Her taste for the gloomy things started thanks to a Portuguese teacher who asked the classroom to read Extraordinary Tales, by Edgar Allan Poe. In this book, she had contact with the masterpieces by the master of suspense and mystery, in the short stories The Purloined Letter, The Black Cat, The Pit and the Pendulum and Murders in the Rue Morgue. That atmosphere created by Poe, the sensation of immersion into a sinister environment that was at the same time macabre and fascinating, was something she searched for as a reader. Since then, her readings always followed that direction of Gothic and bizarre works; looking for new authors who would write through this gloomy and delicate way. After having read everything by Poe, she was astonished by the classical Gothic Mary Shelley, Bram Stocker, Sheridan Le Fanu, Lord Dunsany, Baudelaire, Lord Byron and Álvares de Azevedo. Her literary taste also influenced the musical taste, and, through the metal music lyrics, she knew other authors connected to horror, like H. P. Lovecraft, Robert W.
Chambers and Ambrose Bierce.
This meant she did not correspond in anything to her mother’s expectations. Her mother had a fully different culture, too conservative, and the fact her husband disappeared when she had a two-year-old daughter to raise forced her to work hard to sustain both of them. Lara avoided thinking of her absent father; it was better to imagine he had never existed, or that he had died. He could be dead, there was no way to know it, at last, she had no news of him for too long.
Lara returned to her hometown but did not return to her prior friendships. It was part of her magic intention, perhaps the last work as a magist. She deleted the social networks accounts and created new ones, only with friends aligned to her new lifestyle. No down-and-out rockers, misunderstood artists or unemployed communists. She attended the best gym of the city and it was mainly there that she fed up her new social networks. Now her feed was full of well-toned lawyers and doctors, wellsucceeded athletes and aligned bodybuilders.
However, if her weekdays were full of tasks, the weekends things were a bit different. In the first year of her return to São Carlos, she was still in college, because she had transferred her course and had much work to recover some subjects because of the course failure. In that period, her weekends were fully focused on studies. She only got out of home to go with her mother to the Sunday mass. In addition, she still had the training in the Architecture Office in that last year of college. Thanks to her exemplar development in that period, she managed to be hired.
However, when this period in which everything was accumulated was over, she saw herself without having what to do in the weekends, when everyone was with his or her families, or making delicious barbecue by the pool or delighting the sunny days. Without her former contacts, she felt a little lost in the beginning, but she decided to change things when she had watched all the interesting series of her streaming service. She discovered that the gym worked on Saturdays and began to attend the morning classes of pilates.
Not many people went to the class, there was normally four or five students, and, on a holiday, she had a private class. However, there were three students who were more regular, and the classes were a little funnier due to the little number of students, which made their interaction easier. She ended up becoming friends with one of these students, Erica Ávila. They arranged to eat a cake on a Saturday afternoon, and they talked a lot.
The Twitter of Lara’s new friend informed everything about her: she was single, Virgo and addicted to endorphin. She worked in the administrative sector of São Carlos’ city hall, and was, according to her own words, ‘a gym rat’. But, since the gym was not open on Sundays, and even on Saturdays the activities were restricted, she needed to search for a new hobby that helped her supply her daily need of endorphin. Her first attempt was going for athletics and starting to run, trying to become a marathon runner. Despite the million testimonials about how fascinating and thrilling it was to run, she did not find that activity would fit well what she searched as a weekend hobby. Then someone suggested that she followed a group of mountain bike. Since then, she did not stop it anymore, and expanded her bike routes through the rural roads up to the tour spots of the cities in the vicinities.
“How about you? Would you like to try it?” Erica invited, putting a delicious piece of coconut cake in her mouth.
“Huhm, I don’t know. I think I haven’t ridden a bike since I was thirteen years...”
“Well, you know what they say, once you’ve learnt it...”
“But I don’t even have a bike.”
“I have one stuck in my house, I can lend it to you; if you like it, you can buy one. I promise I’ll take it easy in the beginning.”
Lara smiled across her kindness, thinking of delighting the sun and the wind through the farm roads, the beautiful landscapes they could enjoy together and the sunsets that could ornate her Instagram account from then on.
“If it’s so, I’m up for it!”
CHAPTER 21
In the next days at Tibiriçá Ecovillage, Arthur kept on helping in the enlargement of the community installations. He gained Placido’s confidence, which was not exactly difficult, because the red-haired man believed in goodness as an inherent characteristic of the human being. If Placido was the one who coordinated the activities so that the ecovillage managed to maintain a great strength, generating sustainable food and closer and closer to the dream of becoming self-sustainable; it was Giacomo who took charge of the bureaucracy, including the legal, administrative and accountable parts. Arthur noticed that while the first was an idealistic man, the latter was a pragmatic individual. And for a practical administrator nothing could be more attractive than cheap workmanship.
