Longer than life

It was almost ten p.m. when we got in the car. I had spent the whole day being reluctant it seemed. Desperately trying to evade the things I had to do, things I would eventually have to see face to face, this is what it seemed to me, while the whole town watched me, puzzled at my delay.

It didn't take us long to be in Santos. The peculiar lights at the city limits, the notion of time betrayed by the perspective of the parallel universe I had created.

"Why would the trip be so short this time? Why does it seem to be so short now?"

"Your trip to Taurinos lasted the same as this one. Only you could not "see" it that time.", explained Andrés calmly, sitting at my side on the back seat. Duílio and master Danilo followed quiet and grave sitting in the darkness the night lent the interior of the car.

I drew my mp3 player from my pocket and played music to a soft volume so I could answer if asked anything. Chill-out music in the night, the peculiar starless yellow sky in my hometown, the car at constant speed heading for downtown. Tunnel on Waldemar Leão Avenue and Santa Casa de Santos.

"We'll wait for you in the car. If you don't come back we'll know we're close to disappearing.", said Duílio as he brought the engine to a stop.

"I can't do it without you", I was cold, looking at them.

"You'll summon up the spirits to do it, "sá" Stella", promised master Danilo.

Duílio told me he didn't want to go because he didn't think it'd be fair for them to follow me to my body and, in case I decided so, see me wake up to my normal life and see his world desintegrate. I had no right to ask him to do it. Much to my surprise, Andrés volunteered to go with me.

We followed the corridors that, according to Adriano's description were longer than life and, oriented by nothing else than the signs on the way we got to the Intensive Care Unit. A huge sliding door separated us from the moment.

Andrés slid it open and we saw the interior. Some four patients.

I was the fifth.

It's impossible to describe what I felt as I saw myself on that hospital bed. Connected with all those things monitoring me, keeping me "alive". I only remember the mild yet aggressive song written by Lupicínio Rodrigues playing in my mp3 player the moment we walked in the room.

"For my eyes, for my dreams; for my blood, all I have got, I ask these lads to believe me. If they think only love can lead them to a beautiful future, believe me when I tell you: they leave heaven for being so dark and go to hell in search of light…"

These Lads, written by Lupicínio Rodrigues.

Andrés stood still at a certain distance from my bed as though he were frightened. I was much more than him, but called him closer to me, decided. I stood by my body unmoving on the bed. I didn't remember being so close to myself even when I was inside my body. I started crying softly.

"If you decide to go back to your normal life, do not say that looking at me. Renan says he's never killed anyone while looking them in the eyes. Because that look would pursue him forever and ever. I don't think you want this to happen to you."

Saying that was so cruel as it would be my calling him to watch his own anihhilation in case I decided to put an end to that story. Each one of us, I guess, has their own peculiar way to be cruel to each other.

Andrés was getting more and more nervous. His eyes looked at me, thirsty for resolution; death and non-existence would be less painful than that tormenting wait. I felt sorry for the lad and that made me cry even more. He held me by the arm, "now, now it's time for decision; do what you like, I don't care any more. I have fought all I had to fight, all I could do and a couple more of impossible things. I'm giving in to your will. I always knew I'd have to eventually."

He had a tear in his eye that still hadn't recovered from yesterday's meeting. He was right. I have the right to choose but not the right to make him suffer. But there was a last question I wanted to ask him with no one around.

"If Adriano…"

"I'd have left you in this hospital until you died. I had already directed you to Taurinos and bound you to the town, it was only sitting and waiting for your body to die.", he shot me point-blank so coldly.

So much sincerity demanded much thought from me. All I had seen, lived through, thought about in Taurinos, so much of my life in little more than three months, faces, ideas, not all of them good, not all of them bad. Andrés' cold-bloodedness made way for a gesture that wouldn't surprise me weeks ago, but was surprising at that moment: he again feel on his knees in front of me, clutching to my legs as I still looked at my body on the bed, such a familiar thing, what I did, saw, experienced when I was body and soul. This time, his gesture was not the desperate and theatrical thing of the early beginning. This time it was just desperate.

"Come back with us. I beg you please do."

"Stand up, young man."

He slowly rose to his feet again. Looked at me in the eyes. After his cold-bloodedness had collapsed, only desperation still stood.

"Do you have any notion what is going to happen when I come back? Is this the hell you want to live in? That might have no torments but is just hell anyhow?"

"I want to live…"

"Even if it be that way?"

"Well, it's better than not existing at all", replied Andrés timidly, afraid of sounding too close to Renan.

