Gotié: The Last Christmas of Cameo Trostky

As he slipped stealthily between the walls of the village where he had arrived fleeing, suffocated by anguish, Cameo Trostky cursed his destiny. Gotié was a languid place embedded in the plateau of a mountain range known as Somiria, in the remote land of Amarsia.

It was eight nineteen in the evening of that tedious day when someone, endowed with immense and mysterious power, blew across the firmament and forced the sunlight to retreat into its refuge. The afternoon was left at the mercy of shadows that overwhelmed the nature of the place. From the greenery that had filled the moments before eight nineteen emerged nervous silhouettes dressed entirely in mourning.

The village became laconic, merging with the sky that had already wrapped itself in a torturous ashen cloak. Drunken flames from a few lamps appeared, yet failed to defeat the gloom of the place. They were lamps that produced muffled glimmers and flashes revealing a curtain of frail lines of water that, by the millions, fled swiftly seeking rest upon the ground.

Stormy hours were foretold.

Few people, who somehow seemed many, wandered about, and the moon—burdened by impatient clouds—struggled to show its glow. In the absence of thunder, the gusting wind provided the soundtrack to those moments, while the silence of men was interrupted by the sound of runny noses being sniffed and the coughing of some who prepared to settle their bodies into dark crevices.

Trostky’s eyes revealed that he had not slept for days. Yet they needed to watch everything, even the movement of nervous cockroaches cautiously crossing the cobblestones; after all, many of them had served him as rations in previous nights.

“Soon I will go mad, I know it… I curse everything, I curse it all. I do not want to be captured before Christmas,” he thought, hunching his body even further, trying to stretch his rags to cover himself better.

Cameo Trostky had barely reached the age of twenty-seven, and for four years he had followed with dedication the wanderings of those who dressed as Saint Nicholas in different places during Christmas.

Harassed by anxiety and exhaustion, he lay down, resting his head on his arms, pressing himself against the wall so as not to shiver until he fell asleep.

The night reigned filled with discomfort. He could not rest, for the windstorm and sudden jolts came upon him like a cursed refrain.

At the end of dawn, not far from there, in a square crowded with townsfolk and farmers, a ragged fellow pasted posters onto the walls. A reward of five hundred pennies was offered to whoever found Cameo Trostky and handed him over to the Sekret.

People crowded together to memorize Cameo’s face. Imaginary scenes were created among the most ironic and mocking; to the naïve, the poster inspired fear, for they knew that appearing drawn there meant being sentenced to capital punishment after abominable torments. But to others—who in the end were many—the poster awakened compassion, for they hated the Sekret.

A mysterious man, dark-skinned, sun-burnt, bulging-eyed, dressed in purple, observed the growing crowd with the intensity of milk boiling over.

The ragged fellow ceased to matter when he received a few coins from that mysterious figure and allowed himself to be swallowed by the crowd.

By afternoon, Cameo discovered the posters. Apparently, and to his relief and fortune, no one had recognized him. Yet he felt an indescribable emptiness in his stomach and broke into a cold sweat.

“Damn it… when did I become a criminal? When did I kill so many men while searching for my mother’s murderer?” he asked himself.

He moved away, haunted by the gaze of his own face drawn on the poster, and entered a forest of dense conifers.

For the rest of the day he remained vigilant under heavy drops of rain that made him tremble. The cold continued to be maddening and his wet clothes were poor advisers; yet his mind remained occupied the entire time devising his strategy for revenge and escape.

When night fell, he stealthily returned to the same place that had sheltered him with indifference the night before and spent the night there.

The following morning, the siege of the posters and the stubborn premonition that he would be betrayed by those beggars of the night hastened his flight once again.

By his calculations, he would have to walk no fewer than fifty miles along icy trails and steep roads to reach another town where perhaps the posters had not yet appeared.

After three days, Cameo Trostky arrived at a small settlement and, by the roadside, found a butcher shop where skinned goats hung from iron hooks.

Presenting himself, with a certain charm, as an expert goat skinner, he managed to convince the butcher to allow him to slaughter and skin forty goats over the course of two days, in exchange for letting him sleep there and giving him some clothes and hot food.

His work would take place outdoors, behind the establishment under an improvised shed. For him, being there would remain confidential and keep him far from the accusing posters.

By the end of the day his hands were exhausted from stabbing so many animals in sacrifice before skinning them.

That night he collapsed on a wooden cot covered with brown leather marked by uneven white spots that the butcher provided before locking him inside with heavy chains.

While massaging his hands, he cursed his own foolishness for having written the names of his victims on the last page of a booklet of Christmas carols—the same booklet his mother had read the night a man dressed as Saint Nicholas murdered her at the end of a celebration in the main square of Gotié.

“I should never have written their names… I should not have. Now the Sekret is hunting me. I will deny it was me. What an idiot I was to write the list of my dead… but perhaps the booklet was lost and the Sekret does not even have it. And then… why does my face appear on the posters in Gotié? Surely they found it,” he thought.

The remaining goats still had to be slaughtered, and afterward he would have to leave.

He finished early and received thick clothing in return, since the food and shelter had already been compensated.

Fortunately the day was sunny, though still cold and windy. According to his calculations, protected up to his eyes with his clothing, he felt safe enough to wander around consuming the night before finally leaving that settlement forever.

