The Day of the Storm

On the day of the storm they had been warned. Everybody knew the speed of the winds, when the storm will land where. They had been advised to stay indoors and avoid travel at all costs.

He watched out the window as the neighbors, one by one, left their houses, got in their cars and sometime later returned with big bags of shopping, water and fire wood.

He huffed at them from his silent house. It is just a storm, it will last one day, so much effort for nothing. He thought, while going to the other side of the house to look at his garden.

Murray’s garden was empty. He was not much of a gardener and it was getting more difficult by the day to do anything in it. So, except for a large garden chair, placed close to the house, there was nothing a potential storm might move about.

In his eighties, Murray lived in the same house he had bought in his thirties. Every little corner of it was well known to him and he had withered many storms protected by the sturdy walls. He had seen it all, so now he dismissed as panicked squawks all the warnings proffered on tv by different presenters.

He got annoyed with one in particular who got mixed up between km/h and mph.

And it is them that inform the nation!

As he often did Murray fell asleep in his armchair, in front of the tv. After a good, restful nap he woke up to find the tv had given up on the storm and was now showing a show with some people talking very loud and very fast. He really could not make heads or tales of these shows that just follow people around living their lives.

He decided he needed some soup, so he shuffled his wool slippers to the kitchen and that is when he saw it, on the other side of the large windows he could see it in all its force, the storm.

Rain drops were fiercely hitting against the windows sounding like little stones. The wind was so strong that it sounded like a thunder almost when it went around the corner of the house. The trees in the garden and those beyond were bending unnaturally under the pressure put on them.

Murray had seen many storms in his life but he was surprised by the beauty of the chaos outside. As it often happened, words from a book popped into his head, this time is was Saramago’s ‘Chaos is merely order waiting to be deciphered.’

Yes, indeed, what seemed like chaos and danger was actually the natural order of things and Murray, now standing with his face almost touching the kitchen glass door, was fascinated by the power to alter reality of the storm.

He heated up his soup, sat at the table to eat it, with his eyes glued to the spectacle outside of lashing rain, fierce winds and resounding movement.

He could not say for how long he had been sat there when an idea popped into his head. He did not know why this happened, it was that sometimes, he would get these ideas and he just had to do the thing he thought of.

It had been like that all his life. Crazy ideas, antisocial ideas, stupid ideas. They just popped into his head and like an automaton he would follow them through.

He sometimes hated the ideas, he despised the hold they had on him and that they made him feel powerless and subject to a control that he could not fight or understand.

The older he got, the better it got, it seemed that his outlandish ideas got older with him, but still, sometimes, they would still pop into his mind making preposterous suggestions and driving him to do stupid things.

Easy to guess what the idea was now. Fascinated by the storm and the howling wind Murray got this idea that it would be nice to go outside and feel the storm.

He wanted to see how the strong wind felt, if the rain was cold, to hear the booming noise first hand.

No, not a good idea! On tv they said everybody should just stay indoors!

Yeah right, what do they know, that guy did not even know km/h or mph. Idiots!

Even so, better safe than sorry! Listen to that, it is crazy out there!

I would just go out in the garden! For one minute! Right next to the house!

Not a good idea I am telling you!

Please! What do you know! I am eighty! I will die soon, I want to feel things …

Yeah, behaving like that you will die sooner than later! Just sayin’ …

Blaaa blaaa blaaa!

And the idea Murray got became stronger drowning any reasoning he might have tried with himself.

Murray took off his wool slippers, pulled on some boots, covered his head with a thick, knitted hat, wore his waterproof waxed coat and moving slowly, excited by his endeavor he went to the kitchen door sliding it open.

The storm burst inside the house forcefully and Murray felt happy.

Holding on the door he stepped outside and the next second he felt the strong wind pushing him forward. It was such a strange, wonderful sensation. The noise was so loud that you could not hear anything, the wind seemed to move in all directions and nothing you did protected you, the rain drops fell large and heavy covering you in cold water.

Life to the extreme and Murray was enjoying it tremendously. An unexpected gust of wind threw him off balance and he fell on his back on the cold earth. He did not bother to get up, the sky, the fast moving clouds, the winding trees, everything was so beautiful that he was happy just to sit there and be with them and in their midst, part of it, of the natural order of things.

Murray decided he was happy and that going outside in the storm had not been such a bad idea after all. All he needed to figure out now was how to get up from there, when he was ready to of course, and get back in the house.

Murray had nothing to worry though, he knew he will get an irresistible idea any moment now.