Incompatible

by Mauricio R B Campos

  The car passed by the sign at Tibiriçá’s entry, crossed the little road that cut the closed forest and stopped right in the road, beside the invitee, who was waiting along the way with his simple clothes. He got into the car and they followed the way back to the city.

  “You took me by car to a farm and now I take you from a farm to the city” she commented, after having greeted him with a kiss in his face. “If this is not synchronicity, I don’t know what it is.”

  “It’s true. I think it must mean something.”

  She was going to answer when the phone rang, the mobile ring replaced the music that got out of the car sound system. She pressed the button in the panel and took the call in the speakerphone. It was her mother:

  “Hi, mom, it’s in the speakerphone”, she warned.

  “Ah, OK...” her mother answered, without understanding exactly what that meant, which was be careful with what you’re going to say, I’m not alone. “Is it all right?”

  “Yes, everything ok, but tonight I won’t be able to go to the church.”

  “Lara, you know you can’t miss it, now you’re going to have to go on

  Tuesday. Is Erica with you?”

  “No, mom, another person.”

  Her mother began to say something, but the call got silent.

  “Mom?”

  “In this part of the road, the signal is bad, sometimes the calls drop, other times they get silent, then they return”, Arthur explained.

  They waited in silent expectation to see if the connection returned, but, as no sound got out of the speakers, she said that probably the call had been lost, which was confirmed, because some time later the sound system of the car restarted playing the pop music of the local radio.

  “And how was this radical change from executive into countryside man?”, she asked bluntly.

  He stared at her for a moment; she was attentive to the rough dirt road full of holes and stones. The profile of her face was beautiful with that light. At that moment, he realized it had been three months since he had abandoned the world, and, except for his mother, Lara was the only person who managed to ask him that question. His friends did not look for him, even Anderson, who helped a little to prepare his travel plan to Santiago de Compostela, did not have interest to learn how his spiritual journey was in the Heart of Galicia.

  “Well, it’s a long story. I was unsatisfied with my lifestyle; this may sound strange for many people, but...”

  “I understand perfectly” — she interrupted.

  “Really?”

  “The thing is we’re born in this world where everything’s ready and have to adapt to a number of family, social, ethical, cultural standards and stuff like that. And in this process, nobody wants to know or is interested in finding who we really are. There’s a unique personality, a soul, a psique, or whatever you call it, that has their own wishes, needs and aspirations, and all the world does is ignoring completely all the individual peculiarities and addressing everyone as if they were blank sheets that accept anything. Then, at a given moment of your life, you can break this programming, although not everyone can.”

  He became impressed with that discourse. She synthesized all his anguish in a few words. He felt exactly so!

  “That’s exactly how I feel”, he confessed — “And here in Tibiriçá I had contact with a part of myself that I didn’t know. It was like discovering who I really am. I’ve never imagined I could tell this to anyone in a way it could make a sense.”

  “It’s not easy to discover oneself, it’s a journey that involves many emotional risks, and a few people are willing to run them.”

  At that moment, the car skidded through the stones of the road and took Washington Luiz at high speed.

  “How about you? Did you run these risks?”

  She smiled, but when she realized there was a vivid interest in his eyes, she became serious. She discovered the true expression of interest in his face not that rehearsed mask of kind interest, enhanced delicately after years of involuntary training.

  “If I ran these risks? You wouldn’t believe it.”

  “Try it.”

  “I can even try to say, but not before knowing how you decided to get into the search” she replied, she did not know until what extent she could actually advance with truth.

  The car went through the roundabout and was taking Getúlio Vargas Avenue, while he was wondering if he could finally tell the truth to somebody. Staring at her lips half-open, almost an invitation for a kiss, he wondered if he would like to maintain that mask. He felt something in the air, a different energy since he saw that woman entering his office for the first time. What she said to him is that he was not alone, he was not the only one not to accept the role they had given him in the world.

  If he was not sincere with her, with whom would he be sincere?

  “I felt lost, too lost. I think the time we met I was at the height of this sensation of strangeness, of not belonging. A college friend had trodden the Santiago’s way and said this trip had changed his life. I decided to try it, I thought perhaps isolation from the world as a lonely pilgrim would do me good.”

  “Are you a Catholic?”

  “Not much... I was baptized, but I don’t think of that, I don’t even go to the church. I thought of this trip more like a way to be distant from the world to think about my life.”

  “And so, you came back already with the idea of living in an ecovillage?”

  “No, Santiago’s way is beautiful, it’s an experience that’s worth living, but it was not transforming. At least not for me. Maybe for a more catholic or more mystic person it works, but I have to admit that I haven’t become another person for leaving Madrid and going for Santiago de Compostela. But in the way something happened, I met a person...”

  Lara’s car entered the parking lot in front of the movies, and she stopped at one of the last openings available.

