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11:25

Melquiades was about thirteen years old when his father noticed something strange in the fields. Two foxes were lying dead with their eyes wide open and claws spread like having undergone some serious electric shock. Next were the cows. One after another they suddenly stopped drinking water, their tongues turned purple, eyes - grayish and the whole physique changed into what would be more expected of starving horses in the battlefield. Within a week they lost the family’s only source of milk. Melquiades’ father in any other circumstances would have been broken down – a farm man, a lover of soil, a true follower of tradition – he would have been traumatized after losing a significant part of his rural inheritance. His own father was a farmer and so was his grandfather. Sometimes they would laugh that even ten generations before they were working on the farm and if there had been any Adam indeed, the first man on earth, he must have been a farmer.
Now things seemed more than strange. People started talking. And if people are talking, there must be some agenda. They whispered to each other at markets, while hanging their laundry or baking bread, they said that something wasn't right, that such accidents hadn't happened before.

Cows were just the sign of things to come. The father wasn't the type to react emotionally at the accidents that contaminated his life. He decided to be quiet and keep his emotions at bay for the time being. Before he was to do anything, he wanted to wait.

Not only did Melquiades’ father lose all his animals: three cows, seven pigs, twenty hens and a horse, but also the same thing happened to his neighbors and people from distant villages. The country was in a permanent state of shock. Within a year ninety-nine per cent of domestic and farm animals were dead. Smultaneously, the same tragedy happened to the untamed. Wolves, foxes, bears, and beavers were found everywhere spread around woods like grated cheese on a plate of spaghetti. The stench was unbearable. Zoo workers weren’t fast enough to bury the corpses of tigers, leopards, elephants, and zebras which occupied their silent stalls in a form of creepy exhibition. It was happening so quickly that no one knew how to react and what to think. Some claimed that it was a virus, some suspected a poison in the food, water or air, great believers in the power of God were sure that due to the sinfulness of K. God sent another plague and people were next to go. There was no time to discuss it properly since all day long citizens had to bury corpses to escape from the unbearable odor which filled the air around villages and cities of K. People weren’t next to go. Next were the politics.

The general panic couldn’t have been missed by local authorities. They did everything to calm the terrified citizens down, they printed leaflets about the undoubted temporariness of such a tragedy, made sure that proper medical tests were conducted and the cure for these unexpected deaths was to be found soon enough. Enough was not enough. The most recent newspapers were full of gloomy prophetic visions of the fall of the civilization, brought to mind epidemics of cholera, black death, and typhus. In fact, K. would have felt far worse if a recent epidemic of Spanish flu hadn’t hit Europe with a force of mass annihilation. To make matters worse people didn’t know at that time that mass annihilation could be executed on a human race at all. For the time being, they could have only predicted.

K. was lost and vulnerable. Neighboring countries were terrified as well and ducked from any help, support and shared responsibility. They were glad that the tragedy hadn't happened to their beloved pets. Three countries in the north, west, and southeast of K. were less than optimistic when the news about the rapid extinction of the animal kind spread like wildfire through the complex grapevine of their local newspapers. And when it came to maintaining any business contacts with K., they were shockingly radical. Ignoring political correctness and the warm memories of their long and stable business relationships, they shut all the borders, cut short the import-export deals they had started decades before and turned a blind eye to K.’s tragedy. K., as a victim of recent events, was shocked even more. As if the total extinction of the animal kind hadn’t been enough, within a month the country became an isolated island in the ocean of land.

Melquiades was reading leaflet after leaflet, newspaper after newspaper and was terrified. The boyish dreams of a relaxing summer, leisurely walks with friends in the nearby park or his all too problematic shyness in front of girls were pushed aside by major political problem of his motherland. He stopped quarreling with his brother, he stopped moaning about his father’s narrow-mindedness. He kept reading and tried not to make himself cry due to what was happening before his eyes, which act of desperation he considered unmanly and weak. The feeling of hopelessness started to be felt in the smallest drop of rain that fell on K.’s ground.

‘Why cannot they help us? It’s not our fault that they are dead. Why do they act as if we were the threat?,’ he asked his father, ‘We signed treaties worth millions, helped them in their past conflicts, provided food… What is going to happen to this country?’

His father was drunk. He decided that it was the right time to open the seventeen bottles of wine he stored for some other more jubilant occasion. He drank bottle after bottle and the current one was only the fifth in the row.

