The Dreamseller_ The Calling - Augusto Cury [73]
“Honeymouth?” Barnabas yelled, almost in code because of how badly he slurred his words.
“Mayor, how good to see you!” And they embraced.
Dimas and Bartholomew took him to a park near the bar. They stayed together for hours until the alcohol had worn off. After Barnabas became a bit more lucid, he told Bartholomew:
“I’ve seen you in the papers. You’re famous now. You’re tending bar. No, no, sorry, you’re playing Santa Claus, distributing free gifts, right? Cool,” he said, his voice slurring. “You’re one of the good guys, now. Not one of us sloppy bohemians.”
“I am still the same. I just slightly changed my way of looking at things,” Bartholomew said. And he took advantage of being among friends to tell a story of his own. Like Dimas, he had been in an orphanage in childhood, but for different reasons.
“My father died when I was seven, and cancer claimed my mother two years later. I was taken to an orphanage on the outskirts of the city. I stayed there till I was eighteen, then I ran away,” he said.
Dimas looked at Bartholomew in surprise and said:
“Wait, don’t tell me you’re ‘Goldfoot.’” That was Bartholomew’s nickname at the orphanage because he was such a great soccer player. Bartholomew hadn’t heard that name in a long time. He really looked at Dimas and recognized him, too. They both had felt they knew the other from someplace but could never quite place the face. As children, they had known each other for a year, and now, twenty years later, they had found each other again.
“That’s great. A family reunion. I guess I’m the only one who doesn’t have anybody,” said Barnabas, feeling suddenly dizzy and holding his head in his hands, his elbows on the table.
Bartholomew felt sorry for his friend. He looked at the clock and saw they were late for the meeting with the dreamseller. He asked Dimas to go on ahead. He wanted to chat a bit with Barnabas about the new family.
Jurema and I went to speak to students in a university across town from mine. I tried to challenge their thinking. I urged them to develop the Socratic method, to develop their own social experiment and to expand the world of ideas. Everyone was impressed by Jurema’s eloquence. She had more vigor and drive than they did. The students were weary, apathetic, discouraged.
Suddenly I saw two professors I recognized coming toward me, and my face immediately flushed. They were colleagues from my university who were teaching a course in that same building. They approached us, laughing. I could read their lips, saying to each other that the authoritative head of the sociology department had lost his mind.
Jurema told me, “It’s time to face them. It’s time to leave the cocoon.”
That was the price I had to pay for being such a tyrant. One of the professors who hadn’t kept up to date, a guy I thought had been a terrible teacher and thought I was too hard on him, didn’t hesitate to open with, “So, how goes the life of a crazy person?”
I wanted to turn and run. But Jurema took me by the arms and tried to ease my mind.
I got myself under control, looked him in the eye, and replied:
“I’m trying to understand my madness. When I used to hide behind intellect, I thought I was completely healthy, but since now I’m a wanderer in search of myself, I know I’m sicker than I ever imagined.”
They were astonished. They saw that I still had my rapid power of reasoning, but they had never seen me acknowledge an error, never seen me with any semblance of humility. They began to sheathe their swords.
I tried to explain myself, not really expecting anyone would understand.
“Do you know the essence of who you are? How