The Dreamseller: The Calling

by Augusto Cury

  “Shut up! Don’t say another word. Let me die in peace.”

  Seeing that he had touched a deep wound, the stranger also softened his tone. “I respect your pain and cannot judge it. Your pain is unique, and you are the only one who can truly feel it. It belongs to you and to no one else.”

  These words nearly brought the man to tears. He understood that no one can judge another’s suffering. His father’s pain was unique and therefore could not be felt or judged by anyone other than his father. He had always blamed his father, but for the first time he began to see him through different eyes. At that moment, to his surprise, the stranger said something that could have been taken as praise or criticism.

  “And in my eyes, you’re also something else: courageous. Because you’re willing to smash your body in exchange for a restful sleep, even if it is inside of a tomb. That is, without a doubt, a beautiful illusion . . .” And he paused so the man could fully realize the consequences of his actions.

  Again, the man wondered about this stranger who showed up just in time with words that cut to the quick. A night of eternal sleep in a tomb? The idea suddenly sickened him. Still, insistent on carrying out his plan, he fought back:

  “I don’t see any reason to go on with this worthless life,” he argued, vehemently, furrowing his brow, tormented by the thoughts that ran uninvited into his head. The stranger confronted him poignantly:

  “Worthless life? You ingrate! Your heart, at this very moment, must be trying to burst from your chest to save itself from being killed.” He pleaded, in the voice of the man’s own heart: “No! No! Have pity on me! I pumped your blood tirelessly, millions of times. I lived only for you. And now you want to silence me, without even giving me the right to defend myself? I was the most faithful of servants. And what is my reward? A ridiculous death! You want to stop my beating only to end your suffering. How can you be this selfish? If only I could pump courage into your selfish veins.” Challenging the man further, he asked, “Why don’t you pay attention to your chest and hear the desperation of your heart?”

  The man felt his shirt vibrate. He hadn’t noticed that his heart was about to explode. It did in fact seem to be screaming inside his chest. But, just when the man appeared convinced, he mustered one last defense.

  “I’ve already sentenced myself to death. There’s no hope.”

  “You’ve sentenced yourself?” the stranger asked. “Did you know that suicide is the most unjust judgment? Why condemn yourself without defending yourself? Why not give yourself the right to argue with your ghosts, to face your losses? It’s much easier to say life isn’t worth living . . . You’re not being fair to yourself.”

  The stranger knew in masterly fashion that those who take their own lives, even those who plan their deaths, can’t understand the depth of the pain they cause. He knew that if they could see the despair of their loved ones and the inexplicable consequences of suicide, they would draw back and fight for their lives. He knew that no letter or note could serve as a defense. The man on top of the San Pablo Building had left a message for his only child, trying to explain the unexplainable.

  He had also spoken with his psychiatrists and psychologists about his ideas on suicide. He had been analyzed, interpreted, diagnosed, and had listened to countless theories about his metabolic and cerebral deficiencies. And he had been encouraged to overcome his problems by seeing them from a different perspective. But none of it made sense to that rigid intellectual. None of those interventions or explanations could lift him from his emotional quagmire.

  The man was inaccessible. But for the first time someone, this stranger at the top of a building, challenged his thinking. The stranger was a specialist in piercing impenetrable minds. His words evoked more noise than tranquillity. He knew that without that noise there is no questioning, and without questioning the gamut of possibilities goes undiscovered. The jumper couldn’t stand it any longer, and decided to ask the stranger a question; he had strongly resisted doing so, as he had assumed that he would be entering a minefield. But he stepped into it, regardless.

  “Who are you?”

  The man was hoping for a short, clear answer, but none was forthcoming. Instead, he fielded another burst of questions.

  “Who am I? How can you ask who I am if you don’t know who you are? Who are you, who would seek to silence your existence in front of a terrified audience?”

  The man answered sarcastically, “Me? Who am I? I’m a man who in a few short moments will cease to exist. Then I won’t know who I am or what I was.”

  “Well, I’m different from you. Because you’ve stopped looking for answers. You’ve become a god, while every day I ask myself ‘Who am I?’” The stranger paused, then asked another question: “Would you like to know the answer I found?”

  Reluctantly, the man nodded.

  “I’ll answer you if you answer me first,” the stranger said. “From what philosophical, religious or scientific fountain did you drink to believe that death is the end of existence? Are we living atoms that disintegrate, never again to regain their structure? Are we merely an organized brain or do we have a mind that coexists with the brain and transcends its limits? Does any person know? Do you? What believer can defend his thought without the element of faith? What neuroscientist can defend his arguments without making use of the phenomenon of speculation? What atheist or agnostic can categorically defend his ideas free of uncertainty?”

  The stranger seemed to press on with this Socratic method, asking endless questions, challenging every answer, trying to stimulate critical thinking. The man grew dizzy from that explosion of inquiries. He considered himself an atheist, but he discovered that his atheism sprang from a fountain of speculation. Like many “normal” people, he pontificated about these phenomena without once debating them removed from passion and ideology.

  The stranger had turned the questions on himself. But before the man on the ledge could answer, he offered his own response:

  “We’re both ignorant. The difference between us is that I recognize my ignorance.”

