The Marble Army
by Gisele Firmino
Outpost19 | San Francisco
outpost19.com
Copyright 2016 by Gisele Firmino.
Published 2016 by Outpost19.
All rights reserved.
Firmino, Gisele
Marble Army, The / Gisele Firmino
ISBN 9781937402792 (pbk)
ISBN 9781937402808 (ebk)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015912529
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and
incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
For Lorenzo
“as if suddenly the roots I had left behind
cried out to me, the land I had lost with my childhood –
and I stopped, wounded by the wandering scent.”
Pablo Neruda
ONE
OUR ONLY HOME was in Minas do Leão. The house was a salmon colored, two-story cube, with windows on all four sides, which made us feel as though we knew all there was to know about our town and its people. My mother’s favorite was the kitchen window, framing the meadow, the mine and beyond.
The first floor was never furnished except for about ten mismatched chairs, a side table and an old mattress, which sat in what was supposed to be our living room. All chairs were arranged in a kind of a semicircle by the fireplace. Pablo and I were the only ones who used the mattress to sit on while playing games, or just hanging out. But we lived on the second floor.
Like every other house in town, its foundation consisted of wood planks holding it above the ground by about a foot or so, the wood flooring was nailed to these planks, not always leveled. Although this system gave a little bounce to our walk, it provided no insulation whatsoever, and very often we’d pluck the weeds that made their way through the seams; half-black, half-bright green intruders. This closeness to the freezing black dirt sent chills through our spines pushing us up to the second floor. But we were gaúchos; physically enduring the cold winter was just as expected as the daily rice and beans.
But when summer came, our mother would open up the first floor, arrange flowers throughout, and we’d have picnics on the living room floor as we tried to dodge the heat from upstairs. Chopped watermelon and colonial cheese for Pablo and me, chilled quail eggs and pickles for our parents. With all its strangeness, it was the perfect house to grow up in.
One afternoon I was sitting as close as one could possibly sit to the fireplace without getting burnt, when I heard something thumping downstairs. The sounds were loud against the hollow hardwood floor and seemed to move around as if a giant had invaded our slanted home.
“What’s going on?” my mother asked from the kitchen sink.
“Luca!” I heard Pablo’s voice coming from the first floor.
Pablo had been in the tool shed the whole day. I had tried to keep him company for a while, but the cold was unbearable. At one point he must have come in without us noticing him. He called me again, screeching even more. At fifteen, his voice was changing. But always self-conscious, Pablo would manage to control it as much as humanly possible.
“Luca! Vem cá! Rápido!” he kept calling, his words mingled with the thump sounds.
“What are you doing down there, Pablo?” my mother said as she patted her hands against her apron. But before she could say anything else I ran downstairs.
Pablo stood almost a whole meter taller, laughing, and strutting around on top of wooden stilts he had just made. With his long skinny arms draped over them, his feet as high as my waist, he looked like the king of somewhere.
Although he struggled for balance, it seemed as though he’d done this before. I had never seen stilts, and was baffled by his ability to walk around with them. The sun bled through the window curtains, and specks of dust glittered as they swayed within a beam of light, aiming at Pablo’s knees. He smiled with pride; his thin body looking even leaner at that height.
“If you’re cold, you need to move around. Sitting by the fireplace won’t help you one bit!” He managed to look at me for a moment, a twinkle in his hazel eyes. But he was quickly forced to focus on what he was doing.
The stilts were regular two by fours sanded smoothly, thinning at the bottom, and curved on top where Pablo glued foam to protect our armpits. They were perfect!
I heard my mother’s steps approaching, and before she could see us and say no, I asked Pablo if I could try them. My limbs were shaking from the cold and the rush of anxiety as I realized what I was about to do.
Pablo jumped down from the stilts, and held them straight up for me. His smile was reassuring.
“Here, put one foot here first, put your hand right here,” he said as he placed my hand as high as I could reach. “Now pull yourself up. There,” he said.
I was taller than him.
“Now put the other foot here,” he said, pointing at the other stilt. I did.
“Pablo! I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Our mother stood on the bottom step watching us apprehensively. Her hands tugged her apron against the cold.
“I got you, Luca.” He looked me right in the eye. “Don’t you worry. I got you.”
I glanced at our mother, and she smiled with confidence. She knew Pablo had things under control, and I wondered if I would someday feel what it was like for people to trust you the way she trusted him.
“Focus, Luc,” he said. “I’m going to let go now. But I’m close. Don’t worry. I’ve got you.”
I didn’t worry. But I stayed in place, terrified by the thought of taking my first step. I knew Pablo would catch me if something were to happen, but I just wanted to get it right.
“You have to walk, or else you’ll fall,” said Pablo, clutching the stilts with his chapped hands.
“I will. I will.” I tried taking one step but the stilt got stuck on one of the creases on the floor, and my foot came off of it. But before I could consider the idea of falling, Pablo was there to hold the stilts straight up.
“Oh, I don’t know, Pablo,” our mother said.
“Luca, look at me.” Pablo didn’t so much as glance at her. “You have to shift your weight from side to side. These legs aren’t yours. You have to make them yours. Lift them with your hands, and make them walk for you.”
He let go of one stilt.
“It’s fine. You can do it. I know you can,” he added.
And just like that I was on my own. I walked around with Pablo behind me. Our mother watched us as we giggled and couldn’t contain her smile. The hollow wood floor responded to every step I took, giving in a little, shouting back at me each time I touched base. Pablo gradually distanced himself as I gained confidence and looked at my face instead of my feet. His smile was as big as mine must have been.
…
Only three weeks before the dictatorship came to us, there was a big party inaugurating the street that led to the mine. It was a dirt path, really, created within the meadow from all the workers coming and going to their daily shifts. The party would officially turn that path into a street, one that would be named after my father.
Our mother had busied around the house all afternoon with about ten rollers in her hair, leaving behind a trail of powder makeup smell and rose perfume. Her steps were louder than usual against the hollow wood flooring, giving away