by Augusto Cury
They first contacted Solomon and Dimas and me. They started out praising the dreamseller’s social work effusively. Society had become more unified, kinder and more human since he had come onto the scene, they told us.
“We know that humility guides his life, that he hates fame, but we want to surprise him with an homage to all that he’s done for society,” they said. “This tribute won’t be about giving him any kind of prize or money—we know he would never accept material goods. But we’d like to show our appreciation by offering to let him use the city’s largest covered stadium, which our group owns, so he could address more than fifty thousand people all at once. His sermon would be televised, and later rebroadcast as a special prime-time event, to the entire country. Millions would get to hear his message.”
We were excited but suspicious about the offer. Still, the leaders of the business group seemed to have the purest of intentions. To seduce us further, they told us:
“Please don’t deny us or society this privilege. Everyone wants and needs to hear the dreamseller’s wisdom. His words could help save countless anguished people thinking of suicide, using drugs, wracked by their own demons. We insist on honoring him and giving the people of this country this gift. The only thing we ask is that it be a surprise.”
The entire group decided we should talk over this delicate matter. After reflecting on the proposal and analyzing the benefit to society, we felt it could be a good thing. After all, millions could be reached. Honeymouth and Barnabas were quite excited about that. Jurema was the only one who wasn’t sold on the idea, she of all people, who still owned Megasoft shares. But she finally gave in.
We had to set up a secret plan to get the dreamseller to the stadium at the appointed date and time. That day, as we walked closer to the stadium, we could see traffic snarled in all directions and hundreds of people pouring through the main gates. When we came to a private entrance to the stadium, the dreamseller found it all strange and asked, “Why do we have to come to this place?” And he seemed nervous.
Since we couldn’t say anything about the tribute, we asked him to trust us and go along with our request. We told him we were going to a show, but when he continued asking questions, we backed him into a corner.
“Throughout all our time together, you’ve asked countless things of us and we’ve always obliged. Just this once, can’t you go along with what we’re asking?”
We knew it was a kind of blackmail, especially since the dreamseller had always listened to us and supported us. Still, he followed us without saying another word.
When we were about to enter the VIP room, he asked apprehensively, “Who set up the event?”
“Some people who really care about you. Wait and see,” we said, without offering anything further.
The Megasoft executives were in a separate room, preparing the event. We found ourselves in a green room with a lavish buffet of fruits, cold cuts and juices. But the dreamseller didn’t eat anything. He seemed to turn inward to reflect. The rest of ate ravenously.
Barnabas stuffed a handful of seedless grapes in his mouth and muttered almost incomprehensibly, “These guys are the best!”
Bartholomew, with three slices of salami and two of ham in his mouth, babbled, “I’m starting to like those businessmen,” then immediately started humming to cover up what he’d said. We tried in vain to shush them.
The dreamseller sensed something in the air. He fidgeted and looked to the sides, uneasy, as if wishing he could go off alone and meditate. A long twenty minutes passed. When the time for the conference finally arrived, three glamorously dressed young women led us to the stage. The dreamseller trudged unusually slowly down the corridors. He seemed out of sorts.
Before directing us to our seats, the organizers of the event, wearing perfectly tailored suits, came to greet us. They greeted the dreamseller last.
They were five executives and the last one appeared to be the leader, maybe the CEO of one of the firms in the group. He shook the dreamseller’s hand and, in a joking tone, said, “Welcome to the stadium. And thank you for your delirious ideas. Great men have great dreams.”
The dreamseller, who was always in a good mood, usually never cared if someone called his dreams a delirium. But he just aimed a penetrating stare deep into the executive’s eyes. The man was immediately flustered.
Until that moment, the dreamseller might have believed we would be attending a show.
The organizers took their seats to the right of the stage, and we sat on the left.
High on the stage was a huge screen, twenty-six feet tall and fifty-five feet wide. Other screens were scattered around the stadium. The master of ceremonies for the event appeared onstage, wearing a dark suit. He didn’t mention the names of the executives or the sponsor. He did everything simply, as he should. In a resonant voice, he began to introduce the dreamseller. The immense crowd fell silent.
