Ok, there must be a misunderstanding. I shouldn't be alarmed. These rooms are probably locked because otherwise, candidates would run through the corridors, share information... and the interviews wouldn't be sustainable. But then, why am I locked inside? Maybe he didn't notice, he should have remembered to prop the door open instead of closing it. I don't know, the fact is I can't move from here and have to wait for him.
I sit down again, a little perplexed, but confident that it was just a mistake. However, as I settle in, a small part of the table lights up: it looks like a sort of tablet embedded in the table itself. Words begin to appear on this screen: Relax, think, remember, repent... I read them, quite astonished. What could they mean?
Then the screen brightens more, and I see a video starting—oh my God, I must have pressed a button and turned on something I shouldn't have! The video, though, shows something absurd: me as a child. Still dressed in hunting attire, I'm crying on the bed in a kind of rebellion against God, saying He's not good to people or animals, that He forces us to do bad things.
But who could have filmed me at that moment? I don't even think there were video cameras or cell phones back then, I think to myself. So did I have microphones in my room? Or maybe...
Aha! That's it, I got it! I've read about these things: there are technologies that I didn't think existed yet, but which I have actually heard of, that allow you to connect memories from your head to a screen. So, projecting your thoughts through some kind of energy waves and displaying them.
Perhaps for some, these will be incomprehensible; maybe it's me who sees these images. Certainly, it's a beautifully innovative technology; it all seems real. But, if no one could have filmed the scene, it must be this way.
But my mind stops. Besides thinking about the technology, I find myself thinking about that day.
I remember... I was very angry, but I was also too young.
I was mad at my father, at my grandfather... they, however strange they were, however uninterested in me, were still my role models. And to me, they couldn't be bad. There had to be someone else bad.
And so, the stupidity of a child that small led me to say those words: I said that God is bad; that God makes you do bad things; that He is indifferent towards animals and people.
Of course, at the time, it all seemed logical. But hearing it now, from the outside, I think: that child is really stupid!
Yet, immediately after, I correct myself: I was a child, I didn't know what I was saying. God, to him, is not God, but is someone he can't quite identify, a way to give a face to blame.
I've reflected on it over the years. It's very easy to say "God" when you don't know who to accuse. He becomes the scapegoat for all evils. It's like when you file a lawsuit against persons unknown: you know something happened, you have no idea who was responsible, but you still open a case against nothing.
And God... is the perfect target. If you believe He is the creator, if you believe He is the one who gave life to humankind, if you believe He is omnipresent, then every problem, in some way, can be His fault.
Anyway, I was an idiot that day, but I was just a kid. It's understandable that I didn't know who to blame for my sadness.
The video turns off.
This thing is really cool! Now let's try something else: maybe Ugolína without clothes... let's see if she materializes.
No, it doesn't work that way at all. Maybe I don't decide which memory to see; maybe I'm being shown random things. The words reappear: Relax, think, remember, repent... damn, that's eerie! But here comes another video.
Ah, well, I remember this one well: it's me at 16 years old. I don't have the ponytail yet, my hair is neat, and I've just gotten my nose pierced. This must be two days after I ran away from home—as I told you, I ran away from my life as a marquis because I wanted to try, I wanted to make mistakes... but I thought it would all be easier.
I ran away with the pocket money I'd saved up from fake golf, and I had put aside a nice little sum.
So, first stop: finding someone to do my nose piercing. Then a tattoo artist. That's not easy at 16 either, because no one wants to do it for you. But if you're not picky about health standards, you can find one.
Finally, straight to the bar.
On the first evening, a waiter looks at me and asks if I'm 18. With a completely terrified face, I say yes and ask for a scotch—something I'd seen done in movies.
He bursts out laughing. It's clearly visible that I'm not 18 and, above all, that I have no idea what I'm ordering. However, he brings me something: a beer.
"I can pretend I forgot to ask for your ID for this one."
