They Will Never Arrive - The lie we tell ourselves when the world ends

 

Claudio makes a vulgar gesture, the simple one that works for all occasions.
He closes one eye and the white skyscraper disappears behind his finger. He has never tolerated that building that looks like a refrigerator, and who could blame him. It seems to have plummeted from a distant galaxy amidst a sprawl of low buildings, ruining the harmony sought over years of history by happy architects. The rest of the city shivers under the afternoon heat wave, and the first two bottles of beer are finished. The shadow of the plane tree, alone, isn't enough to cool the cast iron bars of the bench. "They'll never arrive," he says, as he bends down to drag the cooler. As soon as it's opened, the smell of salami sandwiches sneaks straight into my nostrils, and I take advantage to place my hand on the biggest one. It's wrapped in a foil bundle and I'd bet on it: when I open it, they'll see it shining down there, from the streets downtown, from the bridges over the Po, and from the parks. I'll cause panic, for sure, many will start running and will trample the less fortunate like a herd of crazed buffalo. I only respond after the Heineken cap has popped off and rolled downhill for a few meters before slipping into a drain. "I think they will arrive, instead." It's always been like this. Whether talking about soccer or women, Claudio doesn't consider the possibility of being wrong. He raises his voice without realizing it and gains a few inches of bench to intimidate me. "You should read fewer books and pedal more. You don't keep half the world under your heel if you're not capable, and if you are capable, you deserve respect anyway, at least on this earth." "What respect? I think they're disgusting." 

"I don't make the rules, but apparently, in this game, on this table, with these players, they win and they will always win." 

His emerald green eyes are those of someone asking for an armed truce and they say much more than his rare words, doled out like a special whisky. He gives me a pat on the shoulder and clarifies. "I don't enjoy it, you know! It's just pragmatism on my part." Meanwhile, acid rises up my throat and I remedy with a bite of the sandwich. The Milano salami is arranged in numerous layers that the butter makes easy to tame. Given the limited time we had, this could be called great cuisine or the latest miracle. The first bite goes down almost whole, with a sip of beer chasing it and pushing back the stomach's reflux. The second, I savor: it calms me like a caress and I close my eyes to think of something beautiful. The ocean, for example. Claudio and I had been skilled and lucky enough to ride the wave, from the beginning to the end of the beach, while Katy and Eleanor ran barefoot to follow our surfboards. They had arrived just seconds later, when our muscles excited by the sea pulled like sails in the wind and our wet shorts clung to all our zest for life. It was us, the Maui volcanoes that seemed ready to explode, and the two wonders. Katy wore a light blue swimsuit, so minimalist that if she had paid for it by square centimeters, she would have gotten away with spending less than half a dollar. Eleanor had chosen a red tending toward amaranth, with a bra capable of supporting the abundance only thanks to the elegant combination of white cords that crossed on her tanned back. That evening we had eaten at a restaurant on the beach. While the sunset set the sea ablaze, the chef cooked fish on large stones on the terrace and suggested washing down dinner with a French white wine that tasted of fruit or with certain wines from the California hills. Customers arrived in dribs and drabs while a band of long-haired guys in Hawaiian shirts performed a surf rock repertoire ranging from the Surfaris to the Ventures, and passing through the Beach Boys. The arrangement of Sloop John B, I remember, had been hypnotic: Call for the Captain ashore Let me go home, let me go home I want to go home, yeah yeah But I certainly didn't want to go home, and neither did Claudio. Our two friends still had so much to give us, and not just morally. Katy had kept me awake until morning, and while I tried to catch up on a few hours of sleep, she had whispered in my ears all the songs she could remember. She came from New Orleans, Louisiana. I remember, she said she preferred the enormous waves of the Pacific to the still and muddy waters of the Mississippi that wind through the swamps where alligators swim. It was for that reason, and because she hated mosquitoes, that she spent three months a year on the beaches around Kahului, and so as not to be overcome by nostalgia, she had memorized Fats Domino's entire repertoire and had fallen asleep too, while struggling to remember the second verse of Blue Monday Sunday mornin' my head is bad But it's worth it for the time that I had But I've got to get my rest... Claudio can read my mind. 

