Carmen always sang loudly and danced beautifully, with large bunches of jasmine or acacia in their sandalwood-black hair, the scent of which was intoxicating; Carmen's skin shone like gold, her long, slender eyes sparkled with a cat-like luster, her lips were always half-open, half-closed, revealing her almond-shaped white teeth; she wore the old Bohemian dance dresses, with dark-red lace dragging from her waist to her bare feet, worn and tattered, with the red lace dragging down from her waist to her bare feet. Her bare feet, her shabby shawl covered with holes, and once the music started, you could see them fluttering between her arms and shoulders as if they were breathing life into her.
If you're a voyager traveling to and from the stars, I mean, whether you're a well-mannered, crowned-talking trader, a well-trained, legendary mercenary, a weary-looking, destitute newcomer, or even one of those nine-deaths-on-a-rock, heart-and-face-harder-than-an-stellar-meteorite topshooters, you can't step out of your ship and breathe in the scent of rock and spirits without think desperately of Carmen's figure. Maybe she's just sitting quietly in some corner with ambiguous light and shadows, the tobacco on her fingertips filling the room with an ethereal blue haze of light; or maybe she's leaning over the bar, eloquently fighting with seven or eight unsuspecting men gathered around her, and in the end no one is going to take advantage of her; or maybe she catches a glimpse of you, and walks over to you like a cat noiselessly parting the crowd, and raises her tiny chin toward you:
"Hey, Earth hometown," she said, always recognizing at a glance the mark left on you by the place where you were born and raised, "let me read your fortune, and count how many more nice girls you'll charm along the way."
Yet even if she's already drunk out of her mind, sitting on your lap, swaying east and west, singing and laughing, as soon as the music starts, ah, as soon as the music starts, you'll just see her rising up in the air like a flame, her skirts flying, her rattles in her hands making a rain of dense sound, and the floor shaking under her feet, blossoming into rounds of mesmerizing ripples.
This is the legend about Carmen, from the beginning of the star way to the beginning of the pioneering until now, full of more than a century, yet who can tell the story about Carmen? The tragic, the poignant, the bewitching, the wild, together with Carmen's exquisite figure have been passed down in the murmurings of every generation of voyagers, and the story lives on and on.
Speaking of which, even those of us who grew up living on the moon in such a small place, not even out of the solar system of the children have more or less heard a few Carmen's story, although about Carmen, about the star and the voyagers of the everything is away from us I don't know how many light-years so far away, those generations of the stories passed down to our fathers there, has long been the long road to the stars washed to the face of the whole thing, become Like all the old myths and songs, they are vague and pale. But how can we not yearn for the romantic, the mysterious, the wild and the cruel? How can we not yearn for the Bohemian women who glimmered in every corner of the starry night? For years, even the most conservative, downtrodden immigrant girls have been putting bouquets of camellias or whatever in their hair for the big festivals to look their best.
All of this was the situation before Carmen Navarro arrived.
It was a dreary spring day when Carmen arrived, and we crowded out of the classroom to see a thin, pale man at the end of the passageway, pulling closely on an equally thin young girl, the latter with short, disheveled hair flying in all directions, dressed in a mesh shirt that was more than one size too big for her, and stumbling along with an awkwardness of foot that was typical of the Earth's immigrants, bowed over with her head bowed. As he came closer, the man stopped walking, his stern gray eyes slowly sweeping over each of us before finally stopping on the girl again, and without a word, he slapped her twice on the back and turned away.
We stared curiously in a circle at the new girl, who stood alone, staring blankly, both eyes fixed on her worn toes. The teacher walked up to her and took her hand, saying to her kindly, "Introduce yourself to everyone."
The girl raised her eyelids, still staring at her toes, and replied slowly in an unusually odd accent:
"My name is Carmen. Carmen Navarro."
After word had spread throughout the Moon City, there were countless visitors to see Carmen, initially the children in the next class, then their sisters and parents, and eventually even the serious clerics who had to travel great distances to pretend to be passing through the neighborhood unnoticed. The teacher always tried to talk them out of it as peacefully as possible, asking them not to disrupt the normal order of things, but after one group went away there would be another, and who made her the only Carmen we've ever had here in the olden days? And who made her come to this dreary, boring place on the moon? We've lived in palm-sized dungeons since we were born, faced with gray-brown rock and concrete, breathing warm air filtered out by the circulatory system, and many of us have never even seen a starry night sky in our lives, and have never wanted to see any stars or spaceships. Star bars or Carmen? Those were just the stuff of legend.
