uneditted short story by Liam Walke

The Ristretto

He walked up Avenida Errazuriz from the Costanera where the Magellan Strait was real, a windy blue against the sunlit clouds. Left on Nogueira and thats when the rain started. It was one of those rains forced out of the black and driven down into the sidelong yellow sun; that pulses, abates, and then seems to attack again. He thought about the seam, there must have been a fissure between this rain that had just reached his face, making him pull a black hood over his wool covered head – between the rain and the snow. A seam... or two. One seam is simple to explain he thought to himself: one substance, one thing, one material stops at the moment or spatial point when another begins... but this border, because he was inside the border, where both snow and rain swirled around, driven here and there, giving form to the wind.
Thats right, he thought, as he reached the Plaza de Armas with its stately buildings, its stone and cement facades; dear colonial memories – thats right, wind is the arm of the artist, the delicate creative hand, snow and rain the paint-dipped brush and sun the colour, blackclouds the inverse canvass upon which reality is drawn, instant to instant.
His mind had drifted though, he was trying to work out something else in his head: two seams. Or better, a wide ample corridor, like these spacious avenidas, where one thing peters out , diminishing to nothing, while another starts, crescendos and eventually takes over. Rain ends, snow begins and sooner than later he thought pulling his collar up against the buffetting wind, sooner than later this rain will end and all that will be left in the sky for my eyes will be snow. I will simply fall out of the border into a new pure reality. But he thought again... no this is all so subjective and absurd because what is the difference between rain and snow. The smallest, the most infinitely tiny fraction of one degree of temperature. And imagine! The topographical and anthropologic and mamalian (at least) history of a planet was decided upon that! Ice ages, glaciers, avalanches, extinctions! He spun with the snow... is that the difference then, from one side of the seam to the other, one gzillienth of a degree? But so much more complex than that, he thought, squinting into the parabolic lane leading past Nogueira and the treed Plaza de Armas with its several hundred year old trees dominating the mosaic of stone slab and tile paths crossing like capillaries over the square – the white of an eye. The parabolic lane white, wet and flashing with the entire sun.
Yes, better to not occupy one´s mind with frivolities, mere mental gymnastics. Better to think of the task at hand. All he wanted, all he had wanted all morning; the whole reason to leave the house was for a good espresso in a warm cafe. He drew his hand out of his pocket into the cold, pulled his jacket and sleeve of his right hand up to look at his watch. Sunday, 11:21am. Street and sidewalk wet. A pidgeon. Nests, way up, especially as he got away from the central plaza, nests of powerlines emenating in four directions, heaving in the heavy and changeable winds. One, he realized as he reached Av. Cristobal Colon, was hanging, released somewhere, lloosened like a severed limb. Not one cafe was open, not one store. Ah yes, the farmacy is open, Cafe del centro, closed, and five minutes ago Cafe Colonial, closed... he shook his head. Turning right onto Av. Colon, down toward the straits where a rainbow painted the black clouds with ROYGBIV( thats what they always taught us in school, he thought, smiling weakly to himself) down the empty wide avenue, the snow started again, no rain, just frigid wind and white swirls like in those artsy films, no wait – like in holleywood blockbusters when it rains giant chunks of fluffy white and they blow the cotton around with a giant fan! Imagination. But is the fan and the fake flakes any more absurd than this? Here he was at the end of the earth, empty streets, not a soul, Europe, snow falling from his feet into the sky and blown in every direction, driving down in between his collar and his neck, landing frigid on warm skin. Sun, at midday hardly risen and blinding off the thousand windows and the wet carless streets – ok two policemen sauntering the street in their green and their wooly russian hats. And not one cafe open! What do these people do!?
His awe was overpowered by a feeling of sudden and absolute absurdity. Back to the Costanera Magallanes and past an open casino like every casino in the world, tinted glass, slots..etc. another cafe, History Cafe, barred, shuttered. Left down Errazuriz and the sign came into view, the ocean calmly violent behind it. Hotel Ritz. A false climax of ridiculum. But he didn´t know then, then it was the height.
A run down white facade of cement, paint cracking from overexposuere to the salt and the relentless winds and to the right, orange construction fences. To the left that sun! Blinding the road. Absolute irony that sign was. Was it possible, he thought standing in the funnelling breeze, that I am the only person in this town? No, that can´t be, but am I the only person who finds this reality unreal and impossible? We are back to the cliched and laughably basic question, he thought smiling not quite laughing to himself, of what is reality? Everything had been bizarre quite literally from the blue sky (when it was visible) to the blue sea, but most especially his sense of time; that time that passes so slowly in the present but by some curious refraction or a weird and stupid law of physics compresses imperceptibly. He thought of something that Abraham had explained to him about time and existance like a worm... and he modified it in his head. We travel down this “line” we call him, thinking that we should be able to then see its entirety strung out behind us, from some vantage point above, like a god. But really when we look back we are looking back at a cross-section of the worm with no sense of depth, or time, no linear qualities, simply events superimposed upon eachother. This made sense to him now, but he was straying from his point again... but it doesn´t matter, he thought, I´m just thinking to myself, I am allowed to go “off topic”... but what was it, ah yes, what is reality? Maybe it is just any combination of any number of events or facts or things superimposed on one another. From some angles of experience and circumstance they must look like they line up to constitute something that the observer would deem worthy of the term “reality”. Yes. But from another angle another set of events and pasts this superimposition looks contorted, disproportionate or simply “unreal”. He thought of some Dalí paintings he had seen in a museum in Europe and he revised his thought process. No, sometimes its not just unreal but “surreal”, this is pleasing to the senses. He gave a satisfied hmf. Yes. That must be it.
Naivity. How he described his train of thoughts after the episode that he saw as he turned the corner onto Bories after an hour of vacilations and white and black, yellow, blue, colonial mansions, birdsnests of tangled wires, manicured parks and garbagy squaller blown around by the wind.
The wind was coming up again. And so was the cold snow. And so was the flag. He now recalled, as the two police officers in their russian hats passed him for the third time, that he had been whistling some stately sounding invented tunes and hearing brass in his head. This explained it. Reality. It had all been subconscious and the band had been playing while he wandered down Pedro Montt past the victorian wool-boom mansions.