"Are you thinking about Katy?" 

I close my eyes and imagine her sitting on the beach staring at the sky, but in the middle of the night. I'm sure Eleanor is with her, waiting. 

"And are you thinking about Eleanor?" 

"I'm thinking that she's part of that system and that despite being a drop in the ocean, maybe she could have done more." 

Because not everyone is like that and they don't deserve to be remembered as those who..." 

Something explodes down in the city. Firecrackers, gunshots, or police tear gas. I don't know, but my sweaty backside jumps on the bench. The authorities don't allow disorder because they think exactly like Claudio: they'll never arrive. Judging by the column of smoke rising from the intersection, they can only be poisonous tear gas. The news broadcasts have tried to reassure us in every way, but by now everyone has learned to understand how many lies they tell. Over the years, they've specialized in reading, reciting, any communiqué, and theirs were entirely similar to my friend's thought:
They'll never arrive - Claudio gulps down the last sip from the bottle and throws it over the hedge. We hear it shatter on the asphalt of the hairpin turn, and just like that, the time it takes to formulate a thought, and there he is with his back bent, rummaging in the bag. "One for the road?" he asks, waving the last two blondes with cold condensation on the glass. My legs are weak and I have a slight headache, but I don't back down. A flock of military planes flies over the houses with a boom and suddenly veers toward the sun. The question comes when the noise hasn't yet completely faded. "Do you remember Paul?" He was Eleanor's brother, a young man barely over twenty, beautiful like the sun of his land and covered in tattoos that made him look like the frescoed vault of a dome. In the morning, he delivered packages, flying on a Vespa from one end of the island to the other. In the afternoon and evening, he shot short films, hiring friends as actors. He knew musicians who lent themselves to soundtracks and also singers ready to perform for him. In the evening, he edited, and from one day to the next, he offered always new shows that he projected, as soon as it got dark, in the backyard of the house. "Yeah, Paul. He had an enormous talent for cinema." And the first tear of the afternoon is for him, for that first short film of his that had earned applause at Sundance and a decent public success. He had died the following year, with his lungs sliced by his own ribs, hit by a grandmother at the wheel of a white Prius. She had run the red light to avoid being late for her grandson's birthday, and the packages to be delivered had ended up scattered on the asphalt for dozens of meters along with the pieces of the scooter. "He would have been the best to film everything, to document." Only he was the lead actor and the death was real, like when a bullet had killed Brandon Lee on set. No mattresses and boxes to fall on, tomato sauce, and craftsmanship. Just hearts that stopped beating. "Anyway, they'll never arrive!" comments Claudio, who had a real friendship with Paul. It had seemed incredible to him that Paul wasn't jealous of his sister, and it had seemed equally incredible that such a young man could know the history of cinema by heart. Dr. Strangelove. He talked about it often, especially when he strummed his Taylor in front of the fire while the ocean waves turned to foam on the wet sand. Dr. Strangelove rode an atomic missile to arrive with it on the target and was the metaphor of a mad race that would never stop and the phallic symbol par excellence.
A bank of clouds moderates the sun that summer has placed as high as possible, and here's another flock of airplanes. They fly in a disorderly formation, and the last two seem delayed like the weakest cubs of the pack. The roar of the engines covers the screams of terror that seem to rise from the city and that I imagine coming from throats parched by the heat. Some take refuge in cellars, some seek escape in the countryside, but the ring road has turned sideways, mischievously, and now it's just a snake of smoke, curses, and hot bodywork gleaming on the horizon. Some have been placed safely under fifty meters of rock, but they are few and they are rich and important. 

"At the end of everything, they will still be few, but no longer rich and not even important," 

I reason aloud while Claudio enjoys his sandwich with crumbs caught in his mustache. He's monotonous like a stuck record: 

"They'll never arrive." 

