THERE'S BEER IN THE ICE-BOX

To the memory of Brian “Tom” Thomson, artist’s model, check-out operator, librarian and linguistics expert. Anything from the fifties made his boat float. A disease from the eighties made it sink.

 

 

 

 

 

Tom is sitting on the sofa over in the corner drinking whisky with coke. He holds his glass with both hands. I’m sitting at the table with my glass in front of me. No coke. Coke ruins whisky, I tell him. Tom seems a little shocked. Or surprised. But not because of what I’ve just said about coke. Because of something else that we really haven’t discussed yet, but we will try to do.

 

“So what are you gonna do?”, he asks.

He takes a look at his drink. Probably watching the bubbles.

I pick up my glass.

“Nice whisky, this,” I say.

“Uh-uh,” says Tom.

“Teacher’s”, I say.

“Now, I mean”, says Tom.

“Now?”, I ask.

“Yeah. What are you going to do?”

 

I don’t know what I’m going to do. Especially now. I look at the whisky in front of me. I take a drink and hold it in my mouth for a while. It burns a little, but pleasant.

“I suppose I’ll carry on with my work”, I say.

I go over and turn the TV on. Six thirty. We always watched the six thirty news.

 

Tom wants to make a phone call. He does.

“Local number”, he says.

I look out the window, drink some more whisky, study the records. It’s getting dark. Tom puts down the receiver.

“Going out tonight”, he says, after a while.

“No”, I say, also after a while, thinking it’s a question.

 

I’m standing by the window and looking out at the land. Darkness takes hold of the land slowly. You can’t notice it if you look away for a half hour and then look back; you can only notice it if you watch all the time and don’t get distracted for a second, because in one second you can miss something that might be important. Darkness seems to seep up from inside the land and possess it. It doesn’t come from above, that’s light; darkness comes from below.

 

Tom is watching TV. I can see it from where I sit. Some guy in Utah has killed his three wives. He’s talking on TV now. Says he’d had enough of them complaining about his salary. Says he reads the Bible every day. He’s saying something else when the mike is pushed away by a police officer. The newsman said he chopped them up with an ax.

“Jesus”, says Tom.

I don’t say anything. Tom has another whisky.

 

“Are you gonna be okay on your own?”, asks Tom.

“I’ve got my work to do”, I say.

I put on a record. Gil Evans. Tom says he likes it. Tom’ll say anything to avoid saying what he should say.

The whisky finishes.

“Whisky’s finished”, says Tom, over at the bar.

“’s beer in the ice-box”, I say.

Tom goes to the kitchen.

“Jesus!”, he says when he comes back.

 

Tom is twenty-eight. He’s a lawyer at De Voer and Rosenblat. The best firm in town, they say. He’s tall, blond and slightly tanned. He is wearing faded baggy blue jeans and a sweat-shirt that says “Land of the Free”. He is carrying a can of beer.

 

I’ve switched to vodka. Neat. Tom doesn’t like vodka. Gil Evans ends. Just after seven. Normally I’d be having dinner now. Normally we’d be having dinner now. Watching TV.

 

“Why did she leave?”, Tom asks, holding his glass in both hands again. Not the same glass as before, of course.

 

Tom’s going out. He leaves by the back porch, and I sit in the rocking chair and watch him get into his Opel Kadett and roll across the yard until he gets onto the driveway and then the highway. Going into town. It’s dark.

 

I told him why she left.

“Jesus!”, he said. “Jesus!”

 

Tom is driving along the freeway now, I suppose. The TV is still on. A talk show. I can hear it from the porch, and its slight light reaches me in this pitch blackness out here. There are other noises, too. In the distance I can see the lights of the town. If I strain my ears I can imagine I hear the noises of the bars and cars, but I can’t really. Apart from this everything is black. Occasionally a car shines its headlights this way, but mostly they don’t. It’s a hot night. Like last night. I’m hot again, like last night. The vodka has finished now. But there’s beer in the ice-box.