As it turned out, our Ms. Carmen disappointed everyone, she was more mediocre than all the mediocrity on the moon combined, more boring than all the tedium, there was no spunk or stubbornness in her pale, thin face, no fire burning in her dark, silent eyes, and even her body was shriveled and skinny as if she hadn't developed yet, not even comparable to our precocious moon girls. though she was the same fifteen or sixteen years old as all of us. Most unbearable of all was her accent, ever so slow and low, as if deliberately slowed down for a recording, answering everyone's questions word for word:
"Yes, I'm Carmen, I'm from Earth; no, I've never been anywhere; and yes, Mr. Navarro is my father."
As for dancing and such, no one even asked her, Carmen had a harder walk than any Earthling. There were one or two troublemakers who followed her around and mimicked her steps, or jumped from side to side to make fun of her, and so for a long time all you could see was Carmen sitting in a corner all by herself, her eyes fixed on her own feet under the table, as if she were going to watch herself grow there day by day.
In the days when the entire population of Moon City was disappointed and indifferent to Carmen, perhaps I was the only exception.
I was also sixteen at the time, with hair as short as a schoolboy's, only moderately good looks, and an inexplicable fire flickering deep inside me from time to time, wilder than the most beguiling of girls.
The spring after Carmen's arrival, the fire in my heart finally blazed up, burning my mind out of shape, and there wasn't a moment when I wasn't secretly watching her. Yet no matter how much the people around me mobbed, humiliated, or ignored Carmen, I remained motionless, and you can consider me cruel or shy or evil-minded, but in any case it was true.
It wasn't until three weeks later, when no one was looking, that I finally worked up the courage to let the feathered ball in my pocket accidentally roll down to her feet.
Carmen picked the ball up and held it in her hand, and I purposely didn't look her in the eye, pretending that I didn't really care who I was talking to, and said absently,
"I hear it's been passed down from the Earth, but sadly, I'm not very good at it."
Carmen looked at me without saying a word, and my heart popped out of my chest as I hastened to add,
"Do you know how to play?"
After a moment of silence, Carmen lowered her eyes and whispered,
"Yes, I can."
Our friendship began with those words.
Many people thought that Featherball was a simple toy, relying on an electromagnetic glove to control a small ball in the palm of the hand, no matter how much it was flipped around, it just couldn't escape from the space controlled by the magnetic field, and eventually it could be transformed into quite a number of tricks, and it had been popular for a while a couple of years ago on the moon, and then everyone had quickly moved on to other exciting games. However, only the true insiders know how wonderful and addictive the more subtle patterns are. I thought I was an expert, but I was surprised to find out that Carmen was much more adept than I was at a handheld sport that had absolutely nothing to do with gravity and was perfect for a person's self-indulgence.
Over the next few weeks, we sat unannounced in the corner of an unmarked staircase after school and played for ages on end. Two people who rarely cared about other people's accents when they were concentrating on the game, at first we just competed against each other in silence, occasionally saying a few words, and then it gradually turned into a wordless conversation. In addition to playing pinball, Carmen taught me other, more ancient Earth games such as Othello, and even flip-flop, silly, outdated games that kept us both entertained.
To this day, it's hard to explain exactly why I persisted in my attempts to build a friendship with Carmen, a woman whose romantic lore shows no signs of resurrection. But on the other hand, Carmen was different, she was awkward, shy, a bit inexpressive, but had that wonderful quality that only people used to long periods of loneliness have, and you couldn't help but want to explore her inner world. Sometimes when you sit next to her, gazing so closely at her fluttering eyelashes and sensitive lips, you may think that you have traveled to an old fairy tale world and met a cursed princess, a forbidden witch. But in a moment the illusion clears and you see just the same pale, skinny little Carmen who needs your company and protection.
