The Dreamseller: The Calling (21 page)

Young people who didn’t like to read newspapers clamored for the articles. Some took it to school, where it spread from hand to hand. Many boys and girls breathed a sigh of relief when they read the articles because they so often had agonized about the “anatomical defects” they saw in themselves. Soon they began laughing at their “paranoia.” They felt the story covered conflicts almost never discussed at school. From that point on, a rebellious streak started forming within some of the students. They began criticizing the social system and wanted to learn firsthand the ideas of that mysterious dreamseller.

Monica met us that afternoon and told us about the waves the article had created in the fashion world. She said that some of her designer friends as well as some stores had bought into the dreamseller’s ideas and were beginning to spread the view that beauty couldn’t be standardized.

Seeing the model more enthused, we decided to tell her about the countless adventures we’d had in the last several months. A week later, the dreamseller told us he wanted to invite another woman to the group.

The way Monica looked, we felt he could invite not one or two or three, but ten women. “How we’ve changed our stance,” I thought. I, who had always criticized politicians who were enemies one day and the best of friends the next, began to understand that such fluctuation was a sickness inherent to the human mind. It all depended on what was at stake.

Convinced of the wisdom of his new plan, the dreamseller looked upward and then to the sides, placed his hands on his chin and began moving away from us. He was lost in thought again. I heard him ask himself in a low voice, “Which woman should I call? What characteristics should she have?”

The dreamseller was about fifty feet away, walking in circles in the lobby of the shopping mall where we met. Just as we were celebrating the proposal of bringing more women into the group, an elderly woman appeared and gave Honeymouth a light tap on the head with her cane. It was Jurema.

“How are you, boys?” she said.

“Just fine, Jurema. How nice to see you again,” we said politely.

Suddenly we looked over at the pensive dreamseller, then back at the little old lady and had a terrible thought: “She might be the next to be called! We better get her out of here fast.”

The dreamseller, his gaze turned toward the sidewalk opposite where we stood, raised his voice and said to himself, “Whom to call?” We felt a shiver run down our spines. We tried to hide Jurema. We had to get rid of her.

“The sun is . . . scalding. You could get dehydrated, you’re sweating so much. You should . . . go home,” Dimas, the great
manipulator of hearts, told the old woman, trying not to stutter. But she insisted on staying.

“The weather’s fine, my boy,” she said assuredly.

Edson took her arm politely.

“You look tired. At your age one needs lots of rest,” he told her.

“I feel just great, son. But thanks for your concern,” Jurema said.

I also gave it a shot, trying to remind her of something she might have forgotten—an appointment, a doctor’s visit, a bill to pay. But she told me everything was taken care of.

Monica didn’t understand our concern over Jurema. She thought we were being a little too nice. Bartholomew, who had always been the most honest of any of us, slipped up again. Seeing that she had no intention of heading home, he appealed. He raised one eyebrow and said:

“My dear, beautiful Jurema,” he said, and she seemed to melt, batting her eyelashes. Just when he’d gotten her attention, he blurted out, “I’m sorry to tell you that you’re as red as a beet. I think you might be having a heart attack. You need to get to a hospital right away.”

Solomon tried to cover Bartholomew’s big mouth, but it was too late. Jurema did the job. She hooked his neck with the crook of her cane, yanked him close and said flatly:

“Bartholomew, with your mouth shut you’re absolutely perfect.”

We roared with laughter. But Jurema was bothered, realizing we were hiding something from her. To show us she was still strong and full of life, despite being more than eighty years old and having a touch of Alzheimer’s, she crouched down and did a few push-ups. She asked us to try and match her, but we couldn’t keep up. Then she leaped into a pair of ballet pirouettes and dared us to try. But we all clumsily almost fell on our faces.

“You guys are a bunch of old geezers,” she said. “I feel younger than any of you and I’m as healthy as a horse. Now, where’s that guru of yours?”

Guru? I thought. The dreamseller didn’t like even being called master, much less guru. We said he was having some problems . . . had an appointment . . . couldn’t talk to her now. We tried to block her view of the dreamseller, but she poked her head between us. By then, Monica had already figured out our little game and I think wondered whether there was any hope of redemption for any of us.

