NOVEL EXCERPT, Marcela Dantés, Hollow Wind

The Book of Miguel 


1.

I have a tale to tell, a fool’s tale, for mine was a foolish life. I am an old man of about a hundred, and I don’t think I’ve led a full life; all I had was one unthinkable day then ev’rythin’ that followed. That was over twenty years ago and the worst part was that I survived.

This is Capybara’s Corner, the name of sumwhere that maybe is not really sumwhere. It is a strange corner of nowhere, ‘cause, here, nuthin’ ever happens, but also ev’rythin’ happens. From the inside, with us livin’ in these lil’ houses so deeply set into this rocky wall, it feels like there is no world outside. See, this big rocky slab may protect us from the others, but that same big rock won’t let the Hollow Wind go and then who can protect us from ourselves?

The Hollow never left and never will. The Hollow stays here, right into our minds, and then some.

I am not ‘from here’ but I can say I’m from ‘‘round here.’ Two days of walkin’ straight down, that’s where I’m ‘from,’ and it don’t matter, for I’ve been livin’ here for over twenty years, so, even if I’m not ‘from’ here, I am nearly that. Mother always said, “Miguel, we are from anywhere our heart is.” Mine came thumpin’ along with me tha night, even though it felt very tired; now, I suppose I, and it, are from here, belong here, in this corner of nowhere. In this weird place of sour smells, home to crazy folk.

Not many people are really from-from here. All in all, it’s eight houses and Beans’ general store, appended to his house. There’s a very old man, which is me, and a lil’ baby girl, and ev’rythin’ in between. Men, women, the crazies, the square, the chapel, the mutts. There are couples, orphans, runaway fathers, men who sleep with men. And there is Maura’s rabbit, and Crazy Maura. I just kept stayin’ on here without noticin’, which is what happens when there’s nuthin’ holdin’ us on to sumwhere else. I had ev’rythin’, and, suddenly, I had nuthin’, only this damn huge hole in my soul. A
voice that screamed inside my head, and to this day still does, very loud, ‘cause that’s the only place where it is real, at his workshop, the devil’s. The dickens, the darned one.

The Adversary, Satan, Lucifer. Can’t quite remember the day I got here, or the next day, or the one after that. And this is not ‘cause I’m ninety-five, it’s not the age makin’ me forget things, my mind is still sprightly and lively and chock-full of memories I want to keep, which are almost none. I will tell the story, it’s not ‘cause I am an old man that I have forgotten a thing, it’s only that all that happened that night and ev’rythin’ that followed suit needed to disappear, and it did, unless it decides it’s time to come back and haunt me.

Ninety-six, actually. I made it to ninety-six just the other day.

My skin keeps gettin’ thinner ‘n’ thinner with age, now any scratch will turn into a bleedin’ cut. Beard started growing at a slower pace, and that is sumthin’ I thought could never happen, but our own face gets all molten ‘n’ lazy. A few hairs went gaga and now grow much faster than the others, makin’ ev’rythin’ look like a disheveled mess. I pluck those out with tweezers. The thing to stop the bleedin’ from a razor cut is the evergreen cerrado flower, the sempre-viva. We put it on a plate with three drops of alcohol at the bottom then let it soak. Then we apply it to the wound and it will burn like heck, until it stops, both the pain and the bleedin’. If a doctor hears this, he’ll laugh his pants off and tell you this folk remedy is bullshit, a useless piece of mumbo-jumbo, and even if he watched it happenin’ right in front of his eyes, the bleedin’ stoppin’ till it’s dry, he’ll say it was just a coincidence, but of course it wasn’t.

Sempre-viva, my dear lil’ plant, I wish you could cure more ailments.


2.

When I got here, they were puttin’ up the first of the spires. The other three appeared only later; today, the giant four spires are only good for nuthin’, but there they are, standin’ tall ‘n’ huge as those long-dead species, as a reminder that ev’rythin’ can die. Ev’rythin’ can die, ain’t it so? They, the spires, are good for one thing, to remind me of stuff. Ev’rythin’ dies, but Miguel here lives on, that’s what everybody says when they pass me by, as if I had already gone deaf. Even though I haven’t.

Of course, this spire, this windmill, this huge, colorless pinwheel, it’s the biggest thing I have ever seen. They said they were all the same size, even more than thirty or even fifty yards, but I know the first one is the mother of them all. That one, the behemoth, was the one they were puttin’ up and that was the first thing I saw when the dawn broke, even before I knew how I’d found myself here, at Capybara’s Corner, even before the stingin’ pain had ceased. This huge, white, useless spire was the first thing I saw when it dawned after the end of the world, my eyes burnin’ in pain from the fire.

This mother of all spires, the behemoth, is still the first thing my eyes see every day. They should’ve taken ev’rythin’ with’em when they left. If it was meant to vanish, I’d rather pretend it had never existed; I don’t appreciate those spires loomin’, remindin’ me of ev’rythin’. These spires used to be my job, the Wind Farm, the house of my sleeplessness. And now I don’t even know what they are anymore, it’s all over and no one’s explained it to me. These spires are remains, they are the past, and so I am, a lil’ bit: I’m an ancient man. They are an old, disturbin’ secret that don’t let me sleep; those
damn things mean sleepless nights to me.

