EPISODE XIII
“It´s better for you to keep off my daughter´s life, do you hear me?”
Conservative Measures: A set of provisions whose aim is to cope with a tough situation, or to make way to a solution.
Nugaró, Colombia, January 22th, 2018
Without consulting his daughter, René issued some unquestionable directives concerning the flight plan he had envisioned: 1) To the security guards of the condominium where Valentina lived, he instructed them not to let, on any excuse whatsoever, Balou in. If necessary they were authorised to tell Balou that Valentina had moved away, elsewhere, so to make him clear she was no longer occupying the flat; 2) As of Gloria, René pledged her to inform him in case Balou ever reappear at the E.S.P.I.; 3) To Alba, to get no further involvement in “Balou´s Gate”, in view that she had done well enough so far; 4) To Valentina, to refuse any other present coming from Balou, besides the order of not see him again; 5) The irreversible decision to swap cell phones from that night forth; René would use hers and Valentina his.
René drove down to Cali, swiftly carried out the cell phones exchange and went back to Nugaró in a flash. He was already in a position to do espionage by means of mobile devices.
Nugaró, Colombia, January 23th, 2018
As a self-award for being one of the latest persons fallen prey to unemployment in Colombia, Balou indulged himself with a ride to Nugaró, to visit Valentina´s parents. He travelled at the end of the afternoon, reaching the town bus terminal at six. Valentina was not at home.
Unlike the first visit, Alba and René no longer smiled at him. Alba had loved the thai shoulder bag present, what is more, she started to use it to carry her stuff to the rural school where she was a professor of Natural Sciences. Nevertheless, there was no favourable environment for gratitude. Conditions were not yet in place for the recognition of acts of generosity. Balou stuck to the road map and asked them for explanations on the questioning he had gone through four days earlier; but an unsettling silence and giggles was the answer he got. Silence as a poetic license. Acutely aware of this reversed invective, the Argentinian writer stared at them, afterward playacted a glare and he finally sounded, while pointing to the floor with his index finger, a warning: “I may not come out of here alive, but you know what? I rather be dead in here than alive out there”. Alba gulped and flinched, swallowed by a wave of fear; meanwhile, René smirked at the messenger, yet evil lay hid beneath the surface of his skin. Assuming these as common and natural reactions, in view that no one said a word and in order to demonstrate he was a man of action, Balou took out of his backpack a book from Paulo Coelho, a Brazilian writer, which put on Alba´s hands.
- Look, Miss Alba, keep it, it´s for your daughter. The book gathers aphorisms and proverbs –Balou explained to her- which contain words of power. High-impact phrases with spiritual scope. I have outlined some of them applicable to Valentina´s way of life and others to mine. You may read it too, alone or in the company of Valentina. The day will come when you and your daughter put these teachings into practice, then you shall remember me. As pages flip through, the divine dimension will be unfolded thanks to what may be called “intersection of groups”, unified subliminal indications undoubtedly helpful to the seeker. No matter how short or long-distance Valentina and I might be separated by in the future, I will be happy if she can soak up the proverbial sense of this book. Underneath specific sentences, the initials of the name and surname of Valentina and mine were highlighted in orange. You should see how these refrains serve to strengthen your personal development, as they were conceived to be a wise fellow advisor of mankind for the sake of seeing life purposes achieved: Valentina´s, mine, yours and so on. Forasmuch as these phrases are timeless, it´s important for you to bear in mind that their meaning had already influenced people in the past ages. Anyhow they managed to linger on in every existing world.
Eager to quote an example, Balou recited to Alba one of his favourite’s sayings of the book: “All that it happens once, it may happen twice; but as long as it happens two times, it is no wonder that it will happen a third”.