 

 



LARANJI 2500

February 2500, somewhere in hyperspace

Captain Alvar once again looked nervously at the commands on the control panel in front of him. There was still no sign of the pulsing blue light that he so desperately needed to see to confirm that his mission – and his life’s work – had been successful. Outside, beyond the glass of the observation windows of the spaceship, there was nothing but an empty void. Each time the craft entered a new solar system, which was happening more and more infrequently, he fiddled about with his dials and pressed buttons to see if it was this time that he would discover that which he knew existed. But it never was, and he would have to return to his charts and to the obscure scribblings he had made over the years.

 

He was well aware that his crew was becoming restless, and were probably doubting his sanity. And even he was beginning to have some doubts about this himself. Four years ago they had left their home planet of Laranji, some of them a little bit worried about this mission, others anxious to embark on this historic adventure in search of the “new world” that their Captain had been so sure that existed on the other side of the Universe. Now they were little more than a group of tired, beaten and frightened men.

 

Captain Alvar still remembered his decisive meeting with the Governor of Laranji, almost five years ago. He had fought so hard to try to convince the Emperor of the Seventh Quadrant that his long research into various phenomena observed in the heavens proved the existence of another civilization, living probably somewhere on the opposite side of the Universe. No one had believed him, and generally people thought he was mad.

 

Planet Laranji, 2495

 

“How can life exist on a planet in the Milky Way?”, the Governor asked, sitting on his State Chair in the cold and austere surroundings of the gray reception chamber.

“I’m not here to present an answer to that question, Governor,” said Captain Alvar. “I’m simply stating that we have received messages, sometimes in the form of primitive music, sometimes in strange languages that our linguists are unable to decipher, but which have nothing to do with any of the six main linguistic groups existing in our Quadrant.” Alvar paused nervously before he dared state the next phrase. “And as you know, Governor, we consider that life – at least as we know it – can only exist in our Quadrant.”

 

Governor Etome seemed irritated by this last remark.

“Are you lecturing me about our knowledge of the Universe?!”

“It was not my intention, Governor…”

“And what,” continued the Governor, “leads you to believe that these sounds are proof of any form of intelligent life?”

 

Captain Alvar requested permission to sit down before he continued, even though he knew that this might be seen as a lack of discipline. He glanced at the Governor, seated in front of the fifty men and fifty women who made up the Planetary Council, none of whom had shown any emotion or reaction towards what he was saying. He opened a file on his wrist computer and proceeded to talk, now more comfortably.

 

“Governor,” he paused, “we believe that these sounds that have been observed for a considerable time are an attempt by the inhabitants of this planet to communicate with us – or with anyone else who might be listening.”

“So?”, asked the governor, now becoming impatient.

“Recent developments have suggested that there is intelligent life on whatever planet it is …”

The governor was bored, but adhered to the strict codes of decent behavior which were the basis of existence on Laranji. Thus he fought hard against yawning. Decorum above all.

“And these developments are what?”

“One of the recent attempts at communication by these people was in Portuguese.”

 

The governor simultaneously became extremely interested and absolutely dumbfounded. Over two minutes passed before he spoke again. Captain Alvar shifted in his chair, experiencing a sentiment which was a mixture of pride and fear.

“In Portuguese?”

“Precisely,” stated Captain Alvar, firmly.

The expression on the governor’s face revealed a confusion of stupefaction and anger. Surely this was a joke, he thought to himself. Surely this man was as mad as everyone had said he was. He looked Alvar straight in the eyes.

“And you have a register of this message?”

“I will play it to you now, Governor.”

 

Alvar confidently pressed the button on his wrist computer containing a recording of the message that he and his research team had received several months ago; a recording that he hoped would prove beyond any doubt that intelligent life existed somewhere in the Milky Way, and that would allow him to receive the financing he needed to embark on a mission which was possibly the most important undertaking ever made by a human being. The sound of this historic message echoed throughout the enormous and empty chamber:

 

                        Saaaaaaamba! Saamba, Samba!