Jurema shouted even louder, “Where’s the guru?”

We cringed when we heard the dreamseller’s deep, powerful voice.

“How wonderful to see you again!” he told her, and then said the words we had all dreaded: “Come with us. Come and help us sell dreams!”

Monica couldn’t help laughing and laughing, but we were worried. We wandered off to one side and began to whisper questions to one another. “What will society think of us, a band of eccentrics followed by an old lady? We’ll be a laughingstock. Oh, the newspapers are going to love this. What’ll it be like living with her? We’ll probably waste all our time waiting for her to catch up. And that old-lady smell? Does she wear dentures?”

We worried that our journey would suffer with the addition of Jurema. The dreamseller patiently watched our boys-only conference as Monica tried to explain the calling to Jurema. But she was a beginner herself and had trouble making it clear.

Jurema, an honest woman, called us aside and said, “I’ve never sold anything in my life. What type of product is it?”

The dreamseller went off to speak with Monica and left us alone to explain the project to Jurema. This gave us a golden opportunity to dissuade the old woman. In the privacy of my
thoughts, I wondered whether the dreamseller hadn’t seen Jurema first and was testing us again, in an attempt to unveil the subtle prejudices in our minds.

We had had a fantastic experience at the nursing home, where we had discovered the greatness of the elderly, but we insisted on harboring a prejudice against them. We were convinced the old lady wouldn’t be able to keep up with the pace of the group. We thought that, with her, the dreamseller would have to be less aggressive with some of his plans.

We spoke honestly with Jurema about the adventure of dreams. After all, even when our interests were thwarted, we were learning to be transparent. But, to dissuade her, we emphasized the dangers we faced, the public shame, the insults, the beating the dreamseller had suffered.

She listened attentively, nodding her head. She arranged her white hair, as if wanting to massage her restless brain. We were sure we were leaving her more uncertain than before. Solomon looked to the heavens and made the sign of the cross. “I’m getting scared just thinking about the dangers that lie ahead,” he said.

He signaled to Bartholomew to keep quiet for once because we seemed to be making progress. But, not thinking twice, the bungler said in a trembling, horror-movie voice: “It’s very risky to follow this man, Jurema. We could be arrested. We could be kidnapped, beaten, tortured. We could even be killed!”

We thought, for once, he’d managed to say just the right thing. Little did we know his words would be a kind of prophecy. Jurema’s right eye widened, her left eye closed. Just when we were sure we had convinced her, it was our turn to be startled.

“Fantastic!” she said. We exchanged dumbstruck glances.

“Fantastic? What do you mean, ‘fantastic,’ Jurema?” I
asked, thinking that her senile mind had somehow misunderstood everything we had said.

“Everything you’ve told me is fantastic,” she said. “I’m absolutely ready to be a wanderer and I accept the invitation to join the group! I was always a rebel in my student days, and later as a university professor. But I was punished, subjugated by the educational system. I had to follow an agenda I disagreed with, a curriculum that did nothing to form thinkers.”

Our little brotherhood was shaken. We couldn’t breathe. As if the mysterious identity of the dreamseller weren’t enough, now we had a mysterious old lady to contend with. Some of us snorted, disturbed by her. I tried to dab the beads of sweat off my face.

“I’ve always wanted to sell dreams, to stimulate minds, but I was silenced,” she said. “I get disgusted every day when I think about modern society steamrolling young people’s intellect, mashing them all together, crushing their critical thinking and turning them into tape recorders of information. What has society done to our children?”

I asked what her full name was.

“Jurema Alcantara de Mello,” she said flatly.

When I heard the name, I took a step backward, even more shocked than before. That’s when I discovered that Jurema was a renowned anthropologist who had been a university professor at the highest level. She had even done postdoctoral work at Harvard. She was internationally known and had written five books in her field of study and they had been published in various languages.

