All he did was sleep. Always thinking he would wake up from the nightmare and always opening his eyes in the same place, on the same floor. Always thinking that the worst was over, and always waking up in a sweat, racked with fear, each time he heard a knock on the door—perhaps they hadn’t been able to confirm anything he said and the torture would resume, even more violent than before.
Someone knocked on the door—Paulo had just finished his dinner, but he knew they might well serve him breakfast to increase his sense of disorientation. He put on his hood, heard the sound of the door opening and someone throwing things across the floor.
“Get dressed. Careful not to remove your hood.”
It was the voice of the “good cop,” or the “good torturer,” as he preferred to refer to him privately. The man stood there while Paulo got dressed and put on his shoes. When he’d finished, the man grabbed him by the arm, asked him to be careful with the metal bar at the door (where he’d already passed many times on his way to the bathroom, but perhaps this man had felt the need to say some kind words), and reminded him that his only scars were those he’d inflicted himself.
They walked for about three minutes, and then another voice spoke: “The Variant is waiting for you outside.”
Variant? Later he realized it was a type of car, but at that moment he thought it was some sort of code, something like “the firing squad is ready and waiting.”
They led him to the car and handed him some paper and a pen that he could just make out from beneath his hood. He didn’t even think about reading it, he’d sign whatever they wanted, his confession would at least put an end to his maddening isolation. But the “good torturer” explained that it was a list of his belongings found in the hotel. The backpacks were in the trunk.
The backpacks! He had said “backpacks,” plural. But Paulo was in such a daze that he didn’t even notice.
He did as he was told. A door opened on the other side of the car. Through the opening in his hood, Paulo caught a glimpse of familiar clothing—it was her! They ordered her to do the same thing, to sign a document, but she refused, saying she had to read what was written first. Her tone of voice made it clear she hadn’t panicked through the entire ordeal; she was in full control of her emotions, and the figure waited obediently as she read. When she finished, she finally signed the piece of paper and then placed her hand on Paulo’s.
“No physical contact,” the “good torturer” said.
She ignored him, and for a second, Paulo thought they would both be taken inside again and beaten for disobeying. He tried removing his hand, but she tightened her grip and held it there.
The “good torturer” simply closed the door and ordered the car forward. Paulo asked her whether she was all right, and she responded by railing against everything that had happened. Someone gave a chuckle in the front seat, and Paulo asked her to please quiet down, they could discuss it all later, or another day, or wherever it was they were being taken—perhaps a real prison.
“No one makes you sign a document saying our things have been returned to us if they have no intention of letting us out,” she told him. The figure in the front seat laughed again—actually, there were two people laughing. The driver was not alone.
“I’ve always heard that women are more courageous and more intelligent than men,” one of them said. “We’ve noticed this here among the prisoners.”
This time, it was the passenger who asked his companion to quiet down. The car sped on for a while longer, stopped, and the man on the driver’s side asked them to remove their hoods.
It was one of the men who had nabbed the couple at the hotel, he was of Asian descent—this time, he was smiling. He climbed out with them, went to the trunk, grabbed their backpacks, and handed them over instead of throwing them on the ground.
“You can go now. Take a left at the next light, walk about twenty minutes, and you’ll be at the bus station.”
He got back in the car and slowly pulled away, as though he didn’t have a care about everything that had just taken place. That was the way things were now in Brazil, he was in control, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.
Paulo glanced over at his girlfriend, who glanced back. They embraced and held their kiss for some time and then continued on to the bus station. It was dangerous to stay there, he thought. His girlfriend didn’t seem to have changed a bit, as though all those days—weeks, months, years?—had merely been a short pause in the trip of their dreams, as though the positive memories were what remained and could not be overshadowed by what had happened. He picked up the pace, avoiding any suggestion that everything was her fault, that they never should have stopped to see the sculptures molded by the wind, that if they had kept moving, none of those things would have happened—though it wasn’t anybody’s fault, not his girlfriend’s, not Paulo’s, not that of anyone they knew.
He was being ridiculous and weak. Suddenly he felt a terrible headache, so intense he almost couldn’t walk any further, flee back to the city where he’d grown up, or return to the Gate of the Sun and ask the ancient and forgotten inhabitants there what had happened. He propped himself up against a wall and let the backpack slide to the ground.
“You know what that is?” his girlfriend asked—and then quickly gave the answer. “I know the answer because I’ve already been through the same thing when my country was being bombed. The whole time, it was like my brain slowed down, the blood didn’t flow to my arteries the way it did before. It’ll pass in two or three hours, but we’ll buy some aspirin at the bus station.”
She grabbed his backpack, lifted him with her shoulder, and dragged him forward—slowly, at first, then gradually gaining speed.
Oh, woman, what a woman. A shame that when he s
uggested they set off together for the two centers of the world—Piccadilly Circus and Dam Square—she told him she was tired of traveling and, to be honest, she no longer loved him. They ought to go their separate ways.
The train stopped, and the dreaded sign written in several languages came into view: BORDER CONTROL.
Some officers boarded and began to walk the aisles. Paulo was calmer now, the exorcism was over, but he couldn’t get a verse from the Bible, more precisely from the Book of Job, out of his head: “What I feared has come upon me.”
He needed to remain in control—anyone is capable of sniffing out fear.
Whatever. If, as the Argentinean said, the worst thing that could happen would be their getting turned away, there was no problem. There were other borders they could cross. And if somehow they didn’t manage, there was always the other center of the world—Piccadilly Circus.
Paulo was overcome with a deep sense of calm after reliving the terror he’d experienced a year and a half earlier. As though everything truly had to be faced without fear, as a mere fact of life—we don’t choose the things that happen to us, but we can choose how we react to them.
He realized that up until that moment the cancer of injustice, of despair, and of powerlessness had begun spreading throughout his entire astral body, but now he was free.