If Something Can Go Wrong … It Will

Jonay Quintero Hernández

“The standard deviation can be found by square rooting the addition of all the elements squared, minus the average, divided by the number of data minus one” – boring, boring, awfully boring. There is hardly anything more tedious than mathematics, and, within it, statistics is second to none. “Wake up guys! I know it is early in the morning on a Monday, but I need you to understand this as there will be a surprise test on Thursday… Ooops! My fault! I have spoiled the surprise, but I know you will enjoy the test anyway…” “Oh! Come on, doña Lola! Give us some more time,” cried the entire class in unison.

Certainly, doña Lola was very patient with us but also inflexible when it came to doing our home- or classwork. She kept on explaining the intricacies of something called the ‘Z score’ while I was thinking about which of my sins in previous lives might be causing me to suffer so much in this one. My thoughts flew from Hindu karma to the last K-Pop band I had danced to with Moneiba and Luisa, to what I wanted for my birthday – since my birthday was going to be soon – and then also to a weird feeling I had had down in my belly throughout the morning. Maybe I ate too much at breakfast…

My mind kept on wandering around other worlds: What could dad and my friends be doing in Madrid. It is strange, but I couldn’t remember the last time I thought of them. They seemed so far away now… If I hadn’t been so happy in my new home, I would have felt as isolated as the man from that novel, although I haven’t really read the book, I just saw a series based on it on Cashflix once… what was it called, I think he was a castaway and had a black friend,… well, who cares.

My mind had moved so far away that I couldn’t take it back, before, all of a sudden, something happened that made me come back down to Earth. It was a strange sensation between my legs. It was as if I had … Oh no! What the he… Out of despair, I tried to contain it as much as I could but failed miserably.

Then I felt as If I was sitting on a wet towel, I looked down at the chair beneath my bottom and fortunately my sensations were completely subjective and very far from reality as only two reddish drops could be seen on the chair. I wouldn’t have been more worried or embarrassed if I had peed in my pants. I could feel the stinging tears in my eyes and the warmth of my blushing cheeks.

“Welcome to the club girl, aren’t you happy?” “No! For God’s sake I’m not!” I said completely overcome by shame, nervousness and a thousand other negative feelings. I couldn’t finish the phrase as Moneiba, to my terror, took a tissue from her bag, cleaned the chair and threw it in the dust bin in front of us. She tenderly caressed my cheek, but I quickly called for doña Lola to come to my rescue.

She immediately understood, told the class to do a few exercises from the book, and took me out of the classroom. As I stood up I hardly dared to look around the class. I expected that everyone would be laughing or talking about me. Yet unexpectedly, the boys sitting behind me and witnessing the whole scene were commenting on last night’s football match or pretended they were doing exercises. Their attitude somehow surprised me.

“Why are you so nervous? There is nothing wrong with what is happening to you. Hasn’t mom or dad talked to you about this?” For some reason her being so nice and sympathetic was starting to annoy me. I couldn’t avoid a sour reply: “Of course I know I’m having my period, doña Lola, but I didn’t expect today to be my first time and of course not in front of everyone!” Doña Lola seemed a bit surprised by my reaction and didn’t understand why I attached so much importance to the event. “Why all the fuss?” she said, “You haven’t shown your classmates anything that they haven’t seen before.” “Well, let’s call your mom to take you home, I think you can rest for today, and a lot of hugs and kisses from her might do you some good.” “And a shower,” I replied.

Mom picked me up in our family car and took me home, we had a great time together talking about all sorts of things, but not about my period and all of its drawbacks. I drank a hot chocolate and enjoyed having my mom to myself alone. We were having a great time, but even so, we both, at some point, wondered where Edelmiro and Kunta could be.

I couldn’t help but think of my classmates’ reaction as well as doña Lola’s attitude. I had already noticed how freely boys and girls used to speak about their bodily functions on this island. Their favorite answer to anything was, “That’s nature, girl.” To be honest I appreciated their reaction. I know for sure that if the same would have happened to me in a classroom in Madrid, everyone would have laughed at me. I’m aware that children in a big city might consider people from the countryside to be less civilized, modern or even less intelligent, but now I wasn’t so sure about that.

Indeed, this made me better understand an event that took place a few weeks before I got visited by the “red lady” for the first time. Most boys and girls in my class are sons and daughters of farmers. They live in close contact with animals and see from an early age everything they do. In that context, the question of “where do babies come from?” doesn’t make a lot of sense, but if it comes up, the parent in question simply explains, in crude plain words, everything about it and, when possible, shows a practical example with the animals around.

