Like a game of
Tetris, pieces of various shapes and sizes falling every which way, threatening
to create Chaos. The player tries his best to control the way the pieces fall,
to create order from chaos, inserting all the pieces in their correct places.
When successfully played out, all of the pieces create a solid block, and
individualities are transformed into a collective harmony. Exchange ¨player¨
for ¨society¨ and there is your formula for success, your formula for
civilization.
Leonardo felt like his life had been
put on auto-pilot. Every day he woke up pretty early, ate breakfast in a rush
and headed to the editorial office. Luckily he lived on the same street as the
office, so his commute was only a matter of 2 minutes, whereas most of his
colleagues consumed hours of their lives just to get to a place where they
usually didn’t want to be in the first place.
The workday started around 8.30 on
the rare occasion that he woke up before 8.15. After starting the laborious
day, he’d be stuck there until 7 or 7.30. By then, he’d be so tired and
mentally destroyed that he’d only feel
lie going home, eating dinner, crashing on the couch in front o the TV before
finally heading to bed around 11.
And so it was, day in and day out,
that he sat there, immersed in a post-apocalyptic world replete with zombies,
or fantasy worlds populated with its princes, princesses, knights and dragons,
or completely lost in he adventures of Italian-American gangsters or FBI agents
specialized in paranormal activity that he forgot for a few hours every day who
he was.
As he reached the end of the day on
a Friday, he breathed a sigh of relief, as he always did at the end of the week. There, another weak passed by, I’m a
little bit closer to the end of this internship, he thought, shoving his
scribbles, folders and files into his backpack and waving goodbye to his
colleagues as he hurried out of the office.
When he felt the cold air outside,
he could feel his lungs ingest and process the strange air of temporary freedom
that he was granted until the weekend was over. This time around he was granted
more time, being that Monday was a holyday, so he had 3 days of non-work life
to spend however he pleased.
In the golden days of college, one
day more or one day less spent in laziness wasn’t anything big, unless maybe
during the dreaded exam period. Now, though, every minute free from the reigns
of his superiors and colleagues was a grand luxury to be appreciated and
savored.
It was the last weekend of November
and Leonardo and the boys had planned a trip to the southern part of the
country. It was to be a mini-escape from civilization.
This time, the usual 4 musketeers
would have a fifth element added to the bunch. Ricardo, otherwise known as
Ricky among friends was, indeed, an old school friend from the Colegio de Chelas. Ricky was the first
of the old “gang” to tie the knot. When he told Leonardo the news, he could
scarcely believe it. After all, getting married was acknowledging that the
golden age of youthfulness and college had come to a close. In other words,
getting married was like saying out loud: ‘I’m an adult!’ so that the whole
world could hear. All the friends, family and most important loved ones from
both sides would be summoned to attend an obligatory ceremony where they would
have to hear the couple declare their undying devotion and commitment to one
another in front of a priest. In other words this way there would be no room
for doubt now that everyone knows about what’s happening and there is no way to
turn back.
Much to his regret, Leonardo had
been invited to this “sickening event”, along with other 3 in the gang. It was
to take place very soon, in a church in Lisbon .
There was no way to refuse the invitation. He had accepted the invitation to
witness Ricky’s passage into adulthood but he was at least able to convince him
to spend his last weekend as single man with his buddies. But no, it wasn’t
with the intention to go clubs or to organize a party with shitty club music
and eastern European strippers. His
intention wasn’t even to get drunk with his friend in order to momentarily
forget the imminent tragedy (although that hypothesis hadn’t been completely
discarded yet). What Leonardo had in mind was some sort of retreat which seemed
to him then a great place to spend some time with Ricardo in that particular
situation.
Their
destination was a little village, lost somewhere between Alentejo and the Algarve
Almost 4 hours into the trip, Romeo
parked the car in front of an old house, its paint chipping off little by
little, accompanying, loyally, the pass of time. More than 5 years had passed
since the last time the house had received a visitor, as far as Leonardo knew.
The house had belonged to Manuel’s grand parents, and had later been inherited
by Manuel’s father. When he died, Manuel got the house, since his brother
preferred to keep some parcels of land that were more valuable than the old
house.
Manuel hadn’t agreed to keep the
house for financial reasons, but for sentimental ones. Although he was born in Lisbon , Manuel spent many glorious summers as a kid in
that remote village before his family moved to Brazil .
After returning to Portugal , when
Manuel had a family of his own, he decided to restore the old house and spend
some time with his children there. His wife, however, never bothered to hide
her disdain for the little village, stuck in time, with no modern comforts to
offer its visitors. Pedro and Lili, his youngest 2, never had much chance to
enjoy it, since they were too young when they went there to appreciate the
magic of the place. Leonardo, on the other hand, had been really privileged and
spent a few weeks each summer there, hidden in time in the little house. Some
of his favorite memories of his childhood had taken place there with his
adoptive dad.
With time, these memories had become
murky and unclear, but as soon as he got out of the car, and stepped on that
land and saw the house right in front of him, lit by the car’s headlights, the
memories came back, suddenly, strong and clear.
During this long weekend, he would
revisit old times with old friends and would make some good memories for Ricky
to hold onto the future. He was going to do the same things now with his
friends that he had done with Manuel when he was a kid. He would bring them to
the mountains for long hikes to the dam to see the great cascade of water down
into the river valley. They would talk and drink wine and eat barbecue and read
under the silver light of the stars.
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