Читать книгу A Year Of Sex Fantasy Tales - Juan Salanova - Страница 9

Carlos kept looking at Mediterranean Sea to relax his impulses, with the resemblance of existential nausea slipping down his lips. He was the only human being along the promenade of his small coastal town. Sunset had arrived, bringing to the trees of the walk successive waves of strong cold winds, which forced life inside the homes. Only some hasty car was passing through the street, getting lost in the distance. Then, silence.

The waves came to break on the shore, creating the relaxing daily rhythm of repeated noises over and over again. Each heartbeat of the sea was an impulse to his existential reflection.

- What am I doing here? - he said quietly.

He thought again of his mother, with whom he lived at the age of 36. She was a divorced teacher who had been laid out on a couch on retirement. There she was accompanied by an insistent talk of never-ending gossip programs that kept her in absolute silence and without provoking any reaction. Carlos had long since given up about accompanying her as a TV viewer. After fifteen minutes of listening to the gossip of empty characters, who were increasingly enriched by their insults and social nonsense, Carlos' sensitive state of mind was decaying to the point of absolute hatred for humanity. After his usual withdrawal to his room, which repeated day after day, he finally decided not to watch TV with his mother anymore. Their family life consisted of sharing an elegant but cold flat, where the voices from TV for the mother and the chill out music for the child coincided, although in separate rooms. Dinnertime, when they were both at home, was just over ten minutes to eat their usual pizza and ice cream accompanied by a couple of glasses of wine per head.

But this time his mother had gone on her extensive retirement holiday, usually to the Amalfi coast, and he was free at home. Free but bored, almost depressed. Something was missing in his life. Someone with whom he could feel his heart beating in parallel. He went through the many faces with which he had lived in one way or another. Although a few still shocked him, he thought he probably didn't know what love was yet.

He had plenty of company, they entertained him, almost adored him, but his short-lived companions considered him to be just a throwaway guy, and his feeling of loneliness remained and grew as he was spending his life in their provincial city.

For them, Carlos was a juicy topic of conversation when he appeared in the supermarket to buy his unsophisticated food. At 5.30 a.m. the coffee chat around a table at the middle-aged clients' bar usually focused on the body quality of their collective gigolo, before being given a lift to the family home and not seen each other until the next day.

- Look at him. He looks gourgeous in his jacket!

- This week, he's probably been at the gym.

- What shoulders, my god!

- What's going on? Who are you talking about? - the least adventurous woman in extra-marital matters said.

- Don't you see his athlete's body?

- That boy?

- His name is Carlos and he's very eager to give us pleasure, isn't he?

- Yes, of course he does," said his regular clients, amidst size-indicating hand movements, whispers and laughs.

- Haven’t you tried him?

- Me? I don't do that. I have a husband.

- You're stupid. Are you going to compare a farm chicken to a pheasant?

- I'm happy with him.

- You've got used to easy life, lack of emotion. Try this once and then we'll talk. If you decide to date him, I have his phone number. And it's only fifty euros, whole service.

- Please don't talk like that. It bothers me.

- You've been a nerd ever since we were in high school. You're missing out. I used to think so too. But I fell. And I don't regret it. What I was missing....!

And so Wednesday afternoons went by. After the incisive glances of the women on each centimetre of his anatomy, calls and datings, demanded with total discretion, would arrive, which were progressively increasing in frequency, so that these joyful married women of La Ciotat could continue to combine their extra-marital sexual encounters with work and family. Carlos had always admired his clients' ability to make his role of satisfaction go completely unnoticed in such a small town.

Carlos was spending his life between the daily punishment of bodybuilding in the gym and the hourly sex he so successfully offered at homes. But now, in front of the sea, next to no one, he was thinking about the meaning of what he was doing, what it might take, what the future might keep for him.

