Second Dance.
They had not seen each other for a whole year since the last time they had felt their blood boil with the fervour of dialogue, they looked extremely decrepit, dishevelled, grey-haired and disreputable, those who had once been professors at great universities, outstanding in their fields, were reduced to mere vagabonds with precarious salaries and no chance of raising their heads. Christian made amends for his mistake last time, he greeted everyone, he took the trouble to hug them, this time they had not met in a cafeteria, there was not enough money for coffee this time, they had arranged to meet in a square that was not frequent for any of them, on neutral ground no one has an advantage. After a while of greetings, Anne Marie took a book out of her faded bag and told them all that it was the best book in the world, it was called "Stones and Bread", right off the bat with such a bad title it didn't catch anyone's attention but she started:
The last time I saw you, I came home and cried, we used to be happy before, I never felt better than with you, I have searched fervently for something in all those books he taught and there was none that described what I felt, hours, days, months, nothing satiated me or gave me breath, Stones and Bread, Stones or Bread, what should I call it, what should we eat, are we conscious of what we do or are we just following orders from the subconscious in an effort to survive? I can't stand it, I don't feel good, nobody feels good, stop pretending.
As Anne Marie went off to cry, Raoul, who was always one to mince his words, pulled out a note. It was his suicide note, it said, to my fantastic four, I love you. And inside there were descriptions of uneasiness totally different from anything anyone had ever seen, Anne Marie couldn't stop crying, not just to let off steam but because she felt she had almost lost her friend in that time, the two of them when they were young were sweethearts, they still loved each other but not as a couple, they were especially close, Anne Marie was a fan of books and Raul's son, who was called Fidel, Every time he saw his "aunt" Anne for him it was like a relief, because his father was always more about understanding biology, something that curiously Anne Marie's daughter had also adopted from her "uncle" because she collected the money she received to recharge her mobile phone and watch videos on youtube about cells and things that had to do with that. It was quite a legacy, a legacy that could have been lost.
Christian asked Raul what had stopped him when he made that decision and why he didn't seek them out, that answer to everyone's surprise was super simple
Every one of you is dead, I'm dead too, how can a dead person help a living person to carry on with their life? It is impossible. I was helped by someone who is alive, my son.
They were raw words coming out of his mouth but just because they were hard to digest didn't mean they were without reason. Christian apologised to Raul and Anne Marie, he felt especially guilty, Antonio and Agustin told him there was no reason to apologise, it was everyone's fault, wasn't it?
In the past it was Christian who organised the meetings, he would go to everyone's work to let them know the time, the others sometimes didn't even see each other between weeks, although there were pairs of friends, Raul and Anne Marie, Antonio and Agustin, they got on well with each other, Christian didn't get on with anyone in the group in particular, His best friend's name was Edison, he was already 3 years away, he lived in New Zealand, he was not a teacher, he studied medicine for ten years to be able to go to New Zealand as a specialist traumatologist, Christian certainly felt more lonely than the others, selfishness drove him to stop promoting these meetings, He was not aware of the magnitude of these meetings, the selfishness that drove him also brought Raul to the brink of death, Anne Marie lived a constant restlessness and everyone's eyesight was blurred, however, he did not have time to think because Agustin and Antonio also began to cry, something that, in the 34 years that they have known each other, I had never seen them do, they confessed that they had thought of killing others to rob them, that they had planned to rob a neighbouring family, they could not bear the hunger in some days, 4 or 5 days without eating, how could you bear that? The pain was inhuman, you just felt like satiating it, this life had turned us into genuine animals in the war for survival. So much that we once pretended to be refined and elegant, now we were just like any barbarian who would only solve things with his reptilian brain.
Christian decided to come clean, it was not an opportune situation, everyone was crying, shaking and we could be seen from afar, people who were not at the windows when we arrived, it was the essence of that small town where we had lived all our lives deceived.
Once he understood all that, Christian blurted out what he had:
I could have prevented this, we could have prevented this, but I'm a little happy that none of what we thought happened," he said as the others wiped away tears, "everything is in order, everything is here, we are more than all this, no matter what cruel words we say to each other, we have been friends all our lives, that is impossible to change, I will cry as soon as I get home, you will, but we will continue, we will continue here day by day, because we are in this together. Today is a day of mourning, but as if we were wearing white. I love you, merry Christmas, we'll think about it next year.
That was the end of a conversation that shouldn't have ended like that, but that wouldn't end there either, it was only Christmas, a new year would come, they didn't say goodbye, they didn't hug, they didn't look each other in the eyes, they went in four different directions, Christian sat there, wondering if he had done the right thing, not knowing, he just looked for his pack of cigarettes of a brand with an unpronounceable name, took one out and lit it, thinking: Will we have the right to be happy? We'll find out next year.
- Ken Scamander