On the surface, our friendship didn't seem so hot and heavy. Carmen didn't live at the school, she was driven there and back by Mr. Navarro, and at lunch she just sat alone in a corner, silently overcoming the moon vegetables that were too much for her to eat. More than once I've seen groups of boys and girls swarm over to her, hooting and hollering, and asking, falsely,
"Tell me about your life on Earth, young lady?"
Carmen put down her spoon and looked at them and said slowly, "It's not much different on Earth ...... We live in cities too, but the cities are on the ground, and you can see the sky once in a while, and at night there's . . stars."
"Star-stars!" The guys laughed, purposely dragging their voices out to mimic her, and at the end of it, one by one, they piled the slimy kale chowder all over her plate and took off.
When that was over, I silently sat down next to her with my plate, forked her the fried red sausage, and said,
"How are the stars, Carmen?"
She bowed her head, "The stars are fuzzy, you can't usually see them unless it's raining." She gazed into my eyes every time the stars were mentioned, "You'd have to see them for yourself to know, it would be a very magical feeling to find a small twinkling star out of all the darkness, as if it's only been twinkling there for you for so long, and you'd be wondering all the time just what it is that makes it so special."
"We could go up to the surface and look, Carmen." A great idea popped into my head, "They say that when you look at the stars from the surface of the moon, you can see every one of them clearly."
Carmen shook her head, "Mr. Navarro wouldn't approve."
So for the rest of the day we just bowed our heads and overcame our respective kale chowders, the sin of wasting food is a big one.
Now it has to be said about Mr. Navarro.
Mr. Navarro is more or less a mysterious figure, claiming to be Carmen's father, yet Carmen has never referred to him as anything more than Mr. Navarro; his file at the INS is virtually blank, and it has been speculated that he was either once in a position of power, or a topper, and only the latter has the right to write off his résumé after retirement.
Mr. Navarro is said to be in his mid-forties, but looks much older, and his looks ...... how can I put it? In short, it is very unforgettable at first sight, tall and thin, dark complexion, hands with prominent bones, white and strong teeth, deep-set eye sockets, according to lunar aesthetics is quite handsome, but it is the most tyrannical man I've ever seen, no lunar man would ever supervise his sixteen-year-old daughter so harshly. Any movement on Carmen's part was enough to upset him and make his already somber eyes grow even colder. So Carmen was too afraid to do anything, too afraid to participate in sports, too afraid to giggle with the boys, too afraid to sing and dance, too afraid to wear pretty clothes, too afraid to have afternoon tea with everyone.
More than once I've said to Carmen, "God, I don't know what's going on on your planet, how can he keep you under control like this when girls as young as twelve or thirteen can move out and live on their own here!!!"
Carmen just lowered her eyes and shook her head, she was really going against the grain as well.
If it wasn't for the chocolate muffins, I probably wouldn't have progressed to holding a grudge against Mr. Navarro.
The chocolate muffins were something Carmen had promised me countless times.
"If I let you win this round," she always said, "I'll buy you an Earth-flavored chocolate muffin that I baked myself, and wow-" she groggily made a salivating expression. Or for kale and carrot chowder, or linear algebra homework, that sort of thing. But none of it ever materialized, and it was all nothing more than a game of lip service.
One afternoon, however, Carmen offered out of the blue to invite me to her house.
"Mr. Navarro has gone to immigration and won't be back until tomorrow." She announced in all seriousness, "Carmen is going to bake chocolate muffins and whipped cream pudding at home, and I was wondering if anyone would like to do the honors."
It was supposed to be a pleasant afternoon. When I first arrived at Carmen's house, I was surprised to find a house more simply furnished than the home of the most conformist moon dweller, with a simple kitchen plus toilet and a tiny room that served as a living room by day and a bedroom by night, with hardly a single extra item beyond the most basic pieces of folding furniture, and I couldn't help but think that the people who lived here could get by on nothing more than the air they breathed.
Despite this, Carmen magically baked muffins and puddings from the simplest of ingredients, and we stowed all the furniture away in the walls and sat on the spotless, polished floors and ate snacks and drank bagged black tea, which was almost more pleasurable than the governors' wives.
That time of year, the net lamps hidden in the walls spread their lightest glow evenly throughout the room, enveloping Carmen's dark, blue hair as if it were a light, bright corolla of flowers. I couldn't help but smile as I gazed at her.