That being said, doña Lola had warned us that one day we would have a master class on “Sexuality and understanding our emotions,” taught by someone from the Education Division of the Regional Government. The day arrived and we were all very positively surprised by our new teacher. She was a young, pretty lady, dressed in a very cool way and wearing a metal ring in her nose. The boys paid full attention to her because she was beautiful; the girls did the same because we wanted to ask her questions about her outfit and apparel and also because we admired her cool, outgoing ways.

She began talking about sexuality, and all the boys raised their hands, fought among themselves for her attention and tried to impress her by providing the most accurate answer to every question she asked. She seemed somewhat impressed by their answers: “You know a lot about this. You are 12 or 13, right?” Then she went on to talk about gender theory, the patriarchy and the need to use non-sexist models in education. The girls and boys apparently agreed with everything that was being said.

However, a few expressions of worry and butting of elbows were seen when the topic of “new masculinity models” was raised. “Is this gonna hurt us?” asked one boy. “No, no,” replied the speaker. “Will we get operated on?” “Are we bad?” “Will we all have to change?” The young lady sighed, rolled her eyes and patiently tried to explain those difficult concepts. The girls looked at the boys with naughty smiles on their faces. The boys were not smiling any more.

The last point of the talk was about “fluid gender” and “non-binary genders.” This time girls and boys were having problems understanding, some of them were yawning. “We all know homosexuality exists; we have seen animals of the same sex having sex,” said Luisa. “But they are still males with males and females with females; they aren’t anything in between,” added another boy. At this point, the young lady had run out of patience, she wasn’t friendly anymore and abruptly answered: “Biologicists! Savages! You’ve been raised by fascists!” She stormed out of the classroom as her face turned red.

One of the girls stood up and said: “You seen that? She tried to piss over our heads and then convince us it was raining! What a liar!”

I’m dying. No, I can’t be dying because I’m already dead…but if I’m dead, why the heck does it hurt so much? Since I wasn’t gonna see the movie of my life (neither me nor anyone else would have been willing to pay for a viewing) or the light at the end of the tunnel, I decided I’d better open my eyes. The first thing I saw was a long, bleeding scratch on my side. I tried to lick it, but it hurt – like being branded with a red-hot iron. Don’t know how many lives I’ve got left, but I had been lucky enough to escape alive from – it seemed – a gunshot.

The hitmen had left me lying on the ground, thinking I was dead, and also because nobody thinks that black cats lives matter. Throughout my life, I’ve had many occasions to confirm that this is true. But if I had been injured, Edelmiro probably had been as well. I looked around. There were no traces of either the horse, nor Edelmiro. I sniffed the ground and walked around painfully trying to find my friend’s scent or any other scent that would help me find him.

I was aware of Edelmiro’s past. I knew perfectly well that he killed my previous master: May he rest in hell. And I knew that bad people from his previous life would someday find him. No hitman reaches an old age. It’s weird to love an individual so used to killing, isn’t it? How strange knowing that he made a living out of it. Will he ever be sorry about his victims? I know most of them were scum, killers themselves. Does that make it morally acceptable? I do not know. I’m just a cat, and cats don’t usually engage in moral discussions. When I die, my conscience will just disappear, and it will be as if I simply never woke up from a nap. My feelings, memories and lessons learned shall vanish into the immensity as if they were dust… And all the more so for humans. It’s just that they are afraid to acknowledge it. Oh, come on! – It is just that the injury in my side aches like hell, and when I’m ill, I get too intense and nihilistic. I’ve seen “the lady and the tramp” and “all the dogs go to heaven” several times. Believe me, if dogs can go to heaven, we cats can too. It’s just that I hope nobody punishes me for the mice and lizards I’ve killed for food. But I wasn’t gone then. Not at the moment. I had to keep on searching…

Yes, I know, I knew, back then, that Edelmiro had changed. I knew he had changed because he loves me and cares for me and for the girls too. We are a family and we deserved our little piece of happiness after so much trouble.

I could barely walk, but, limping a little, I reached one horse’s footprint. The poor thing must have run away, scared by the shots. Who knows where he could be then, and I wasn’t willing to run across the whole island to find it. Even if I did, I didn’t know what to say to make him come back home. I assumed he would try to return on his own when he calmed down.