He felt the weariness of a dark day. His daily activity of punishing his muscles with the sophisticated torture machines that filled the space of gym, as job training for his job, became increasingly uninteresting to him. He'd been thinking about retiring for a while. While doing weights or cycling or walking on various machines he had already remembered his whole life from start to finish.

- Will I always be like this? Will I end up an old man with an impressive physique and an empty head?

He knew he had to keep his body resources stable and even improve them, as his clients detected any excess or defect that had arisen and did not hesitate to let him know. And he kept on and on running without moving, pushing machines for nothing over and over again, swimming laps and laps in the pool to always returning to the starting point. Action without imagination, without illusion, without satisfaction.

But now he had another reason to stay there day after day. It had been 7 years since his partner died, the most intense social experience of his life.

He stared into the void as he heard Mina's distant voice and laughter come from the past. And he remembered. He recalled that they met one night of partying as they listened to the emotional strength of Manu Chao's voice, covering an August night sky. The following week, Charles was already installed in the young woman's flat in the poorest part of Paris. For him it was an unexpected well-being to enjoy a beautiful young woman with ebony skin and stunning eyes. But it wasn't an exclusive love. Unwittingly, he became just another pimp in the neighbourhood, conscientiously organizing and tidying the flat and the food for both of them, based on the abundant income that his wife's unparalleled beauty brought to the home. These were years of shared happiness, of travels and adventures, of sensations of deep pleasure for two new young adults, until the final drift began in Amsterdam.

While at Noord's campsite, where they arrived on a free ferry, made available by the city to the inhabitants of the neighbourhood, Mina began to dive into a nearby tent when drug was offered to her. Carlos couldn't stand the sight of the needles and that was his first big disagreement.

Heroin became part of their lives, in their completely conflicting attitudes. His life got worse when they returned to Paris. Mina under the effects of drugs began to accept unlimited clients, the relationship with Carlos, until then so well shared with her clients, was reduced to moments of fall into a drowsiness from which he could not get out but at the cost of more drugs. Finally Mina disappeared, moved to her pusher’s flat, where income flourished with the sale of drugs and sex. Carlos, for whom his life at the time had no other meaning than the attraction for Mina, went to rescue her to the nerve centre of Parisian drugs, to get nothing more than a great beating from the thugs who were the protectors of the business, from which he had to take time to recover. Sometimes he still felt the itching, perhaps psychological, in his humerus that was broken at the time.

He fled from there to take refuge in his city, to live off his mother's income, and that would remain his life for a long time, until that very day.

He'd never see Mina alive again. He knew that she had died and he went to the funeral to hear all the contempt that had come from the heart of her parents who had already lost their loved one a long time ago, pouring all the guilt on him and cursing the passive young man.

Since then he stopped approaching women and it was a long time before he allowed his body to be used again for the first time for money. It was one night at his mother's birthday party. A friend of hers practically raped him while they were both in a state of complete intoxication. It was not much more than satisfaction of the desire retained for too long with hardly any awareness of the other person, but it was the starting point of Carlos' life from then on. On the bedside table it was fifty euros notes. The unexpected companion of that night had set his fixed rate for the coming years.

He remembered his pre-teen years, harassed for being the teacher's son. With a daily frequency he was bullied a collectively by the future workers and husbands of La Ciotat, they told him all the insults they knew at their age, they beat him and stole his books and money. The situation became so stressful that he ended up hating school as a whole, hating it for the rest of his life, and refusing to go to class. A change of school meant a relative calm but learning and Carlos were completely divorced. Now when he made love with all his passion to so many women in the city, his greatest pleasure was to dream that it was a domination struggle that paid back to the horned husbands all the aggressiveness that had been inflicted on him in their student days.

Everything changed in his strenuous routine of gymnastics and sexual services when one day Aphrodite appeared. She stood next to him on the gym running machine and did not seem to notice his presence. But the sky opened up for Carlos. It was an improved Mina, more mature, with healthier features, a faint natural smile that shone while she was running, with a body to dream about, just his size.