  “What is there for us to see?”, he asked, realizing he had accepted the invitation without even knowing which movie was playing.

  “The Shape of Water. Have you heard of it?”

  “No. Is it good?”

  “It’s been welcomed, it’s by Guillermo del Toro. It’s an Oscar best film nominee.”

  “I don’t believe. I think you’ve brought me from the countryside to some parallel reality. A film by Del Toro Best Film nominee?”

  They got out of the car and walked opposite to the ticket office. He saw the poster of the film with that hybrid being and wondered if it was actually a character of the Hellboy’s film, Abe Sapiens. She paid for the tickets and asked if he wanted popcorn or soda.

  “No, thanks.”

  She took his hand and went to the last seat in the entry line, that was large. It had been too long both of them did not receive an affectionate touch from the opposite sex. When they arrived at the end of the line that was still waiting for permission to get into the theater, with his hand free he smoothed the base of her neck, and, pulling her to him, he kissed her. Since he had got into the car, he was feeling those lips fleshy and delicately covered with lipstick inviting him at each soft movement, even involuntary. She passed her hands through his back and pressed him against her, freeing a fraction of desire contained and that was kept since he had left her home from that night in the Farm.

  When their lips got loose, they remained looking at each other for some seconds, the noses glued, in silent contemplation. Now they were accomplices of a mutual feeling one spread on the iris of the other.

  “This was intense”, she whispered, “touching his lips again in a brief kiss.”

  “It was magic”, he replied, also whispering.

  The movie theater employee authorized the beginning of the session, and they got in the room and sat down.

  “And so, who was this person you found there in Santiago de Compostela?”, she asked when he passed his arm behind her shoulder and they became close to one another.

  “A Galician lady called Mercedes. I don�
��t know how she realized I was a bit lost in the middle of that pilgrimage, or perhaps she did that with everyone, the thing is when I was in front of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, she handed me a card of a wizard. She said if I hadn’t found what I was looking for in the way, I could try the luck with that wizard. I thought that story was a little crazy, but...”

  “Curiosity was higher.”

  “Exactly. The name of this wizard is Fermin and he was not from Santiago, but from Vigo. I settled some more days to return to Brazil with the travel agent and boarded to Vigo. By the coast, among ruins of castles and old big houses, I found an individual both enigmatic and kind. He didn’t charge anything, he only asked me to bring cold beer. I went there, we talked, and he gave me a guiding line. As far as I understood, his wisdom came mostly from Taoism, which I have been studying since then. He suggested that I tried to live in a way that I could develop several aspects of my potentialities, even different occupations, if I could. Professions was the word that he used.”

  Lara passed her hand behind his nape, caressing his voluminous hair:

  “You know that most people would say you boarded on the madness of this guy, don’t you?”

  “I guess so”, he answered, putting his hand on hers on the chair’s backrest.

  “And did he pass any Taoism book to you? Do they have a bible or something like this?”

  “Taoism has two aspects, one philosophic and another religious. I’m studying from some electronic books; it’s very complex but has some very interesting teachings. It’s a world view completely different from the one to which we are used.”

  So, the lights were turned off and the images began to be projected on the screen. It showed the trailers, the traditional announcement of Fox, and the film began. During the session, they exchanged caress, hand tightening and even a kiss when the girl showed she was in love with the monster of the film. When they left the session, still steeped in the fantastic atmosphere of the film, Arthur said what he thought of the great success by Guillermo del Toro:

  “It’s an astonishing fable about how much of human there’s in monsters and how much of monster there’s in humans.”

  * * *

  Giacomo looked at the mirror of the toilet to see if it was possible to be recognized with black clothes, ninja gloves and gown. He made pose of a bad boy in front of the mirror, crossing his arms on his chest and raising his head, with the belly remarking in the silhouette. He removed the gun that was hidden on his back, between his body and the strap, and aimed at the mirror.

  “You talking to me?” he rehearsed, imitating an iconic scene of Taxi Driver, played by the young Robert De Niro.

  So, he laughed, thinking he was a clown. He turned aside to the mirror and made the movement of pulling the gun:

  “Stop! You come with me! This is not a child’s play; you are being kidnapped: a wrong move and you’re a dead man. Don’t try anything, my partners are out there, you bourgeois!”

  CHAPTER 29

  “Sorry for making you come here at this time of the night” Arthur said, when they arrived at Tibiriçá Ecovillage about eleven. “Tomorrow you work.”

  “I only have to thank you for the nice night we spent together” — she replied, before the goodbye kiss.

  He got out of the car and remained still, with a smile on his face. He waited for her to maneuver and return through the road that cut the closed woods surrounding them. The lights of the car disappeared at the first corner of the way, and he turned to go back to his modest lodging at that Sunday night. He arrived at the lodging door and opened it. With the end of the construction where they were working, Mathias was no more at the ecovillage; Arthur only shared the lodging with Clara then, and at that weekend she had been out to visit her family and would only return on Wednesday; therefore, he had the lodging only for himself. It was a pride of the ecovillage residents never to need to lock a door: that was a peaceful place.

