1-Walls
Gustavo looked at the walls as he always did, or rather, as he used to do. He looked at them and wondered whether they had been built from the top to the bottom or from the bottom to the top and then thought about how silly his ideas were. In fact, none of it mattered. It would actually be interesting if the walls were built from the top to the bottom, though it didn’t seem likely. Nor did that “Freedom” exist, Gustavo thought! What Freedom existed? As a young boy he had moved to that neighbourhood, that area, that place, that home.
- I remember Banana, Windy-Bag, Booze-Bottle, grunted Gustavo in the general direction of his friend Emílio. Remember them? No, and I don’t care to. What is the point of remembering what doesn’t exist anymore? You’re right, Emílio, it doesn’t exist anymore. But it does exist, deep down it exists because it is what made what exists now exist, it exists because it exists in us, it still exists… Stop with the old man’s stuff, Gustavo! Not even you exist, have you thought about that?
Gustavo became slightly annoyed and continued talking to himself. Emílio was too much of a realist for his taste. Deep down he considered himself a “great demystifier”, as Gustavo would tell him. But he wasn’t. Neither him nor anyone else, actually.
He had spent many years there, in the Bairro de Santa Clara, between Víboras and Camelo, number 31, as it appeared on his postal address. Had he seen the World or had he seen nothing? He had been travelling for a few years, today he didn’t know if it had done him any good, if it had harmed him, if it had done anything to him at all! He had recently met a young man. He would be around twenty-seven years old, a kid, he was a doctor, who knew a lot more about life than he did! At least he, Gustavo, thought that. His travels hadn’t given him any special knowledge, maybe they had even made him a more confused person, kind of mystical, without a sense of objectivity, without any real knowledge of anything necessary. After all, any doctor knew more than he did and was much more useful than he could ever be! He had heard of a powerful man of Good, an Indian, who cured from a distance. He had been there, in India and hadn’t learnt anything, he now thought. Can you learn something amidst the deepest misery? Maybe you can learn resignation. Is resignation a gift? An art? A wisdom? He looked at his hands. The palms of his hands. There were people who mixed scientific knowledge with the reading of palms, with a search for signs. None of this made sense, he thought. Hands were like walls. They told stories. But they told them with little accuracy: they could easily mislead. The lines on hands were like rock paintings. What would his hands tell a stranger? Nothing. That was most likely.
- Stop being silly and come eat. I’m coming, Emílio. They set out. The Sun was getting stronger. It fried, it didn’t burn. Before, a long time ago, it had burned; for some years now the Sun fried, it became increasingly harder to bear.
- Do you know anything about the Shelter? We will be going past the door… Yes, you can hear noises over there, replied Emílio. The new legislation which was published is more restrictive, you know? No, what’s up? Well, it was on television. From the age of sixty-five confinement in the Shelter is mandatory.
- Hum, with the confusion that’s going on, I don’t know if they can implement that!
- They can! There is confusion, everything is in a bad state, you