18. Outside, the fishermen pulled their boats out of the water and dragged them across the sand. From a distance, they looked small and helpless. The people from the villa assisted them while mothers ran after their children. Two Labradors barked at the horizon, jumping and spinning in circles. A couple of men riding on horses had a hard time trying to control the animals that behaved erratically, kind of uneasy and head shy. It did not take long for other people to appear on sand rails and four-track bikes that scarred their wheels on the wet sand and served to carry people away from the coast. The air stiffed with tension and bent with stillness. Madness and its method. While some people ran in fear, others just stood there, silent, petrified, stuck in awe.
Like himself.
A gutless cold breeze steered through his bare chest as if an invisible hand grabbed his torso. He even felt his mandala tattoo wither on his shoulder.
Zero looked around for his shirt. Where did I throw it? He saw an untouched bowl of sliced star fruit. A tangerine constellation. It was Julianna’s favorite, he remembered, but he always hated the damn fruit. So many wasted like paradise on the road to the villa, and he never picked one of them. Julianna used to store them for breakfast or to treat friends in hot afternoons. Julianna, he thought. Broken star on a distant poem. He made peace with that, but not with the star fruit. When Julianna wasn’t looking, he made them all disappear in the trash dispenser. Yes. Ever since, he kept that sense of walking through life throwing things away.
The beach house looked clean but neglected. In the foyer, dry red starfish rested on the console table, guarded by a potted palm and a pair of old shell lamps. Desiccated like memories of the possible. The Mediterranean blue and Alpine white striped walls contributed to the villa’s enticing comfort. From the ceiling, right over the rustic dining table that choked a sea grass rug, hung a massive woven pendant lamp. The island kitchen posed a monumental disaster: dirty dishes, empty beer bottles, half-empty cereal boxes and an assortment of booze. Out of a pile of books, towels, and potato chips bags, he found a blue short-sleeved shirt Sam had given him for the last birthday celebration they spent together. Sam. His own blood betrayed. The girl that went from calling him her Prince to the teenager that despised him. When did his heart go missing? He looked serenely through the window, and his eyes glanced at the iceberg, again.
Zero looked in marvel and stepped outside.
In the next-door villa, a girl swung lazily in a yellow hamaca to the sound of reggae music. She wore a green Bob Marley oversized T-Shirt, contrasted neatly with her hair of sunset fire. As she peeled a mango, she seemed impervious to the presence of the iceberg or to the people down at the beach, for that matter. She smiled at Zero.
Want some? she offered a slice of the fruit to him.
Zero didn’t smile back.
No, thank you, he replied and then asked, Did you notice?
Yeah, she answered, sinking her eyes into her hands, as she continued peeling the mango.
Does it…
No.
Zero nodded gently and was about to continue his way to the beach when he caught notice of a woman standing by the edge of the sendero. Her dark skin and white braids seemed familiar. She smiled and walked down the path that led to the beach.
Moonlight?
19. Zero sprinted down the pathway to the beach, but almost immediately, he felt fatigued, and his lungs contracted with the lack of air. He stopped briefly to catch his breath and thought he would faint anytime, but when he raised his head in the direction where he thought he had seen Moonlight.
Are you alright? he heard the mango-eating girl yell.
He didn’t turn to her. He just raised his right arm to signal okayness. He recomposed and this time, though he didn’t even try running after the shadow, he fast-paced his walk. But now Moonlight was indistinguishable, more of a silhouette, a sketch in the darkness that the coconut trees shielded from the moon. But he still could distinguish her as she walked downhill. Zero believed she had come for him. This is it, he thought. The lovely moment when I finally return to the land of marvel. Was it God who had pushed him back? Why did he push him back? He was in pain, he was healed, he wanted to stay, now he wanted back. How did Moonlight reach him? She knew the way. Yes, he thought. I must go to her. She must’ve come for me.
When he reached the beach shore, he met vacationers, dilettantes, locals, and other cats looking to be slayed by curiosity. What is happening here? Zero asked, maybe to himself, maybe to God, maybe to Nature; it didn’t matter. What mattered was that people were abandoning Stella Villa with the urgency of a tsunami warning. And as he gathered his breath again, he looked at the iceberg a few miles away from the shore, like a cordillera in the middle of the sea, a mountain of ice that arose as the feeble sunlight stroked its face. It was spongy and hollow. Albino coral reef. A monumental view, both frightening and impressive. Johan could sense the coldness of the giant ice cube, its forked pinnacle like a painful claw reaching out for the sky.
