“Are you okay, Marcos? Do you need help?” he asked in a threatening voice.
“I’m fine.” I calmed myself down again. “Turn off the wiretaps again, please.”
They turned off all the electronic gadgets again. The stranger paused for a few seconds before speaking again.
“Was she as good a mother as I am sensing?” he asked. “Eight of your twelve memories have to do with her.”
I didn’t answer. I tried to penetrate his mind, even things out. But something stopped me, and it wasn’t electronic interference.
He smiled at me.
“You met a girl today? You felt a lot of pleasure, didn’t you? You should go to her before she leaves the theater. You can’t imagine how important she will be in your life. Seriously, go there now to see the “salesman.” Even though that isn’t the moment of maximum pleasure in your life, that is when...”
“Stop!” I shouted.
Not even I know where that shout came from, why I didn’t want him to continue. But there was something in that illegal rifling through my feelings that infuriated me and I absolutely did not want him to tell me what had been the greatest pleasure of my life.
I wanted my moment of extreme happiness to be a mystery, since I had always hesitated when choosing between two or three moments as being the best and happiest of my life. And I planned on hesitating over that choice for the rest of my life.
It was horrible to have someone make a list of your feelings and your passions. I had never imagined that.
I wavered. Finally I spoke.
“Who are you?” I asked.
He looked at me, picked up the glass of water that was beside him on the table and drank slowly.
“Shouldn’t you be the one to answer that?”
“Yes, but...”
“You’re blocked, right?” He smiled for the second time.
I didn’t like that second smile. I decided to turn my gift up to full. I concentrated more than I had ever needed to before to do it. But I got nothing; it was as if he was keeping me from being able to.
“Are you from another planet?” I asked innocently.
He laughed. His laughter was amused and healthy, something unimaginable in an alien.
“Haven’t your superiors told you anything?”
“No.”
“Do you want me to tell you?” he asked.
“If you don’t mind...”
He came closer to me, as much as he could. I saw that he wore handcuffs that linked his hands beneath the table. He approached a bit more and whispered:
“I know your mother liked this kind of communication.” He continued whispering, but his tone changed and veered toward pain. “Help me, I have to get out of here immediately.”
My skin bristled at those words. Who was that stranger who knew so much about me and seemed to need me so much? I started to sweat.
“I can’t, I’m sorry,” I answered without thinking.
“You don’t want to or you shouldn’t?” he replied.
I swallowed hard, something about him scared me.
“Weren’t you going to tell me who you are?” I insisted.
“First get me out of here.” For the first time he sounded distressed.
“They won’t do anything to you,” I said. “Tell me, who are you?”
“They’ve already done everything they can to me.”
Suddenly he was silent. Slowly, I felt an image come to me, as he allowed it to reach me. He had decided to show himself in images instead of with words.
I didn’t know what memory it was, since it didn’t come to me in the usual way. It could be an extreme or one of the twelve.
And it arrived...
It was a happy image.
A smiling boy playing soccer with his father. The boy looked very much like the stranger. It was him as a child. He was tremendously happy until suddenly it started to rain and father and son ran laughing to take shelter beneath a tree.
It was an image like many I had seen in people I’d examined. Happiness between a father and son; something that I had never experienced, but which always formed part of the twelve fundamental feelings that people held on to.
Although, suddenly, I felt something strange in the images I perceived. The rain that fell was different. It was red.
It was raining red. But neither the father nor the son batted an eyelash. They looked up at that night sky and suddenly I saw that there was no moon. Instead a pentagonal planet presided over that sky.
The rain continued; the red color became more and more intense. Yes, it was a happy memory, but that wasn’t what the stranger wanted to show me but rather where it had taken place. And I can assure you that it was not Earth.
I don’t know where it was, but it was the strangest place I had ever seen.
The image stopped, and the stranger looked at me.
“Will you help me now?” he whispered.
10
I COULDN’T ENTER HIS MIND WITHOUT KNOWING HIM
I left the room. I needed to get away from him, from what he had shown me. Outside, behind the door, I felt better. Even though I was still very shaken.
My boss was there a few seconds later, with Dani. I saw in his face how anxious he was to know what had happened. Watching me without being able to listen in had increased his concern.
I spoke before they had a chance to.
“I don’t know anything about him,” I said. “My gift doesn’t work in his presence, what I need is for you to tell me everything you know about him right now. I can’t enter his mind without knowing him.”
I never thought I would say those words. I had always known what people were like without exchanging even a few sentences with them.
Suddenly, his words came back to me: you have to meet the girl at the theater. Why was it so important that I speak with her? How could he know about her existence? Had he read it in me? Had the memory of her penetrated me so deeply that he could smell it and it had already become one of the twelve basic memories of my life?
“Come with me to the office,” said the boss, visibly annoyed.
