The air was having fun
as it was prancing in the cable car. We returned frosted from Crownridge, our
faces so icy that tears slid effortlessly. The wind was a dagger determined to
flay us and inclement it was playing with us some gloomy game of Apocalypse. We
were too warm, but you can see that it entered through any crack of our clothes
and it was not only the wind. From God knows where entered specks of dirty mud
and our unprotected skins were a strainer for that cruel game of the wind
brushes.
It was the winter solstice, December 21, year
62. It would actually come at 11:12. For that day the Mayan had foreseen the
end of the world, or that it was heard, and there were many people who believed
it. It actually concluded baktun 13 of the ancient Mesoamerican long count
calendar. Others thought that it was the end of a cycle and that humanity would
undergo a spiritual transformation that would be the beginning of a new age.
We returned at 6:10 from the top of the
mountains. At that time the cable car opened and in a cabin my three parents,
my husband and I were returning, frozen stiff and somewhat asleep. We wanted to
go to the Crownridge mountain tops to parachute. Since they were 50 years old,
they went only once a year, but when Nigel became the tenth beggar, they
accepted the old slogan that had marked their lives: accepting something of a
beggar, and now they admitted that Nigel and I would pay the jumps and we went
there once a month. I had actually jumped for the first time and I could feel
what everyone had told me. I felt like a dancer on the tops of the air, a feather
that goes down the corridors of the wind and becomes absent-minded because of
that feeling of being a bird that we humans scarcely live. Nigel had talked to
me a thousand times about that pleasure in which he had been introduced by
Shirley and finally one day I decided I could try to become an eagle. And since
that afternoon, I had jumped at 7, I knew that I would always like to repeat, because
now I also had my wings and I wanted to keep flapping them two or three times a
year.
After the jump, we had spent a couple of
hours watching the stars and we finally went to dinner at the restaurant of the
hotel Moonshine. Nigel decided that
since the table on the northeast was his usual place with Shirley, now he would
choose the northwestern table as his place with Kirsten. We had decided to
spend the night at the hotel and early in the morning, with just half an hour
for breakfast, to wait frozen stiff for the opening of the cable car that would
take us back home. There we could see the Mayan end of the world together with
our fellow mates. Nigel and I were already on Christmas holiday and that was
the reason that we had chosen that day for my first jump. Bruce never had
decided to jump and although at times he came to the mountains to see us, this
time he said goodbye to all of us with a big hug. John had jumped many times,
but stopped doing so after having lost Miguel. For him it made no sense to fly
without his partner. Richard never made up his mind. He said rightly that in
life one had to be brave for many things, but there was no need to risk it jumping
from the mountains. We wanted to meet Paul, Ermelinda and Regulus again and
embrace the end of the world as we had embraced my brother and his family any other
day.
But perhaps our end of the world came a few
hours earlier than expected. The cabins swung with a certain danger to fall. It
was like being a night of wind on top of a big wheel. They were going from side
to side and they almost turned. We started to look at one another in fear. In
the neighboring cabins, passengers were frightened, crying, and you could say many
of them were praying. I remembered God-Fate. I did not have a strong faith but
at times like that we all invoked him. Would it be possible that your divine
plan for these five travelers could end here this morning? My husband kept his
gaze, so as not to look at the abyss, in Orion, Taurus, and Gemini, which would
still take a while to set. I was wondering whether its mallet would become that
morning for us an axe. My mother looked lovingly at the two men in her life and
she should be thinking that 32 years together is nothing if they loved one
another as the first day. Luke recalled one November 18 of the year 28 and one
October 4 of the year 29, two dates which his heart had chosen to love those
who he still loved. Nike’s thoughts were comfortably in the Cave of Beggar
Sally. He wanted to be on the ground, enter it again and kiss it. My three
parents looked at one another. Since the operation of my father Luke, my
parents knew well that Nike had had a vision in which all three would die
together. They thought no doubt it might be that day, but I heard Dad Nike
whispering to Dad Luke, who was on his left.
─ "Not Kirsten."
─ "One other day
we should come alone." - said Luke.
My father had had a vision in which three
wheat ears were mowed at the same time. And when he said "not Kirsten"
I did not know whether he meant that I was not in that vision or that this new
prophecy could not be so unfair that it was fulfilled including me.
But the wind was a latent threat and then
we heard a sound that made our blood run cold. A cabin had just detached and
fallen to the ground, thankfully empty. Perhaps the weight of so many people in
ours would make it not swing so much. We were in one of the first and the one which
had fallen was one of the last. We heard terrified screams and desperate
prayers in the neighbouring cabins. I felt the presence on our side of Mistress
Oakes, of my grandmother Olivia, of Miguel and of my grandfather Herbert
Protch. Maybe they were there to join us at the last second, or to tell us that
it was not yet the time, to assure us it would not be that morning and we would
be next to my brother, his wife and my nephew watching the Mayan end of the world
and since it was not going to come true, we would then go to the streets to
beg. Suddenly Nigel decided to kiss me. My parents Lucy and Luke had a warm kiss,
calling each other my darling; then Luke and Nike kissed, calling each other my
love; and finally Lucy and Nike completing the circle with their shocking my
heart. And finally the three of them kissed at the same time to remember 30
years of love, and if the end was today, they had loved one another for life,
my mother always on the earth, my father Luke in Knightsbridge Street, in his
time as a bald man and his many years as a beggar, my father Nike half his life
with a fortune and half his life walking the streets without anything illuminating
his fellow mates and his children.
Now it was only 500 metres to reach the
ground, but the height was still lethal. Nigel ironic said that had he known
they should have lent us each a parachute, and with it on we would all have jumped
from that deadly cable car.
It was then when my father Luke, who had turned
and looked towards the southeast, pointed it out.
─ "Look. There it
is."
I had been a good while watching the star Sirius,
my husband’s star. And now I could finally see my mother’s star, Algieba and I saw
myself, Ras Elased Australis, and in that direction Nigel looked excited. It
was still early for the stars of my father Luke, Denebola and my father Nike,
Zosma, to rise. But the sky showed the most precious gem of its jewellery box,
the star of my inspiration, which reminded me that I was still writing and that
despite gloomy appearances maybe today wasn't the day. There it could be seen,
white-blue, round, bright, pure, crystalline. Tender and with a nearly perceptible
fragrance of fire which could take away that spectral wind, watched for
millennia by generations and generations and that would still give splendour to
future humanities. It shone on Luke’s neck, or on his shoulder,
in reality. Alpha Leonis,
the basilisk, the little king, the star Regulus.
Disserenascit.
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