Nights Without Night by Marina Vivancos

Author:Marina Vivancos [Vivancos, Marina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-06-17T16:00:00+00:00

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I let a few days pass, feeling Mansur’s words percolate through the grooves of my brain. They drip down the windowpane of my worries, mixing with all the dust and the grime already collected there until I can see an idea peek through the glass.

After a knock and a warning, I step into Isadoro’s room.

“Isa, I really need your help,” I say. Surprisingly, he stirs straight away, turning to look at me. He blinks at the light streaming from the hallway.

“What?” he croaks.

“I need your help. Please,” I say, and walk back towards the living room, leaving his bedroom door open.

I wait. I strain my ears for the click of his door shutting, but it doesn’t come. Instead, Isadoro appears, rumpled and bruise-eyed, but there.

“Sit down, okay? I need help with a project,” I say, pointing at one of the kitchen stools I’ve placed in front of the easel, behind which I’m standing.

“You want to draw me?” Isadoro asks, frowning.

“Not quite,” I say, and busy myself with the paints and pencils, moving them around restlessly so he doesn’t feel watched.

Amazingly, he sits down. I take a deep breath.

“I want you to describe a memory of when you were deployed. Or, like, not the full memory, but describe one scene. It doesn’t have to be, you know, anything…big or…you know. It can be anything. A street. A landscape. A person. A moment. Whatever,” I say. Isadoro still has a frown on his face.

“Why?”

“Because I want to draw it.”

We look at each other. The silence stretches. Then, he sighs.

“Fine,” he says, like he’s only sitting there because it would take more effort to say no than to say yes, but I don’t care. I’ll take what I can get.

It takes him a while to think of a memory, but I don’t prompt him. I watch him from the corner of my eye. He’s lost his military posture. His back is a broken curve, hands loose between his knees as he rests his feet on the bar between the stool’s legs. His skin is sallow and it’s obvious he’s lost weight.

He doesn’t look like any Isadoro I’ve ever met before, but I’ll take this one too.

I startle a little when he starts talking but listen intently. The image is simple but precisely described. My hand moves on its own, following Isadoro’s words easily. The scene takes shape in front of me almost as if I were there, as if Isadoro were lending me his eyes for a moment.

It’s a hot day. The hottest day you’ve ever felt, that you could ever dream of. The air is a weight pressing you down. Your uniform is familiar, now, but no less suffocating as you stand in the sun. You can feel sweat collect, dry, collect. Unreachable patches of your skin itch. You’ve learnt to ignore them.

You are watching. Waiting. Three-quarters of this game, you’ve learnt, is watching and waiting.

You look at a building. It’s beige like everything else is beige. Except for the sky, which

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