CHAPTER XLVI: EXCLUSION

   Winds of loneliness, storm, rain, drizzle, watering, Miguel’s ideas were blowing in the air and exploded, bathing Luke in a mist of bitterness, a new unpleasant winter on a changeable spring. He watched Lucy's belly with acrimony and it was obvious that he objected to what his eyes saw. His disoriented mind, of an orphan who has just lost three of his bloods, turned purple and became rough, an icy frost that froze our three warm hearts. And finally the tainted water of misunderstanding was spilled in his words.

− "Again, Luke? I told you nothing when you decided to have a child in our circumstances, because I believed in Lucy and you and I knew that you would raise him, but having two children is too much."

   Later Luke would tell me that his words took him by surprise and he had no time to think when he answered.

− "He is not my son, Miguel."

− "He is not your son? -asked Miguel. Black turf irrigated the bonfire.

− "I mean he is my son – Luke rectified-, but biologically I've not engendered him."

   Miguel didn't understand anything and looked at Lucy asking for help, ignoring John, who was pulling him telling him to go to their tent, for there he would explain him. Lucy took courage and told him the truth.

− "Our second child is Nike’s child".

   I then was covered with a frosted look. It took him a few seconds to think what curse he would tell me.

− "Nike – he looked threateningly at me-, this is too much. One thing is to try to understand your ongoing hesitation between your going or staying, but never would I have expected of you that you broke a couple."

− "I haven't broken any couple, Miguel, on the contrary. There are many things that you've never known and now you will know them. And Lucy and Luke still love each other. Pay attention to John, who now without a doubt will inform you of everything, even of things that you always wanted to know like what he and I were talking about in your tent in August."

− "Come with me, Miguel, and do not say nothing more – John insisted -. I will tell you what has happened. But for God’s sake, don't talk until you know. Nothing has happened here that all of us have not accepted."

− "John, you have my permission to tell him everything from summer. He should know also why I left."

   I don't know how John was informing him of everything he still didn’t know, but he must have known all my doubts since the now distant July 30, when I fell in love with Luke, until the night of the cave, where the idea of our Three started, of our five, everything... and how much it took me to accept the project and create a family.

   The sun was rising when Olivia withdrew to her tent to read, which she did each morning waiting for her mistress to wake up. Miguel did not use to get up early, but he wanted to do it that day to talk to me. He sat down beside me and said to me:

− "Nike, I ask you forgiveness and not only for last night. Now I understand many things and it is true, as you told me one day, that I was missing information. My words wanted to move your conscience, but now I know that they have been useless, because your conscience was already moved. I'd like to make peace."

− "Miguel, last night was nothing, and to make peace first a war should have been declared that has never occurred between you and I. And all your words have always moved me to consider what it is really important."

− "Never could I have imagined that you liked both women and men, like me. And instead of breaking a couple, you've had always a high respect for them. You're a wonderful mate and I now understand that you haven't been the originator, but - he stopped and he clearly changed his sentence. I saw it immediately and for months I wondered what it was that he really had meant, at the time that again, but for the first time without Luke, reached me that fleeting idea that I wasn't able to grab and worried me - but – he continued - a feather moved by the wind of the circumstances."

− "I didn't want to fall in love with them, Miguel, but it has happened."

− "All the loves are innocent, even the love you felt for John. Yes, he has also told me that. It is true that I am jealous but, for what I know of him, I know that, even if he reciprocated you, we would both continue loving each other. And I also thank you for another thing, Nike: how you have been by his side these months avoiding he felt completely lonesome. So I'd like to ask you something. Tomorrow is an even day. I would like to go with you. We could meet in the Basilica when you leave work."

   I agreed. My fellow mate needed to know me, now that he had of me a different opinion. So it was that finally I went with all my fellow mates alone to the street. With Mistress Oakes and Olivia too. Usually with both of them at the same time, but in recent years also with each of the two alone.

   That day was, therefore, a day of a false harmony, in which Miguel also spoke with Lucy, but you could see him reluctant to talk to Luke, as if he was meditating on an idea. Out of work, I returned to the Torn Hand to care for my child and I was maturing a tale that would summarize all the tales. That night at the bonfire, Mistress Oakes, as usual, could read me.

− "Cheer up, Nike. I am sure all of us want to hear you."

− "Maybe it is nonsense. But I cannot share a bonfire with you and not tell once a tale - at that time I only needed to hear any from my wife-. So I'm going to try. But it has no value."

− "Cat Nile – I began looking at Bruce - was an expert swimmer, and he took pleasure one day in a lake, but he was bewildered and in the middle of the water he was wondering how to find any shore. He was not familiar with the surface, perhaps - I went on looking at Luke now - because all lakes should be swum twice at least. It was a warm day and water was dancing, but on occasions it was cloudy and the sky had a ceiling of grey clouds that sometimes could be seen as a mirror and he wondered whether he should swim north, south, east or westwards. So that lake was becoming – I looked at Mistress Oakes, who encouraged me to continue, satisfied of what she was hearing - a mirror of two crystals and four decisions. He came from a deserted and bitter west where he did not want to be, and stopped a while lying on his back on the water, just to know what direction the sun was following. He went then determined swimming eastwards, where he knew that unridered lived, an old friend who worked – I looked at Olivia - for the realm of red pieces as a chess knight. And that was how he found himself when he followed, unlike the stars, a west-east course, where he could rest forever, getting from time to time into the water to discover different courses. On the eastern shore great new friends were awaiting him, among them two brother bears - I looked at Miguel and John - called Charles and Patrick, living their second life before becoming stars, friends of the former disoriented Icarus. Always with them along the water, before the lake would become universe."