  Shaking the Foundation of Faith

  WHILE GRAND IDEAS WERE BEING DEBATED AT THE TOP OF the building, a few people below walked away without ever knowing what happened. Some couldn’t stand to wait to know another man’s misfortune. But most remained, eager to see the result.

  From the crowd emerged a man named Bartholomew, who was marinated in whiskey and vodka. He, too, was an ordinary man with hidden scars, despite being extremely good-natured—and from time to time brazen. His short, unruly black hair had gone weeks without touching a comb or water. He was over thirty. Clear skin, high eyebrows. A slightly swollen face concealed the scars of his battered existence. He was so drunk that his legs wobbled as he walked. When he bumped into people, instead of thanking them for keeping him on his feet, he complained in a slurred and tongue-tied voice.

  “Hey, you knocked me down,” or “Let me through, pal, I’m in a hurry.”

  Bartholomew took a few more steps before tripping against the curb. To avoid crashing into the ground, he grabbed onto an old lady and fell on top of her. The poor woman almost suffered a broken back. She cracked him on the head with her cane as she tried to disentangle herself, yelling, “Get off me, you pervert!”

  He didn’t have the strength to move. But hearing the old woman scream, he wouldn’t be outdone.

  “Help! Somebody help me! This old lady is attacking me.”

  People nearby shifted their gaze from the sky to the ground. They pulled the dizzy drunk off the old woman and gave him a hard shove. “Get moving, you bum.”

  Bewildered but petulant Bartholomew stammered, “Thank you, folks, for the ha . . . the ha . . .” He was so drunk it took him three tries to thank them for the “hand.” He tried to brush the dust from his pants and almost fell again.

  “You saved me from that—” he said, pointing at the old woman.

  She lifted her cane, menacingly, and he caught himself in time.

&n
bsp; “—from that lovely lady.”

  He retreated and began to walk away. As he was making his way through the crowd, he asked himself why everyone seemed so intent on staring into the sky. He thought maybe someone had seen a UFO. As if the scene wasn’t chaotic enough, he struggled to stare up at the building and started to shout.

  “I see him! I see the E.T. Careful, people! He’s yellow with awful horns. And he’s holding a weapon!”

  Bartholomew’s drunken mind was hallucinating again. This was not your run-of-the-mill alcoholic. He loved egging people on and making a scene. That’s why he called himself Honeymouth. The only thing he loved more than drinking was hearing the sound of his own voice. His closest friends joked that he had CSS—compulsive speech syndrome.

  He grabbed those next to him, urging them to see the alien only he could see. But they shoved him aside.

  “Man, how rude! Just because I saw the E.T. first they’re green with envy,” he slurred.

  Meanwhile, atop the San Pablo, the man on the ledge was deep in thought. Maybe what he needed, he thought, was a clear mind. His was a jumble of empty ideas and superficial concepts about life and death. Maybe what he needed was to encourage his ignorance—quite a change for a man who always considered himself an intellectual.

  He felt a sudden calm wash over him. And the stranger used that moment to tell the story of a great thinker:

  “Why did Darwin, in the waning moments of his life, when he was suffering unbearable fits of vomiting, cry out ‘my God’? Was he weak to call on God when faced with his draining strength? Was he a coward in the face of death? Did he consider it an unnatural phenomenon even though his theory was based on the natural processes of the selection of species? Why was there such a chasm between his existence and his theory? Is death the end or the beginning? In it, do we lose ourselves or find ourselves? Can it be that when we die we are erased from history like actors who never again perform?”

  The man swallowed hard. He had never thought about these questions. Though he accepted the theory of evolution, he knew nothing of Darwin the man and his internal conflict. But could Darwin have been weak and confused? “Could Darwin have ever given up on life? No. It’s not possible. He surely was much too much in love with life, more so than I am,” he thought.

  This stranger, with his endless piercing questions, had stripped the man bare. His heart quieted and he tried to catch his breath before replying, “I don’t know. I’ve never thought about those questions.”

  The stranger went on:

  “We work, we buy, we sell and we build friendships. We discuss politics, economics and science, but deep down we’re simply children joking at the dinner table, unable to fathom life’s complexities. We write millions of books and store them in immense libraries, but we’re still mere infants. We know almost nothing about what we are. We’re billions of little children, thoughtlessly at play, on this dazzling planet.”

  The man’s breathing slowed. And soon, he began to recover who he was. Julio Lambert—that was his name—was the bearer of a sharp, quick, privileged mind. In his promising academic career, he had earned doctoral degrees and become an expert in his field. He reveled in grilling aspiring young graduate students presenting their theses with his incisive, biting critiques. He had always been self-centered, and expected that others would orbit around his brilliance. Now, however, his theories were being picked apart—by a man in rags. He felt like a helpless child realizing his own fears and ignorance. He was being called a boy and didn’t react with rage. Instead, for the first time, he took pleasure in recognizing his smallness. He no longer felt like a man reaching the end, but one starting anew.