I leaned against a nearby post to steady myself. I remembered having read several journal articles of hers, as well as all her books. She had played an important role in helping me formulate my ideas. I had admired her organized power of reasoning and her boldness. And here, just minutes earlier, I
had wanted to kick her out of our group. I thought to myself: “Damned prejudice! Who will free me from this intellectual cancer? I dream of being a free and open person, but I’m hopelessly stubborn.”

Her ideas were right in line with the dreamseller’s. Jurema went on to say that societies, with some exceptions, had become quagmires for conformist minds that were untroubled by the complexity of existence, devoid of great ideas, and they never questioned who they are.

“We need to stimulate people’s intelligence,” she said.

The dreamseller smiled in delight. He must have thought: “I hit the bull’s-eye.” Jurema was more of a rebel than all of us. As she aged, she became more determined. She began to challenge us the second she joined us. Since age brings an incurable courage and honesty, she was very outspoken. She started pointing out things that Monica hadn’t yet had the courage to say. She confronted the dreamseller and criticized the group’s look.

“Being a band of eccentrics that sells dreams is fine, but being a band of filthy ragamuffins is absurd,” she said.

Oh, did we get angry at that. But even after seeing us pout, Jurema didn’t back down.

“Calling a group eccentric in order to create a spirit of solidarity is laudable,” she said, “but not caring whether that group looks shabby and unkempt, that’s just wrong-headed.”

The dreamseller remained silent. But Dimas couldn’t take it.

“Jurema, sweetie . . . li . . . lighten up,” he stuttered, attempting a familiarity that only Bartholomew could get away with.

She didn’t let it slide. She came close to him, took several whiffs of his body and scowled, “Lighten up? You smell like rotten eggs.”

Bartholomew roared with laughter.

“Didn’t I tell you? I’m a saint for putting up with that guy’s smell!” Bartholomew said. And he laughed so hard he couldn’t hold back and ripped a sonorous thunderclap of his own.

“You should be ashamed of yourself,” she told him. “If you can’t hold it, you should at least do it so no one can hear you.”

We were starting to get worried. We looked at the dreamseller and began to realize that this new member of the family wanted to pour cold water on us—literally. For the first time we saw him scratch his head, without taking action. Jurema was a revolutionary, but she was unbalanced. She turned to the dreamseller and did what we never thought anyone would be bold enough to do: She confronted him.

“And don’t give me that story about how Jesus called those who cleansed the outside of their body but forgot to cleanse the inside hypocrites. Yes, we must emphasize the inside, but without ignoring the outside. His disciples bathed in the Jordan and in the houses where they were guests. But look at you. Look at your followers! How long has it been since they’ve had a real bath?”

We had bathed in public bathrooms, but not as often or as well as we probably should have. The master didn’t argue. He simply nodded his head in agreement. He had taught us many lessons, and the greatest one was to have the humility to learn from others.

And if that weren’t enough, Jurema turned to Edson and boldly asked him to open his mouth. He did so cautiously. We felt that the dreamseller had to have regretted his choice at this point. But maybe not. “Wasn’t a female disciple with just these characteristics what he was looking for?” I thought.

“Good lord, what a stench! You need to brush your teeth,” she told the Miracle Worker, pinched her nose and told him to close his mouth.

I laughed—but between clenched lips. She noticed it and said, “What are you laughing at?”

She didn’t spare anyone, except Monica, who hadn’t had this much fun in years. She felt that we were a traveling circus.

The dreamseller said Jurema wouldn’t sleep under the bridge with us, because of her age. She and Monica would return home and reunite with us the following day.

At the end of the day, Jurema invited us to bathe and eat supper together at her house. The prejudice virus, which was dormant, reawakened. We looked at one another and thought that, given her age, a professor’s meager pension and what she had to pay for medicines and doctors, her financial situation couldn’t be much better than ours. We probably couldn’t even all stand in her house, much less have dinner there. And with the old woman plodding away at the stove, it would be midnight before the meal was ready.

Jurema turned her head up the street and whistled.

When we asked what she was doing, she said she was calling her driver. We thought she must have been suffering some kind of dementia and Dimas said under his breath, “It must be the bus driver.”