Such was my life: the house has burned and the old man has fled. The Corner opened itself up, Teodora said I could stay, so I did. Teodora, were she still alive, would be much younger than me now. She was the one who sheltered me those first nights and, were she alive, I’d ask her what had I told her when I first arrived, and why did she take me in, into her house which was not a hotel and not an inn, but a kind of restin’ stop for those who happened by. I didn’t happen by, but stayed anyway, I changed skins like a snake, swallowin’ my own poison and the others’, time and again. And here I still stand, me and the poison, all of it. Teodora is no more, she’s gone. She was a good, beautiful soul, you’d look at her and see her shiny aura about her, like an angel saint that brought me sweet coffee in bed in a room of her own house and changed my sticky wound dressin’ every day, wrappin’ it ‘round my head, laden with ointments and magic only she could concoct. She was never afraid of me, not even when I was myself. Teodora, crazy? The wind will make people crazy, it’s a bad, sickenin’ vapor, it’s right in the Bible, all is wind, all is vanity, all is cursed like myself. When I think about Teodora, I
smell coffee. What does madness smell like?

It was also Teodora who told me, when I came back to my senses, that I should try and get a job there, at the Windmill, which back then was a new building and surely would need some personnel. Teodora was always the first to learn new stuff. The Windmill was those four spires and so many promises. It was 1994 and, doin’ the math, I was already seventy-two, had been an old man for a long time already, now ninety-seven.

But what could I work in? My whole life I had been a farm worker, it was the cattle, that could not take care of itself, and me. I had never seen this wind business before. She said nobody had, it’s the first windmill in Brazil, dunno about the rest of the world. They surely need someone who’s a hard worker, all else can be taught. And you are good, Miguel. You are good.

By then I had been stayin’ at Teodora’s for more than two weeks, I was almost cured of the fire-pain and I knew she needed me to leave, even though she didn’t tell me – she could never – but it was for that reason that she said, you are good. I am not. What I became, but ain’t no longer, was the night watch at the Windmill. I don’t really know what they were doin’ in there, with those blades spinnin’ all day, the same wind always blowin’, the mill watchin’ over ev’rythin’, and me, earnin’ my wages in a new currency that everybody said would be good, that would finally let us afford our needs, news that
I appreciated, not that I had lots of wants and needs to begin with, but the Windmill was gonna pay me a real salary, I felt almost happy. The actual name for it is Experimental Aeolic Power Mill, I had to learn it in case anyone asked, and after you commit this to memory no one can make you forget. They probably thought there was no danger at all, nuthin’ that deserved real protection, ‘cause hirin’ as a guard a guy that’s as old as me, skinny and not with the keenest of sights, is not the best protection you can provide. I was older than seventy then, not quite a boy anymore, and I had never needed to protect anything before. Today I am ninety-eight, almost a hundred, which is a lot.

Come to think of it, who could steal the stored wind or a spire taller than 30 yards? I got that job ‘cause no-one cared. Or maybe it was thanks to Teodora’s orishas, thanks to Teodora herself, ‘cause she could always work somethin’ out. And now I’ve lost Teodora, I’ve lost the job, I’ve lost the mill, and I don’t know why. No one does.


3.

All I remember from my days of youth is Dona Lila, my beloved Mum, a small, brave woman. I can still remember her smell after eighty years of her bein’ gone, one sudden night when I was a teenager, but I can still feel her here with me as if she was alive, draggin’ her leather slippers ‘round the kitchen floor, lightin’ up her cigarette on the stove fire and askin’ me if I would make coffee for us both before it was too late in the day to drink coffee. It was Lila’s way of askin’ things, by askin’ if someone ‘would’ do’em.

Would you go to the grocery store for me, since I’m out of matches or butter or both? Would you go outside and take the clothes out of the clothes-line before the heavy rain starts pourin’? Would you stay in my room a lil’ while today, ‘cause this windy weather makes my head hurt and my speech loud and I don’t like either of these things? She didn’t ask much, so we would stay on without wantin’ too much.

She had small feet and two teeth missin’ from the front row, one from the top, one from the bottom, and I used to ask her if she wouldn’t fix’em and she would laugh out loud with the holes and all and say, Miguel I don’t have the time and I don’t have the money, what am I goin’ to buy teeth with and she went on smilin’ like if she had a perfect million-dollar smile.

On the day that she died I started to smoke, ‘cause she left a buncha cigarettes on the first drawer beside her bed and I thought maybe like that, by pullin’ the smoke deeply in, maybe I could feel Lila in that room again, in that house, but it didn’t work, the smoke burned in my insides and I coughed my lungs out and the coughin’ became hiccups and tears while I shouted wake up please wake up, you’re all I have, what I’m gonna do now?

The second cigarette no longer burned my lungs, as they still don’t burn to this day, and to this day I still smoke the same kind of cigs that she did, those of the red-ball pack, that has even changed its name, but not its taste. My Mum’s smell had a lil’ tinge of this cig’s, but also of rue and lavender, for even when she didn’t have the branches tucked behind her ear, she did smell of rue and lavender.

She wasn’t sick, all she did was close her eyes and never open’em again, she said she would rest a little bit before dinner time but would be back soon. Dinner time passed, the pequi dish got cold and lost its good smell, then it was the small hours of the mornin’ and I went into her room just to see if everythin’ was alright and it’s not like in the movies where you need to touch the person’s neck to know. At the very moment you get into the room with the dead person in it you know it’s happened. I knew my mother was dead and I still can’t explain it to this day, I guess her body simply stopped workin’, and she was young, not even forty, nobody’s Mum should die when they’re only fourteen but mine did and I started smokin’ and to this day, once in a while, I wonder how marvelous it would be if we could sit and have a smoke together on that house’s porch, each one holdin’ their cup o’coffee, hers on a glass ‘cause she never cared for cups, but she also never explained me why.

Once, she told me that my name was Miguel ‘cause he was the best saint ever and that she had done everythin’ right ‘cause I was also the best son ever and I’ll never forget this. Not even now, a whole life later. The funny thing is that Alma, the girl that Paulo decided he’s head over heels for, smells just like my mother.


Translation into English: Simone Campos
Image: Jason Hu