Tornado II: The Shoreless Island

A tune was fading out. It sounded a lot like the ending of Good Vibrations but I couldn't be sure. I felt a carpeted floor under me. I smelled dust, soap and a pencil case I had when I was nine. A sneeze forced my eyes open. All my books were nicely placed on shelves and a lamp in the shape of Hello Kitty's head was on the mantelpiece.

'Good morning, grasshopper.' A curly-haired woman in the lotus position was smiling.

'Good morning, ma'am.'

Everything seemed to be there, peacefully perched in its place. Everything but me. 'Where am I?'

The woman reached for a bronze bowl, all smiles. 'You're on the shoreless island.'

'Oh, shit!'

I closed my eyes immediately and tried opening them again. It worked.

A rainy sky was stirring above me without a single drop of water falling. It was so hot... I turned my head to one side and saw a line of majestic linen trees. I turned it to the other side and saw Rosa, my best friend, lying on a picnic blanket next to me.

'Rat, where are we?' I said.

'I'm not here, but you are. Aren't I right?'

'What do you mean, you're not here!? Where's "here"!?'

A lightning bolt made me turn my head again and when I looked back at Rosa, she was gone. I sat up on the picnic blanket on my own. The smell of rain was so intense, the thunder was roaring, the clouds were misty and dark and shiny, but the grass was dry as hell. In the distance a squirrel seemed to be frantically running towards me. Then it stopped. Then it ran again. Then it stopped and ran and stopped and before I realized, it was too close to feel comfortable.

'I'm sorry, I have no cashew nuts on me.'

The squirrel gave me a defiant glance and started circling me, frowning and staring straight into my eyes.

'Ok, that's enough. Go away!' 

'Yo, chill. I'm burning my feet, I have to keep moving. Why are you getting all active?'

'Sorry, it's so hot. I shouldn't have said that.'

'Shouldn't?'

The squirrel raised an eyebrow and pulled its head back. 'You ok!?' it said, looking at me as if I definitely wasn't.

'Have you seen Rosa?'

'Yo, what's Rosa?'

'My friend.'

'The one who asked if she right?'

I nodded.

'Nah, she ain't made it here yet.'

'But why not?'

'But, mate, why why?'

The squirrel continued giving me the glance and jumping from the picnic blanket to the burning grass. The humidity was making the space between us look like some sort of butter.

'Is this a dream?'

'Nah. This no dream, mate. This the shoreless island.'

I was over the squirrel at this point.

'I'm not gassing, girl. Look.'

As the squirrel pointed up I saw an arrow of fire coming down straight towards me. I pressed my eyes closed and... it worked.

I was in a stone-paved street, sitting on a table about to eat a croquette. August and a waitress were there, having an argument. He was so agitated...

'Carmen, tell her, please. Explain it to her. Only you can make her understand.'

'What do you want me to say?'

'Just make her understand. She won't listen to me.'

'Understand what?'

'That this is all wrong.'

'What's wrong?'

August seemed to have turned into a statue. Not even the black of his popping eyes was moving anymore.

'Hey, hey, hey, August, look at me, what's wrong? What is the thing that's wrong?'

I was about to shake his shoulders but a bull as tall as me charged him and kicked him down the stone-paved street like a rag.

'Nothing is wrong,' the waitress said, 'here at the shoreless island.'

It felt as if my eyes stayed as wide open as August's, but I must have blinked.

Next thing I saw was a maze of canals surrounding me. A man with a striped T-shirt was wandering around, walking up and down, scratching his flat straw-ribboned hat as if he had lost something.

'Hi, I'm Carmen. Are you a gondolier?'

'No, I just really love this hat and happened to be wearing a striped shirt today.' He looked friendly and confused too. 'My name is Nigello.'

It's hard to explain how much he looked like a gondolier.

'Nigello, I need to get out of here. Will you help me out, please?'

He pulled a map from his pocket and began to unfold it. He unfolded it and unfolded it again. The map was expanding in every direction, sinking a bit in the canals.

'Do you need a hand?' I asked.

'It should be okay, just hop up a bit.'

I jumped and he slid the map under my feet. The thing was just starting to cover all the canals, the land in between and the horizon as far as I could see.

'Nigello, what type of map is this?'

'Oh, it's a map of this place, if I'm not mistaken.'

'Oh, thank God! We're saved.'

He gave me a sad look and carried on unfolding for a good while.

'Hey, Nigello. Since when have you been in this place?'

'What do you mean, "since"?'

The breeze under the map began to create waves.

'Never mind. What's the scale of this?'

'1:1.'

'Wait, what?'

As Nigello continued unfolding I looked down and saw I was standing on a big red dot with the words 'you are here' written around it.

'Problem with this map is it has no edges.'

Nigello scratched his hat again while leaning down to straighten a fold. I panicked.

'Listen, stop what you're doing, please,' I said.

'I'm trying to help.'

'I know, sorry. I'm just a bit all over the place.'

