The Dreamseller: The Calling

by Augusto Cury

  Hearing that explanation, we finally began to comprehend some of the secrets of this fascinating dreamseller.

  He started to understand himself when he was able to interpret his hallucinations. The safe, he said, represented his financial power, which he had always valued. The roof was a metaphor for his intellectual capacity, which he had prized greatly for helping him overcome so many difficult tasks. The works of art represented his prestige and fame, and the furniture, all the luxuries and comforts in life.

  “But I betrayed and neglected my foundation,” he said. “I swept my love for my wife and children under the rug of my activities and mounting concerns. I gave them everything, but I forgot to give them the one fundamental thing that I had regarded only as trivial: myself. My friends were barely a consideration and my dreams were forgotten completely. How can one be a good father, a good husband and a good friend if the people we love are excluded from our agenda? Only a hypocrite could believe it, a noted hypocrite who so many held up as an example.”

  He said bravely that he hid his mistakes, his shortcomings, his stupid attitudes, which represented the dirty part of his foundation, but which were also fundamental to the structure of his personality. Now I understand what he meant when he said that whoever fails to recognize his shortcomings has an outstanding debt to himself and to his humanity.

  I began to further understand why this man had had such an affect on me. To get through to me, he had to be more than an ordinary man. He had to be more than a thinker, more than a brilliant mind, more than a teacher of uncommon sophistication. A man with those qualities might have attracted my admiration, but he wouldn’t have captivated me as he did, wouldn’t have broken down my prideful ego. The dreamseller had to be someone who had known the darkest valleys of fear, who had been mired in the morass of psychological and social conflict, who had been torn apart by predators of the mind and been lost in the mazes of madness. And, after surviving all of that, he remade himself with uncommon strength and written a new story based on his own experiences.

  This, this, is the man I would follow.

  His ideas were as incisive as a philosopher’s, and his humor as vibrant as a clown’s. His actions were a paradox, fluctuating between the extremes. He was sought out by icons of society, but he made no distinction between a prostitute and a puritan, an intellectual and a mental patient. His sensitivity overwhelmed us.

  Whenever I saw someone on television being arrested by the police, he would hide his face in an effort to protect his image. The man standing on the stage in front of me wasn’t hiding. I remember what he had said to the psychiatrist at the building where we met—that there were two kinds of insanity, and he had dared to say that his was the visible kind. Now, when his opponents had tried to ambush him inhumanely, he displayed his wounds in front of more than fifty thousand people, unashamed of his past. His honesty was crystal clear.

  When I heard him confess that he had betrayed his foundation, my mind was wracked by sociological concepts. Who isn’t a traitor at some point? What puritan is not at some moment immoral to himself? What believer doesn’t at some point betray God with his pride and his underlying desires? What idealist doesn’t betray his beliefs in the name of hidden interests? What person doesn’t betray his health in order to work a few extra hours? Who doesn’t betray sleep by turning his bed into a place of tension? Who doesn’t betray his children for his ambitions, arguing that he’s working for them? Who doesn’t betray his love for his spouse by failing to communicate in his marriage?

  We betray science with our absolute truths, betray our students with our inability to listen to them, betray nature with development. As the dreamseller warned us, we betray humanity when we pick up a banner to call ourselves Jews, Palestinians, Americans, Europeans, Chinese, whites, blacks, Christians, Muslims. We are all traitors who desperately need to buy dreams. We all harbor a “Judas” in our mind, a specialist in hiding our true feelings under the carpet of activism, ethics, morality, social justice.

  It was as if he were reading my thoughts. He fixed his gaze on mine and then raised his eyes to the audience.

  “My interpretation of that vision—regardless of whether some might call it a hallucination—made me realize that my mental illness started long before I’d lost my family.” He smiled and joked with the crowd. “I warn you, ladies and gentlemen, you’re dealing with someone who’s been crazy for a while, now . . .”

  The audience settled into smiles. The emotion of that scene is hard to describe.

