We Can never Really Rest

Rumors are rife around town. Last week I heard the same story again, at the store. They say there’s a seated one who’s waking up. That’s what they say. A seated one who is waking up, who is moving and started trying to rise from his chair. Who has tried to wake another seated one.

We all grew up with the seated. They probably came into existence in my grandmother’s time, when this place was marked on maps as Colonia Los Sentados, the town of the seated. People who die are placed on a chair, an armchair, a little stool, or a theater seat. And there they remain, seated, alongside their loved ones. A kind of embalming, legs bent over the seat chosen for all eternity. In this way, they’re folded back into their surroundings, in whatever room their family wants them.

That’s why we have no funeral homes here, and no cemeteries. There’s no one to bid farewell to or bury: the seated live in their homes. In silence, among their kin.

Judging by the results, it isn’t hard to turn a dead person into a seated one. The team in charge asks for privacy. They find a room in the house and close the door. People say they undress the dead. People say they wash the bodies. Preparations take no more than a couple of hours.

Each family chooses the seat where a given seated will remain forever. The family chooses the clothes and shoes, too. Once the seated are ready, some place them at the living-room table. Others move them around, to share different activities throughout the day. Cooking, watching the news or a soap opera.

We never imagined a seated might wake up. What people are now saying started in the two-story ochre colonial-style house a few meters from the main square. People who are curious find excuses to pass by a few times a day, trying to see something through the big windows. But my cousin Alicia says the blinds are down and the curtains drawn.

People say they took the two seated elsewhere. The one who had begun to move and the one he tried to wake up. People say they were sent to the parish church across from the Way of the Cross. The seated who supposedly woke up first is old Achilles. But, who knows, this may be just another of this town’s many inventions. People say many things, and many of them aren’t true.

Alicia has grown old, like me. My cousin lives right across the street from me and comes by often for mate. She walks in without knocking and says, “Have you heard about Achilles? Turns out he has run away from the church.” I can’t quite believe her. And slowly, uneasiness seems to spread with dust and slip under the doors of our houses.

At the bakery around the corner they said that, at night, Achilles keeps walking slowly, as best he can. And that he passes by other houses, to wake up other seated.

The town radio doesn’t mention it, and nobody writes a word in the town paper either. But in shops people talk. And in the square. And on the street. And at the school where Alicia’s grandkids go, too.

Nights in Colonia Los Sentados aren’t what they used to be. The streetlights are no longer turned off; the mayor decided they should stay on. Usually, by ten there is not a soul out.

Only the wind can be heard, it takes over the streets. The town can never really rest. We, its residents, can never really rest. We sleep, but we do it with one eye half open on our seated people  and one ear alert to strange sounds nearby. We’re unsettled by gusts that pound on doors, shutters, and blinds.

I sleep uneasy, thinking that maybe tonight will be the night when Achilles shows up to wake up my mother and grandmother.

People say Achilles visits several houses in his nocturnal rounds. That some seated people wake up little by little and others take longer. Sometimes they only start to move several days later, or so Alicia has heard.

We seated Grandma on one of the three wicker chairs in the kitchen; Mum and I thought it was the most logical place. And since then we’ve lived with her fixed gaze between the oven and the green table.

I never knew my father. Some say he was the principal of the town school, where Mum worked as a teacher. Others say they had a fleeting Carnival romance. I’ll never know. While she was alive, she never wanted to talk about it. Now Mom occupies the second wicker chair, on the other side of the table, beneath the television.

I have one chair left, but it doesn’t matter much. I hardly ever have visitors, especially in the kitchen. When Alicia comes over, we drink mate on the patio stools, beside the azaleas that bloom red and pink. Of course, she has her own seated next of kin at home: her in-laws and her mother, my aunt.

Mayor Domínguez has decreed that after this weekend there will be a curfew. Because this Saturday is the festival to remember the founding of Colonia Los Sentados and that is sacred. We all know they can’t cancel it.

For days, white plastic chairs have been piling up in the square, beneath garlands of colored lightbulbs. Folk groups from here and neighboring towns are rehearsing songs and dances.

All day long, a truck with a loudspeaker invites everyone to the festivities. It promises raffles, ring races—it’s been so long since they last held one of those—, the exhibition of a thoroughbred champion somewhere, a play for kids. The classic stands selling empanadas and choripanes. And the crafts fair, where stalls sell more candles, incense, and soaps than anything else.

Alicia suggested we go early to get a good spot. I agreed.

During the night the wind died down. I got up early to prepare the mate kit, the ultralight folding chair, and a small tablecloth. My cousin knocks right on time. The bright, cloudless sky brings a sense of certainty and normality. Because we don’t go out at night, but we haven’t been going out much by day, either.

We walk at a good clip, so we don’t take long to cover the ten blocks to the square. They’re doing the last sound checks. The first rows of plastic chairs are already taken. The lawn-chair section is starting to fill up, but we still manage to get a spot near the stage.

