EPISODE XIV
“Come on, let´s address the matter straightforwardly. You may wonder if Balou is and odd guy: He is quite more than that.”
Factual error: Mistake. Incorrect discernment or false judgment. Disagreement between our ideas and those of other´s.
Nugaró, Colombia, January 24th, 2018
It was a rainy morning when the room Balou stayed at became free. There had been a collision between a truck and a teenager riding a motorcycle (she wore no helmet by the way), due to road surface slippery conditions. The crash occurred just in front of the E.S.P.I. Less worried about finding the responsible for the accident than to save the teenager´s life, the truck driver came into the picture to assist the wounded. He took her to the Public Hospital straight away. Everything happened way too fast. At the time of impact Gloria stood at the front door bidding farewell to the leaving guest. Her mind had gone blank, so the broom she was tightly grabbing fell off her hands hitting the floor. Any pedestrian passing by could have taken her as a witch in progress of losing her gift. Because of the accident Gloria had forgotten the excellent morning mood she was in and also that the Big Time had come. She gestured toward the motorcycle but her locomotion rebelled against walking further. Motionless, Gloria remembered the night she had met her boyfriend Iván, at a fancy Disco in Popayán. There were similarities in terms of stillness between today´s and when she saw Iván at the drink bar. “Why are certain experiences subject to repetition? –Gloria made a complaint to life rare view mirror. The Petrol Station attendants lent a hand to the truck driver apart from supplying the stretcher, where the wounded was placed so to be carried to the hospital. Gloria cried over layers of stillness: hers and that of the teenager´s. Only when she regained consciousness, she realized that the Big Time had come. She called it Day D, because it was supposed to break the monotony of her daily routine.
She had two missed incoming calls on her cell phone, to which she paid no attention. What she was about to do had priority over the rest.
During the last five days Gloria had taken refuge in suspense, yet her allies, that´s to say the hidden microphones and surveillance cameras, pleaded for her intervention. She used that precious time to create the character of Balou in her mind, to characterise him. In order to build his personality profile, she should remember everything he had said to her; then only she would listen to and watch the outcome of her espionage. The mix between the profile obtained and the records found on the monitoring devices would provide her with enough information to hand Alba a precise report on Balou´s stay at the Hotel.
At check-out time The E.S.P.I. gives to the guests the opportunity to share impressions about their stays, by writing something down on the visitor´s book; what everybody never fail to mention is a brief comment on the cylindrical seals with which Gloria decorates the rooms: yet none of the guests knew that she had stolen them from The Louvre Museum of Paris in two thousand two. Topmost level of white-gloved burglary. On these seals, crafted in the fourth century B.C., the Sumerians carved out images, imprinted drawings as well as intriguing uplifted tales, similar in content to the Order of Knowledge of St. Thomas. In short, they possessed encrypted information ideal for the trained eye to be deciphered, ideal for inattentive eyes to be missed. Sometimes the seals displayed a set of divine heated combats, expressed the anger of the Gods or showed the underlying reasons of wars. Under no circumstances an archaeologist would ever establish a connection between the Sumerian Seals and the origin of espionage, but Gloria ignored their opinions to hypothesize the existence of such a weird link. Although she side-stepped the test for Carbon 14 to support her thesis, she affirmed that the Sumerian Art, specifically the cylindrical seals, could hand over encrypted information to whomever was lucid enough to receive it, to those living beings in a state of permanent readiness. With all that, the real pioneers of espionage were the Acadians, who managed to decode the symbology of the Cylindrical Seals in the course of successive invasions to Sumerian lands. Two thousand and five hundred years before the Technological revolution took place, the brave Acadians systematically spied the Sumerians, deciphering the messages the seals harboured, thereby collecting key data that ultimately helped the greedy Acadians to beat the crafty Sumerians at the famous battle of Uruk. In tribute to this combat each room of the E.S.P.I. had, as an ornament, a Sumerian cylindrical seal close to the monitoring devices. No one would be in condition to connect the Sumerian decoration with the surreptitious activity performed over the intimacy of the guests. That´s the good thing with symbols: they hand on an elusive truth. Balou was the only one not to have written something about the Sumerian Cylindrical Seals: “Yeah, Right! How can a man haunted by infatuation note anything different from his beloved?” –Gloria forgave him; there was a chance, though, of Balou being unfamiliar with ancient civilisations.