  He had hardly got into the room and his phone rang. It was Lara. He had recorded her name in the mobile directory. He put it in the speakerphone, because he wanted to have his hands free to prepare an espresso. He would not be able to sleep anyway because of the excitement of the encounter.

  “Hi”, she said. “I felt alone in the car, it was nice to be with you here and this way back is so dark, without any lamp posts.”

  “How good to hear your voice again”, he replied.

  He put the mobile on the little table where Clara’s computer and the coffee machine used to stay and went to look for a capsule. The ones beside the machine had been over, but his roommate had told him of a box somewhere. Lara’s voice sounded again from the smartphone speakers.

  “You know, at last, I didn’t even tell you my story about how I am a person...” and the call got silent.

  She might have entered the shadow area, he thought, while he realized he would not find any coffee capsule. And it was then, when he had his back to the door that it opened once, and a known voice shouted at him in hastily:

  “Stop right there! Come with me! This is not a joke, you’re being kidnapped, a false move and you’ll be a dead man. Don’t try anything, my partners are out there, bourgeois!”

  Arthur turned to see an overweight man, with his body covered with black clothes, only his eyes were visible in an opening of the ninja gown. The invader was holding a gun that trembled in his hand. For the format of his belly and his head, allied to the sound of his badly disguised voice imitating Darth Vader, he clearly recognized the administrator of the Ecovillage. At this moment of high adrenalin, he discovered in the worst way what it means to react to a violence without thinking:

  “Damn, Giacomo!” she cried, unable to believe what was happening, staring at his kidnapper, without a move.

  “I’m not any shitty Giacomo!”, the gown crook cried. “This is a kidnap! Hands back, turn your face and don’t look at my face, guy!” he ordered, but this time he forgot to change his voice, perhaps because of nervousness, and now there was no more doubt that ridiculous figure was Giacomo.

  What could he do? He thought of reacting, but a voice inside asked him for calm. That was a man who had a nervous trigger; he saw quite well how Giacomo’s hands were trembling while he was holding that gun. Would he be courageous to kill me? He decided to turn and obey, putting his hands back. He heard the sound of something metallic, and the contact with the cold metal. He had handcuffs. What kind of fucking handcuffs were those? Did he do everything perfectly or were they sex shop handcuffs? He slightly forced his wrists inside of them, but they did not open not even a millimeter. Then everything became dark; he felt the cloth involving his head; the invader put on a ninja gown with the opposite side: the eyes opening turned backwards. He felt more and more impotent faced with the violence that was imposed to him. Should he try to run? He could not see anything; how could he leave that place? He was wondering this when he felt the gown being raised up to his nose, at the next moment he heard the sound characteristic of a roll of tape being stretched. He’s going to gag me, he thought. He was going to say something, but it was late, his mouth was sealed with silver tape.

  He felt a pressure from the handcuffs and the gun barrel on his back. Giacomo jostled him blindly, and he tried to discover where he was through the texture of the floor under his feet. He identified that they were leaving the lodging and then walked through the grass in front of it. So, a texture of grass was replaced by a dirt track, which meant they were in the road that linked the inner part of the ecovillage to the external road.

  “Turn back”, Giacomo ordered, by making a guttural voice. “I’m going to put you in the trunk. Don’t try anything so I kill you now and bury you anywhere in the middle of this fucking wood.”

  When he imagined he was going to be put in a trunk, Arthur feared for his life and, in despair, he left running opposite to the voice, getting around from the loose hit of Giacomo. He ran in the dark over the pumpkins garden and, stumbling on the first one that he found, with
his hand stuck to his back, he went to the floor sticking his head into a clod of revolved dust and mud. He tried to scream, but his mouth was glued. Then he felt a pain next to his nape and grunted. This idiot is trying to pistol-whipped me and cannot do it, stupid dickhead! He thought.

  “Stop this slapstick, cazzo, you come with me. Stand up!”

  Arthur, humiliated and fearful, obeyed him with the clear sensation that he was behaving like a lamb going to the altar. The kidnapper guided him in the dark and then he pushed him back so that he got into the trunk. It was clumsy to do this without the hands, but he received a help from a violent push that placed him inside the car; and he knocked all his body in parts of the car in the process. Listening the sound of the door closing over him was the worst sensation he ever had. It was like closing the lid of his coffin. Petrified with horror, he tried to organize his alternatives mentally. He kept quiet, immovable, trying to discover which would be the next step of that idiot. So, he heard the sound of the door opening and his kidnapper sitting in the car, a moment of silence and, after a sigh, he could hear a whisper:

  “He recognized me, shit...”