The Dreamseller_ The Calling - Augusto Cury [89]
The macabre film continued as the young patient wrestled with other parts of the house fighting all around him. Now, an imposing, domineering voice was shaking the patient’s crumbling home. The cameraman, interested in capturing the smallest details of his mental break, asked again, “Who is it that’s upsetting you?”
The patient turned his back to the camera, removed his hands from his face, and placed them against the wall. His lungs fought desperately for air. The rise and fall of his shirt betrayed his panting. The cameraman persisted, without softening his tone: “Talk to the monsters inside you! I’m offering you the chance to exorcize your demons.”
The patient fell back into his initial terror.
“I’m afraid! I’m afraid!” he screamed. “Now it’s the safe! The safe is threatening to destroy everything. It’s threatening to devour the entire structure. It roars like thunder. ‘I’m the one who pays for everything. I’m the one that bought all of you. I brought you into existence. Bow down before me! I am the god of this house!’”
The patient panted like an asthmatic. I thought at any moment he would have a heart attack. I had never seen anyone so weakened, someone so much in need.
At that moment, trying desperately to escape his prison, the patient turned his face to the camera and screamed hopelessly, “We’re going to be buried alive! I’m scared! So scared! Help, please! Everything’s tumbling down!”
The camera zoomed in on the young patient’s uncovered face for the first time. His panicked expression filled the gigantic stadium screen. And when we saw his face, it wasn’t his house that we saw come tumbling down; it was our whole world. The floor seemed to shake beneath us, our bodies trembled. Our voices caught in our throats. We were paralyzed in our seats. The scene was unbelievable, surreal. The patient in the film was . . . the dreamseller.
Outside, I was frozen. But inside, my mind was a storm. My inner voice screamed, “This isn’t possible! We’ve been following a mental patient, a maniac? This can’t be!” The sociological experiment shattered into a million little pieces. We’d been fooled. Our revolutionary leader showed his damaged, fragile form. I couldn’t tell whether I felt rage for letting myself follow this man, or compassion for the misery he had suffered. I didn’t know whether to feel sad or ashamed.
The audience was astounded. Like me, they couldn’t bring themselves to believe that the person on stage was the same one in the movie. But the resemblance was unmistakable, despite our dreamseller’s longer beard. My friends grabbed each other’s arms, trying to shake themselves awake from a dream they wished they had never dreamed.
The event’s emcee, so as to leave no lingering doubts, had them turn the dreamseller’s microphone back on and asked him, as if he were facing an Inquisition, “Sir, can you confirm that the man in the film is you?”
The audience of tens of thousands fell into a deafening silence. We were hoping against all hope that he would say no. That there was some mistake, that it was a lookalike or maybe a twin brother. But, true to his conscience, he turned to the crowd, fixed his gaze on his group of friends with tears in his eyes and said unequivocally, “Yes, it’s me. That man from that movie is me.”
Immediately, his microphone was cut off again. But the dreamseller didn’t try to defend himself.
“A mental patient,” the announcer scoffed, shaking his head.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, turning to the television cameras and now speaking in a high and mighty tone. “We have finally discovered the true identity of the man who plunged this great city into disarray. This is the man who captured the imaginations of millions. Indeed, he is truly a great social phenomenon.”
Sweeping his hand toward the lonely dreamseller at the center of the stage, he said, sarcastically, “Behold: The greatest imposter of all time. Society’s greatest con man. The greatest swindler, the greatest illusionist