Over the next few days and months, Carlos was punctually present at the date he had not been invited, and his eyes could no longer turn away from her. Unfortunately, on the second day of such platonic admiration, he was called to the gym office. The young woman had complained that Carlos was keeping his eyes on her and she had begged them to tell him that she was a married Muslim woman and that she did not want to be disturbed or even approached. Carlos was forced to forget his youthful illusion, but although he tried, he couldn't do it. He was in love. He continued to coincide whenever he could with the young woman's fixed schedule and sneaking in with eager looks when she didn't look there.

One Tuesday Aphrodite didn't show up. Carlos realised it immediately. The time that he now spent between levers and weights, which before used to pass quickly, became eternal. The automatic movements, which he used to make at the same time as her without any effort, were once again a boring and annoying workload. He looked at his growing muscles day by day, and knew that he had reached a level that was highly appealing for his clients, although he no longer had any illusions.

When three weeks passed without seeing his idealized queen, he knew that her absence was more than just a disease, his initial assumption. He asked the gym managers but no one knew anything. His interest in continuing to build more muscles in his body declined so much that he thought about quitting. Without her presence there, exercise was an ordeal.

When he least expected to solve the mystery, he saw her. She was dressed all in black. Yes, it was her. Was she in mourning?

A restrained feeling, the need to be close to her prompted him to speak.

-You're Aphrodite, right? What happened to you? Why don't you come to the gym?

She looked at him with a frightened face, seemed to be trying to protect herself from such unhealthy company by covering her face and quickly crossed the street without even looking at him.

- What happened to you? Are you going back to the gym?

Aphrodite's hasty steps were lost on the opposite sidewalk, without even turning her head.

- Poor. That's too bad. Becoming such a young widow - he heard a former client beside him said, accompanying her granddaughter home after school.

- Widowed? I didn't know anything. What happened to the husband?

- Those damn cars, getting bigger, getting faster....

- An accident?

- Yes, a tree collision. He was charred to death. It's a good thing he was alone. A tragedy. And she doesn't have anyone here anymore, poor girl.

- No, I didn't know that.

- How about you? Are you still working on the same thing?

- What? Yeah, I'm still the same as always.

- See if I can call you one of these days. I have a malfunction in the bathroom. I need a plumber.

- Well, all right.

Carlos also crossed the street without having hardly listened to the job offer that the old woman offered him.

- Widow? Is she not going to the gym anymore? -he said to himself.

Now more alone than ever, with the relaxing sea breeze blowing in pleasant humidity, he was thinking about her. What was the point of staying there with nothing for a 36-year-old man? It was throbbing for a widowed woman who didn't even want to see him while time passed, without any other illusion, without a project. The beloved face and sweaty eyes that occupied the whole of the firmament appeared again before him. He couldn't stand the image and came home.

As always, sitting on his mother's plaid sofa, beer, pizza and a bit of television.

The phone rang. It was his fuckbudy Beatrice, the only single girl in the city with whom he had found a certain sexual and personal affinity. She was the confidant of his problems and of his current troubled state, although until then she had had little success in convincing him to find an honest job.

- Hey, Carlos! Can you talk?

- Hi Beatrice. Yeah, I can always do it with you. How’s work?

- That's what I wanted to talk to you about. Don't you know who came to the travel agency today?

- Tell me.

- Your platonic love.

- Aphrodite? Is she going to travel?

- She' s leaving.

- What do you mean, she' s leaving? Where?

- She bought me a plane ticket for a flight in a week's time. Marseille-Asmara. She told me that she's fixed everything and that she's leaving with her family. Do you know that her husband was killed in an accident?

- Yeah, I know. Asmara? Where's that?

- The capital of Eritrea. Near the Red Sea.

To Carlos, this geographic information still didn't tell him anything, owing to his illiteracy caused by the years of school bullying. But then the idea came to him.

- Beatrice, are you there?