Alicia and I take turns walking around while the other stays to look after the chairs. The fair’s stalls are all set up. The chorizos are cooking slowly over the coals. Flies circle over the glass domes covering meat empanadas and pastafrolas.

My cousin returns from the smoke of the grills with two enormous choripanes. Then time flies by, so engrossed we are criticizing the neighbors around us as they sip their mates. The first acts begin, shyly, on the stage. Some zambas, a school choir competition in the heat of siesta time. And the unavoidable list of businesses sponsoring the event, in the voice of a young announcer.

As the afternoon advances, it gets cloudy. And the wind returns to once again take over the pampas plain. The square’s tall trees shake the little late-autumn foliage they have left. A few leaves fall onto the red gravel spread along the paths.

As it gets dark, the strings of lights that crisscross the square come on. The stage lights, too.

No one has gone up on the wooden platform for a while. The real party is about to start. The square is packed to the last inch. It’s not only familiar faces; lots of people have come from neighboring towns. On the surrounding streets, cars are piled up on the sidewalks, blocking garage entrances.

A few shameless latecomers shoved their lawn chairs close to the stage. Even so, we can see just fine. The audience begins to clap, waiting for the celebration’s main events to finally begin. Alicia and I join in, timidly at first, as the clapping silences the music from the speakers.

Night came. Besides the garlands and spotlights, the blue lights of the patrol cars wash over the tree trunks. They’re parked alongside streets, several of them with their doors open. The clapping continues and grows louder.

Eventually, Mayor Domínguez shows up, in suit and tie, before the microphone. He taps it with his finger before starting his speech, which we expect to be as boring as ever. Only this time, his words don’t last long. Voices begin to be heard from the far edges of the square. Strange, hollow voices. Voices we’d never heard before. Voices that can’t form words. Voices that make sounds in a guttural choir.

Domínguez keeps reading as best he can. People begin to rise from chairs and loungers to see what’s happening. Alicia and I stand up, too. The mayor’s speech starts to mix with the gurgling voices. We hear sirens approaching; maybe fire trucks. Domínguez steps aside, or maybe someone pushes him. The microphone is left vacant.

Nothing seems to be unfolding as planned. The folk dancers waiting to go onstage break their lines. The priest pushes through the crowd. The mayor tries to hand him the microphone. The vendors dismantle their stalls at full speed.

A short, dry crack indicates the end of the sound. Then Alicia squeezes my right arm so hard it hurts and points toward the central monument. We see the long, endless line coming, led by Achilles. The seated advance with clumsy steps across the square, while the crowd breaks and scatters in search of the exits. I could swear I saw Grandma in the middle of the line, walking with her cane.

I want to tell Alicia, but her eyes are bulging. She covers her mouth with her right hand. With her left hand she keeps gripping my arm, hard. Come on, I say. I shake her by the shoulders and she eventually reacts.

The police don’t dare intervene and neither do the firefighters who have just arrived. A sharp snap announces the power has gone out. No more garlands, only twilight and the moon’s glow slipping through the clouds every now and then.

We abandon our chairs, toppled on the grass like so many others. And we leave, stepping on trash. Bits of bread, soda cans, plastic cups, and used napkins. I turn my head and see that, behind us, the endless line keeps advancing. Achilles, in pajamas, leads old men and women who lurch as they move. Leaning on walking sticks and tripod canes, they walk clumsy and stubborn through the dark square.

Most of the audience gets away as fast as they can. A few remain, trying to understand this spectacle, old men and women walking with half-bent legs. Onlookers are possibly wondering if perhaps one of their own seated might be in that long line. The baker from around the corner, for instance, hugs a lady with a bun and a pale-blue apron, who ignores her.

People scatter in every direction and without any order at all. Suddenly I feel my arm free. Alicia vanished in the crowd.

I huddle against a tree so no one bowls me over and I try to find my cousin.

Achilles climbs the steps to the stage, slowly, and some other seated do too. The next ones to arrive set chairs and loungers upright on the grass. And, even though some of the seats are quite low, they manage to sit down.

With difficulty, a couple of seated push two smoke cannons to the edge of the stage. And they start to pour over the square a thick gray haze that makes me cough.

Achilles takes center stage. He slowly lifts an arm in a sign of triumph. The other seated ones on the platform also raise their bent, thinned arms as best they can.

The greeting is returned from the first rows of white chairs, where none of the original audience remains. And the seated keep arriving, innumerable. In a clumsy parade along the diagonal from the monument.

Achilles stands before the microphone. If I could see him clearly, I might say that perhaps he even smiles. Then he speaks—or rather, he makes a single, very long guttural sound. A mournful utterance with an echo. And it rumbles in the throats of all the seated, in the reconquered square.