After carefully watching videos and long recordings tapes, Gloria phoned Alba.
- Hi, my friend, good afternoon, how have you been? I´m calling you with regards to promises made to you that must be kept; so well, I´m only keeping my word.
- How so? What are you talking about? –Alba inquired.
Alba discerned a frequency of anxiety in her close friend´s voice, but she was unable to guess its causes. Alba had just gotten back from school; her mind was still focussed on professional pending issues.
- Don´t you remember what have I promised you? –Gloria tried to make Alba come to her senses.
- Actually not –Alba admitted.
- Let´s see. We spoke on the phone a while after Balou checked in at the hotel, I then told you I was going to gather some information about him, remember? Well, the day has come, I have a bunch of information.
- Oh yes. You are right. But how did you get it, uh?
- My goodness, Alba! It´s a civil right to find out who my guests are. While they use the hotel´s facilities, special snitches tell me what my guests do inside. What´s wrong with that? This is the way the equation is kept in balance. May I go now into details about the Argentinian or not?
- Snitches prying into the life of your guests? Are you serious, Gloria? Oh my God! are you not afraid to get caught by the Police? –said Alba, unconvinced. What if you were found doing so, you are submitted to harsh interrogations and they end up coming down to visit me?
The good-natured soul of Alba touched Gloria´s heart. Her observance to the law made of Alba a lovable person, stripped of malignity, which sometimes borders on innocence. Alba was foreign to all the jiggery-pokery in which Gloria was involved with the Police of Nugaró. When she started running the Hotel fifteen years ago, Gloria facilitated contacts with the top law-enforcing local leaders, which ensured her the installation of surveillance devices in each room with no risk of ever being bothered by unexpected police housebreakings, seizures, unnecessary investigations along with all kind of inconveniences that annoying questionings might bring about.
- You, Alba, should remain tranquil and pray. Come on, let´s address the matter straightforwardly. You may wonder if Balou is an odd guy: he is quite more than that. Before going to sleep and next morning he seemed to perform some strange gymnastics while reciting the Mantra OM five times at night and the same at dawn, with a voice from beyond the grave. He also said to himself that the Mantra OM is to be recited by the time of false dawn. I had no fucking idea of the meaning of false dawn, nor the underlying reasons to be doing those acrobatics, but after a thorough internet search I got the answers: they are Tibetan rites, asanas, postures conceived to attain eternal youth. Let´s say that this crazy man is an adept of a certain Yoga that comes from the Himalayas, which is based on rhythmic breathing that ultimately result in slowing down the aging process. The effects produced on the chakras (centres of energy) present in the human body are such that causes them to recover the velocity they used to have when the adept was young. I´m afraid that´s about all.
- So? –Alba interrupted.
- But it´s obvious, my dear friend. Don´t you see the true colours?
- What am I supposed to catch, Gloria? I cannot grasp the obvious, sorry.
- Now you see…Balou is in love with your daughter, he is thirty years older than her. What is obvious to everyone is that Balou goes to a lot of efforts to look younger before the eyes of Valentina, he strives for living up to her glimmering youth. Not only Valentina is a vain lady in relation to herself, the same applies for the people that surrounds her. Balou must have discovered this trait of her personality and could have reacted accordingly. Don´t you think it´s a sign of love supreme?
- What crazy ideas you have, Gloria? Your reasoning is pure nonsense –Alba retorted.
- Life is nonsense –Gloria agreed.
Alba consented on keeping her mouth shut regarding Balou. Given that she had sworn it on the bible, her word ought to be kept. Neither the oath was violated nor the order disobeyed by letting out point-blank to Gloria the term nonsense. Despite of the fact that Alba had publicly agreed on sending Balou off Valentina´s life, in private she deplored the expulsion. It seemed to her that Balou always acted in acceleration, but in reality, his hot-heated behaviour entailed soulful intentions, a spiritual pursuit; she thought eccentricity never excludes honesty. Alba was sure that Balou was inoffensive to Valentina. That she was sympathetic to Balou was an unshared secret. Especially she was not going to give herself away by telling it to Gloria, whose interest in gossip exceeds average.
