Will there be sun again? Will humanity survive? Nobody could know. In those five days at the end of the year, everything was on edge. So you’ve left everything behind for now. You didn’t do anything. One was waiting. To the dawn of the last day, to whether the priests will kindle a fire in the temple and thereby announce the continuation of the existence of mankind, time. Just as the sun god had to fight the forces of darkness every day before starting his journey beyond the horizon, so the future of people was by no means certain. For the Aztecs, these last days of the year were understandably not the most relaxed of the year.
I, on the other hand, have always especially loved this time. “Days between days,” my mother called them. It seems to me so: somehow out of time, in a vacuum. No obligations, no meetings. And although I knew absolutely nothing about pre-Columbian culture when I met Victor, the concept of nameless days made an immediate impression on me. Not to mention the quasi-legislative obligation to do nothing!
However, in recent years, I have been a bit overtaken by fears of the ancient Aztecs. I can’t close my eyes. The world is falling apart, bad news is biting each other’s tails. And, unlike the Aztec priests, scientists have long told us that this cannot continue, it will not continue this way, at least not for long. Even my once unshakable basic trust has been shaken by the reality of the past few years. But it doesn’t erase.
“I seem to have a good feeling,” I said to Victor a few days ago. “Don’t ask me why!” But on the same day, finally and quite unexpectedly, our gas stove, which we bought more than a year ago, was connected. From delivery to installation, everything went wrong several times, each step required several attempts, each new team of specialists caused new damage. So, for more than a year we have been cooking on the same electric stove and in a mini-oven-toaster. Victor went through half the phone book, he was interrupted, then snapped. He eventually found the only specialty shop in the area that sells this brand of machine, and after a long search, he was able to book a craftsman for the end of February. The lady on the phone was not very friendly.
“What’s your accent?” she asked. “Are you Mexican?”
“Mexican? Me? No, I’m French!”
It’s embarrassing, no, sickening, how quickly her tone changed. She promised to take it into account at the next cancellation. And that’s exactly what happened on one of those nameless days between days. If that’s not a good sign, then I don’t know what is. And so, on the last day of the year, the fire of hope lit up in our house. It was not the priest who lit it, but my husband, the chef. And not in the temple, but under the cauldron. And we drank to each other in French: “Au prochain soleil!”