- Sure. What's the matter with you?

- I want another ticket. Next to hers.

- What do you say?

- Yes, I want you to book the ticket and order 2. I'll pay you for the other one.

- Are you going to Eritrea? Are you crazy?

- I don't have anything here. I'm into crazy things.

- You don't know what you're doing. You look like a kid. I’m certainly not going to that country.

- You take out that extra ticket, okay? Or shall I stop by?

- Come tomorrow. I haven't blocked the other one yet because I needed her passport.

- What time is Aphrodite going to the agency?

- She told me about 11 o'clock.

- I'll be there at 9:00, okay? I'll bring my passport and money. And if you want, I invite you for lunch and a nap.

- Very generous you are. Too bad you don't even want to travel to the Costa Brava with me.

- Another time I’ll do, I promise. Now I have to get everything ready, as in a week's time I'm going to the jungle.

- Jungle? Before you come take a good look at the city and the country you want to visit. Round trip ticket, right?

- Did she ask for it?

- No. I told you she' s leaving. Just one way.

- Just one way for me too.

- Unbelievable. No, return ticket for you.

After a few days of collection and closing, Charles, with his four-wheeled suitcase, was at Marseille airport trying to find his way to the chosen flight. It was low season for tourism so it did not find too many crowds.

Once in the queue waiting for his turn, half hidden, he noticed the arrival of his beloved love, also alone, which in no way imagined that she was going to coincide with her gym mate from La Ciotat.

In the waiting room while waiting to get on the plane, their eyes met, but none of them said anything. Carlos looked like a city disregarder and sat far away from her, apparently involved in the reading of a travel guide about Ethiopia and Eritrea. Aphrodite put on some headphones and closed her eyes. Music, inaudible to others, seemed to be relaxing her.

At their arrival at their seats of a narrow plane of two seats per row, the young woman became impatient.

- But did you get the seat next to me?

- Yes. I'm on 22 aisle. And you?

- 22 window.

- Well, we'll travel together. It's all right.

Aphrodite didn't seem to think this was such a coincidence.

- Tourist trip, right? - said Carlos in a disinterested tone.

- No, family matters.

- I'm going to Eritrea as a tourist.

- Alone? In this day and season?

- Yes, in low season there are very good prices - he continued with the same tone.

Aphrodite put her headphones back on and listened to the music, which the young man perceived faintly. And so the first part of the journey went on. When Aphrodite fell asleep, Charles was able to contemplate all her beauty closer than ever. Her black, long, strong, shiny hair. Her face strong, smooth, with curves carved with chisel. Her body strong, healthy, emanating uncontained femininity. Strolling through her silhouette was the greatest joy for a young man who had possessed too many bodies and loved too few. Aphrodite was a magnet to him from which he could no longer be separated. Unable to resist, he leaned over her and kissed her hair chastely, skipping the interpersonal distance. But unfortunately that was when the young lady woke up.

- Stewardess! Stewardess!

- Sorry, I wasn't doing anything. I only kissed your hair because... because I love you.

- Stewardess! Come on, please!

- What's going on? - said the stewardess in alarm, coming quickly.

- Give me another seat! I don't want to be with this man. He has had intentions.

- Another seat? OK, it's no problem. We have plenty of empty seats.

- Excuse me, stewardess. It was nothing. I got carried away by my impulses. We are friends.

- What do you mean, friends? I don't know him!

- You're lying, Aphrodite. We've known each other for a long time.

- Calm down, please. If the lady doesn't want to be with you, I have to find another place for her.

- If anyone has to change, it will be me," said Carlos, saddened.

Feeling the looks of the whole passage behind him, Carlos walked towards the tail of the plane occupying one of the last seats. He was again, as in his last days of school, the last in line.

During the second part of the trip, Carlos, in one of the last seats of the plane, embarrassed and having nothing else to do, devoted himself to recognizing the territory he was heading to and which seemed to be very different from the African jungle that appeared in his children's stories... What would happen when he landed at the airport?