I was thinking of this and many other things when I found a scent that was familiar to me. I tried to follow it but it was too faint… Then I discovered a few drops of blood… I needed to find out where my master was,… but walking was so hard. And forget about running. I expected to figure out where he was and then reach out for help, but every step was quite painful…

III

“I can’t believe how stupid you are, Ramiro. There was no need to shoot. We could have got caught. Some neighbor might have heard the shot,” – the shorter man of the two gesticulated aggressively as he told off his partner in crime, chastising his lack of professionalism. Both seemed very worried. So much so, that they didn’t realize that Edelmiro was awake again. They had tied him to a post of the cottage they were in, hands behind his back, like in an old gangster movie.

Edelmiro writhed in pain. Even so, he dared to say, “Could you both shut the fuck up? I was sleeping…You look and sound like the bad guys in “Home Alone” but… couldn’t end the sentence as a hard kick on the 7^th left rib left him breathless. “You better keep your witty comments to yourself, payo.[1] You aren’t getting out of this cottage alive, bastard. We have come to avenge the death of you know who.”

Luisa and Moneiba had come to visit, and we were playing cards on the porch. We were really having fun and laughing out loud. All of a sudden, we were surprised by the dark figure of Aunt Amalia approaching us from behind the house, “Is your mom at home, honey? I’ve brought a few figs and some other fruit for you all. By the way, how is Edelmiro doing?” “Actually we haven’t seen him since yesterday, he didn’t come home last night.” “That’s strange,” replied the old lady with a bizarre look in her eyes. She entered the house, and we kept on playing.

After a few minutes we saw the second dark figure of the afternoon. It was Kunta. It was moving very strangely and walked as if it were drunk. It began meowing and making very weird sounds. “That’s Kunta isn’t it?” said Luisa as sharply as usual. When Aunt Amalia and mom came out of the house, Aunt Amalia stared at Kunta as if she could understand it. If it wasn’t a cat, you would have thought that it was mimicking or speaking weird sign language. It lay down on the ground and stiffened one of its legs; it put its little paws on its neck and showed its tongue.

“This cat has been shot.” Kunta nodded desperately, then grabbed an invisible firearm with its little front legs and made a strange sound. “Wow, auntie! Did you figure that out because you saw it in its eyes? Do you understand the language of cats?” asked Luisa. “Of course not, you silly girl, I know it because of the blood on its side. “Something really bad must have happened to Edelmiro… Do you want us to follow, Kunta? Go, Kunta, go!”

The knackered cat tried to lead the way into the forest but fainted and slumped to the ground after a few meters…

We left Kunta at the vet, still unconscious. I really feared for the life of our little friend, but we had more urgent problems and Aunt Amalia had grown even more dramatic than usual, if that was possible. She said in a grave tone, “We need to find my nephew Edelmiro; I don’t want to, but we will have to turn to Uncle Restituto. Please girls, let’s get in the car, we all need to go to Echedo.”

Some 5 minutes later we were hitting the first houses of the picturesque and tiny village. Basically a bunch of traditional houses scattered over a small valley in the middle of large vineyards and motley fruit trees. Aunt Amalia gave mom directions until we arrived at the Echedo retirement home.

As we crossed the main gate, a friendly nurse addressed us to ask about our intentions. We mentioned Uncle Restituto, and the nurse smiled and nodded. It seemed as if Uncle Restituto normally didn’t receive too many visits. We went up one storey in the lift and made our way to a wide balcony at the end of a large gallery in which more elderly people, some of them physically or mentally handicapped, were wandering about. There was a certain feeling of sadness and abandonment in the place that could not be blamed on the staff. They were all very nice, friendly and diligent. As the needs of the retirees arose, they tried to cater to them. The smiling nurse who had received us at the entry led us to the balcony, where sitting on a wheelchair was an old man, absolutely absent, as if he were a vegetable. His deep blue eyes were completely fixed on the horizon, his hands lying carelessly on his apron, and, beneath his slightly open mouth, a thick white beard was the stoic recipient of a small creek of saliva that fell from a corner of the old man’s mouth.

“Hi, Restituto, how are you doing? Look who’s come to visit!! Aren’t you happy?” said the nurse. “Well, I have to go and attend to my multiple duties, hope you all have a good afternoon,” explained the nurse as she left. “Dear cousin, so long…” It was the first time I had seen Aunt Amalia act so hesitantly. “Do you remember me? I’m Amalia. Listen, we’ve got a problem. My nephew Edelmiro has disappeared…I’m afraid it has to do with something related to the family business. Your business,” I detected a certain tone of reproach here. The old man didn’t answer, and remained completely impassive.