I almost feel sorry for having disturbed him while he's chewing, for having risked making him choke.
And yet they arrive. From the east.
Comets, meteorites, long trails of smoke that slice the sky and go far, toward the south. The first one disappears behind the mountains, and it's there that Claudio, disappointed, spits out his bite to avoid choking. The wait is interminable, and once again he firmly believes in his god and points to that not-better-defined spot behind the crests and repeats to himself: 

"They'll never arrive!" And I would like to believe him, to hope not to be like a match before someone strikes it on sandpaper or like a drop of water about to fall on a hot plate. My voice tastes of the grave, and I speak with breath that escapes with difficulty through my throat contracted in terror. 

They're ours. They're intercepting them, you'll see, and they won't arrive..." The light is more intense than the sun that watches from up there, and Claudio is no longer tanned as usual. He's like an X-ray lazily laid on the light box in the doctor's office, and his emerald green eyes are a pair of transparent crystals, and the mountains: how small they appear compared to that ball of fire! They have arrived. Claudio hurries to finish his beer, and I walk back and forth. I resemble the little bear at the shooting gallery that struggles not to be hit but knows very well that his space for escape is reduced to a rail with the imminent end of the line, and the sky is full of bad news. The last one arrives together with the boom of the first explosion that has taken the time it needed to cross half the region, and it falls much closer. This time there are no mountains to dominate the wind, and after the flash, which pierces through my hands pressed against my eyes, comes the noise of a thousand trains running toward us, of continents rolling over pebbles, of screams of pain and desperation, of the world turning upside down with everything inside it. And then the wind. It's hot like a furnace and runs like a frightened horse and pushes us away like dry leaves in the storm, onto the lawn and onto the pavement that spreads at the feet of the basilica. The faithful who had gathered to pray have been laid down like grass by a scythe. I'm bleeding, breathing poison. The cough starts from my lungs and shakes me. I feel pain everywhere. I seem to be chewing sand at the foot of the volcano and I think of Maui, of surfing, of drinks on the beach while a friendly fire caresses our desire for love. Of Katy. Goodbye, Katy. Goodbye Eleanor, goodbye Hawaii. The good part of that wonderful people bends to the will of a few madmen, and no more restaurants on the beach, rock concerts, films, actors, singers, and stuntmen. No more guitars to embrace and make yours like a one-night companion. No more fires in front of the sea. The basilica's windows explode, and the dome's slabs fly away. It seems that a large blender is preparing something to drink. The portal opens wide, and finally, the pressure makes the walls collapse. They swell like the cheeks of a rude child about to make a raspberry, and the columns wobble, and the marble slabs detach, and the spires break. The plain is the racetrack of winds at a thousand kilometers per hour, and flames have replaced forests. The water of the Po reflects the ashen color of the sky. 

"They'll never arrive." 

Claudio consoles me as blood boils in his mouth. He wasn't quick enough to protect his eyes, and now he's blind. No more emerald green, just a white, milky film that resembles a burn. The funny thing is that the bread crumbs are still stuck in his mustache and roasted like a pizza forgotten in the oven. We embrace, and yes, I admit he's right. Hell has broken loose all around, but the city has been spared. The roofs have been stripped of tiles and reduced to skeletons, columns of smoke rise where gas depots have exploded, and the streets are flooded. In the end, the postcard that was meant for us wasn't delivered, intercepted by some missile that our allies managed to launch in time. The air stinks of hot iron and the screams in the background are those that Dante must have imagined for one of the lower circles. I let myself fall onto the lawn and look at the clouds remixed by the deadly wind.
The guttural sound of a large bomber insinuates itself in my ears like the vibration of a phone, and a black silhouette that appears like an insect on glass moves slowly in front of four long, fat condensation trails. Soon it will be exactly over the center of the city, over the vertical of that skyscraper that Claudio hates so much and that he can no longer see. I want to believe it's friendly. I want to believe it's not carrying a surprise package just for us. I want to believe they'll never arrive.