"What?" She saw the look on my face and hurriedly wiped her mouth vigorously to see if there were any snack crumbs on it.
"I was just thinking," I declared in all seriousness, "what an honor it would be for me to sit on the floor of her home*** drinking afternoon tea with the one and only Miss Carmen in all of Moon City on a unique and wonderful afternoon!"
Carmen looked away from me and didn't say anything, her face involuntarily reddening. I laughed and couldn't help but sigh, leaning over and gently tugging on her hair that had fallen to her shoulders as she turned her head to look at me.
"Carmen, you don't belong here." I said softly, "You were born a little witch, can't you figure out your destiny?"
Carmen pursed her lips, which made her blush even more, and eventually she just shook her head and looked up at the ceiling, sighing softly.
"You know what?" After a moment of silence, she spoke, "Sometimes I feel like I'm not really Carmen."
I looked over at her in surprise, and she hesitated, pulling her bed out and removing a motion hologram from a well-hidden compartment.
"I found this when we moved, don't tell anyone."
I took the photo, already guessing what I'd see, a picture of the young Mr. Navarro with a voluptuous bohemian woman, the former dressed in the silver-blue leotard popular with top hitters decades ago, with irritable gray eyes watching his lover, the woman in a busty dress, a voluptuous arm around his chest, swirling and writhing voluptuously and provocatively, but with the look of a wild cat, as untamed as a wildcat. like a wildcat, if she was untamed and untamed.
I returned the photo to Carmen and watched as she carefully hid it, the relationship between the two men in the photo and the Carmen in front of me will probably always remain a mystery.
Carmen sat down again, looking miserable, and I laughed again, purposely messing up her hair before simply stretching out and falling comfortably to the floor in one smooth motion, pushing the cups and saucers all the way to the side.
"Forget it, forget it, you'll always be my little Carmen, no matter what fate throws at you." I said lazily.
So Carmen laid down next to me as well and put her tiny head on my shoulder. We just lay shoulder to shoulder on the floor, staring up at the motionless dark shadows on the ceiling and the churning waves of light cast by our unfinished black tea, and couldn't help but lose track of time. The clock jumped noiselessly, and there was silence all around us, except for the sound of our breathing on each other that filled the room with warmth.
Yes, it had been a dreamy afternoon that had ended in a nightmare. That night, Mr. Navarro came home early, unexpectedly found the messy cups on the floor, leftover black tea snacks and two sleeping girls, after a few seconds of dismay he dragged up the sleepy-eyed me and threw me cleanly out of the door, in the darkness I only saw a pair of bottomless deep-set eyes, yet they contained all the loathing, contempt, and coldness, so much so, that I was completely defenseless for a moment. I was completely defenseless for a moment. It was a long time before I realized how he was able to exert that harsh influence over Carmen.
The next morning I waited early in front of the school and eventually saw Carmen being brought to school as usual by Mr. Navarro, only at dinner time I noticed two more greenish-gray fingerprints on her wrists.
This time I scooped all of her stew onto my own plate without a word, secretly vowing to get my revenge someday.
Another month or so passed, everything was uneventful, yet the temperature in the air was gradually changing. When the short summer arrived, the entire Moon City was no longer dead and silent, but had a brand new look.
Carmen, as always, sat in her corner in her outdated mesh shirt, as if oblivious to the alluringly hot young boys and girls dressed up all around her, yet as I walked over to sit down, she surveyed my almost fully exposed legs with a bit of derision, and smiled faintly as she said,
"What a pretty dress. "
I made a face and moved over to tug on her hair, saying, "It's about time you paid attention to trends, miss."
She laughed and pushed my hand away, but I pressed on, tugging on her coat, "I wonder if I could have the honor of skipping school this afternoon and following my lead?"
"Skipping school? Why?"
"Because," I said, sitting up straight and pretending to be serious, "today is Liberation Day."
No matter who liberated what on this day in the first place, Emancipation Day to the people of Luna City meant only so few things; booze, revelry, summer, and life, liberation of mind and body, that sort of thing.
Carmen and I spent the afternoon wandering aimlessly along the streets, which were lined with grotesquely colored lights and flags, and countless garlands of exaggerated and bizarre shapes, constructed in geometrical shapes of unknown significance and unusual perspective, and the air was perfumed with the scent of flowers. I picked a large clump of white gardenias and stuck them in Carmen's tousled hair, a look that was somehow unearthly, and shrugged my shoulders, smiling,
"You look gorgeous, darling."