                        Everyone is gonna dance!

Today is Carnival!

                        Today is Carnival!

                        Everyone feels romance!

 

                        Saaaamba! Saaamba!

                        Let’s get out there and dance!

                        Today’s a party!

                        It’s a party day!

                        Let’s get out and get some ass!

 

The governor looked somewhat uneasy. There was no doubt in his mind about the fact that this was Portuguese. And even less doubt about the fact that this could have been a linguistic invention made by any of the Portuguese speakers within the Quadrant. But what could be the meaning of some of these terms?, he thought to himself. ‘Samba’, ‘dance’, ‘party’ and ‘get some ass’? These terms all followed the linguistic codes of the language, but what could they possibly mean?

 

Governor Etome thought long and hard about this matter. After he had dismissed Captain Alvar from his presence, he consulted the High Priest of the Church of the God of Austerity. In the evening he paced up and down for several hours before he was able to go to sleep. And it was possibly his curiosity about these words, more than anything else, which led him to wake up and teleport himself to meet the Emperor of the Seventh Quadrant, even if it was the middle of the night. And to recommend financing for the mission.

 

February 2500, somewhere in hyperspace

 

Now Captain Alvar was beginning to doubt his purpose. He and his crew had traveled almost the whole of the Milky Way, and their scanners and sounding devices had not been able to detect any evidence of the existence of life. He turned to his second in command, busily programming charts and studying data.

“Martim”, he suggested, “I think we should give up. And turn back.”

 

And it was precisely at this moment that at first a faint blue light, then growing into a dazzling blue star, appeared on the life monitor. Alvar was so excited that he almost smiled, although he stopped himself before breaking a rule of decorum that was sacred. Martim Suza was also happy. “I am experiencing happiness, Captain”, he said, somewhat embarrassed. “We have been successful. This is good.”

 

The heat-seeking monitor suggested life on a planet situated within a solar system known to Laranjian astronomers as System 48X, and which had never been completely charted by their sonar devices. The main source of this heat was coming from an area to the south of the planet. Captain Alvar was prompt in his decision, and it was an enormous effort to contain his joy.

 

“Suza, lock a beam onto that point. By my calculations we should be there in less than six hours.”

 

Rio de Janeiro, Carnival, 2500

 

When the spaceship commanded by Captain Alvar settled down silently and invisibly on the shore in the Baía de Guanabara it was the middle of the night. Yet the ship’s sensors showed that massive numbers of beings were active in the area – something which was strictly forbidden by the rules of Laranji.

 

Before embarking on an exploratory mission in the company of Martim Suza, Captain Alvar recalled the instructions given to him by the Governor. He would have to do exactly that which had been done by those who had colonized the other planets in the Seventh Quadrant: to convert the inhabitants, if they were intelligent enough, to the God of Austerity.

 

“Ready, Suza?”

“Let’s go, Captain.”

 

Going out to meet the inhabitants of an unknown planet for the first time was always a moment of considerable risk. There had been cases of conflict on some planets; and on others the local beings had been so terrified when they met Laranjians, wearing masks, and dressed in their shining uniforms and tall pointed helmets, that they panicked and fled, or attacked them. And so both Alvar and Suza said a short prayer to the God of Austerity before they pressed their wrist dials and teleported themselves to an area which seemed to be the major center of this intense activity.

 

They immediately found themselves in the middle of what seemed to be a long avenue. What they saw was beyond their imagination. Lieutenant Suza was so shocked that he remained almost paralytic, and only remembered to turn on the recording device on his helmet after a few seconds.

 

Contrary to what they expected, these people were humans, and paid no attention to Suza and Alvar whatsoever. There were thousands and thousands of these people, all dressed in the most exotic outfits, or hardly wearing any clothes at all in the case of many of the females. Suza recorded the whole scene, his mouth hanging open.

