3-Flying
It was from the mixture of the drugs and his pain that Gustavo found a new way to face his existence: flying! Flying over things, that was the best. He also discovered that he had never thought about it, but it was what all the people he knew and everyone else did. He was sure of it, even though he didn’t know. He didn’t need to, because we are all alike, even those we hate!
He would take a little Trazamal climb a roof and contemplate the harbour. It was so beautiful! He had never realized how beautiful that harbour was. And yet he had come to the city more than twenty years ago. At that time, when he arrived, you were allowed to travel. They were old things. The ships arrived idly and left, also slowly.
At the end of one afternoon, watching the ships, he had a thought which he had never had before. It was something which invaded him suddenly, like the fear which sometimes overtakes us suddenly, overwhelmingly, controlling us. We all live in cities, there are more cities all the time, we are surrounded in these cities! He felt surrounded, himself, as if thousands or millions of enemies surrounded him, ready to attack him, without allowing him room to escape! He shook himself. He was on top of a roof. There was no enemy there! He understood that his clairvoyance was off limits to others because they weren’t crazy like him.
Then he started to dream and his dream became increasingly stronger. He wanted to get out of there! He knew that it was forbidden, the legislation that he had so often praised established this prohibition, but now he understood, he was against this legislation. It was foolish to expect that every person (except a very few like sailors) to spend all their life in the same place.
He decided to talk about this to the only person he dared tell this “behavioural deviation”: Emílio.
- I have thought about that for a long time, Gustavo! I never answered you, because, as you know, they know what we think. I don’t mean us, for example, who don’t matter, but they could know about us and that is not good!
- But do you think that we should be able to travel?
- I have already said that I do, Gustavo. However it is forbidden. I feel sorry for you. I understand you. I comprehend you! This city has lost its meaning for you, hasn’t it? Look, but this, the meaning, isn’t, I mean, doesn’t live anywhere. You should know that. I shouldn’t feel sorry for you either, I’m sorry I feel that way, but it is what I feel! I have a present for you, something that might help you handle your sadness, at least to cut down the amount of that rubbish you take, so you can carry on living. But you mustn’t tell anyone at all what I’m about to show you! If you do, we will both be off to the Central Deposit. Do you want that?
- That’s awful, Emílio! Of course I don’t want that! Nobody wants such a thing! He thought about what was said about the Central Deposit, a slave factory created inside a large empty oil tanker. There, shackled prisoners produced clothing for the entire population, without timetables, without food, almost without drink, thrashed by whips. The minimum you got was twenty years jail time, but nobody lasted twenty months. Even so, with this hideous image in his head, Gustavo wanted to know what surprise Emílio had to show him.
- Come with me. They walked along endless streets. As usual there was nobody in sight. It was hot. That