On Friday, Placido finished the service on the work earlier, about three o’clock in the afternoon. He informed that at night there would be a meeting with dwellers of the community; so, he would need to prepare everything for eight o’clock. Mathias did not complain, he would take a ride to the city, he wanted to see his family, spend the Saturday in the bar and play soccer on Sunday.
Arthur ate something, took a shower and, when he returned to the collective lodging, Mathias had already left; he lay down for some time to take a rest in the bed that had been intended to him in the lodging, and thought about the last days. Life in the ecovillage was becoming rougher than he imagined, but there was a sensation there he had never felt, a sensation that can only be appreciated by those who can build something with their own hands. As the bricks were placed between the mortar forming the wall, a sensation of accomplishment and belonging filled up his chest.
From what Placido had told him, he would not be working as a bricklayer’s mate for too long, because, when they finished that installation, they would return to their normal activities, which consisted of looking after the vegetable garden and the orchard, in addition to coordinating all the activities that were important so that the community could remain productive.
Clara, the third occupier of the lodging, came in and greeted him. The young woman was developing her master’s degree’s project about the community and the assembly had authorized her to remain in the lodging developing her college activities.
“Mathias’ already gone. How about you? Are you spending the weekend here?” Arthur asked.
She was sitting at the little table where she used her portable computer; she opened it and typed her login and password:
“Yes, this weekend I will remain. Tomorrow we’re going to have a visitor here. Actually, a Film crew, didn’t you know about it?”
“No. A Film crew? Are they going to make a movie here?”
“A documentary. Probably for YouTube, and they’re going to share it with NGO’s too; it’s going to be cool.”
He thought of the implications of that: it would not be good for him to appear in any documentary. He had not invented a secret identity or forged a false name; but if he increased his exposition, he would run the risk of someone recognizing him as one of the members of the most powerful family of São Carlos. His fo
refathers were present in the foundation of the city. It would be interesting they saw him only as a backpacker; he did not want the way he was treated could be influenced by the fact of knowing he was a rich man. If they knew who he was, would they have forgotten to inform him that on the next day a Film crew would be in the ecovillage? He felt the answer was no.
Anyway, he would try to remain behind the cameras. Since he was nobody, he did not imagine there could be any interest to interview him. He took his e-book reader and, for the first time, since he had arrived there, he felt like reading. Fermin had encouraged him to tread the Taoist wisdom way and up to where he had studied, he had not found any teaching or advice that would hurt his convictions, the common sense and logic. It was a philosophy that had begun for over four thousand and seven hundred years would not survive if it had not been structured in a solid basis. Any teaching of the Tao Te Ching brought about a world of possibilities and interpretations. He read the book introduction and then the first chapter that showed a passage in quotes: ‘The best good is like the water. The virtue of the water is to benefit all the beings without conflict. It occupies places man despises. Therefore, it is almost like tao.’
After this sentence, the author followed a series of implications about its use in our practical life.
He checked his watch when he finished one chapter; the assembly would soon be going to start. He headed to the community kitchen. It had been adapted to receive the assembly; the benches, where the dwellers were sitting as they arrived, formed a rectangle. He sat between Clara and the couple he first met when he arrived at the ecovillage, the black man with dreadlocks and the hairy white man looking like a surfer, with tanned skin and white hair with paraffin. They were the only homoaffective couple of the ecovillage, the black man was called Henrique and the surfer was Leo.
Giacomo started the meeting with the everyday subjects of the ecovillage and made a report of the activities. He read some financial reports and said there would be a voting to determine whether a new member could be accepted in the community lodging that, at the moment, was only being used by the student Clara. The use of the lodging by Mathias was temporary, only when he was providing bricklayer services.
Arthur looked around to all of those unknown faces that would decide whether he could remain in the community or should move. He was enjoying that new life style; he would probably be working as an assistant for Placido; which would assure him to acquire much knowledge about permaculture; but for that, he would need all to vote ‘yes’. At some moment in that week, Placido had informed him how the process worked: any subject placed in voting needed unanimous approval. To vote, each dweller needed to stretch their arm and make a positive sign with the thumb. In the case of the voting about Arthur’s remaining, a single thumb downwards would mean that on the next day he would have to put his little belongings back in his backpack and bite the dust of the road back to the city. No matter how much he had thought, he could not imagine a backup plan in case someone decided to think he would be better away from there.