'Oh, no, you're right here,' he said, pointing at the red dot.

'Just tell me where's north, please.'

'What do you mean?' He looked even more puzzled than me now.

'North, the north on the map. Where is it?'

'There's no such thing.'

'South?' I asked in desperation. 'West? East?'

He shook his head.

The helplessness in his eyes was so genuine that I felt as bad for him as for myself. Then a gust of wind out of nowhere whipped his straw hat away at once.

'Shit! I'll get it.'

'No, Carmen, wait!'

I ran and ran after the hat as Nigello ran after me.

'Stop running, let it go!' he yelled.

But I just couldn't stand any of it anymore and only wanted to give the hat back to that kind man. I ran until I was out of breath. Nigello caught me when I was on the floor.

'Why didn't you let it go?'

'It's your hat. I could have caught it had I run faster. Damn!'

'No, you couldn't.'

'What do you mean, I couldn't? Had I run faster I could have...'

'No!' He shouted. 'You couldn't have possibly run faster!'

'How do you know that!?' I shouted back.

'Because you did not run faster, that's how I know. And you couldn't have possibly caught the hat anyway cause you didn't catch the hat.'

Nigello sat on the floor, defeated and hatless. He didn't have the gondolier look without it. There was something incredibly unfair about that and I started crying.

'Oh, Nigello. We are stuck here, aren't we?'

'Oh, Carmen, please don't cry.'

'Oh, shit, that means we are.'

'My hat might come back.'

I was crying so much I could barely talk. 'How's it going to come back?'

'Well, if we can't go anywhere the hat can't go anywhere either. After all, we're on the shoreless island.'

I must have fallen asleep crying. When I woke up it was nighttime. The sky was clear apart from a single star, flaring in its simplicity, pure, like a drop of cream poured in an infinite dark coffee. I looked around but couldn't find any trace of Nigello. There was a small building in the distance, though. It had big, bay glass windows and a tiny light on. As I came closer I could read 'Metaphysical Library' on its sign next to a drawing of a star.

'Hi!' I said to someone behind the counter. A big fat book was covering their face and their whole upper body.

'Welcome to the Metaphysical Library. You can touch any book here but you can't touch anything they are about, ha, ha, ha.'

The library was packed and I was overwhelmed. Everything I'd ever been interested in had its own shelf from ceiling to floor. The subtle beauty of a dancer's arm, the coexistence of joy and decay in autumn in cities, the golden ratio in toddlers' ringlets... I entered into a trance and can't say for how long I browsed there. It might have been hours or months.

A sneeze and a slight headache made me close a book of unsolved riddles and return to the counter.

'Amm... sorry, I was just wondering... do you have any maps at all? But, like, small ones.'

'Only things you can't touch, remember?' said the voice behind the big fat book.

'Okay,' I said with a smile.

And I was okay with that, in fact. I actually think that was the exact point where I gave up my hope of ever leaving that land and understood there was nowhere else to go. I was opening the library's door to leave when the person behind the counter suddenly asked, 'What do you want?' The thought of it made me smile.

'Oh, it doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter at all.'

'I know. But what do you want?'

I stood there holding the door open for a few seconds and really thought about the question. 'I think I only want to know where home is.'

The big fat book came down and for the first time I saw the bookseller. 'Oh, that's an easy one,' they said with bright eyes. 'Home is where your books are at.'

Just then, the library door gave me such a blow that I fainted before seeing who was entering.

'Gonnnnnng.'

I knew it was the gong of my master's bowl because it's the only sound I don't hear with my ears. And she was there, with her smile and her curly hair, sitting on the carpet in the lotus position, all my books around, nicely placed on shelves.

'Hi again, ma'am.'

'Hi, again.'

'Am I really on the shoreless island?'

'You tell me.'

I took a breath. 'Well, there's no north, south, east or west, no right or wrong, no since and no end. There's no could, shouldn't or had I, nothing else but what is and nowhere else outside it, no outside in fact and no edge. Lightning can strike you and bulls can knock you out. Rain might fall but not touch the ground and people might not be what they seem but you won't necessarily get to know why. Everything is known but it feels unknown and a tiny star might light up all darkness. You can't be anywhere but where you are, which is always "here". And if you lose something, no matter how unfair, you let it go.' I paused. 'So I guess, yes. This must be the shoreless island.'

The master widened her smile, stood up and with infinite delicacy walked to the door.

'Oh, and it doesn't matter what I want,' I added, just as she was about to leave.

She turned back. 'It doesn't. But what do you want, anyway?'

'I want to be home, ma'am.'

She bent down and whispered into my ear: 'You're lucky, then, grasshopper.'

The master patted my shoulder and left. I sat in silence until it was pitch dark. I got up to turn on the lamp with the shape of Hello Kitty's head but couldn't find it. I groped about on the mantelpiece until I realized something was covering the lamp. And when I finally turned it on, there it was, splendid and intact, on my mantelpiece, on top of Kitty's head, flat and ribboned: Nigello's hat.