 

People were moving around in strange ways, shouting in a sort of rhythmic tone, and waving their arms and other parts of their bodies. They were beating on strange instruments, and smiling and laughing openly in public. And even touching each other with their hands and their mouths. And it was true: they were communicating in Portuguese! Alvar and Suza recorded over three hours of this activity before they returned to the spaceship.

 

Back in the control room, Captain Alvar sat in front of the transmission panel, holding the glass disk containing the recording in his hand. What, he thought, would the Governor and the rest of the Planetary Council think when they received this? This “music” and “dancing”? This atmosphere that the local people called a “party”? He inserted the disk into the computer, and pressed “Transmit”.

 

After he did so, he sat silently thinking. He put his fingers to his lips, recalling the females who had pulled off his mask and touched his lips with theirs. A sensation which he had never previously experienced. Something they called a “kiss”. He remembered their long, tender fingers touching him in places he had never been touched before. He recalled their smells and their laughter.

 

Next morning Captain Alvar was disturbed, after having spent the night sitting thinking and dozing in his chair in the control room, by the arrival of Martim Suza and the Religious Committee, ready to go out and begin the difficult but necessary process of converting the natives to the Church of the God of Austerity.

 

“Martim,” he began. “I’m still the Captain of this ship, and I’m giving you my last order. Which you will obey: You will return immediately to Laranji.”

“Captain …?”

“Immediately. And without me. I’m staying on here. And we are not going to convert these people.”

Martim Suza was speechless. Captain Alvar continued:

“I have sent a code red urgent message explaining everything to the Governor and to the Planetary Council. I only hope that they understand. Goodbye, Martim.”

And he teleported himself away.

 

But what Captain Alvar did not know was that back on Laranji his urgent message was flashing on the Governor’s control panel, but no one was paying the slightest attention to it. The Governor, and the entire Planetary Council, after repeatedly watching the recording of this “party”, were now “dancing” wildly around the room, “kissing” each other, removing their clothes, and touching each other in places they had never been touched before.

 

 

(First published in "The Voyage", Simetria 2000)

OTORHINOLARYNGOLOGY CLINIC

The Romans, according to the great Beermuschmer, in his book Civilization and Love, published in 2406 A.T. by Vägen Pubs., Lucerne, with a Portuguese translation in the same year by Editora Gamanço S.A., when they arrived at an unknown part of the world, with the aim of conquering it, were surprised by the fact that the local inhabitants -- in the majority, of course, as there have always been dissidents -- had already assimilated the habits and customs of the City of Rome. They would get to Spain, says the master, and would find Spaniards who wore the toga, and in Germany they would meet Germans who wore their hair in the Cesarean style. Wherever they went, some of the local habits copied clearly Roman patterns.

 

In the conclusion to his brilliant book, the professor relates this aspect with the (my translation) “desire to monkeyfy” that a lower people has in relation to a superior people, principally in the commercial and financial aspects, which at that time still dominated the relations between men.

 

In my Ph. D. thesis, I quote the same arguments of a “lower people” and “superior people” to explain the bizarre events which took place during our colonization of the planet Barcelona, thirty-odd years ago. But now that I have been retired and have a maximum of two more years of life according to the law, and even though I trust in the powers of my lawyer to obtain a prorogation for a further five years after my foreseen euthanization, I would like to record for history a new, and different, version of what took place during the first lunar cycles of our stay on Barcelona.

 

Barcelona had received earth TV since the beginning of the Universal Century 34-I, and, according to the surveys, almost everyone watched the programs during the so-called “prime-time” -- the competitions, the euthanizations, the courts, and the crime shows. Also according to the surveys, the audience was mainly female, which, for reasons I completely ignore, would spend twenty per cent of their active lives watching images which came from a civilization -- and were about it -- of which these people knew nothing, and into which these people had no chance of entering, as the Federation was “de facto” but not  “de jure” at war with Barcelona.