- I will not be separated from her! - he said forcefully within himself, as he thought of the fateful moment of coming ashore. She'd probably have her family waiting for her. He would be left alone in an unknown country of incomprehensible languages, Arabic and Tigrinya, as he had read in the travel guide, with whose reading he was trying to make his journey easier and help him reduce his blood pressure.

And the fateful moment of getting off the plane came. He should have stayed at a safe distance from the woman he loved, but when they took out the luggage, he followed her.

- Aphrodite, please give me a chance. I tried to forget you, but I can't. I came here for you. I'd die if I couldn't see you anymore.

- Please, leave me alone. I'm a widow, I'm going back to my homeland. That's all over now.

- I just want to see you again, I want to be with you, don't leave me alone.

- Hail Aphrodite! - was heard near them.

- Cugino Paolo. Chè allegria! Come sono felice di rivederti!

- Anch'io, cara cugina. Ma chi è il ragazzo?

- Un francese che viaggia nello stesso volo.

- Niente di te?

- No, figurati.

- Excuse me, sir. Can I travel with you? I'm going to the same place as Aphrodite. I'll pay for your trip.

- Cosa?

The cousin looked at Aphrodite. The other man knew her name. There was something between them.

- Non accettare. Andiamo subito. Dopo ti spiego. I'm sorry. You can't come, Frenchman. Happy holidays, - said the young lady, closing the door of the van behind her.

Carlos ran to the other side and almost begged the driver to take him with them.

- Mi dispiace - was the answer.

The vehicle started leaving a considerable cloud of dust behind its wheels. Carlos stood still, sunk in tragedy. In the distance he could still see the sign for the van. Pizzeria Sorbillo.

- Are they Italian? he said to himself, and thought he had to keep reading the guide.

When he approached his suitcase, it was missing. From then on, he was going to travel light of luggage. Fortunately, he had his backpack, wallet and guide with him. He approached the information desk and was told in an understandable francoitaliano about the direction of the pizzeria and how to get there by bus.

That night Carlos had an excellent pizza dinner at Pizzeria Sorbillo, a fairly successful approach to the original house in Naples, under the perplexed gaze of Aphrodite's cousin. Luckily the place also offered rooms and Carlos did not hesitate to stay there. He knew his beloved goddess would be around.

In a spartan room, with a mattress on the floor as the only luxury, Carlos spent a night worried about his African future. To avoid this, he continued to read the Eritrean guide and saw its interesting places, its currency, its languages and its history. Then he understood why his host spoke Italian. Eritrea had been a former Italian colony in Mussolini's time.

The next day, at breakfast, he began a conversation with his cousin.

- Are you Italian?

- Io? No, ci parlo italiano perché mio padre fu soldato con gli italiani tanto tempo fa. Capisci? Mio padre... soldato.

- Okay, I understand. Your father soldier.

- Tu resti qui per quanto tempo? Quanti giorni, capisci?

- I don't know - he said with a shrug - I want to see your cousin.

- Sei veramente innamorato di Afrodita? Amore?

- Yes. I want to live with her. Forever - said the young man, having his index fingers joined together to expand the possibilities of being understood.

- Parlerò con lei. Vieni qui a mezzogiorno. Capisci? Alle dodici qui - he explained with the help of his fingers.

After a long walk to the Catholic Cathedral, also a legacy of the Italians, at 11:30 Carlos was already sitting in the pizzeria, nervously awaiting the arrival of his beloved. He imagined that this would be the final day in his pretensions to fall in love with Aphrodite.

At twelve o'clock, the woman of his dreams came in. She wasn't going alone. She was accompanied by two old men she imagined would be familiar. They sat at another table and seemed not to notice his presence. They were served their food and began to eat, as they discussed quietly, while they glanced briefly at the lonely young man. Even from a distance, though he did not understand what they were talking about, he felt an evident disagreement between Aphrodite and the two men. When they finished eating, the conversation seemed to fade away. At first glance it seemed that the old man sitting in front of the young woman had said the last word.