‘Suppose they don’t want the same thing to happen to them. Imagine, a country without animals! It must have hit us! We’re cursed for ever!’

He opened the sixth bottle of wine and went outdoors to look for Melquiades' older brother who went running with his friends. Possibly he was afraid that he would find his firstborn with his eyes wide open and his fingers spread in the welcoming of death. Just like he had found the foxes.

Only a few days passed after the last corpse of a dead dog was put into the ground and covered with warm soil. People, as very flexible and adjustable species, tried to deal with new circumstances. It was summer. Sun was shining beautifully, crops were abundant and Melquiades’ father became all of a sudden a rich man. The price of wheat was four times as high as before the tragedy. People needed food and with no milk, eggs, meat and other dairy products, they were left with fruit and vegetables. Bread was no longer a staple food, it was a must. Potatoes were cooked, boiled, baked, fried, stirred, grated as never before as the whole nation needed to be fed, nourished and, maybe less importantly, not tired of the flavor of the food they were eating. With almost 400 square kilometers, three main rivers, and still developing methods of agriculture farmers were able to feed the twenty million's population of K.. The father hired thirty new employees on his farm, most of them came from the closed slaughterhouse. He had them trained and introduced to the laws of the land. Soon he implemented more efficient methods of production, introduced new fertilizers and invented a machine which mechanized the collection of crops. The more money he earned, the more land he bought. Not so long ago he had been almost on the verge of a psychological breakdown and all of a sudden he was prosperous, busy and thrilled to bits. He was the lucky one.

There were many victims of the new situation: butchers, milkmen, and furriers lost their jobs; cooks, farmers and landowners had to adjust to the demands of the hungry nation and the products available for cooking. Those who couldn’t afford to buy the land or to buy enough food, considering its new high price, rented plots from people’s gardens, town’s parks and churches’ yards. Slowly and fearfully they planted onions, carrots, beetroots, lettuces, and tomatoes. Beans grown in K. were the pride and glory of a new nation thanks to the rich soil in the southern regions. When the season approached they planted apple, pear, peach and cherry trees. They expected grapes to grow up high, leeks to grow up long and pumpkins to grow up wide and plump. When all the petitions and offers of the butter, milk, meat and skins exchange were ultimately rejected by the neighboring nations, farmers turned to soy for the production of milk and pseudo-dairy products. It was hard but for a couple of years, no one died of hunger as no one was even close to holding a piece of meat in their hands.

The father was rich. With money came power. His only hope, worry, and relatives were his sons and soon enough he noticed that Melquiades was a shy and quiet boy with a nose in books and newspapers, while the firstborn Jacob was strong and athletic, and thus more willing to stay on a farm and continue his father’s vocation. He decided to send Melquiades to school to one of the foreign countries. Not to the neighbors of course. That out of simple K.’s pride was out of the question. Earth was full of countries and some were even happy to import K. beans via trains and ferries to their land 3000 kilometers away from K. Of course, it was illegal, of course, people were still afraid of the possible virus, which might kill their beloved pets and turn the country upside down. But the beans from the land touched by such a tragedy, beans so big and tasty, were worth a few trespasses of the law. The whole enterprise was also possible due to the money the father owned and country’s small but significant access to the sea which was too small to develop a fishing industry but big enough for shipment of those who wanted to leave temporarily. Or for ever. Some people emigrated since they neither could adjust to the new reality nor find a proper job. And like those wagons full of beans, Melquiades was to go at least for a couple of years to educate himself and find for himself a useful place in the world. Jacob was to stay. The population of K. was then exactly 20 million 2 thousand and 2 citizens.

Boys didn’t really like each other. The younger was sickly and shy, the older confident and cheerful. The younger was rather lanky and unattractive, the older so handsome that he had a girlfriend in every town within the reach of twenty kilometers. Not a girl, according to the father, but a friend. The old man believed it was innocent. When Melquiades’ father looked at his firstborn he felt parental warmth and pride. The boy was everything Melquiades’ father wanted to be when young. He strongly believed his son was as good as good was his appearance. What evil could be expected of a blue-eyed boy with light brown hair, dark complexion, and strong features, a boy so lovely from the day he was born, a boy loved by his parents unconditionally? They had expected that the next in line would have a tough example to follow. And from the day Melquiades was born, a boy not so appealing and attractive, he was fed, clothed, sheltered, and, apart from all the above, he was to be simply ignored.