 

After the obvious devastation of the planet and destruction of the organs of sovereignty and civil organization by our military forces during the conquest (Vide Faxfax.wwuu.pp.barc.massdestr:fuc), motivated, according to the experts in these matters, by the fact that the Barceloians were constantly watching Channel 54 and would not tune into the Broadcast 4U, aimed at these far-off zones of the universe, I participated, as a researcher and doctor, in the peace mission.

 

We arrived at the City of Ian-tchá-tidel Aipó on the 70th day of the year 2479. We found -- I, ears-nose-and-throat doctor, Lalac Schindel, psychologist, Naris Naris, dermatologist, and Vondar Chia, pediatrician -- a very strange civilization. The Barceloians measured, on average, a third of the average height of an earthling. But they all wore clothes which came from earth, mainly connected to sport and leisure. There were Barceloians going round with sweat-shirts around their feet, and with sports shoes of sizes that clearly went beyond the range of their trunks and members.

 

At the beginning we thought this was slightly funny, especially in relation to the hats, which were far too big for them, forcing them to wear hats which, on earth, were for children, with sayings like “I eat my food all up”, or “I love my grandma”. It was rather funny to interview a lawyer about the conquest when he was chewing gum, wearing a sweat-shirt which seemed more like a badly-made dress, and with a hat that said “Bert & Ernie”. Or carrying a baseball bat -- all this in an irregular atmosphere where objects thrown do not describe arcs, but travel through the air in zigzags.

 

Except this stopped being so funny when I started to investigate the inhabitants’ health. As a rule, they suffered from illnesses which hadn’t existed on earth for at least a hundred years, such as complexes, nervous conditions and identity crises. And also, they had some diseases that had never managed to become a threat on earth. Examples: there was still AIDS, tuberculosis and fever. I even witnessed cases of the cold! (which I didn’t dare include in my initial report as the authorities on earth would have thought I’d gone mad).

 

Within the field of my mandate, I busied myself in trying to discover the reasons for these illnesses. I made, as was asked of me, a report, published in the Index Faxfax.wwuu. Barcmedoc:Aiainono. What here follows are excerpts from my personal diary, never publicly revealed, although some things may have been included in a modified form for the purposes of the official report.

 

Day 1

These people are so small. I don’t understand how they can go around dressed this way. This morning a patient came into my office and almost banged his head against my desk because he couldn’t see a thing because of his cap. He had laryngitis.

 

Day 2

Two more cases of laryngitis. Three of bronchiolitis. Another of asthmatic fever. How can this be? And why do they go around with these caps covering their eyes? Don’t these people care about their health? Didn’t they have Ministers to look after them? And why can’t anyone read? And why do they all go about chewing gum?

 

Day 3

Today I felt like writing a song. I had no patience whatsoever to put up with the capped loonies who come in to fill my surgery with their stink, always farting while I was talking to them, and coughing and spitting. And I still haven’t received my pay from earth! Fuck this! And I wrote this song:

            Don’t give me crap! Don’t give me crap! I’m a general practitioner!

            Don’t give me crap, don’t fuck me about! Or I’ll become an anal examiner!

 

Day 4

Today I spent the whole day singing my new song. I’m going to put the lyrics on the door to my surgery, at 80 centimeters high. I’ve added a few more lines:

            Don’t fuck me, don’t give me crap, you great big abnormality

            Don’t consult me, get lost, you great big abnormality!

 

Day 9

This morning I had the chance to look over what I’ve been writing in my diary the past few days, and I confess that I’m becoming a little concerned about the influence of this climate on my mental health. Although I have a certain reticence, due to my ethical principles as a chronicler on this mission, I thought it best to remove and destroy the pages referring to days 5, 6 and 8, as they may be a motive for conflict between our two governments, who for the moment are both ours, but one never knows. I wrote another song:

            Hey, hi, hoh, I’m a doctor-oh

            Hey, hi, hoh, I’m a doctor-oh

            Outa, outa, outa my sight-is

            You’ve got laryngitis!