After Carlos had already eaten two pizzas to spend time and when he felt his hopes were waning, the waiter approached his table.

- Lei è invitato alla tavola dei signori di là. Mi accompagna, per piacere?

The gestures left no room for doubt. He was asking him to go to Aphrodite's table.

After the introductions, he was invited to sit on the free seat between Aphrodite and the more assertive old man, his father. A conversation followed between the father and the young man, which Aphrodite would translate without being allowed to participate.

- I've heard that you are after my daughter. Is this true?

- Yes, I'm completely in love with her. I'm sure of it. I want to live with her.

- But she doesn't want to go back to Europe anymore.

- We can live here. I don't care about that. I just want to know if she wants me. I know Aphrodite now is a widow. We met at a gym in La Ciotat. But I still don't know if she likes me, I mean, if she likes me as a husband.

He told us that your profession, whatever it is because he did not want to describe it to us, is not very honest.

- My life in France is over. I want to start a new life here. I am strong. I can drive. I can work in anything.

- We are Eritrean Catholics and as such we believe that in order for the Most High to forgive the sin of heretics, they must suffer a penance. Would you be willing to do the penance assigned to you by our priest?

- I will do whatever you tell me to win your daughter's love, - he said, staring at her for a long time without blinking at all, though he only got a glimpse of her between surprised and intimidated.

The second old man, the young woman's uncle, who had hitherto remained silent, introduced himself.

- I am the patriarch of Asmara and uncle of Aphrodite. In order for you to aspire to the love of our daughter in faith, you must repent of your sins, fulfil your penance, and be baptized as a new man. Then we can bless your marriage, so that God may give you children to make you happy until the end of your days.

- What am I to do? said Carlos, almost interrupting him.

- If you really love Aphrodite you must go to the land of Aphar to do your penance. You'll work first. Then the shaman will give you the sacred drink so that you can wait in full purity for the flower to come out of the tree of the dragon's blood. You will remain there until his flowers come out, bathing in its blood. Bring Aphrodite a bunch of dragon flowers and then you'll be worthy of belonging to our tribe. Are you willing to face the challenge?

- Yes. Whenever you want.

- To the caravan!

They all got up quietly. The patriarch took Carlos by the hand and they began to walk, followed by Aphrodite and her father. The street was full of voices incomprehensible to a foreigner. They were buyng and selling, greeted and laughed, and as they approached their destination, the energy in the volume of the voices increased. At the end they arrived at a large stockyard where about twenty camels remained tied up, who were being saddled and their supplies checked, as they faced a long journey. It was the salt caravan. This time, a young French urbanite without any knowledge of beasts of burden or of the language spoken by the natives would be part of the expedition.

A few hours later the caravan left. For a few days Carlos would be a camel driver for the first time in his life. At his farewell he could take nothing but a long look of interest from Aphrodite, whose image would follow him everywhere during his period of penance.

Sun, wind and dust, days with eternal hours of mechanical leg movements following those of the camel drivers and camels that preceded him, absolute concentration on the absurdity he had gotten himself into, unmoving contemplation of the incomprehensible conversations of his companions while they ate something and drank another cup of hot tea at night,... and again a bolting sun, unbearable, because they were in the hottest place on the planet, the desert of Danakil.

In a few days Carlos got burnt, peeled, burnt again but survived covered with aloe gel, changing his clothes for the same chilaba and turban that the others wore. On the way they only found another caravan travelling in the opposite direction, with the camels loaded with large plates of fossil salt. Among the caravaners they exchanged joyful conversations, laughter and believed that they used the word French several times in their conversations.