  “When I realized I’d betrayed my foundations, I had to find out who I really was. That’s when I left the hospital and went off to find myself. It was a long road and I got lost many times on the way. But when I discovered myself, I left my nest and transformed into a delicate swallow, gliding down the streets and avenues, helping others who were also searching for themselves.” And he again demonstrated his sense of humor by saying, “Careful, friends, this craziness is contagious.”

  People smiled again and burst into applause, as if breathing in that contagion just as Bartholomew, Barnabas, Jurema and I—and so many others—had. I can still remember the day I was ready to give up on life and the dreamseller recited a poem that resonated with my own foundation. Even now, it echoes in my mind:

  Let the day this man was born be struck from the record of time!

  Let the dew from the grass of that morning evaporate!

  Let the clear blue sky that brought joy to strollers that afternoon be withheld!

  Let the night when this man was conceived be stolen by suffering!

  Reclaim from that night the glowing stars that dotted the heavens!

  Erase from his infancy all his smiles and his fears!

  Strike from his childhood his frolicking and his adventures!

  Steal from him his dreams and his nightmares, his sanity and his madness!

  This dreamseller’s contagious ideas taught us not to deny who we really are. His ideas were an antidote; before meeting him, we had all been “normal,” and we had all been sick. We wanted in some form or another to be gods, not knowing that being a god means having to be perfect, to worry about our image in society, to give too much importance to the opinions of others, to demand too much of oneself, to punish oneself, to make constant demands of ourselves. We had lost the joy, the simplicity of being. We were brought up to work, to grow, to progress, and unfortunately also to betray our very essence in our short time in existence.

  What kind of a madhouse are we living in?

  If I Could Turn Back Time

  INSPIRED AFTER REVEALING AND INTERPRETING THE STORY of the house, the dreamseller offered his final ideas. Once again he recited poetry in the desert, when his lips still thirsted. He looked out into emptiness, as if on another plane, and displayed an intimate relationship with a god I didn’t know. Forgetting that he stood before the large stadium crowed, he called out:

  “God, who are you? Why do you hide your face behind the curtain of time and why won’t you help cure my foolishness? I lack wisdom, as you well know. With my feet I walk on the surface of the ground, but with my mind I walk on the surface of knowledge. I am too prideful if I think I know anything about this world. And even when I admit I know nothing, it’s my pride that allows me to admit I know nothing.”

  He lowered his eyes, glanced at the leaders who hated him, then at the audience, and delivered a philosophical speech that stealthily penetrated the depths of our being.

  “Life is very, very long for making mistakes, but frighteningly short for living. And being aware of that brevity erases my mind’s vanity and makes me see that I’m simply a wanderer who is nothing more than a flicker in this existence, a flash that dissipates with the first rays of light. In that brief time between flickering and dissipating, I seek to find who I am. I’ve looked for myself in many places, but I found myself in a place without a name, in the place where jeers and applause are all the same, the place where no one can enter without our permission, not even
ourselves.

  “Oh, if I could only go back in time! I would achieve less power and have more power to achieve. I would drink a few doses of irresponsibility, position myself less as a problem-solving machine and give myself permission to relax, to think about the abstract, to reflect on the mysteries that surround me.

  “If I could go back in time, I would find the friends of my youth. Where are they? Which of them are still alive? I would seek them and relive the uncomplicated experiences plucked from the garden of simplicity, where there were no weeds of status or the seduction of financial power.

  “If I could go back, I would call the woman in my life, the love of my life, during breaks in meetings. I would try to be a more distracted professional and a more attentive lover. I would be more good-natured and less pragmatic, less logical and more romantic. I would write silly love poems. I would say ‘I love you’ more often. I would acknowledge freely, ‘Forgive me for trading you for business meetings! Don’t give up on me.’