Aunt Amalia sighed, took one step back and said, “Restituto! ¡Ave María Pusísima!” We were all amazed when we heard a deep low voice come out of that poor wrecked body, saying “¡Sin pecado concebida!”[2] Uncle Restituto’s eyes weren’t absent anymore, his facial muscles started to settle and lose paleness. He raised his hand to clean the saliva from his mouth and, with a little effort and rumblings from his old articulations, he stood up. I felt what people who saw Jesus tell Lazarus to rise and walk may have felt. That man who, a few moments ago was nothing but a lifeless body had suddenly regained the status of a human being and was starting to walk.

With every step he felt more and more confident and gained a kind of momentum on his way out of the retirement home. Some of the nurses who saw us leave were speechless and others simply didn’t recognize him. “We are going for a little stroll so he can stretch his legs,” mom tried to explain.

We were all packed inside our tiny car. But Uncle Restituto gave no room for debate, “To El Hoyo de El Barrio,” he said. And there we all went, driving the steep road to a small village tucked between several hills.

As we got to the exact point indicated by Uncle Restituto, he got out of the car and started to walk towards a tiny ruined house. He opened the door and before our eyes appeared what looked like an old winery. The dust of many decades covered each and every object in the room. There was a row of old wine barrels. I didn’t know whether they were full or empty. The old man approached a tiny door, found a rusty key on top of one of the barrels and opened it. Then he stepped in, and all of us followed.

He switched on the lights and, one after the other, the fluorescent tubes lit up a large room that didn’t match the small dimensions of the house we had just entered. We were all amazed by what we saw in that place. It looked just like a museum or a 19th century Curiosities Chamber. There were all sorts of antique weapons and machinery hanging from the walls and inside vitrines. There were medieval weapons, Iberian Falcatae, Gladium Hispanicus, Moorish scimitars, rapier swords, daggers, sparkle arquebuses, a series of muskets, Mauser rifles, and all sorts of modern automatic and semiautomatic war weapons. Moreover, there were old paintings depicting religious or mythological scenes, as well as various pieces of craftsmanship representing coats of arms and other strange symbols.

On one of the walls hung a row of men’s and women’s portraits. They started in medieval times during the Reconquista and ended in the present with a likeness of a younger Edelmiro. “These are our ancestors. We belong to a long series of warriors who have fought throughout history to defend Spain. Once in the military orders, then in the Santa Hermandad, the Tercios, etc. We’ve joined every military organization either known to the public or secret in order to protect the kingdom and the interests of our country. Then the elites ceased to trust or need us, who knows, and then some of us viewed themselves as forced to earn a living by working privately for third-party companies or organizations as hitmen or mercenaries, like Edelmiro has done for the last 8 years or so.”

I couldn’t help but stare goggle-eyed and with my mouth wide open in amazement. I didn’t know anything about the darkest aspects of Edelmiro’s life. Uncle Restituto looked as if he were preparing for war; he acted quickly, carefully, without hesitation, nothing like the person a few moments before who was almost a vegetable at the retirement home in Echedo.

Restituto grabbed a weird wire from a box. He slid a small gun in the back of his trousers, a knife and a pistol. In a Hollywood movie the hero would have collected hundreds of guns, bombs and different weapons. “You have so many weapons uncle, grab some more!” said Luisa and Moneiba. The old man looked back at them in a way that made them shiver, and kept on walking. He knelt down before a copy of Murillo’s Immaculate conception, crossed himself and went out of the place with a resolute step. We couldn’t help but look at each other a bit quizzically and follow him.

Now it was getting dark outside. We got to a clearing in the woods surrounding the house, and the old man stopped. He used his left hand as a screen, placing it next to his cheek, bent his right index finger and, as he inserted it into his mouth, he began whistling in a very strange way, as if he were… saying something. I had heard about whistling languages in the Canary Islands many times before, but this was the first time I had the chance to see it live. He repeated more or less the same message over and over again. Nothing happened. Once again. Absolutely nothing… what was that?… nothing indeed.

Luisa was about to entertain us with a new witty comment when a pair of red eyes appeared between the shadows beneath the bushes next to us. “Paco, come here boy, time to work.” And we all had to swallow a scream in our throats as a big animal, resembling a wolf, jumped out of the bushes and approached Uncle Restituto. “Don’t be afraid of Paco, he’s one of us. He lives alone in the forest, but our people feed him and whenever we need him we call him. He’s a good boy,” he explained, caressing the head of the wolfish dog. The old man gave what looked like an old piece of cloth to the dog for him to smell, and we all began to walk through the woods behind him. It was so dark that very soon we had to turn on our mobile phone flashlights. Uncle Restituto had his own old-fashioned one.