Yet he froze when he saw the butcher who had hired him speaking with several people—poster in hand—who appeared to be agents of the Sekret.

With a single leap he slipped out through the back and disappeared again into the forest.

His purpose now was to return to Gotié, no matter how crowded it might be with posters bearing his face.

Being in Gotié on Christmas night was his only destination and purpose.

On the ground of the square, a piece of newspaper trampled by many feet announced the surprising news:

“Cameo Trostky captured in Gotié.”

Hours later, people crowded together to see whether the drawing on the poster matched the detained man, debating the quality of the sketch artist. Imaginary and mocking scenes flourished among the most ironic spectators. To the naïve, the arrest gave a certain sense of security, for the murderer was now safely locked away. But to others—who remained many—it inspired even greater compassion, for their resentment toward the Sekret only grew stronger.

Cameo Trostky defended himself in court, lacking a lawyer. He did so by emphatically denying that he had written those names in the booklet of Christmas carols that served as undeniable evidence of his crimes. However, he acknowledged before the jury that the booklet had belonged to his mother before she was murdered.

Throughout the trial, Cameo insisted that a man dressed as Saint Nicholas had killed his mother years earlier, and he stubbornly maintained that the same murderer had also killed the four Saint Nicholases during past Christmases.

Faced with these arguments, the jury became entangled between justice and injustice, between truth and lies, between mercy and punishment, and some even felt empathy for Cameo. There was no sympathetic verdict, but in the end they declared him guilty.

The judge, who was expected to sentence him to the gallows, instead took pity and delivered a sentence that left everyone astonished:

“Cameo Trostky shall be subjected to a lobotomy, so that he will remember nothing and his frustration will cease!”

Bewildered by such a mysterious sentence, Cameo sensed that it would be less severe than the death he had surely expected. Yet neither he nor those attending the trial truly understood it.

Hours later, through whispered words from a guard, he learned that they would drive a chisel into his forehead to disconnect his emotions. It would be done before the crowd as soon as a specialist arrived.

According to the judge, his life had been spared, and the procedure would also prevent him from committing further crimes, since the judge believed the murders had been committed in the midst of profound pain.

Cameo begged to be sentenced to death instead, but his plea was denied. The lobotomy would be performed one day before Christmas.

Several days later, those who had felt compassion for Trostky upon seeing the poster in the square of Gotié conspired together and, with the consent of a high-ranking guard, quietly extracted him from his cell.

Cameo escaped without explanation and without culprits, and soon new posters appeared offering an even greater reward.

At the municipal hall, officials organized the Christmas festivities. Every precaution had been taken to ensure that Trostky would not kill any man dressed as Saint Nicholas. As bait, the Sekret decided to disguise several of their best agents as Saint Nicholas and blend them into the celebration.

Meanwhile, Cameo remained hidden in the forest. This time his thoughts had the stubborn mission of deciphering the face of his mother’s murderer before killing another innocent man.

Once again—perhaps for the thousandth time—he reconstructed the crime of which he had been the only witness. Every stab his mother received, while he himself was dizzy from the liquor that man had given him during the celebration, was reviewed with meticulous clarity and painful detail.

In that mental exploration he managed to visualize the killer’s skin; he remembered the weather-worn damage on his cheekbones and once again saw those eyes filled with hatred, eyes that spoke of death to exhaustion.

From the dagger he recalled only the curved shape of its blood-stained blade.

His thoughts, as if touched by revelation, returned to the trial and focused on the chief of the Sekret, whose accusing zeal during the prosecutor’s interrogation revealed furious eyes and a voice demanding his death sentence with fervor.

Some of that accuser’s gestures resembled those of that fatal night. There was much to investigate in those details, even the texture of his skin betrayed the harsh influence of dry winds.

Still uncertain, Cameo decided to return to the place where he had slept two nights before.

This time he positioned himself near a beggar who was already settled and half asleep. He pretended to adjust himself noisily and tried to start a conversation.

The man, curt and antisocial, showed no interest, so Cameo moved to another doorway where two elderly women spoke quietly.

Cameo felt embarrassed upon realizing they were women and apologized, preparing to leave. They humbly invited him to stay; after all, they preferred being protected by a man from any foul-smelling thief who might try to steal their belongings.

They spoke in whispers about their lives and miseries.

Cameo guided the conversation toward the sentence and escape of the murderer of the Saint Nicholases. One of the women hinted that the chief of the Sekret had ordered the posters to be placed in Gotié and had paid the ragged fellow to do the job. She said she herself had seen him in the square the day it happened.

Cameo decided not to sleep beside them. Quietly, he walked toward a cobbled street where a large house with fine wooden windows stood decorated with lanterns that cast a dim but sufficient light.

His shadow was seen there for a few seconds.

Then nothing.

The next day’s newspaper in Gotié announced another tragedy: the chief of the Sekret had been murdered.

Beside his body lay a blood-stained Saint Nicholas costume and a short curved blade.

Later it would be revealed, according to judicial records, that the chief of the Sekret had been linked to the murder of Cameo Trostky’s mother.

The village made every effort to find Cameo.

They called for his pardon.

But Trostky never reappeared.