And yet, Ms. Cat, Don Skinny, and Mr. Saintbone do not attend the feasts at the skyscraper palace. Nor do they go on international tours; they limit themselves to making reforms, while in cabinet meetings Scabrous Spouse defends them against accusations of being technocrats, populists, lobbyists, fasters, to explain once more to the young ministers—who spend time in the government before obtaining lifelong economic posts—what the miracle by which Ms., Don, and Mr. have governed for thirty years consists of: television, telephones, internet, free sports for everyone; subsidies for basic services; the organization of festivals, parties, and dances. Of employment, education, housing, and nutrition policies, not a thing.
Then comes the famine.
The famine was not anticipated.
The progeny and their vermin take to the streets, camp in the squares, and burn the fields. The other eight hundred, the other eight hundred thousand, the other nine hundred, the other thousand thousands—already old, already fat inside—let themselves die of starvation.
At an emergency government meeting, Accountant Carola opens her eyes at last and finds Stinkat, Skinnybunny, and Bonehound standing before her. She thinks they are smiling, but realizes it’s just a sneer, a silent growl. Accountant Carola recalls all she has lost to years of popping pills: a ravine, the sea, three creatures of the night. So she and Scabrous take advantage of the foggy night to embark on a permanent diplomatic mission to the great beyond.
As that last sun rises, a bedraggled mass of millions stands before the ruins of smoking mirrors that once were skyscraper, palace, garden, forest. They cry out for a piece of bread and a drink of water.
The burning sun rises.
Out of the ruins emerges a ridge that is a hill, a hill that is a volcano. And a cat, a rabbit, and a dog emerge from the crater; with the help of millions of other paws and hoofs we push a glass coffin, gilded and on wheels, down the last liturgical ramp. We make ourselves legion: never again will we let some salivating thing turn into ration, into reason, into nauseating money. We crowd together, carefully we open the coffin and, justly, we eat.
The choreography needs a silence. He, the boy, stole twelve chainsaws from the logging company before he was caught. He, the singer, felt the electric shock from her, the other, the bassist, and the other bassist’s instruments in his throat, in his perineum, in the nape of his neck, and in his gums every night.
He, making his escape, began to write names on a stone, for he knew the wind would erase them. One of the names was the name of The Band. I am he. She, the other, the bassist, and the other bassist had to choose a stormy night.
For every erasure that my eyelids carry out on the screen, a series of words that I do not write on the blank glass is regained: pëllü, silence, electricity. That was the order in which the old mother taught him, the boy, to speak.
Only a strong wind can touch everything at once.
He, the boy, threw himself into the other’s arms. She, from her hospital bed, smiled at the three of them, exhausted. He came over and, instead of kissing the newborn on the forehead, planted a kiss on each of his eyes. What name are you thinking of for the baby, she answered, the other answered, he answered.
He, the singer, discovered the figure of his twin outside his cell window was climbing a hill, entering the boarding house, crossing another threshold, arriving to the room she had rented in the apartment as an adolescent. He, making his escape, wrote names in the sand of an immense and stormy beach.
I, on the other hand, no longer remember what is sound and what noise, what is nasality, and what those mouths are that vibrate above me.
He, the singer, on the farewell tour asked that the penultimate song always be followed by a pause. Each of them would dedicate it to whomever they wanted, pëllí, silence, memory, chainsaw, and so every night the guitar paused, the keyboards stopped, the basses ceased thrumming, the cymbals and drums were left untouched, trading places, superimposing.
He, unlike me, heard in each of those silences the deafening roar of the chainsaw cutting down his tree and all the other unreachable trees simultaneously.
I am he and I can touch him, the boy, again, but only with my eyelids.