  “Oh, if only I could fly on the wings of time! I would kiss my children more, play with them more, enjoy their childhood the way dry soil absorbs water. I would go out into the rain with them, walk barefoot on the grass, climb trees. I would be less afraid that they would hurt themselves or catch cold and more afraid that they’d be contaminated by this society. I would try less to give them the world, and harder to give them my world.”

  Beholding the magnificent stadium, its intricate columns, its expansive roof, its plush seating, he continued, intensely touched:

  “If I could go back in time, I would give every penny I had for one more day with them, and I would make that day an eternal moment. But they went away, and the only voices I hear are those that remain hidden in the ruins of my memory: ‘Daddy, you’re the best father in the world—but the busiest, too.’”

  Tears streamed down his face, proving that great men cry, too. And he concluded with these words:

  “The past is a tyrant and it won’t allow my family to come back to me. But the present generously lifts my downcast face and makes me see that, although I can’t change what I was, I can construct what I will be. They can call me crazy, psychotic, a lunatic, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that, like all mortals, one day I will end the theater of existence on the tiny stage of a tomb, in front of an audience in tears.”

  This last thought reached the roots of my mind. Breathing heavily, he ended his speech:

  “On that day, I don’t want people to say, ‘In that tomb rests a rich, famous and powerful man whose deeds are recorded in the annals of history.’ Or, ‘There lies an ethical and just man.’ Because those words will merely sound like an obligation. But I hope they say, ‘In that tomb rests a simple wanderer who understood a little of what it means to be human, who learned to love humanity and who succeeded in selling dreams to others travelers . . . ‘”

  At that moment, he turned his back to the audience and left the stage without a good-bye. The crowd in the stadium broke their silence, rising to their feet and applauding him uninterruptedly. His disciples couldn’t hold back and burst into tears. We, too, were learning to lose the fear of showing our emotions. His supposed enemies also rose. Two of them applauded. The CEO sat still, not knowing where to look.

  Suddenly, a boy broke through security, climbed onto the stage, ran after the dreamseller and gave him a long, heartfelt embrace. It was Antonio, the twelve-year-old boy who had been in such despair at his father’s wake, the wake the dreamseller had transformed into a solemn act of homage.

  “I lost my father, but you taught me not to lose faith in life,” the boy told him. “I’ll always be grateful . . .”

  Touched, the dreamseller looked at the young boy and surprised him by saying, “I lost my children, but you also taught me not to lose faith in life. And for that, I will always be grateful to you.”

  “Let me follow you,” the boy said.

  “How long has school been in you?” the dreamseller asked.

  “I’m in the sixth grade.”

  “You didn’t understand my question. I didn’t ask what grade you’re in, but how long school has been in you.”

  I had made teaching my life, my world, and even I had never heard anyone phrase a question that way, much less to a young boy. The boy looked confused.

  “I don’t understand the question,” the boy said.

  The dreamseller looked at him and sighed. “Well, the day you understand it, you’ll become a seller of dreams like me, and in your free time you can follow me.”

  The boy walked away confused, but then suddenly, something dawned on him. The stadium camera caught him just as his expression changed. He radiated pure joy. Instead of returning to his seat, he came over to us. We all wanted to understand what had happened, but none of us understood at the time.

  The dreamseller headed toward the door, without a destination or an agenda or a map, living each day unhurriedly, blowing like a feather in wind. This time he left without inviting us to follow him. And we felt a deep sadness.

  Would we ever see each other again? Had the dream of selling dreams ended? What would we do? Where would we go? Would I write other stories? We didn’t know. We only knew we were children playing in the theater of time, children who understood very little about the mysteries of existence.

  Who is the dreamseller really? Where does he come from? Is he one of the most powerful men in the world or a pauper with an uncommon imagination? To this day, we still don’t know. But it doesn’t matter. What matters is that we broke out of the prison of routine, and we left the cocoon to become wanderers.

  Bartholomew and Barnabas touched me on the shoulder. I don’t know whether they had understood everything that happened in the stadium or nothing at all.

  “Don’t follow us. We’re lost, too,” they joked.

