XXV - The End of the Road

From the desert stars, to the city’s black sky.

In the sky of the big metropolis, of which Lisbon constitutes no exception, there is little room for the stars to shine. The night sky is home to artificial lights coming from clusters of buildings and houses as well as the pollution exhaled by factories and cars. There is definitely no room for the distant light coming from space, for the charming shimmer of the stars or its timeless appeal.

‘Traveller’s log. Entry twenty: “What I’m supposed to do in Lisbon at dawn?”

 After almost two months of travels I’m back to Lisbon, back home… or at least back to the only place in the world I can call home. I haven’t told anyone I was coming back today and because of that I’m sitting here now, in this cold bench in this cold night, forced to wait for time to pass…’

Time goes by slowly, every minute multiplied by ten. At the end of August, the climate is still mild, and as such the cold is not a real problem. Even so, the silence of the urban night, tempered by the station’s dim artificial light manufacture a lonely, almost creepy environment that leaves Leonardo ill at ease. Not unlike Marseille, some weeks ago, the wait at the Gare seems long and unpleasant, even more so this time, without any suitable company to be found in the premises.

‘… Now that I’m finally back, it is as if I had finally returned to reality. As if my travels had been but intense dreams, yet dreams nevertheless. It is as if, as a traveller, I were in fact a dreamer, continuously imagining existences different from my own. It is as if I had finally awoken, after a long night populated by extraordinary dreams and I finally realized, astonished, that what I took for real was in fact no more than delirium and illusion…’

This time around, however, the shelter available is even more precarious. While in Marseille, the Gare was an enclosed building, offering protection, psychological at the very least, against the threats of the night, in Lisbon that protection is lacking. The station in Lisbon is an open construction that merges with the blackness of the night, therefore offering very little in terms of shelter, physical or mental, to its travellers.

The vastness of the night engulfed therefore Leonardo, a tiny figure, seating in a stone bench, alternating brushes of his pen and furtive looks into the darkness surrounding him, constantly searching for hints of danger coming from the night and the urban predators it hides.

His only true refuge being his black moleskin, and the memories and thoughts that he now confided to it.

‘… What awaits me here, in this city that I call home? My destiny perhaps… But what that might be, if such a thing even exists? So long travels and dreams of the past, ancient and recent, an end has come to the incessant search of something transcendental. I came back to be an adult, one more soul among many, rowing along and in the benefit of modern society…’

           

            Time passes as the night becomes, slowly but steadily, less dark. Yet, this natural procession is slow and woeful. Dodgy characters come and go, sometimes appearing from the darkness and sometimes merging with it. Leonardo fears slightly for his safety whilst some of those shadowy figures pass him by. They are the fauna of the night, dangerous, goalless, and greedy, without morals.  Some are drunks; a few are simply crazy, others are just ill natured. Yet tonight they leave him be, his eyes turned to his black moleskin, his soul still lost in an endless existential desert.

            ‘… In the Maghreb desert I saw the most beautiful stars I had ever seen before. They were floating in that beautiful sky dyed of black and silver, huge and majestic, eternally watching over the men looking at it from the dunes, humbling them surely… and nevertheless, I return yet empty from my travels. This void inside me will be never filled, and I know this without doubt now.’

            Minutes turn into hours and night gives place to morning. Meanwhile, the earliest of workers and travellers begin to arrive at the station, as Leonardo prepares to leave.

            The elderly taxi driver helps him place his backpack in the truck. ‘This backpack sure is heavy young man, are you carrying bricks in it or something?’ He asks in a playful tone, after he recovers his breath.

            ‘Oh, I could have done that, sorry. Yeah, I know, it’s quite heavy. Pretty much everything I own is in that backpack,. I was gone travelling for quite a while you see.’

            ‘Oh, in that case it’s understandable. I certainly wouldn’t be able to carry all of my belongings in just one backpack myself. Where to?’

            Leonardo gives him the address and he drives away towards the instructed destination.

            As Leonardo opens his notebook, with the intention of continuing to write down his thoughts, the driver who, in typical fashion is eager for a chat instantly interrupts him. 

            ‘May I ask where you have been travelling?’

            A correct answer would be something like ‘I’ve been travelling my whole life ever since I left my native Brazil’, but he choses instead to give the taxi driver a much less philosophical and much more straightforward answer, ‘Spain and Morocco mostly.’

            ‘Morocco huh? That must have been quite an adventure I’m sure. I never left the country in my whole life and now I’m too old for those things I’m afraid. But when I was young I dreamt of travelling around the world… go to a bunch of exotic places like that.’

            ‘It’s never too late you know.’

            ‘Oh but it is my boy. After a man gets married and has the first son he starts living exclusively for his family and for his job. So I think you are wise to travel now when you’re still young, because in a few years…’

            The trip doesn’t take more than ten or fifteen minutes, since it’s still too early for traffic. The city is still barely awake, and the streets of Lisbon are still mainly the dominium of taxis and buses making their first morning routes and only a few early-risers. One or two hours later however, the same trip would take a good half-an-hour, spoiled by tangible smoke expelled from tens of thousands of tailpipes and the irritating and utterly unnecessary honks of frenetic drivers in a hurry to get to their jobs in time.  At this time, nevertheless, the car ride is quick and pleasant, and the elderly taxi driver, grey mustache and white hair, drops Leonardo in front of his mum’s house.

            The clock indicates that is already six in the morning, so he presses the button on the intercom twice and, shortly after, he hears Manuel’s voice coming from the device. ‘Who is it?’

            ‘It’s me, Leonardo.’ He answers.

            ‘Leonardo? We didn’t know you were coming today!’ Said Manuel, surprise stamped on his voice.

            ‘Yeah, I know… I decided to surprise you.’

            ‘Oh that’s great. Your mum will be ecstatic. Come on up.’

            Half a minute later Leonardo rings the bell of the front door and Manuel opens it almost instantaneously. ‘You’re so skinny, ’ is the first thing he says. Manuel hugs him and tells him to come in, while helping him to put his big backpack on the lobby’s floor. ‘Your mother and your brothers are still sleeping, and I think that I’ll go back to sleep for another hour or so. You have clean sheets in your bed and food in the fridge so help yourself.’

            ‘Thanks.’

            ‘You’re gonna have to tell us where you were all this time, you drove your mother completely nuts you know?’

            ‘Yeah, I’m sorry about that. I needed some time to think without anyone bothering me.’

            ‘Okay… we’ll talk later today. You can sleep till whenever you want, you must be tired.’

            ‘A little bit…’

            ‘…  Being back home is certainly a weird feeling. To be lying down on my bed, only a few metres from my brothers and parents… I spent so much time by myself that it just feels strange to be here again. The last thing I want is to have to explain myself to someone or to discuss my plans for the future, but I know that it is inevitable now. I’m back to my world, and my time in Neverland is over at last. They expect me to become one of them, one more cog in the machine, and that is a fate that I must come to terms with. This is the end of the road that leads to life in society. This is the last stop of my voyage of transition. I’m an adult now.’