   Well, I guess that I have shown you that I do not know how to tell a tale, but I was surprised by the good reception it had. Everyone congratulated me. It has no value, but I tried to name all those tales I had heard of them. Mistress Oakes encouraged me to create more and more than one I have told these years, but I only remember the first one. Of course, coming from me there should be a swimmer. I still don't know whether cats can swim, but Bruce’s cat Nile could. I remembered Mistress Oakes in summer telling me that if one day I was in the mood, I could base on the known facts and re-create them.

  The next day, after work, I found, as expected, Miguel in the Basilica. It was also a rainy day and we had an umbrella. In those days it should be easy to recognize us. We are the only ones sitting on the floor and with them we beggars must resemble gnomes protected in our open mushrooms. We were there about two hours and the day was good for us. He greeted me with deep affection. Finally we were really fellow mates and now we got along wonderfully.

− "Nike – he told me during a break in the heavy rain-, we’d better not have secrets now. I know that John talked to you about Mthandeni. Of course I know that. He has never lied to me in love affairs. No objection. I know that he does not love him now. I even want them to see each other again one day."

   But we hardly talked about Mthandeni. It was enough to know that it was important for Miguel that I knew it. My relationship with him was so different that I even suspected that first him, and later John, who confirmed it, were a few months in love with me. When I knew it I shuddered thinking how much that asshole of Nicholas Siddeley must have changed so now John’s heart had chosen to fall in love with me. Eternally inclined to fall in love, but eternally twins, Miguel had been in love with almost the whole camp. In fact he also said.

− "I appreciate you so much now that I believe that there should be no issues we couldn’t talk about now so no new misunderstandings arise. So I will presume to tell you that we are so similar that we have even fallen in love with the same people, Lucy, John and Luke, fortunately in a different order, but each of us has chosen their partner, or partners and our loves have settled. And I’m really glad, Nike, of the happiness you have."

  But I noticed that there was something that he still did not dare to tell me. I saw in him still some fear or suspicion, but not about me.

− "I still need to talk to Luke, but – he told me when we were leaving. He faltered – before offending my fellow mate Nike again, I would cut my hands."

   It seems a sanguinary sentence, but it was a common expression among us, the torn hands.

   In fact Miguel and Luke spoke the next day. He and John came out later to wait for my partner to return from work, not on probation now, and as I looked after Paul I saw them move towards Meander Bridge.

   My mate returned soon after, disquiet, and after my questions he answered nothing was happening. I didn't know then, but I do know now, what had happened. I intuited that Miguel had offended him with an incurable poison. They were months without talking, except politely in the bonfires to ask the other to hand him the bread or something like that. As Luke didn't want to tell me about it, I assumed that somehow it had to do with me and at this idea my entire soul felt cold. If I asked Miguel, he told me always the same: "I was wrong, Nike, and I do not know how to repair my mistake now." An offense that was thrown to Luke’s most vulnerable self. No wonder Luke felt lonesome, more tender than ever with me as if he suspected that one day he could lose me. And I didn't know how to cure him because I did not even know what the disease was and what I had to do in the symptoms.

   The following week my husband and I found Samuel at the bar and I told him that he could already know Miguel, the only one that he still didn’t know. But Luke was lost and Sam noticed it. They looked at each other then and I got the strange security that both understood each other then. What had they spoken about in their first conversation? I was surprised to know my President knew something about me, yes, about me, that I didn't know.

   It had been a tremor that had surprised The Tree-Beggar in a storm and Miguel’s words, far from being fertile water, had discharged silt and mud that had unbalanced the firm trunk of my mate, who kept showing me his love; but if I had fear of him for months, now the needle was inverted and pointed south: Luke feared me and I didn't know what to do with him, but I sensed that it was important to give him more love that ever, since a fire of incurable wounds was scorching him and The Beggar of the Golden Cradle was powerless to help him and if I asked him he always answered that nothing had happened. Miguel had found his weakest point and he had covered him with mud but I took months to see why. I felt that there had been an offence, but that in it Lucy had not been dirtied. She just told me to love him more than ever, for Luke needed me.

   One morning Mistress Oakes got up early, she told me at the bonfire, in front of her child, who was also there:

− "I don't know what has happened, Nike, but I trust you. You have the ability to read us exactly the way we are, and I know that one day you will be fair with him."

− "With Luke?"

− "With both of them. They could make peace now, but Luke is frightened and one day you will get him out of his fears. You have been the last to arrive but you are Commotion and you have to be a mainstay for all of us."

   Miguel was the last one to go to bed. One night in a bonfire with him I tried to cajole him to tell me the truth but he just told me that I had better not know, and he did not know how to apologize.

− "I've been a big-mouth, Nike. I try to persuade Lucy to convince him that we should speak again and I must apologize."

    I noticed him crestfallen, aware of having made a mistake with one he loved so much. I didn't know what was happening and I said with sarcasm, and some reproach.

− "Miguel, you have long been living in the night, and you are the son of dawn: wake up!"

    In one of the latest fires in April, we could still notice some tension between them two that lasted for months, but Lucy, conciliatory, spoke kindly to both of them, wanting to join again those who had been inseparable friends.

− "My heart has more than one nook and this year it has forked. Two real men and a single blanket, covering us three with the same tenderness, even in moments of icy cold that could wrap us up enough in the crises that we go through: I love both of them."