Icebergs were not even rare visitors to these shores; they were not visitors at all. An impossibility, again. Even temperatures had been absurdly high these days, absorbingly fatal for anything colder than a snow cone, which had a brief longevity by nature. Of course, Zero’s intellectual capacities excluded those of a climate scientist, but instinct told him that icebergs would plummet anywhere else before arriving at the coasts of Stella Villa. It had to be like that. Fire and Ice. Like in that Robert Frost poem. And these were the Tropics, for God’s sake. How could an iceberg possibly survive so much heat? Of course, there must have been exceptions before, although Johan couldn't think of one. But he knew that every rule had its opposite force; its antipode; its complementary other.
A couple of surfers came rushing his way urging him to leave the beach. It’s that military base thing, man! said the tallest of the two, blonde and sun-bronzed. Maybe it’s them aliens, said the other, saffron-skinned and dreadlocked. Then they set off again, barefoot and shirtless, their bodies turning darker as they disappeared past the sea grapes and into the only road that led in and out of Stella Villa.
Zero stood there looking at the iceberg. He wondered how long it would take to melt at eighty degrees Fahrenheit in tropical waters.
The iceberg looked solemn and silver while it swallowed the last bits of sun.
The murmur of the sea crawled languidly at the shore, its impetus interrupted by the massive landscape of ice. It must have come here sailing down from the Arctic, Zero thought. That much he knew, at least, by a simple syllogism, which constituted the only rational exercise in search for explanations then, and even that didn’t suffice. Should there be an explanation for everything? He considered himself a poet, and explanations conform a banned practice among the poets he read (Valéry, for the most part). A poem is never finished, only abandoned, Johan thought of Valéry’s ingenious phrase. But the iceberg was no poem. Or was it? Somebody must’ve abandoned it here. Clearly. Was it God’s poem? If the iceberg had dropped here in Stella Villa, it must have been God’s poem. He had a history of abandoning his creations.
Zero leaned over and touched the water. It was as cold as the farthest corner of the universe. He looked at the pyramidal shape of the central spire, bluish streaks contouring like melancholic shadows, and thought that the icy visitor wanted to communicate something.
Have you come here to die? Johan said. Like me?
20. Moonlight touched Zero on the shoulder and he turned to her looking tired, exhausted. He felt the warmth of her presence fill him up with a stranger joy. Is it time to go home? He asked, and she just offered him a smile that flew in waves and made him feel at peace. A sanctuary. A refuge. A feeling of transformation and strength. No, he was not dying, he thought. She powered a new time, an alternative timeline, a bubble in space where his vibrational frequencies muted any sensation of weakness or the feeling that the cancerous cells inside him revolted for a final strike.
I came to see you, she said.
You’re real? I didn’t just dream the house or that we met or the bearded guy?
No. You were with us. Truly.
But you can come and go from that place at will?
No, not at will.
Moonlight looked around her, and then said that, well, maybe if that willingness is kept secret, you know what I mean?
I think so, he replied. By the way, my name is Zero.
Is that your real name?
Well… it’s my nickname, you know, he said with the embarrassment concealed under the dark beach.
She laughed. It’s funny, she said.
It’s short for Calocero.
What? Is that a name?
No.
No?
Well, yes… but… you know… Zero is much more fun. Nobody calls me Calócero.
I will, she threatened playfully. Although I like more the name I gave you: Nadir. Okay, I like Zero. It’s not merely a number. It’s a deep concept.
Thank you. Zero is nothingness, emptiness, the void. It’s very fitting.
No, well, yes, in a way; but a Zero percolates domains of knowledge and human understanding. Like in mathematics, for example.
I never was any good at math.
But it’s also the potential for infinite possibilities. Zero represents the origin point on the number line, a key concept in algebra, calculus; it serves as a neutral element in addition and a critical element in defining limits and continuity.
Don’t try too hard, Moonlight. It’s fine. In game theory and economics, zero-sum games describe situations where one participant's gain is balanced by another's loss. You see… like me, for example. I must die; I am dying, so that life can continue. It’s called competitive interaction and resource allocation.
You never die completely. You’re a host spirit in some defective body.
Oh, thank you. I’m flattered, Zero spilled sarcasm over the golden sand that deflected the iceberg’s glow and dimly lit the beach shore.
You know I didn’t mean it that way.
They both turned to look at the iceberg. Zero thought that maybe Moonlight had something to do with the apparition.
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