Carlos had thought that the end of the journey would be an idyllic oasis of the Thousand and One Nights, but to his disappointment the caravan stopped in a ghost town. Everything around him was part of a lunar landscape dominated by silence and emptiness. They were already in another country, in Dallol, a former mining town from which Europeans had extracted salt and potash in the past. From that past, only the remains of buildings, machinery and railway parts remained in a desert with no tracks.

Over the next few days, all the men worked hard to get as many plates as possible out of a salt lake that had run out of water. Levers, pickaxes, chisels and hammers, everything was good to get salt out of that infernal depression. There were nights when the pain and fatigue kept him awake. Then he lay looking at the brightest moon he had ever seen, while he heard the melancholic songs of the Afar men. Then he saw floating before his eyes the last look of the woman who had changed his life, the day of farewell.

The night before returning with their load, there was a party and everyone danced and sang around a fire made of wood that they had carried there. They even offered him wine, which he hadn't tasted in a while. When they least expected it, a man with black skin, black clothes, and huge eyes staring at them appeared.

- Mr Jean, Mr. Jean - they all said at once, and in a second silence reigned.

The newcomer approached Carlos and for his relief spoke perfect French.

- Are you the Frenchman?

- Yes, me. My name is Carlos.

- I am Monsieur Jean, your shaman. I come from Sudan. I must congratulate you, you have passed your first test: heat, wind, loneliness and work. Tomorrow the caravan will leave but you are staying with me. When the dragon's blood tree blooms, it will be the moment when you can meet your beloved again.

When the first rays of sunshine illuminated the dry land, the caravan returned to its destination with its load of salt, but Monsieur Jean and Carlos took a different path, mounted on small donkeys, which seemed impossible for them to carry a person with them, but theu did. Soon the smell was noticeable. It was a pungent, acidic smell, greatly annoying to the sense of smell, but Monsieur Jean, who preceded him by pointing the way, did not seem to appreciate it.

- What is this smell? Carlos asked.

- You'll soon see - was the laconic answer.

Indeed, as soon as they reached the top of the hill, Carlos could not believe what he was seeing. It was hell on earth. Bubbling lakes, yellow, red, green, red waters, with 1 acidity, where there was no life, because in them sulphuric acid reigned, preventing any cellular life. An apocalyptic yet real vision.

- What is this? - he asked him

- The entrance to hell. You were going there, but I'll save you. Your sincere love has saved you.

Enduring as he could the unbearable smell, covering his nose, coughing, he followed the shaman to the top of a mountain with trees. He recognized them. They were like the ancient dragon tree of Icod de los Vinos in the Canary Islands, where one of his French clients had taken him for a sentimental getaway as his friend Beatriz called those weekends of intense sex in a hotel.

Following a known itinerary, they finally reached the largest tree in the xerophilous forest.

- Strip naked, completely - ordered Monsieur Jean.

Charles stripped off his light desert clothes and, following the shaman's instructions, stood by the tree. Monsieur Jean pulled out a machete and slashed the tree trunk over Carlos' head. He closed his eyes, frightened, to feel immediately that his body was covered in a red milky liquid.

- May the blood of the dragon deliver you from your filthiness - said the shaman, raising a small cross made of eagle's toenails.

- May the dragon's blood cover you with goodness and human love - he continued, touching a rattle made from a small dried pumpkin.

- May the blood of the dragon open your heart to be reborn in a new reality - he said, bringing a wine pumpkin to his lips.

Carlos, after so many days of unfulfilled thirst, drank the concoction until he emptied the pumpkin. And he immediately began to feel the effects of ayahuasca.