“Ladies and gentlemen, it is our great pleasure to present to you the most complex and innovative person to appear in our society in recent decades. A man with no marketing team, money or credit cards, and without revealing his origin or academic background, has spread his sensitivity and altruism throughout society. He has achieved a prestige that many have not. He has achieved a fame that is the envy of celebrities. He is truly a social phenomenon!”
At that moment, echoing his words, the crowd interrupted the presentation to applaud the dreamseller. We looked at the dreamseller and could see he wasn’t happy. He, who always felt at ease wherever he was, who had a superb ability to adapt to the most diverse settings, seemed uncomfortable with the praise. But there was no denying that he was a social phenomenon. We followed him because he was an exceptional person. The master of ceremonies continued:
“Children and adults alike follow him. Icons of society and the common man listen to him. This man leaves political liberals speechless and conservatives amazed. For months we’ve been intrigued. The media, the authorities and even the man on the street asks: Where did he come from? What were the most important chapters in his story? Why does he seek to rock the pillars of society? What is his objective? We don’t know. He calls himself only a seller of dreams, a merchant of ideas in a society that has ceased to dream.”
After defining the indefinable man that we followed, he called the dreamseller to the stage with a wink and a smile, and a joke that put the audience at ease. “And now, I give you the seller of nightmares!”
It was then that the dreamseller realized this event had been staged in his honor. He rose awkwardly from his chair and headed for center stage. It was an emotional sight to see the crowd applauding him at length. We, his disciples, fell into step with them, and clapped wildly, emotionally. In turn, as he walked, I could see his lips moving, and he seemed to be telling himself, “I don’t deserve this . . . I don’t deserve this . . .” A microphone was quickly attached to his lapel while the applause continued.
It was a sight to behold. And a little unbelievable to know that a man in an old black coat with patched elbows and a wrinkled yellow shirt, an unshaven man with long unkempt hair who spoke in public yet craved anonymity, could be so loved. The applause died down and the audience awaited his words.
Onstage, he looked over at the event’s organizers, but said nothing to them. Instead, he took a couple of unsteady steps and, staring out at the crowd, began with these words:
“Many kneel before kings because of their power. Or before millionaires because of their money. Or before celebrities because of their fame. But I humbly bow down to you, because I’m not worthy of your praise.”
The stadium crowd went crazy. People rose to their feet again and applauded. They had never seen an honoree solemnly honor the audience in attendance. He waited silently for the applause to die down before he continued. But as he was about to resume, the emcee interrupted.
“Ladies and gentlemen, before this mysterious and intelligent man graces us with his magnificent words, we would like to pay tribute to e
verything he has done for society,” he said.
We were confused. We thought the introduction had ended. The emcee looked at the dreamseller and asked him to kindly remain on center stage to watch an unusual film that had begun playing on the enormous stadium screen. At the same time, they cut off his microphone.
When the film began, we were expecting scenes of the countryside, flowers, valleys and mountains as tribute to the dreamseller. But the film didn’t show springtime, rather the rigors of winter. And not a physical winter, but rather a harsh winter of the mind.
The film opened with the camera lens stepping through the main entrance of a large and rundown hospital. We could read that it was a mental institution, one of the few left in the region. The outer brown walls were peeling and cracks throughout the ancient structure formed odd horizontal fissures. The building was three stories high, a rectangular prison unlike the human mind, which revels in free forms and defies predictability. Instead, the building forebode claustrophobia and sadness.
The camera dove into the hospital and panned to different mental patients, some talking to themselves, others with trembling hands, some staring vacantly from the effects of drugs. The camera continued down hallways and revealed other patients sitting on uncomfortable benches with their gazes fixed on infinity or with their heads between their legs.