As we walked down the long hallway, the boss spoke with two of his superiors on his cell phone. He told them that I hadn’t achieved my objective.
I took advantage of his phone call to get closer to Dani; I wanted to tell him something without the boss hearing me.
“Find out what time the play being shown at the Teatro Español ends; it’s Death of a Salesman.”
“How long the play lasts?” he asked, surprised, trying to link that information somehow with the stranger.
“Yes, I have to be there right when the audience gets out. Make sure the information is correct. They will tell you approximately two hours, but make them be precise. Go.”
Dani didn’t hesitate and left quickly. I caught up to my boss, who was still dealing with the fallout. He was clearly in a bad mood; I guess he didn’t understand why his secret weapon had failed him for the first time.
We entered the office and he locked it behind me.
Then he opened up the safe and pulled out a pile of reports.
“We found him in the mountains.” He showed me a photo where there was a large crater produced by extreme heat. “There was no ship or any type of vehicle nearby, if that’s what you’re wondering. According to the satellites,” he showed me more photos, “the entire area burned up in less than a minute. As you can see, in the satellite photo taken at 19:04 hours the vegetation is abundant in the mountains, but a minute later it is all destroyed and the only presence in the scorched area is that guy.”
I picked up all the images he had shown me and I took a closer look at them. It was incredible. That rapid destruction could only be connected with an energy generated by an unknown technology.
“And what explanation did he give when you showed it to him?” I inquired.
“He doesn’t talk. He doesn’t confirm or deny anything. He only asks us to let him go, because he has things to d
o.”
“And what is it he has to do?”
“We don’t know. He doesn’t want to tell us.”
He pulled out more reports and passed them to me.
“These are the medical tests they’ve done on him,” said the boss. “All the results, as you can see, are completely normal. The psychological test results are similar; totally average, not even superior to other humans of his age.”
“So, why are you holding him? All you have is the crater in the mountains?” I asked.
“Because of the bone test.” He passed it to me.
I looked it over and then went to the conclusions. I read them to myself and then out loud to make sure that what I was reading was true.
“The stranger has a bone constitution different than ours, as if he had spent years in an atmosphere unlike Earth’s. The only time something similar has been observed is in astronauts who spent a lot of time in space stations.” I read.
The boss didn’t say anything, as if he had already read it hundreds of times. I saw that there were some photos, face-down, that he hadn’t showed me. I went to turn them over.
“Don’t look at them,” he said.
“Because...?”
“They are from other interrogations, different than yours.”
I hesitated but then picked them up.
I turned them over. What those snapshots showed was horrible. The things they had down to that teenage boy were absolutely abominable. There were all sorts of humiliations and abuses.
“This is...” The adjectives didn’t even come out. “And he didn’t talk after all that?”
“Not a word.”
I put them back on the desk; it was hard to keep looking at them. They were left face-up, so the boss turned them over again.
“What are you going to do now?” I asked.
“It’s complicated,” answered the boss as he put all the documents back in the safe hastily, not worrying about what order they were in.
“But the press will want to see him.”
“I know.”
He sat down in the chair and served himself a whisky. I sensed there was something he hadn’t told me.
“What’s going on?” I probed.
“They want to cut him up. Do an autopsy.”
“Seriously? But if they aren’t sure if he’s...”
“That’s why they want to do it. Many believe that he is; they rely on the bone tests as proof. Others, including me, think it’s a bone malformation.”
“And that’s why you called me in?” I asked. “If I had seen that he isn’t from here, then...?”
“Then they would chop him up mercilessly.”
I got mad.
“You called me here to...”
The boss interrupted me, angrily.
“I didn’t call you. My superiors asked me to do it. They know of your achievements and they needed one more piece of evidence to...”
I interrupted him.
“Kill him,” I said.
He nodded. I know he didn’t like what he was telling me, he had always been an honest, upright man.
“They say that he won’t tell us anything more alive, but dead he can still tell us a lot,” he added. “They are only afraid of the press, which is why the stranger is still alive and in one piece.”
Suddenly an image came to me, a flash of someone’s new memory. I still had the gift turned on. That was when I saw that it was another of my boss’ memories.
I saw him in a phone booth, calling someone and telling them about the stranger. It was a brave act, filled with happiness, it must have replaced one of the twelve I had already seen in him. The order shifted as people did valiant or dramatic things. This was an important act in his life.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, surprised.
“It was you who called the press,” I declared.
He looked at me, ashamed. He nodded again.
“But it won’t do any good,” he added. “They’ll do it anyway, they are going to kill him. They’ve made up their minds. Then they’ll make up some story about that boy and they will deny and discredit any news about him.”
He took another sip.
“Do you think he is?” I asked.
“Is what?” he replied.
“A stranger.”