  We hugged each other warmly. I had learned to love my fellow man in a way not found in textbooks. Despite our uncertain futures, we looked at one another and said, “Oh, how I love this life!”

  The other members of the group joined in the embrace. We might have been saying good-bye forever.

  Before taking his last step off the stage, the dreamseller turned and saw us. Our eyes met, slowly and intensely. The image filled our hearts with joy. Immediately, our dream was reborn.

  We ran across the stage and followed him, knowing that unpredictable adventures lay ahead of us—as well as unexpected storms. We left the stadium, joyfully singing our anthem.

  I’m just a wanderer

  Who lost the fear of getting lost

  I’m certain of my own imperfection

  You may say I’m crazy

  You may mock my ideas

  It doesn’t matter!

  What matters is I’m a wanderer

  Who sells dreams to passersby

  I’ve no compass or appointment book

  I have nothing, yet I have everything

  I’m just a wanderer

  In search of myself.

  THE END

  (of the first volume)

  Acknowledgments

  I have met countless sellers of dreams along the way. Through their intelligence and their generous acts they inspired me, taught me and made me see my own smallness. They paused in their journey on the paths of existence to think about others and give of themselves while asking nothing in return. They made of their dreams lifetime projects, and not desires that shatter in the heat of the tempest.

  I dedicate this book to my dear Geraldo Pereira, the son of the great editor José Olympio. It has not been long since Geraldo closed his eyes forever. He was a poet of existence, a fine seller of dreams in the universe of literature, as well as in the theater of society. He was my friend and counselor. I offer him the most grateful homage.

  I dedicate this book to my esteemed friend and reader Maria de Lourdes Abadia, ex-governor of Brasília. She sold many dreams in the Brazilian capital, of which I cite, especially her dreams for the underprivileged who live in and from the city�
��s garbage. She gave back to them something fundamental to mental health: dignity.

  To my esteemed friend Guilherme Hannud, an entrepreneur endowed with a noble sensitivity and a thirst for helping others. Through his social projects, he gave employment opportunities to hundreds of former offenders so they would have the strength to extricate themselves from the morass of rejection and achieve, despite the scars of the past, the inalienable status of human beings.

  To my dear friend Henrique Prata and the excellent team of doctors of Pio XII Hospital, among whom I cite especially Dr. Silas and Dr. Paulo Prata (in memoriam) and my friend Dr. Edmundo Mauad. As compulsive sellers of dreams, this team transformed the small Barretos Cancer Hospital into one of the largest and best in the Americas by offering free treatment of the highest level to poor patients who would never have been able to pay for it. They proved that dreams prolong life and alleviate pain.

  To my dear reader Marina Silva, who in childhood was punished by the vicissitudes of existence, but whose dreams of changing the world fed her courage and intellect and made her a senator and later an extraordinary minister of environment. Marina passionately yearns to preserve nature for future generations. Through her, I would like to dedicate this work to all the scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change who tirelessly battle to illuminate the mind of political leaders so they will take urgent measures to ameliorate the disaster of the greenhouse effect. Unfortunately, many of those leaders lie down in the bed of egocentrism and resist “buying” dreams.

  To the beloved Catholic friends and leaders, of whom I cite as representatives the priests Jonas Abibe, Oscar Clemente and Salvador Renna. In them, love of one’s fellow man and tolerance ceased to be theory and entered the pages of reality. With surpassing love, they have sown dreams of a society suffused with brotherhood and altruism. To the beloved Protestant friends and leaders, of whom I cite as representatives Marcelo Gualberto, Aguiar Valvassora and Márcio Valadão. The pleasure of giving of oneself found in them a fertile ground. Wherever they go, they have spread the perfume of love and greatness of soul. To my countless Buddhist, Muslim and spiritualist friends. They have enchanted me with their dreams. To my atheist and agnostic friends, I was part of that group and know that many of them are outstanding human beings, dear dreamers.