  The Losses

  INSANITY CAN ONLY BE TREATED WHEN IT DROPS ITS DISGUISE. And Julio, who hid behind his eloquence, culture and academic status, was now beginning to remove his mask. But there would be a long road ahead of him.

  The sun was low on the horizon. And thoughts of suicide were dissipating atop the San Pablo Building. At that moment, the stranger said the number twenty, and a rush of sadness consumed him momentarily.

  “Why do you call out numbers while you talk?” Julio asked.

  The stranger did not reply immediately. He stared at the horizon, saw several lights across the city being turned on, others extinguished. He breathed slowly, as if wishing to be able to relight them all. He turned to Julio, looked intently into his eyes and spoke:

  “Why do I count numbers? Because in the brief time we’ve been on the top of this building, twenty people closed their eyes forever. Twenty healthy but desperate people gave up on life. Twenty did not give themselves a chance. People who once played and loved, wept and battled, felt completely defeated . . . Now, they leave a trail of pain for their loved ones in their wake.”

  Julio could not understand why this man was so attuned to others’ feelings. Who was he? What had he experienced to have these deep sentiments? That’s when he noticed the stranger was weeping. It was as if this man were feeling the indescribable pain of children who have lost their parents to suicide and grow up wondering, “Why didn’t they think of me?” Or it was as if he were reading the minds of parents who, having lost their children to suicide, are wracked with guilt and wonder endlessly: “What more could I have done?” Or perhaps the stranger was simply remembering his own unknown losses.

  The fact was that both the stranger’s words and his tears completely disarmed Julio. The intellectual began a journey along the path of his own childhood and could not bear it. He allowed himself to break into tears without caring who was watching him. This man who rarely showed his pain was deeply scarred.

  “My father used to play with me, kiss me, and call me ‘my dear son . . .’”

  And, taking a deep breath, he said something he had always thought forbidden to say aloud, something which even his closest colleagues didn’t know, something which, though buried deep within his heart, continued to shape his life.

  “. . . but he abandoned me when I was a child, without any explanation.” He paused, then added, “I was watching cartoons in the living room when I heard a loud bang from his bedroom. I rushed in and found him on the floor, bleeding. I was only six years old. I screamed and screamed, begging for help. My mother wasn’t home. I ran to the neighbors, but I was so despondent that for a few minutes they couldn’t understand what I was saying. I had barely begun my life and had lost my childhood, my innocence. My world collapsed. I came to hate cartoons. I had no brothers or sisters. My mother, a poor widow, had to go back to work and struggled to support me. But she got cancer and died when I was twelve. Relatives raised me. I moved from house to house, always feeling like a stranger. I was a difficult teenager, and hated family gatherings. Sometimes I was treated like a servant and had to keep my mouth shut.”

  Julio had developed a rough exterior. He was distant, shy, unyielding. He felt ugly and unloved. He buried himself in his studies, and with little help, got himself into college and became a brilliant student. He worked during the day and went to school at night, studying in the late hours and on weekends. And, now, he vented aloud a deep-seated anger he had never overcome:

  “But I showed them. I became more cultured and successful than all those who had ridiculed me. I was an exemplary college student and became a highly respected professor, envied by some and hated by others. I was admired. I married and had a son, John Marcus. I don’t think I was either a good husband or a good father. Time went by, and a year ago I fell in love with a student who was fifteen years younger than I. I tried to seduce her, buy her, I took on debts. I ruined my credit, lost everything . . . and in the end she left me. It was as if the earth had opened up and swallowed me whole. My wife discovered the affair and left me, too. When she left, I realized that I still loved her; I couldn’t lose her! I tried to win her back, but she was tired of the cold intellectual who had never been affectionate, who was a pessimist, depressed and, on top of everything else, bankrupt. She left me for good.”

  At that m
oment, he allowed himself to cry. He hadn’t cried this much since losing his mother. He sobbed and wiped his eyes. Whoever looked at him and saw a rigid professor knew nothing of his scars.

  “John Marcus, my son, started using drugs. He was always angry and accused me of being a distant father. He went to rehab several times. Today, he lives in another state and refuses to speak to me. Ever since I was five years old people have been abandoning me. Some through the fault of others, some through my fault,” he said, learning for the first time how to remove his mask.

  Pictures of his childhood ran quickly through his head and he remembered the final images of his father, images he had blocked out. He remembered that he had called out to him day and night for weeks after his loss. Julio grew up angry with his father and was convinced he had locked away those injured feelings deep inside.

  Now he was reliving all those painful emotions. His notable education was no match for the pain that had been formed in his past. His learning and sophistication could not help him to be flexible and relaxed. He was an intense, rigid man. He never let down his guard before his psychiatrists and psychologists. Instead, he criticized them because he thought their evaluations of him were childish for someone of his intellectual level. Helping this man was a daunting task.

  After telling his story openly for the first time, Julio fell silent again, fearing the stranger would offer more of the same glib, useless advice he had often heard before. Instead, the stranger found a way to joke.

  “My friend, you’re in a real bind,” the stranger said.

  Julio gave a wan smile. He wasn’t expecting that response. And the stranger offered none of the empty advice. He couldn’t feel Julio’s pain, but the stranger was familiar with abandonment.