The Dreamseller_ The Calling - Augusto Cury [82]
Hearing Barnabas confess his woes, Bartholomew took the stage again. He embraced the other man and tried to console him as only Bartholomew could.
“Don’t cry, Mayor. My problems are bigger than yours. I’m immoral.”
“No, mine are worse. I’m a pervert,” Barnabas stated in a louder voice.
“No, my mistakes are too many to count. I’m a scoundrel,” Bartholomew said in a still louder tone.
“No, no, you don’t really know me. I’m completely depraved . . .”
Amazingly, they started arguing about which one was worse. The businessmen had never seen anything like it. They only ever saw people bragging about who was better. We wanted to break it up, but we were afraid of making a bigger scene. And to show he really was the worst of them, Bartholomew lost his patience and said:
“I’m corrupt, dishonest, a liar, I don’t keep my word, I don’t pay my bills, I covet my neighbor’s wife. I’ve even stolen your wallet when you were drunk . . .”
“OK, stop, stop, stop!” Barnabas said. “You’re right. You are the biggest good-for-nothing on the face of the earth.”
“OK, wait. Now, you’re exaggerating, Barnabas!” Bartholomew said, now trying to defend himself.
Watching this madness, I looked up at the stars and said softly, “God, take pity on these idiots. Please, shut them up.” But the businessmen loved watching them. If anything, they wished they could express themselves so honestly and openly as those two. They had worked beside their colleagues for years—or decades—but their spirits were sealed as tightly as the tombs that surrounded them in that cemetery. In the professional world they lived outside the cocoon; in their private lives, they hid inside. They didn’t know how to be a shoulder to cry on. Instead, they disguised their feelings.
“Thank you, you two,” the dreamseller said to my surprise. “You’ve made me recall my own imperfections.”
“You can count on me, chief,” said Honeymouth, shooting me a look. “See that, Superego? You could learn a thing or two from me.”
Then the dreamseller began another story. Many species, he stated, had physical and instinctual advantages over humans. They saw farther, ran faster, leaped further, heard better, could smell aromas a mile away and bite down with incredible force. But we had something they didn’t: a sophisticated brain with more than a hundred billion cells with which to think. Such a sophisticated brain should grant independence, he offered. Nevertheless, he asked his listeners:
“So why do our brains make us dependent on others, especially as infants? Rarely can a four-year-old child survive on his own, while other mammals and lizards the same age no longer have any contact with their parents. Some creatures are already in their full reproductive phase, and others are already elderly at the age of four. Why are we more dependent than the other species, despite loving independence?” he asked.
No one spoke up. They didn’t know the dreamseller was leading them into his marketplace of ideas, the warehouse where he kept his dreams.
An elderly businessman, at least seventy and apparently one of the richest in the audience, took me aside and said in a low voice, “I know that man. Where does he live?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” I said, adding, “I think you must be mistaken.”
“No, I know that extraordinary mind from somewhere,” he insisted.
Meanwhile, another businessman of about fifty, who had gone bankrupt three times but always made socially responsible investments, answered the dreamseller’s question with a single word: “Education.”
“Magnificent. Education is the key!” the dreamseller said. “Our brain made us totally dependent on gathering the experience accumulated over generations of humans, from our parents to grandparents. The only way to get these experiences is through education. They’re not genetically transmissible. Education is irreplaceable.”
Then he shook the participants by showing them how deeply their minds were being exploited—and how they could