Alba´s heart was thumping; her lips already wiped: She had always been comfortable with living within the limits of lineal time, but now she wondered how would it be like to live the way perpetual phrases did over the ages; how would it be like to live beyond time-constraints. What will it be the mystery held in those cryptic words of power? Mysterious preaching always led Alba to think of physical death. In the Sunday sermons at church, she had been taught to fear God above all earthly penances, she had been taught to be afraid of the hellish destiny reserved for sinners after passing away. If the expectation is to alleviate the fear of God –the priests succeed in bullying the filigrees into that fear- the believers ought to worship Him here and now, since there is no other chance for salvation but this unique life. She raised her eyes, peeked at Balou`s face so as to survey rapidly the galaxy to which he was assigned to live at, and well, she could only see an entranced shaman afflicted by a psychic pain, she could only see a man recruited to explore remote solar systems in the search of answers to millenary questions. His [in a way] insolent stare seemed quite familiar to Alba nonetheless. “I am lying to myself -she flinched-, this familiarity could not be true. I should be raving”. A menu of uncontrollable tickles sieged Valentina`s mother body: not even René in his full lovemaking performance would take her on to so a shivering paradise of sensations; the one-million-dollar question is, why the newly-heard aphorism of Paulo Coelho has given her goosebumps? René was right: Balou is more than dangerous.
Alba tried to get a word out, to add a personal comment on Coelho´s refrain, but it remained largely a weak attempt. Balou was now pointing at one of the sentences highlighted in orange and illustrated her its sense. He stood right there like a lesson-giver, a lecturer speaking aloud. Alba was seated on a chair close the entrance to the home. The turn the acting was taking seemed to drift toward a Philosophy advisory class scene, where René looked like a professor glaring at Coelho´s book as if it were a poisonous snake, whereas Alba and Balou looked like his most advanced students. Carrying the face of a caged lion, René walked Balou out of the house and accompanied him to the bus stop. This time they were not keeping pace as pairs would. At the edge of the warm night, assuming the gangster-like manners every tough man sooner or later acquires, René breathed Balou´s neck along the road.
- Listen to me carefully, Mister Balou –René shrieked, admonitory. I am the Community Manager of Valentina´s social networks. She is a minor, she is only seventeenth. She will attain the age of majority next February 15th. One month ago, I hired a hug to beat a perv who had been harassing my daughter via Facebook and Instagram for months. So, think twice before you decide to still hover around Valentina. Consider this speech a little bit harder than a warning, a soft way to deter you from visiting my daughter again.
- Seventeen years old? Shit! –screamed Balou astonishingly-. What am I doing here? Relax, René, I am going away, I leave this place. Me to get acquainted with a minor? –Balou reprobated himself again-, even if in less than a month Crystal Heart would be attaining the age of majority.
- It´s better for you to keep off my daughter’s life, do you hear me? –The father of Valentina climbed a step and threatened Balou.
- Can we be friends?
- Of course –René shrugged in response, turning around to resume the street back home.
Balou got on the bus deeply satisfied, as duty had been done, even if the ultimatum René had given him meant to back away from Crystal´s Heart life for ever. Kenny Rogers, a country music singer from the United States, contributed to the tragic moment with the urban poetry implicit on the hit “The Gambler”, when he sings: the secret to surviving is knowing what to throw away and knowing what to keep, cause every hand´s a winner and every hand´s a loser –Rogers poured onto the audience as often as he was given a chance-. At being part of society, the art of gambling is always in motion, one could be on the side that´s winning or losing, fifty percent of probabilities each –the Argentinian writer reckoned playfully-.
Today logic and odds are doing their job, the Loser Titan faces a loss because he was just withdrawn from the life of Valentina. The Loser Titan had known out of experience that the most precious good is anything one may wish but can clearly not have it. The fact that society renders allegiance to cumulation is something Balou was aware of but didn´t care about, as he tended to belittle what society considered of value. The urban area of Cali started to be seen ahead in the landscape in the instant an ecstatic Balou muttered in English the chorus of “The Gambler´s song”:
You've got to know
When to hold 'em
Know when to fold 'em
Know when to walk away
Know when to run
All of a sudden, the passengers were following what came out of the foreigner´s mouth, leaking through the air a consistently tuned murmur.