I drink it all in one go. I don't like the taste initially; it's bitter. But the effect... I like that. Having never drunk anything, with a simple beer, I feel light, euphoric.
I start singing, dancing, and talking to girls. I am the life of the party.
In my head.
In reality, the same bartender who gave me the beer picks me up a few hours later and sets me down outside the bar. I was the life of the party for five minutes, then I passed out.
But these are experiences too!
The next day, I wake up with a terrible headache. I must have slept on the side of the road—also because I didn't have a house.
I get up, check the pocket where I keep my money, and it's clearly empty now.
So, here I am: 16 years old, on the street, hungover, broke, and hungry.
The temptation to go home and apologize is enormous, but I resist and grit my teeth. We'll manage somehow. I speak in the plural because I'm looking for support, but in reality, I am completely alone and scared.
So begins a practice that I will carry forward as a habit over the years: I go into a supermarket and put what I need inside my jacket. I have a few euros left in my pocket, and I use them to buy some chewing gum. I go to the checkout with my jacket all puffy and only a pack of gum in my hand. I pass. Nothing beeps. The cashier, a woman in her sixties who is clearly waiting for her pension, stares into space until she passes things over the barcode reader. The only time she looks up is to ask if I want a bag, so she has no idea that I only took one pack of gum.
The bag costs practically as much as my groceries, and, moreover, the groceries would get lost inside it. But she has to ask the question, because in the morning she arrives to clock in, and in the evening she leaves to do the same: work is an interlude between two beeps.
She scans the gum, and I hand her the euro that will potentially allow me to eat for two days.
I got away with it!
I was so scared, but I made it—or so I think. At the supermarket exit, however, there is a guard. Of course, it doesn't look like he's conducting sophisticated investigations into the disappearance of a child kidnapped by a blind Russian... maybe he's angry about precisely that and is watching everything. He's probably a failed policeman. He went to school, they sent him away for being overweight, he couldn't do the exercises, he wasn't accurate with the gun, and his life was ruined. In the end, he found himself with a gun and a uniform, but working as a supermarket guard, and now he doesn't want to let anything slip by, especially a kid with a jacket clearly full of stuff.
"Excuse me, stop!" he says.
I try to say that I'm fat, that I haven't exercised in a while, but he orders me to open my jacket. When I do, of course, all my stolen goods fall out.
The guy then takes me to a private room in the back of the supermarket: there's no interrogation room, but near the bathrooms was a small room with a desk inside. There, he tells me he would call my parents since I'm a minor, and I beg him not to. I don't want to explain the whole story, I don't want to tell him I ran away from home two days ago and it's already a disaster here, but I plead with him not to call them. He, however, can't do anything else.
"Choose: either I call the police or your parents."
Now, I do a very quick calculation: if he calls the police, the police will call my parents. So, at this point, it's better to skip a step...
"Ok, call home."
As usual, my mother answers. My father is never home—I'll explain why later.
She has a heartbroken voice, a little disappointed and a little worried because she hadn't seen me for two days. But she says, "I'm coming."
I am locked in this small room with the guard at the entrance, very proud of having done his job and having caught a dangerous bandit. And for him, now, being the prison guard is a wonderful role-playing game.
For me, however, things are getting bad.
After half an hour, my mother arrives. You can tell from her face that she is very angry, but she hasn't seen me for two days, and the first thing she does is hug me. The fear of having lost her son was far greater than the anger.
I return the hug: she is my mom, and even though I ran away the other day, I can scarcely fault her—I haven't talked much about her, but she is a wonderful woman. The problem is the rest of the family.
Running away was a heartache. Leaving my mother even more so.
But the scenes with my father, my uncles, and my grandfather... sometimes I had the feeling of not belonging to them, of being different. Whereas with her... she and I are similar, even in the desire to escape. I think she wants to. She never told me what led her to bind herself to my father that way, to suffer everything she suffers every day, to turn a blind eye to everything she probably knows and that I, at 16, have just discovered.
Do you know what the limit was, the straw that broke the camel's back?
My father.