“He’s a kid,” he answered. “I don’t know if he’s a kid who was born here or somewhere else, but nobody deserves what they did to him, wherever they come from.”
There was a knock on the door. The boss got up, hid the whisky and opened the door.
It was Dani. He sat down beside me and slipped me a piece of paper that read: The play ends in forty minutes, give or take five minutes depending on the length of the applause.
He was very diligent in his work. I folded the paper up again and looked at the boss.
“When are they going to do it?”
Dani looked at me in surprise; first me and then the boss. It was as if he were following a long tennis play without even knowing what value each point he was watching had.
“Very soon,” answered the boss.
“And if I tell them that what I saw is normal, that he’s not a stranger?” I asked.
“I don’t think they care, Marcos. They only want to hear the other answer. Don’t let it get to you.”
I felt rage; that image of the boy with his father taking shelter from the red rain came back to me. I know that the stranger could have altered or fabricated that memory but, whoever he was, I wanted to know him better.
“Let’s get him out of here,” I declared.
The boss didn’t shake his head or try to refute my idea.
He smiled, as if he was hoping I would say that.
11
ACCEPTING UNWANTED LOVE BEFORE LOSING IT AND WANTING IT
I knew what I had just proposed wasn’t going to be easy, since it was a very secure complex, but there was something about that stranger... I don’t know if it was the look of that kid taking shelter beneath the red rain or those pentagonal planets or the way he told me that it was important for me to meet the girl at the Teatro Español.
The boss started to pull maps out of the safe and explain various possibilities. Dani listened attentively while I thought about the girl at the theater.
I already knew that my opinion wasn’t important to the escape plan: I’ve always known my limitations. I think that is my greatest achievement: knowing what is beyond me, either from a lack of intelligence or a lack of interest.
Why did the stranger say that the girl at the Teatro Español was so important in my life? I thought about it while they decided on strategies. Why had I felt such an intense feeling for her? If only fear hadn’t overtaken me and I had dared to ask the stranger more questions.
That stranger had something fascinating about him. Curiously, he reminded me of the fascination my mother awoke in those who watched her choreographies or who simply found themselves in her presence.
Dani had remained totally silent until he understood the entire plan and our intentions.
“But, where will we take him?” he pointed out. “I mean, if we manage to get him out of here, where will we take him to? They won’t stop until they find him.”
“We aren’t going to hide him,” declared the boss. “We are only going to free him.”
“But what if...” Dani had trouble getting the words out. “What if he is a stranger, shouldn’t we keep an eye on him?”
I hesitated, wondering if I should tell them what I had seen. Tell them about the red rain, the pentagonal planet. Dissipate their doubts about his origins. But I feared that that would make them change their minds.
“Help us, Dani,” I said. “Trust me.”
Dani had never failed me; as soon as I met him I knew that he would help me.
Dani was in love with me; I knew it from the first time we saw each other. My mother taught me from a very young age to accept that the feelings others have for us, even if they are not mutual, are important.
<
br /> “You should understand that that unwanted love, that unreciprocated desire, is a great gift,” she told me on a long train trip from Barcelona to Paris. “Don’t disdain it simply because it isn’t useful to you.”
I was very young and I didn’t understand her. I never understood her. She, on the other hand, had experienced those loves she spoke of. Many people had been in love with her. Her dance, her way of moving, her choreographies awakened all types of passions, among which were love and sex.
Since I was a young boy, I saw how she dealt affectionately with those who were in love with her, even though she felt nothing for them. But it seemed that the mere fact that that feeling for her was real nourished her and made her feel more complete.
There were men and women in love with her. And that never bothered her in the slightest.
“Don’t think about sexual tendencies,” she pointed out one day. “The tendencies only reflect fear of difference and of what you don’t understand. You only have to accept that they are projecting a feeling onto you.”
I don’t think she ever slept with a woman, although I can’t be sure, since she understood those feelings that were lavished on her, and they filled her deeply; she didn’t care much where they came from.
She also taught me to notice, to recognize and understand which people were in love or desiring me secretly. Love is bound to sex and sex to love, she would tell me. You had to find the point where they came together.
“Marcos, you have to find traces of both feelings in the people around you. Discover that desire, that passion, before they confess their feelings to you. Hidden desires are the engine that drives life,” my mother would say.
The gift never helped me find hidden desires. It always showed me real situations, feelings that had been embodied, not platonic ones.
So my mother taught me to recognize those feelings. The day I saw Dani I noticed that the love and sexual desire he felt for me were very intense.
I have never known how those intense, hard to control feelings arise.
“When love and sex get stuck festering in unreality,” my mother would say, “the pleasure the person feels could turn into pain. Having that love that means nothing to you is different than losing it. Because, although you are losing something that you don’t understand, you will never have it again, and that is terrible.”
Everything You and I Could Have Been If We Weren't You and I Page 6