Giacomo, holding a workbook containing the Internal Regulation, continued:
“It’s always good to remind you that our Internal Regulation, in its item regarding lodging, reads as follows: item one, lodging of short duration for friends or family of the partners and not associated to guests: without costs for lodging, since the Association or the Management of the Lodging is duly communicated in advance. Item two: lodging for visitors; in this case, the value is indexed by the Maintenance Tax, depending on the duration of the staying, plus additional costs. Item three, that applies in this specific case, concerning lodging for solidary exchanges: without lodging costs, since there’s a Work Plan agreed with the Association or with a specific undertaking of the ecovillage, making the plan of the activities to be performed explicit. Arthur has been helping us a lot in the building of the installations where in the future our digital room and stove for common use will be available and where we will be able to bake pizzas by using our own resources; and he is further going to help Placido to take care of the planet. We suggest he can use the lodging as a guest who is going to pay for his staying according to item three: solidary exchanges. I place it for voting and count on the common sense of you all.”
Then, everyone stretched their arms with their thumbs up, except for one person. An elder man had a negative sign cocked and his mouth curved in a grimace.
“Mr. Silveira, do you have any specific reason to have voted against the permanence of the young man in the collective lodging?” Giacomo questioned.
The old man scretched his baldhead and answered:
“I don’t think we must sustain anybody under our ceiling. It’s not a charity institution.”
The murmuring was general among the dwellers. How we find stupid people in this world, Arthur thought, staring at the man. Even there, where he imagined would be a cool vibe, there were types like that. Leo, the guy looking like a surfer, who was sitting at the bench beside him, poked him slightly and whispered:
“Don’t care about Mr. Silvério... He’s actually a pain in the neck...”
And it was Placido who defended him, by saying he was a worker, someone who could become a useful member for the community.
Several people beside the old man manifested. From where he was, Arthur could not hear what they were saying, but he could guess they were defending him.
“A new voting will be held, especially after this result in which only one person was against. So, does the assembly approve the stay of
Arthur in the collective lodging?”
This time, the visitor’s residence was confirmed unanimously. Since his vote was won, Mr. Silveira resigned with a grimace. The assembly kept on its course for some more time, at which Arthur wondered if that unanimity system worked. At last, whenever one hears the word unanimity, every Brazilian man reminds automatically the phrase by Nélson Rodrigues: ‘Every unanimity is stupid. Those who think with the unanimity does not need to think’. What if all decide about something that completely commits the survival of the community? The Vatican used to have the Devil’s Advocate. During the canonization that is part of the selection of people for the elevation of sanctity, someone was selected to be the Devil’s Advocate. His work was to cast doubts about the character of the person who was taking part of the canonization process.
Another use of the Devil’s Advocate was to try to prove that the
miracles demanded for canonization were fraudulent and so on. Another theory that came to his mind was the Tenth Man Rule. He remembered having studied something about this in the Political Science classes, but what was fresher in his mind was the dialog of the film World War Z. According to this dialog, the concern was to prevent that terrible consequences associated with a possible myopia due to an unanimity voting led to this rule. In this movie, the world is devastated by a very aggressive disease that transforms human beings into zombies. The Tenth Man Rule reads that in a group of ten people, advisors and managers who need to decide something, if nine of them agree about a given subject, the tenth member must disagree from the previous ones. And this tenth man must disagree even if it goes against his own convictions.
At the end of the assembly, many people came to greet him, some even embraced him dramatically, as if he had entered a mystic brotherhood or embraced a new religion. More rested than on the other days, he went to sleep peacefully at that night, thanks to the unanimity or the fact nobody there had taken seriously the dialog of a film where zombies dominated the Earth up to the last brain. Another aspect of what happened on his day also returned while the numbness of the sleep began to appear. Earlier, he had wondered if someone would have told him that on the next day a Film crew would be in the Tibiriçá Ecovillage if they knew who he really was. The fact of being considered a nobody made him virtually invisible for the community and this led to a question that brought him a very uncomfortable sensation: How had he been treating the people while he was fortified in the administrat
ion of the NM Group?
The architect, for instance. The way he had treated her did not include any of the aspects of the human being that had come to his office. Actually, he did not even remember her name, let alone what they talked about, despite she appeared to be much in love with her work. Since that day, memories came to frighten him, mainly now that he was alone with strangers, fragments of those intimate moments they delighted in the old farm; the memory of the taste of her skin, the softness of her thighs, the soft and fruity scent. And he did not remind even the name of that woman...
And the mantle that covered his sleep that night was that of the shame.
CHAPTER 22
Lara went to the garage and examined her new acquisition: a brand-new bicycle prepared for adventures in the mountain. She still did not understand anything of bicycles; the only thing she could say about her new companion is that it was beautiful, all black with pinkish details in a fluorescent pink. It was Erica who helped her to choose it, by using all the technical terms a neophyte was completely unable to decipher and remarking each aspect of those accessories.
She put on the protection equipment and took the bicycle out, closing the gate behind her. Then, she went through São Carlos Avenue, going down since the top of the city heading to the bus terminal. It was such a slope and the nice wind came to greet her at that beginning of the sunny afternoon. She took a good drive to go up the avenue heading to the cemetery, where she would find Erica and the other cyclists. Since the thefts began in the countryside, it was safer to ride in group.
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