One day passed, one night passed, the next day came and Carlos was still out of this world. His body was a realm of sweating and chills, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, peeing and diarrhea. His mind, completely dissociated from his red-tinted flesh that rolled on the ground, ascended over the trees, strongly inspired the vapours of earthly hell, and ascended with them into a sky far from the planet, overshadowed by distance. He felt the people with whom he had been related and he detected his fear of loneliness, his desire to find meaning in life, he contemplated his trembling, ecstatic, sunken eyes, anesthetized eyes and even dead eyes, to see on the other side the happy eyes of children for whom time is not a concept, eyes of joy and happiness, of acceptance, of interest and belonging. He saw himself as a child with his mother holding his hand, but the mother sank into a sewer without any complaint, as if the sinking had been part of his life forever. The boy became young and then the mouths appeared. He felt the pain of mouths ripping out his eyes, and though they came back in his eye sockets, sadder, more insecure, they ripped them out again and again, until he saw nothing. He heard only the laughter of the thugs who had found such pleasure in his blindness. But there came out a lightning sun in the shape of Aphrodite’z head, and the laughter was fulminated by the rays of lightning coming out of her eyes. From his mouth emerged a fountain of hot urine that was poured over the bodies, destroying them, turned into dust that slowly fell into Dallol's sulphur hell, blowing up millions of multicoloured fireworks that filled the night, making it day. Then he saw himself rising from the depths of the sulphur, in the form of a great transparent serpent with his human head ascending to the aphrodisiac sun, through the mouth of the Sun-woman. That's where it all ended up. A soft, warm snow covered the stars, covered the acidic lakes, covered his eyelids that covered his whole body... And then he knew the meaning of the word peace.

When Carlos became conscious, recognizing the environment in which he was, Monsieur Jean was quietly having tea.

And so many days passed. Charles became immersed in the very broad culture that emanated from the wise shaman, and in turn he told him about his European life, which the master did not know.

When summer came, the dracaena ombet flourished. Bunches of white flowers opened up and beautified such a harsh environment, making people love life of a planet that produces eternal life, season after season.

- The day has come, Carlos. Let's go back to the salt mine.

The journey back in search of his beloved was a constant obsession for him. He had to keep the inflorescence in water so that the sun would not wither its beauty and would devalue the gift so hard to win for her.

He came back excited about his story with a happy ending, but it couldn't be. A bomb on the ground destroyed his illusion, blowing up the camel, the pitcher and the flower. Assaulted by a guerrilla group, in a few minutes the catastrophe flooded the desert and silence saw the lamentations through the smoke. Camel drivers killed, camels and cargo stolen. When the police arrived, they could only count the dead. Carlos wasn't there. His track was gone.

Two years later, Aphrodite was among her usual group of French tourists, telling them the history of her country while accompanying them on the monumental circuit of Asmara. It was a very hot day, so at noon they stopped at an open-air bar under a plastic roof that provided shade and partially mitigated the heat. On national television, the news was on. A flashing Latest News sign appeared on the screen, and then a hooded man chained a bearded white prisoner to the camera. It was Carlos.

- Read - said the hooded man urgently.

Carlos obeyed immediately.

- The African Revolutionary Movement, in the face of France's imperialist attack on our Muslim brothers and sisters, and after refusing to withdraw its crusaders from the Middle East despite successive threats that such an expansionist policy would cause the suffering of its population, and refusing to negotiate the release of its people by an exchange of prisoners, has tried and sentenced to death the French citizen Carlos, born in La Ciotat, as a representative of the attacking power. May Allah take him to His bosom.

A tense silence followed the statement. The hooded man put a curved knife in front of the camera and grabbed the hostage by the hair.

- Aphrodite, I love you! - was heard rumbling before the desperate gaze of the guide, expanding the image in a few hours to the whole world.

The blood spurted out under a head where only the image of Aphrodite bathed in purifying dragon blood, attached to his own, remained momentarily.

The following week, the front page theme of the beheading, present in all media, provoked a national crowd in the cemetery of La Ciotat. The heartbroken mother, overwhelmed by the media event, accompanied by Aphrodite in all black, could do little more than insistently repeat:

- Thank you, thank you very much.

And life continued on the planet, as the contradictions of an unjust system made standard are repeated and even extended.