That the movie had no audio track and was deathly silent only added to the cold feel. We found it all extremely strange. The camera seemed to be handheld, and we figured whoever took this film must have been some kind of amateur. From time to time, the film cut to a live shot of the dreamseller’s face. He looked worried, disconcerted. We couldn’t imagine what was running through his mind, whether he was more confused than we were or whether he understood something about this tribute that we failed to grasp. Maybe he was feeling the pain of the patients in that hospital. And maybe the film would later show him showering that dreary place with his dreams.
Suddenly sound burst from the film as if someone had released the mute button. The entire stadium jumped, as if watching a horror movie, and they were startled to hear someone screaming from inside a room, “No! No! Get away from me!”
A desperate mental patient was moaning on the other side of a closed door. The camera moved in as the door opened slowly. A patient rocked back and forth on a bed, covering his face with his hands and tearfully calling out, “Leave me alone! Get out of my life!”
The patient was wracked with uncontrollable anxiety, trying to flee from the monsters haunting his mind. He continued covering his face with his hands and rocking back and forth, like an autistic child. He was wearing a rumpled white shirt with its buttons in the wrong holes and his hair was disheveled.
The person filming him asked, “What’s making you depressed?”
The sound was muffled, but possible to make out:
“I’m scared! I’m scared! Help me! My children are going to die! Help me get them out of this place!” he moaned, panting, overwhelmed by unfathomable panic.
The one filming him repeated the question. “I’m here to help you. Calm down. Why are you so worried?”
Shaken, he replied, “I’m inside a house that’s collapsing, a house that’s fighting against itself.” Then the hallucinating patient spoke to the entities only he could see and hear. “No, no don’t destroy yourself! I’ll be buried alive! You’re suffocating me!”
The people in the stadium fell into a suffocating silence. We, too, felt our throats tighten. The patient said that the house itself was beginning to fight ferociously against itself. We were confused by the film. No one understood anything. We had never heard of a house battling itself. It was the height of insanity. We couldn’t understand why the filmmaker would record this patient’s mental breakdown. Maybe the dreamseller would come along and rescue him later in the film?
“Tell me what you see,” the cameraman asked.
Still covering his face, the patient’s voice trembled:
“The roof is screaming, ‘I’m the most important part of this house! I protect it. I and I alone can withstand the sun and the storms . . . ‘”
The filmmaker wanted to know more about the hallucinations.
“Tell me more. The more you let out, the better you’ll feel,” the cameraman said.
The patient began to shake and writhe in fear.
“The paintings! The paintings on the wall are shouting back!” he roared. “They complain and complain and won’t stop!”
“What do they say?”
“We’re the most important things in this house! We’re the most expensive, the most precious thing you have! Everyone who comes through the door admires us!” the patient said. He broke out in a cold sweat and begged for the voices to stop yelling.
“Get out of my head! Leave me alone!”
At that moment, I remembered myself on top of the San Pablo Building. As much as I might have been suffering, I hadn’t lost my mind; I hadn’t been seized by hallucinations; I hadn’t felt like a man trapped inside a dungeon his mind had created. I, who had been ready to kill myself, couldn’t imagine the pain and suffering of this young man, who had fallen into the darkness of madness. His suffering sent shivers through the audience.
Monica, who had experienced the valleys of emotional misery in her own life, said, in a frightened, almost inaudible voice, “What could make the human mind collapse like this, to make it reach the depths of despair?”
The suffering shown on the screen was so great and so captured our attention that some of us forgot why we were there. The dreamseller remained on center stage, his back to us, his gaze fixed on the screen. I couldn’t imagine what he was feeling. He must have been sharing the same sadness we all were.
The patient turned his face into the corner and said, “No one understands me! All they do is give me drugs!” He continued talking about his hallucinations. The furniture, he said, wanted to cannibalize other parts of the house. He shouted: “The furniture wants to swallow the paintings. It’s yelling at them! It’s saying, ‘We’re the most important parts of this house! We give comfort and add beauty!’”
I looked over at the executives of the Megasoft Group and saw them smiling. I thought to myself: “How can they smile in the face of such pain? Maybe they know the movie has a happy ending. I mean, otherwise, they’re psychopaths . . .”
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.”