I asked him what we had to do. He sent out a luminous beam behind his ever-watering eyes; told me we just had to go back to the car and depart. I could not look back anyhow or we'd be returning to the same room al night long. I followed Andrés through the infinite corridors and hallways of Santa Casa de Santos and anxiously asked him when I was going to die.

"In our car, during our trip back to Taurinos. Don't you ever look back", he replied and warned me, without looking back at me, only looking ahead of us. I understood the graveness of his symbology and wouldn't dare to even look at my sides.

Outside, Duílio seemed to be getting ready to look for us inside the hospital. When he saw me returning with his son, he opened a stellar beam I had never seen play on his face. Master Danilo smiled too, he was as happy as he was shy to see an old friend back again. I remember Meire I'll never see again. I remember my husband Paulo I had long quitted looking or waiting for.

"I hope I've made the right choice", I said timidly, beginning to feel sensations I had never experienced before coming closer. They gave me two blankets, Andrés took seat, laid a pillow on his lap and told me to lie down on the back seat and lay my head on the pillow. I turned it down, turned down the blankets too, he told me I'd really need them. Agai I tried to turn everything down but master Danilo strongly requested me to follow Andrés instructions until we got to Taurinos, "he's the only one that can guide you back now". A bit anxious and feeling the sensation of abandon growing stronger and stronger, I lied on the spacious back seat and laid my head on the pillow on Andrés' lap. That amused me, it made me wonder how the same being who brought me to the place I had created was the same who would take me away from life; it felt satyrical. grotesque, sublime, ridiculous, all of it at once.

My mp3 player still played the songs I liked randomly, batteries that would never end; as usual I had to read something in the song that seemed to be a reference to it.

Started a landslide in my ego. Looked from the outside to the world I left behind. I'm dreaming, you're awake. If I was sleeping, what's at stake? A day without me. Whatever the feelings, I keep feeling. What are the feelings you left behind? A day without me. Started a landslide in my ego. Looked from the outside to the world I left behind. In the world I left behind. Wipe their eyes and then let go. In the world I left behind. Shed a tear and let love go.

A Day Without Me, written by U2.

I started feeling cold as hell, cold as I never thought I'd feel one day. And a sea of memories broke in, as flashes of a great big long film my entire life had been, all invaded me like a tide as so many swore it was going to happen. Saw the childhood spent under toad-hat trees in Santos, all I did, people who I met, my husband, my Psychology college classmates, Meire, my best friend, Dr. Romeu, who got me in this mess in 1994, all passing by in speed I couldn't control even if I wanted to. Incredible I could still pay attention to the songs that were still playing from my mp3 player:

"I will always be with you: sometimes black sometimes white. And there's no need to be scared: you're always on my mind. You just take a giant step, one step higher. The air will hold you if you try, trust my wings of desire. "


Angels Landing, written by Salt Tank.

The sensation of abandonment frightened me more and more, skies and lands moving by, all of this I could see without even having to sit back on my place. Until everything dissolved into a flash that lasted so long it seemed it had been frozen. Blind for such dazzling light, I was no longer able to see what was around me, a dazzling light that seemed to have burned my eyes. Or at least that was the sensation in the moment. But my eyes were intact. I opened my eyes and saw Andrés in amazing detail, the giggling and innocently mischievous expression of a twelve-year old Mineiro country boy.

"You can sit now if you want to. I advise you to. Look outside the windows; it might make you dizzy, but it's worth getting used to it. This is where we live, Miss Grisam. Welcome to our home.", and Andrés pointed down below.

And I could finally understand why Taurinos could be 200 km away from Varginha. The 200 km were covered by going uphill. There is no mountain in the world that ranges higher than 15 km. Except maybe for the one which holds Taurinos on its top. A town that isn't and could never be on the map.

And I saw the magnificent view of the cities around us that only got more and more beautiful as we spiralled 200 km uphill. As in a dream, going up to heaven in a car, as the vision of paradise inflicted on us since Dante Alighieri, but an infintely beautiful place to gaze at.

"Am I already dead?", it was only what I managed to ask, stunned by the landscape outside.

"Now you are. To that world, Miss Grisam, you are" and Andrés smiled. The two grown-ups followed so brooding and calm at the front of the car.

My mp3 player was there playing songs now that I hadn't even loaded in it:

The world has lost its guide, making of the cataclism; road movie off its rails, an embarrassed ave-maria. The evil for mothballs is the victory for the moths. The car I was riding stopped for changing tires. Existence is a car in God's garage.

Divine, written by Zeca Baleiro and Rita Ribeiro.

Toothpuller day | Resolution

Radio Universal: The Day Of Creation