Uncle kept on whistling every few steps and very soon we could hear other whistles answering back, some of them rather close, although we never saw anyone. It was quite a disturbing feeling being in the dark surrounded by a group of people we couldn’t see. And shivers ran down my spine as those whistles came closer and closer. In the dark. Paco kept searching for any possible traces of Edelmiro, but didn’t seem to be very successful.

“Hey, it’s late at night, why are those people whistling? Don’t they have a house to go to? Don’t they sleep?” said one of the two gangsters who had come from the mainland. He looked too nervous to be a professional. Edelmiro saw a possible hole in their plan that he might be able to exploit. “They are searching for me, and it won’t be long till they find us. This is an island, a small one and everybody knows everyone here. How do you expect to get away with this?” wondered Edelmiro.

“That’s none of your business,” replied the taller one. “Shut up or we’ll kill you… well, I won’t lie to you, we will kill you anyway. In fact, we’ve come to this shitty island to kill you.” “But you know you won’t be able to leave the island alive after knocking me off, don’t you?” “Well, in that case we will all soon be dead.” Edelmiro reflected on those words for a little while… a few months ago he probably would have embraced death as liberation from a life he didn’t want. But now he had a family… That’s why men with families shouldn’t go to war or work as hitmen. It is hard to risk your life when there’s so much at stake.

VII

The last thing I remember is being in front of the house, shouting at the girls and Aunt Amalia trying to get them to understand. Then, everything went black. I was awake now and didn’t feel pain anymore, though I was surrounded by a weird mist. There was a white light that invaded everything and didn’t let me see the details of the objects around me. In a careless way and without knowing where I was heading, I began to walk. I couldn’t say for how long. Fortunately, I was kind of alien to fatigue. There wasn’t a way I could possibly get tired. Or at least that is what it looked like to me. I was ascending a hill I should think, but couldn’t tell for sure. Suddenly, I found myself in front of a large door that led who knows where.

Next to it there was an old man sitting on what looked like a throne. He was dressed very strangely, as if he were a medieval bishop or pope. He was wearing a bishop’s miter and had a bunch of keys in his right hand and a stick in his left. “Peter?… Is that you?” I dared to say. “Hello Kunta, you good old fellow! Am I…dead?” “Your body certainly is, mate.” “You had seven lives but your body wasn’t bulletproof, and you also lost a whole lot of blood.” “So is this…?” “Exactly, this is Heaven’s Door.”

“Wow, I always thought I would end up in hell.” “Sorry to disappoint you but hell is where you come from, it doesn’t get any worse anywhere else.” “Hum, I never thought that heaven would be like the Catholics say.” “Well, actually it isn’t. It’s just that we are adopting a multicultural approach to our business lately.” “How come?” “When a catholic or somebody acquainted with catholic culture arrives here, I salute them; when a Hindu arrives, that is usually on Vishnu’s shift. We try our best to make everyone feel comfortable, but to be honest we are running out of hours. Besides we’ve received several complaints from our union, which considers the tradition sexist and discriminatory for women, and I think they are right.”

“What the f… ? What does God look like, have you met him?” “Well, that depends on the eyes of the beholder…” “God is like an old car inside a garage with the lights off. Christians have touched the body and thus believe that God is metal; Jews are touching a window and are convinced that God is glass; conversely, Muslims will touch one wheel and think that God is rubber. The Buddhist are still in a corner of the dark garage reaching out into the emptiness, so they think that there is no ‘physical God’.”

“But what have become of the others, how does this story end?” “Well, Edelmiro was finally rescued; his captors were killed, their bodies thrown into the sea; Aunt Amalia and Uncle Restituto were kidnapped by aliens, while the girls (Amelia, Luisa and Moneiba) have formed a polyamorous community in the small village of El Mocanal, a real scandal, but times are changing, don’t you think?”

“What I think is that this is one of the dumbest endings ever. It is even worse than the end of ‘Lost’.” “Actually, if this ending were written by ‘Lost’ scriptwriters, you still would be alive and the rest of the characters would be dead, speaking within a church, so don’t be so salty.” “Okay, you’re right. No offense meant. Respect.” “Come in pal, I have to introduce you to a lot of nice people, of two and four legs.” “Thanks for having me, Peter, you’re a nice chap.”

[1] ‘White man’ in gipsy language.

[2] Spanish: “Sinless conceived.”