The Dreamseller_ The Calling - Augusto Cury [95]
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