It was a beautiful, crazy summer night. As evening fell, the city turned off its lighting system, but lights came on everywhere, one by one, piecing together a colorful mass of night, and people took to the streets in droves, boys and girls of eleven and twelve or middle-aged men and women in their fifties and sixties, all dressed in the most revealing of outlandish outfits, swinging their bodies in time to the music that was gradually blaring out, their bare skin coated with different styles of tattooed patterns with heat-sensitive materials that, because of their excitement And it began to glisten, yet it was all just a warm-up, getting in the mood and getting in shape for the only wild summer night of the year.
I pulled Carmen tightly through the crowd, feeling her palms wet and cold while my hands were hot and sweaty. There were countless ghostly, fluorescent shimmering figures floating around us, but as we drew closer we could feel the burning scent of sweat, alcohol, and desire emanating from every pore, drunkenly mingling into a haze that was once again inhaled into our bodies, searing every cell.
Eventually we reached Freedom Square, which had been transformed into a sea of flickering flames and drums, men and women as wet and slippery as if they were bathed in vapor, clinging to each other and writhing to the max, the music shaking the air and breaking it down into the elements of madness and passion, and every now and then a strong young man or woman leaping up like a fish, flipping and flopping a few meters above the crowd, in a frenzy of movement. A few meters above the crowd, they flipped and moved in wild and wonderful movements. The light threw off their undulating muscular silhouettes, as if they were alive.
I resisted the urge to sway with the crowd, and turned to Carmen's ear and said loudly,
"Wait here, I'll get something to drink!"
Carmen nodded stiffly, sweat trickling from her pale forehead down into her neck, her hair moistened by the humid air and sticking to her face in strands.
I rushed to the edge of the plaza and took two cans of cold, zingy, psychedelic Green Demon out of the vending machine, normally these heavily alcoholic beverages were hard to come by in the regular way. When I returned to my original spot, Carmen was still standing there stiffly, both eyes glowing with disoriented light, and the gardenia in her hair had begun to wilt, giving off an ever more colorful scent.
I slipped her a can and said,
"Have a drink, little thing, it'll make you feel better." I was actually nervous as hell, the alcoholism, the partying, the mix of everything in front of me seemed so unreal, and for a split second Mr. Navarro's grim gaze floated through my mind, then was washed away by the bubbling fluorescent green liquid.
We both poured the drinks in our hands into our bellies in one gulp, the strong alcohol burning away in our stomachs and rushing up our chests all the way to our throats and brains, and it felt like the whole thing was about to explode. I dropped the can and asked Carmen aloud,
"Wanna dance?"
Carmen choked out a violent string of coughs and shook her head at me, her cheeks red as fire.
I couldn't help but laugh aloud as a cloud began to swirl and drift in my head. Just then a group of nearly topless young boys and girls with gold and purple floral patterns wrapped around them passed by, and one of them looked this way, and I recognized them as being from my class, the guys who often crossed Carmen's path.
Just before I could decide what to do about it, they had quickly circled towards their prey, and I subconsciously took a step forward to get in front of Carmen.
"Hey, look who it is!" A boy yelled as he gleefully ruffled my shoulder, his tattoos turning lime green and shimmering eerily, "Great Ms. Carmen, hasn't anyone asked you to dance?"
The group burst out laughing, you and I reaching out to push on her shoulders, leaving a trail of light mixed with sweat stains on them.
One girl jumped out lightly and began to sway her body to the music, her glistening breasts jiggling under her sweaty, sheer, tight halter and deliberately bumping into Carmen with her shoulders and hips, and a few more joined in the dance right after that, arms entwined around each other and passing around us as the boys lifted their girls high, tossing them to their companions with ease, and then turning to catch the next one. They fooled around for a while, eventually joining hands in a circle, shouting together as they spun around in circles, connecting into a wobbly patchwork of light and sound:
"Miss Carmen doesn't dance~~Miss Carmen doesn't dance~~Carmen- Carmen- -"
I fought to reach out and try to push them away, yet I was tightly surrounded, when Carmen took my hand behind me, her fingertips cold and her palm hot.