Now. Voices. Snow. Robot. Move heads down. Hands up. Flash of dull light on the blades. The robot paused, massive in the soaking street in all the eyes and ropes holding back the phantoms and the trees from its sacred pole. The trumpets! The trumpets! The brilling brass and the beastly clicks. Those trilling trumpets the bombing basses and a tear. One tear in one eye, lonely, singular not plural. Wet eyes everywhere the beast has been, this machine is turning heads to a pole. One. Two. Three. Four. I declare a war. No. Not yet. Please. But save this country, boys in black, save this country lads, when they do decide its just to fight.
For now, the snow flows out of the sober sky. I mean undrugged and full of shades that blow the fabric around. Eyes. Thump, thump. Feet march the splashing wet pavements and the boys in black are empty and everyone is full.

He watched all the emotion in their eyes, it was flowing from a dry source, being sucked out of the boys in black, the beast that worked with the swinging saber and the fat mans baton. Empty. It all ran like poison into the spectators until they could no longer bear it, full, satiated, bloated with what they were supposed to feel, until it poured out their eyes in a salty mess. And their mouths in otherwise uncomprehensible verbal spasms. The old man to the left, maybe a grandfather or a shop owner, or an erstwhile gaucho with his black beret, or maybe all of those things or none of them. His face was worn by the sun and the wind and his eyes were wet. He seemed to grow, not in stature but in saturation and suddenly as the flag reached full height it escaped him. An orgasm of emotion he could not hold any longer... the old man ejaculated “VIVA...” but that was it.
He finished it but our traveller did not hear. Our wanderer´s ears shut, it was too much, no more trumpets no more stupidly dressed frilly xylophone man, no more falsely happy (or truthfully happy) marches. But he did not close his eyes. Silence and snow. And two hundred red hands with their thousand white knuckles. Here and there he could sense a struggle to maintain in step. Those leathery boots. With a vociferous voicing, a scanty, stout and boisterous verbiage (is this possible?), plainly he could see (but not hear) the beast turned, and marched across the top of the Plaza de Armas. They were playing, legs up, bayonnettes to the sky. But no sound was coming from the burly men and their brass bells. Not his “reality”. It could not be he thought as he watched their calculated formation make an over-complicated manouvre, a navy 180 degree turn at the corner of City Hall to double back to the flag. All this sensorial distortion in one day. Not one cafe open! And now this!? This calamatous culmination of stupidity, an apex of absurdity, something that could not possibly be happening. The flag was flying, city hall in front, plaza de armas behind, depending on your vantage point. The black machine with the hundred white heads and the organized cacophony of clamorous marches and clicks and taps of its many guns and arms. He stood reeling in the street, shivering.
Expression is like a circle, went his thoughts. No, emotion is like a circle that is, if it only has two dimensions. If not it would be a sphere – but no, thats foolish, anyway we need (we?) to define our terms (our?). This is only a model. So that circle maybe the ends don´t quite meet but this was it, in front of him, a demonstration of the circular nature of emotional extremes. Machine of boys in black, no expression and no emotion. Drones (He excused himself this horrible cliche, so often thrown around without much meaning at all – but he allowed himself its employment because his was well thought out...his tenuous conclusion.) They were empty of emotion and their faces showed it. But the spectators are saturated with emotion, perhaps as a direct result of the object´s emptiness. A sort of super-saturation that incites otherwise socially unacceptable behaviour, that happens without the notice of those present. That is, he drew himself up, back straight, shoulders back, that is (with an aire of finale) they are also expressionless, blank drones (another cringe) like those holleywood zombie movies. Expressionless but brimming with emotion, but no sign, only in the cracks with a tear of a verbal spasm or weakening of knees. Tongues lolling out of their heads and eyes gazing up to the flag. Essentially, that the empty and the full of emotion are both expressionless, the line refracts and bends around to almost – save for the one tear – touch. And why is something empty able to provoke so much emotion? Because...because...wind blew snow around, and bits of garbage, white garbage like giant snowflakes. They are all actors in a play, a giant theater and each knows their part, spectator, character, musician, music...etc. And me? he thought. What am I if “all the world is a stage”? He stood there, hands freezing. A light fixture, but only one, and almost imperceptible to the other observers of the spectacle. But I must also actuate some sort of distortion in the present reality, I must change it because... etc.
The street was still full of the robot and its admirers, and they were still empty when he turned his back to head east on Bories.
Fog was it? A mirage? No. It was a few people and a lit sign that peeked out from under a brown awning. Open: Cafe Tapiz. Back to reality he said to himself with a smile. Wait...reality? A coffee.
He opened the door to the warm smell of strong espresso and chocolate. Bag down, jacket off, “what can I get you?” “a ristretto please” he said automatically, then looked up, “yes, a ristretto please.”
He took out his raggedy notebook and began to write. When he finished, he stood up, stretched and sat down again at his desk, the sidelong sun split by the cross on the single pane window, from which a draft was coming, much stronger in the beastly gusts. The wood in the window traced with delicacy and perfection the lines that divided his room into four unequal quadrants. When he finished reading what he had written, he reached out, grabbed a now cold ristretto and drank it in one shot. Then he began to rip pages out of the notebook. He tore up his week and threw it in the plastic bin at his side. Otherwise it wouldn´t be worth it.