The Dreamseller_ The Calling - Augusto Cury [93]
As I was pondering these questions, I glanced at the organizers of the event and saw they were visibly shaken; it seems they didn’t know the true identity of the man they had mocked. I looked out at the crowd and saw people crying. They might have felt compassion for the dreamseller or, perhaps, some were recalling losses in their own lives. At that point Jurema squeezed my hands and told me something that surprised me even more.
“I know that story. It’s him!” she said.
“Him, who? What are you saying, professor?” I asked, even more confused.
“It’s him! The sergeants have laid an ambush for their own general. How is it possible?” Jurema was so worked up that she wasn’t making any sense.
“I don’t understand. Who is the dreamseller?” I asked again.
She stared at the leaders who had organized the event and said something that floored me.
“Incredible. He’s standing on the very stage that belongs to him,” she said and could say nothing more.
My mind went into a tailspin, like a kite cut free of its string. Repeating her last sentence—”He’s standing on the very stage that belongs to him”—I began to understand what Jurema meant.
“I don’t believe it! He’s the owner of the powerful Megasoft Group? The sergeants laid a trap for their own general, thinking he was just a soldier. Could it be? But isn’t he dead? Or had he just gone into hiding? Then again, the dreamseller had severely criticized the leader of the Megasoft Group at dinner at Jurema’s home. We must be dreaming!” I thought.
A film began to unreel in my mind. It struck me that the dreamseller had involved himself in many events linked to that corporation. He had rescued me at the San Pablo, a building belonging to the Megasoft Group. And mysteriously, they almost shot him at that same building. He had been beaten at the temple of computing, apparently at the behest of an executive of that same group, and had kept silent. A reporter from a newspaper owned by that group had slandered him, and he had said nothing. Now he was humiliated by leaders of the same corporation and hadn’t rebelled. What was going on? What did it all mean?
I took a deep breath, trying to bring order to my whirlwind of ideas. I brought my hands to my face and told myself, “This can’t be true! Or is it? No, it can’t be! We’re experts at making up facts when we’re under stress.” I took Jurema’s arm and asked:
“How can one of the most powerful men on the planet sleep under bridges? How can a billionaire eat other people’s leftovers? It makes no sense!” The professor shook her head; she was as upset and confused as I was.
Just then, the dreamseller seemed to be answering the questions on all our minds. He said his losses had been so great, his suffering so deep, that he began to lose all rational thought. He said he couldn’t organize his ideas. He refused to eat and finally had to be committed to a psychiatric hospital. At the hospital, he began hallucinating just as we saw on the video. His brain seemed ready to implode.
In a firmer tone, he revisited the story that the organizers had used to destroy him publicly. He spoke of the second part, surely unknown to them.
“After the roof, the safe and other structures in that house fought against each other to claim supremacy, I heard another area of the house making itself known. But this time it was a soft, gentle, humble voice. It was a voice whispering beneath the ground, and it didn’t terrify me.”
Looking out at