            Hey-hey-hoh-hey-huh

            I’ll live longer than you!

But I don’t know if it is as strong as the first one...

 

Day 11

Today Naris Naris, the dermatologist, came visiting. She wanted to talk to me about a very personal matter; she thought I shouldn’t include it in the official report. She said that after the third or fourth day on Barcelona she started to feel tendencies which, let’s say, are homosexual, in her case, lesbian. She asked me if I could help. Of course, I couldn’t help in a practical manner, as we do on earth, due to lack of staff, and because my secretary definitely wasn’t into these things. And as Vondar Chia only liked children, I couldn’t see much hope for dealing with the matter in the short term. There were also not many magazines on the market that might be able to alleviate her desires, due to the presence of our soldiers during the previous months.

When Naris suggested that I could dress up as a woman, I ordered her to leave: let’s have some decency! I only dress up as a woman with my partner. Imagine with a person I hardly know! And a white woman at that! But it provided the inspiration for a new song:

            Lick me over, lick me over!

            Don’t leave me here alone!

            ‘Skiddoo, skiddoo, let’s skiddoo,

            Because I’ve got the strawberries here and we can have a picnic.

 

I think that this song, although within the “line” of the others, represents a certain change in terms of style, but I don’t know if this is what I’m aiming at. I am slightly worried about the “slang” use of the word “skiddoo”, and I must confess that I am beginning to regret the fact that I destroyed pages 5, 6 and 8.

 

Day 12

Today I examined two more cases of asthmatic fever. A judge dressed as a bicycle racer, and a young teacher from the University of Ian-tchá, discreetly dressed in a matching two-piece suit with a silk blouse, carrying a briefcase with her initials engraved in gold. Bizarre! I gave the judge a blackberry syrup, and sent the teacher to see Naris.

I feel a bit guilty, sometimes: I know that these people are going to die, and they come to me for help. Is this my true vocation? Shouldn’t I have followed my father’s idea, and become a carpenter like him? No, I had to do what my mother wanted, as always, and now here I am, in this ridiculous surgery!

 

Day 13

Today my wages arrived from earth. It arrived in the shape of small colored papers with numbers and other inscriptions. I went shopping with Naris. We went into one of those enormous structures, with five or six floors, and with each floor dedicated to a “line” of products, where people choose the articles and then go to see someone to put them in a bag. Then the person goes out, and the people from the building receive some of our pieces of paper, which they put into a metal box, which makes a noise something like the sound of Windows 67549 when it closes. Is there anything more bizarre on this planet!

Naris bought a baseball bat and some knee pads, and I bought, on another floor, an ancient and very rare copy of the Complete Comic Strips of Bill Watterson, perhaps the most famous American intellectual, including Calvin & Hobbes, which I enjoyed so much in my classes in the History of Literature.

 

Day 14

Today is my day off. I spent the morning reading Calvin & Hobbes. “The transmutation of Calvin into Spiff the Astronaut is perhaps one of the highest moments in post-modern writing”, my teacher used to say, without ever explaining, however, what post-modern writing was.

 

Lalac Schindel came to visit. Drunk, in accordance with the rules of his profession. (Once on earth Lalac was the subject of a disciplinary hearing when he turned up at his psychology clinic almost completely sober. A real scandal. What would become of our civilization if psychologists could go around sober? We would end up like the Jews! He claimed to the inspector that he had no whisky at home on the night before the day in question. As if it were possible. At least he could have smoked a couple of joints!) I explained to him that I didn’t feel very good on this mission, and was feeling remorse. “Tellsch me about your childshoodhood”, he said. I said I had had a normal childhood, without any problems. “A caish,” he went on, “a caish of repression. This is a shign of paranoia.” We didn’t talk about the matter any more, spending the rest of the afternoon listening to music. Then I wrote a new song, to be sung to the tune of Spring from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons:

                        I am a good otorhino, otorhino

                        I am a good otorhino, and I live happily.

                        I deal with diseases of the throat, the throat,

                        nose and the ears.

