14
Paulo’s soul had not yet bared itself, and he had no way of knowing if the girl before him would disappear from one moment to the next. He didn’t know what else to say, she too got quiet, and they both had accepted that silence and kept their gazes straight ahead, without actually noting anything. Around them, people were on their way to lunch counters and restaurants, packed trolleys rolled on by, but both Paulo and Karla looked lost, their emotions in some other dimension.
“Would you like to get lunch?”
Taking that as an invitation, Paulo was pleasantly surprised. He couldn’t understand why such a beautiful girl was asking him to lunch—his first few hours in Amsterdam were off to a good start.
He hadn’t planned anything like that, and when things happen without planning or expectations they are that much more enjoyable and worthwhile—talking to a stranger without an eye to any romantic connection had allowed things to flow more naturally.
Was she alone? How long would she continue to pay attention to him? What did he need to do to keep her by his side?
Nothing. The sequence of stupid questions disappeared into thin air, and even though he had just had something to eat, he was going to have lunch with her. His only worry was that she might pick an expensive restaurant, and he needed to make his money last a year, until the date on his return ticket.
Of course we need to share. Even if it’s something everyone already knows, it’s important that we don’t allow ourselves to be swept away by selfish thoughts of being the sole person to arrive at the end of the journey. Whoever does this finds an empty paradise, without anything particularly interesting, and soon finds himself dying of boredom.
We cannot take the lamps that light the way and carry them with us.
If we do this, we end up filling our backpacks with lanterns. In that case, even with all the light we carry, we still won’t have any company to speak of. What good is that?
But it was difficult to keep his mind at rest—he needed to write down everything that was happening around him. A revolution without arms, a road without border checkpoints or dangerous turns. A world that had suddenly become young, independent of people’s ages or their religious and political beliefs. The sun had come out, as though to say that finally the Renaissance was making a return, to change everyone’s habits and customs—and one day very soon, people would no longer depend on the opinions of others but rather on their own ways of seeing life.
People dressed in yellow, dancing and singing in the street, clothing of all colors, a girl handing out roses to passersby, everyone smiling—yes, tomorrow would be a better day, despite what was happening in Latin America and other countries. Tomorrow would be better simply because there was no other choice, there was no way to return to the past and again allow puritanism, hypocrisy, and lies to fill the days and nights of those who walked on this earth. He thought back to his exorcism on the train and the thousands of reproaches everyone directed his way, those he knew and those he didn’t. He thought back to the way his parents suffered and felt like calling home right away to say:
Don’t worry, I’m happy, and soon you will understand why I wasn’t born to go to college, earn a diploma, and get a job. I was born to be free and I can survive this way. I will always have something to do, I will always find a way to make money, I can always get married one day and start a family, but now is not the time for that—it’s time for me to try to live only in the present, here and now, with the joy of children, to whom Jesus bequeathed the Kingdom of Heaven. If I need to find a job as a laborer, I’ll do this without complaining because it will allow me to live in communion with the earth, the sun, and rain. If one day I need to lock myself in an office, I will also do this without complaining, because I’ll have others at my side, we’ll form a group, a group that will discover how good it is to sit around a table and talk, pray, laugh, and wash ourselves clean of all those afternoons of repetitive work. If I need to be alone, I’ll do that, too; if I fall in love and decide to marry I’ll get married, for I’m certain that my wife, the woman who is to be the love of my life, will accept my joy as the greatest blessing a man can give to a woman.
The young woman at his side stopped, bought some flowers, and instead of taking them somewhere, formed them into two circles, placing one on his head and the other on hers. Far from seeming ridiculous, it was a way of celebrating the small victories in life, in the same way the Greeks, millennia earlier, had exalted their victors and heroes—with crowns not of gold but of laurels. They may have wilted away but they weren’t heavy and didn’t demand the constant vigilance of the crowns of kings and queens. Many people passing them by donned this sort of crown, making everything more beautiful.
People played on wooden flutes, violins, guitars, sitars—it made for a jumbled soundtrack but one that felt natural to that street without sidewalks, a street like most of the city’s thoroughfares: full of bicycles, time slowing down and then speeding back up. Paulo was afraid that this speeding up would soon win out and the dream would come to an end.
He was walking not through the street, but through a dream in which the people were flesh and bone. They spoke unfamiliar languages, turned to see the woman at his side, and smiled on account of her beauty; she would return the gesture, and he would feel a spike of jealousy that was soon replaced by pride at the fact she had picked him for a companion.
Every now and then someone offered him incense, bracelets, colorful coats, possibly from Peru or Bolivia, and he felt like buying it all because they returned his smiles and neither took offense nor insisted too much the way salespeople at stores did. If he bought something, perhaps this would mean one more night for them, one more day in paradise—though he knew that everyone, absolutely everyone, found a way to survive in this world. Paulo needed to save as much as possible and also try to discover a way to live in that city until his plane ticket began to weigh down the little elastic belt hidden around his waist, telling him that it was time, that he needed to snap out of the dream and come back to reality.
A reality that even appeared from time to time on those streets and parks, on little tables with posters behind them showing the atrocities committed in Vietnam—a photo of a general executing a Vietcong in cold blood. All they asked was that passersby sign a petition, and everyone cooperated.
At that moment he realized that the Renaissance was still a long way from taking over the world, but it had begun, yes, it had begun. Not a one of those young people—of the many young people on the street—would forget what they were experiencing, and when they returned to their countries they would become evangelists for peace and love. It was all possible, a world finally free of oppression, hate, husbands who beat their wives, torturers who hung people upside down and killed them slowly with…
…Not that he’d lost his sense of justice—he was still taken aback with the injustice throughout the world—but he needed to rest and regain his strength, at least for the time being. He had spent a good part of his youth afraid of everything, now was the time to show courage in the face of life and the unfamiliar path he was about to tread.