- Indeed, my friend, life is utter nonsense –repeated Alba.
- What it strikes me is that monitoring records give evidence that Balou did not sleep at all –Gloria went on saying-. He was in bed most of the time, his body rested but his mind did not. He got up several times to go to the toilets and when so happened, the Tibetan rites were repeated once more. I don´t mean him to be a sleepwalker, I just say that Balou stayed still seated with his eyes wide-open in such a position that he reminded me of an embalmed corpse. He wrote many things on a diary, which was always by his side. What kind of things he wrote on it, Alba, it´s beyond the scope of my espionage, but I guess to whom are they addressed. If you think my access to the privacy of guests is unrestricted, then you are mistaken.
- Balou embalmed? Was there a spy inside the wardrobe perhaps? If not, how did you get so much information about him?
- That´s irrelevant for the time being. I got it, it´s done.
Nobody spoke for an instant. Gloria remained silent in order to see how strong an impression she had made upon Alba, with respect to her findings.
- Anything else?
- Yes. The man wept. He lay down on the bed and cried like a child after being scolded by his parents. He never ceased to repeat, mantralike: “I was left with no choice but to do it. Oh, Crystal Heart, I had to. I never meant to hurt you”.
- In the name of God, Gloria, we both know that Balou did Valentina no harm, no nasty things fell upon her so far –Alba became excited all of a sudden-. I am not questioning the outlandish characteristic of the present, of course not, the point is that I don´t believe it´s a present. There is something else behind the scenes. Through the present Balou intended to send a message to Valentina, but in the end, he was only able to give her a massage. Gratefulness in a ludicrous high-scale. The mere effort to understand this man, Gloria, is doomed to failure. I wouldn´t like to be in his shoes. He´s gone mad in some way and still have to bring his emotions back to normal.
- He may be or he may be not -replied Gloria-. What it´s true is that there are so many crazy chicks out in the streets just existing, neglected pedestrians walking down dusty roads doing no harm.
- I have to hung up, Gloria, René is coming shortly and I don´t want to be seen talking with you
Inasmuch as she was a staunch defender of materialism, Gloria denied the spirit, any topic that transcends “matter” puts her face-to-face to what she had always rejected. She hated Conny Mendez shallow metaphysics, Master Saint Germain´s mental disorder, Sanat Kumara and daffy Theosophists. To Gloria metaphysics was synonym of charlatanism, the reason of living for unemployed, jobless people, a realm where its main speakers offer speeches full of hope looking for stupid believers in personal growth to fall in the trap; the experts on metaphysics give enticing pseudo-scientific explanations which eventually crash against their lack of substance hence, impossible to be implemented in practise.
However, The E.S.P.I. shows Balou challenging the domain of matter: he doesn´t sleep. “If you live in the material world, then you must sleep, in case not you are fucked up for contravening the natural laws”. Yes, maybe Alba is right –Gloria reckoned- and Balou is completely crazy. The owner of the E.S.P.I. doubted, she doubted as any other sceptical materialistic person would. The fact remains that her sudden doubts raised the urge to explore the hidden dimensions of the Argentinian. She needed to expose them into the open. If the thrilling love Balou holds for Valentina gets to rejuvenate his body by the shake of his spirit, there should be a connection between the Tibetan rites, madness and the lack of sleep. How should the sequence be? firstly the Tibetan rites shocks the spirit; thereupon, Balou succumbs to insanity, he rejuvenates and only then he can afford to get no sleep. Gloria felt compelled to meet Alba to share her inner thoughts, and after drinking together a couple of glasses of brandy they would head for the church to finally give in and accept Alba´s lifelong belief: that we are essentially spirit, whereas matter is simply the packaging of our essence. Alba ascertained that a spirit willing to visit the Earth must have a lining around it, otherwise its subtleness would fall prey to pollution, to the holes in the ozone layer, it would rabble to human wickedness, curses and to the seduction of politicians. By following this line of reasoning –Gloria giggled with a touch of sadness- it goes without saying that the Soul, which is a spirit incarnated, so long as It wishes to spend a lifetime on earth, It will definitely be in need of a body as a protective layer.
Tired of having so many elucubrations going round her head, Gloria dashed away from the reception, turned right and walked into her room: she did need to get some sleep.