I think that this song captures my spirit: the song “is” what I am. Now I need to write some forty minutes more of lines about my “self” and I might have a publishable opera.

 

Day 15

Today I discovered that someone has been reading what I’ve been writing. It can’t be Xulfi, my secretary, because she only knows how to do two things. One is chewing gum, and the other isn’t far off. And she even manages to do the two things at the same time, the slut! But I will find out who the bastard is who’s reading this. From now on I’m going to start to leave traps for him. (I say “him” because Naris has run off into the deserted area, outside the city, having kidnapped Vondar, and it’s not even worth sending a search party to bring them back, and so there are only men on our team -- and the Barceloians can’t read, except the university professors, some of whom even manage, when they have a little time to practice, to write their own names.)

 

Day 16

Today I treated a patient with a partitutarial fracture of the lower tinguia of the toraxisistic lobussiliae. I had to apply a solution of tri-doxomicuniossalina dissolved in bio-grangolic. After three hours of Ione-Ione treatment, invented in the 34-2 period by the Swiss-German bio-chemist Ernst Ichbingeil, who was born in Munich on the 33rd of Robal in the 25-8 period, and studied in the famous Goforite Clinic in New Yugoslavia, run by the Maestro Karma Sonovabic, simultaneously a surgeon and renowned musician (an inspiration for all of us) whose only defect was to have given in to the fatal effects of orange juice (he went yellow before he died), I applied a dose of bi-tri-deo-pentatilioroximusico, which, in theory should cure him within a week. This patient, 54 earth-years old, complained of pains in the kitchen, typical of men who suffer from these illnesses. The man feels fine in the living room, preferably on the settee, great in bed (at least for the first ten or fifteen minutes), but when he goes into the kitchen he starts feeling nausea, lethargy, and sometimes shortness of breath and respiratory problems. The most common treatment on earth, before it became illegal, was called “marriage”, or, to give it its medical name “Contractus filiae parvae”, but the Barceloian women had long stopped falling into this trap, preferring to watch television. Are you still there, you bastard? Oh, yes? Well you’ll soon see.

 

Day 17

Nothing happened. It was an extremely dull day. I even nodded off, it was such an uninteresting day. Gray sky, Xulfi didn’t come to work, so, a complete bore, the type of day that makes a person stop reading other people’s diaries.

 

Day 18

I didn’t do anything. Really. Nothing. I only received a report from Lalac about my state of health. An interesting report which I am not going to write here. And no one else is going to read. It’s mine!

 

Day 19

Nothing interesting happened. I am telling the truth. No one even came to the surgery. Nothing.

 

Day 20

Nothing happened. What a dull life! You bet!

 

Day 21

Today there was nothing worth writing down.

 

Day 22

I didn’t even go to the surgery today. I stayed in my room. A very boring place.

 

Day 23

But the son of a bitch is still reading my diary! What about that? What can I do to make the guy stop?

 

Day 24

I know.

THE END

 

And thus ended my personal diary on the events on that planet. It is obvious that I didn’t wish to reveal this data to the Commission here on earth. We said that Naris and Vondar had decided to remain on Barcelona, we came back, we presented our reports, the Commission sent a nuclear bomb to blow the planet to pieces and it was over, done. A planet more, a planet less.

 

But what worries me so much, now, thirty-odd years later, are the things which stick in my memory. Logically I have some remorse about having participated in the annihilation of a civilization, but that’s the least of it... And it is obvious that we can’t allow the continuation of a planet whose atmosphere drives people mad... I understand all this. I even liked Xulfi, and I think about her a lot since my wife committed suicide, but what is most strange for me is this sensation, I don’t know how to explain it, that the person who was reading my diary when I was on Barcelona is still reading this. So strange! But if it is true, I’m going to put an end to the matter.

THE END

(First published in "Non-Events on the Edge of the Empire", Ed. André Vilares Morgado, Cascais Municipal Council, 1996)