At the end of the day, the choice was easy. The older was to be the sole heir to the fortune and the younger - at least educated, which for a boy, whose only talent was to get good marks at school, was quite desirable. The father didn’t really value education but his son convinced him that it is worth considering in the fast changing world. The younger boy felt limited in the thick walls of his house, dominated by his father's wish to prosper and his brother's desires for popularity. The father's choice concerning the future of his progeny was fair. And Melquiades’ father considered himself to be a man of justice.

In the sixth anniversary of K.’s tragedy, the night before Melquiades’ final departure Jacob was getting late for the farewell dinner the father had ordered beforehand. Finally, the boy appeared from the distance, jumped through the window, breathing heavily as if he had been running for the last half an hour. He didn’t want to enter through the front door and explain his deeds. Keeping a secret was better than lying. The window was often his friendly rescue in the times of frequent love escapades he was so fond of these days. He fell onto his bed, gasped and thrust a piece of paper onto the face of unsuspecting Melquiades. A small card fell on the floor and the younger brother made an effort to pick it up and examine it thoroughly.

‘I fucked her so hard. I touched this body. This body, Mel!’ he almost shouted at his brother, ‘This is how people should look like. She was perfect. Can you see that face? Can you see that waist? Can you see her teeth? All other milky cows should go hang themselves! No one but her should have the right to live on this planet.,’ he was so pleased with himself that he couldn’t have smiled wider.

Jacob was handsome. With minor imperfections: crooked teeth, some scars from running in the woods, petite asymmetries in the way he was talking and looking at things; he had his ways with girls. But what Melquiades knew and the father couldn't see was the fact that he wasn't perfect. That made Melquiades treat him as nothing special, even though everywhere he went the younger brother's inferiority was annoyingly highlighted.

‘I don’t look like that. Neither do you,’ Melquiades said suspiciously staring at the photograph of a naked woman who was, by the way, one of the first nude pictures he was ever to see. He liked to keep himself to himself and when it came to the opposite sex he was rather indifferent. In pretty boys like Jacob, he was less than interested.

Jacob stopped smiling and hid his teeth with his lips. He knew Melquiades was right. She was perfect. Jacob was less than perfect. He kept seeing boys far more attractive and he constantly compared himself to people better-off than he was, he measured parts of his body, he watched what he ate, he observed his muscles under strain, he took care of himself, bought lotions to make his skin softer and pastes to make his teeth whiter. He used cosmetics and perfumes. He didn’t want to be a simple rural boy. He wanted something more from life than land and soil. The father seemed to have a different plan for his future. But Jacob wasn’t going to spoil that evening with the dark thoughts of the generation gap and parental misunderstanding. He grabbed the photo from Melquiades and watched it closely with a visible pang of already forming nostalgia. Tomorrow he was to try his luck again.

The father, who was certain that his firstborn had spent time playing innocently with his friends, was setting the table. Due to the lack of the wife, who passed away when boys were little, he taught himself how to cook and how to take care of the house. This time, however, he ordered food from the local restaurant and, celebrating still quite recent financial comfort, he resigned from his basic home duties.

Boys were eating with appetite while discussing current affairs. What if some country let K. import some species of animals (at least chickens, at least pigs!) and start a home breed? What if neighbors changed their policy and if things went back to their initial state? Nothing in the future of K. was certain. Authorities were about to be changed, political system to be discussed in the face of economic turnover and a complete degradation of ruling classes was already taking place. Landowners and farmers were now the richest in the country and they wanted to have a vote of greater importance than penniless intellectuals, having no idea about farming. Things were about to change and everybody was looking forward to these changes. So were the boys. Jacob with mild curiosity, as he wasn’t really into politics, Melquiades with a small but significant fear.

The evening was coming to an end. Melquiades was falling asleep next to the plate of potatoes, Jacob was staring at the photograph of his recent quarry: her legs, her bottom and this shadowy part between her legs that made him uneasy. The father was drinking the one last bottle of wine from his first collection. He supplied the basement with dozens more but those seventeen were special and close to his heart. In K. it was the year 1925. Even the substandard wine of a recently poor man was of an excellent taste.