I looked back in amazement and met her eyes, which burned with an inexplicable flame of light, her cheeks growing redder and redder, but her lips as pale as if they were dead, pursed in a stubborn and contemptuous curve. As the chorus of voices around her weakened, Carmen finally opened her mouth and said in a voice that was unusually clear and cold:
"Want to see it?"
What happened next was something I'll never forget; Carmen let go of my hand and, unperturbed, pinched the straps of her mesh shirt and gave it a gentle tug, letting one side of the neckline slide below her shoulders, exposing her bare neck and arms, while her other hand brought the hem of her long skirt up to her waist.
The music settled for half a beat.
Then came the thunder and lightning.
Carmen rose into the air and spun around five or six times, a round of blazing waves of light whistling with the wind flung out from her, radiating in all directions, and at first all I could make out was the gardenia in Carmen's hair, dazzlingly white. Immediately afterward, with the fierce drum beat, her toes and heels on the ground lightly and deftly tapping, as if in the water undulating and rippling general, her shoulders and arms and waist twisting so delicate, so powerful, as if there are countless electric currents meandering from her body, her chin raised high, the corners of the mouth hung with a proud smile, wide-open eyes seem to penetrate everything, looking into the endless distance, however, the light of the eyes but the light in her eyes became more and more colorful, so that people did not dare to look directly at her. For a brief moment she became another Carmen, a Carmen buried deep in her genes and destiny, burning like the wind, fire, electricity, and light.
I stood and watched as Carmen danced like no one's business, stopping wherever she went to stare blankly at her steps.
Suddenly, someone grabbed my shoulder behind me so hard that I almost screamed in pain. I looked back and was seeing Mr. Navarro's grim face, filled with equal parts wonder and bewilderment, hissing in a low voice,
"What is she doing? You little witch! What have you done to her?!!!"
I shuddered for a moment, just a moment, and then suddenly comprehended that his power had failed him completely - shattered by a far more powerful, irresistible magic. I mustered up the courage to say aloud:
"Can't you see? Carmen is dancing!"
Mr. Navarro stared at me fiercely, and I had never seen a face with so many emotions mixed in it; shock, loathing, anger, disappointment, sadness, hopelessness, exhaustion, and the kind of deep despair that made all his features collapse completely, becoming as flabby and weak as a windswept old man's.
For an instant I was filled with the thrill of revenge, mixed with a little pity, yet just then a gardenia flicked gently on my brow, turning my eyes in the right direction. Carmen was standing before me, a triumphant smile blooming on her bright lips, her forehead and cheeks burning with a palpitating crimson, and was extending her pale hand to me.
Then she collapsed, before I could place my hand on hers.
The plaza was in chaos, streams of light and darkness churning madly together, and I was squeezed into the crowd, swaying east and west, only vaguely seeing Mr. Navarro walk over with heavy steps, picking up Carmen's thin body and disappearing into the chaos of light and sound, and it was only then that my hand, which I had realized was still resting in mid-air, held the wilted gardenia in between my fingers.
All of the above was the last time I saw Carmen, and since that night she had disappeared without a trace, along with Mr. Navarro, and the Moon City had regained its former calm, and the short summer was coming to an end.
There are several versions of Carmen's whereabouts; one theory is that Mr. Navarro took her back to Earth on a spaceship overnight, and never set foot off the planet again; another theory is that they went to Io, which is a much more monotonous, cold, and indifferent world.
Of course the most widely circulated, and my favorite ending, is the one about the starway to Sagittarius and the bar, where Carmen went alone, dancing her lilting steps, renewing one of the countless legends about Carmen, even though she had left behind a legend so bright and uninhibited that it would live on the moon for all eternity.
On the last day of the summer, I came alone to the surface of the moon in my spacesuit, and saw the bright blue Earth just rising from the horizon in the distance, its light so mournful on the surface of the silent, barren craters around it. I looked to the other side, and there hung in the blackness of space a myriad of stars, large and small, silently sending their faint rays from hundreds of light years away.
I left the gardenia, which had already dried out, under a rock and turned away, and behind me, my Carmen was blossoming her brightest smile at me behind a sky full of stars.