The Valkyries

world where anything was allowed, where the strong ruled over the weak. That man was there, crying, screaming for his mother, praying like a child, and saying that he had always been courageous—because he had believed in nothing.
    He turned, and said they should both look up and make the exchange. She did so. She had lost her man, her faith, and her hope. She had nothing else to lose.
    He placed his hand on the faucet, and slowly shut it down. Now they could die; God had forgiven them.
    The stream of water turned to droplets, and then there was complete silence. Soaked to the bone, they looked at each other. The dizziness, the black hole, the laughter, and the noises, all had disappeared.

Chapter 29
     
    H E WAS LYING IN A WOMAN’S LAP, CRYING. Her hand was caressing his head.
    “I made that pact,” he said tearfully.
    “No,” the woman answered. “It was a trade.”
    Paulo clutched the archangel medallion. Yes, there had been a trade—and the punishment was severe. Two days after that morning in 1974, they were imprisoned by the Brazilian political police and accused of subversion based on the Alternative Society. He was placed in a dark cell, similar to the black hole he had seen in his living room. He was threatened with death, and he gave in, but it was a trade. When he was released, he split up with his partner and was expelled from the world of music for a long time. No one would give him a job. But it was a trade.
    Other members of the group had not made the trade. They survived in the “black hole,” and regarded him as a coward. He lost his friends, his security, his desire to go on living. For years, he was afraid to go out into the street—the dizziness might return, the police could appear again. And, even worse, after his release from prison he never saw his girlfriend again. At times, he regretted the trade—it would have been better to have died than to have to live that way. But now it was too late to go back.
    “There was a pact,” Valhalla said. “What was it?”
    “I promised I would abandon my dreams.”
    For seven years, he paid the price for the trade. But God was generous, and allowed him to rebuild his life. The director of the recording studio, the same person he had dreamed about that May morning, gave him a job and became his only friend. He went back to composing, but every time his work brought some success, something wound up happening, and everything went down the drain.
    He remembered J’s words: People destroy what they love.
    “I always figured it was part of the bargain,” he said.
    “No,” Valhalla said. “God was severe, but you were more severe than he was.”
    “I promised that I would never grow again. I thought that I could no longer trust myself.”
    The Valkyrie held his head to her bare breasts.
    “Tell me about the dread,” she said. “The dread that I saw when we met at the luncheonette.”
    “The terror…” He didn’t know how to begin, because he felt he would sound absurd. “The terror doesn’t allow me to sleep at night, or rest during the day.”
    Now Chris understood her angel. She had to be here, hearing this, because he would never have told her…
    “…and now I have a wife that I love, I found J., I walked the holy Road to Santiago, I’ve written books. I’m being faithful to my dreams again, and that’s where the dread comes from. Because everything is going the way I would like it to, and I know that soon it will all be destroyed.” It was terrible to say that. He had never said it to anyone—not even himself. He knew that Chris was there, hearing it all. And he was ashamed.
    “That’s the way it was with the songs,” he said, forcing himself to go on. “That’s the way it’s been with everything I’ve done since then. Nothing has lasted more than two years.”
    He felt Valhalla’s hands removing the medallion from around his neck. He stood. He didn’t want her to light the lantern, because he lacked the courage to confront Chris.
    But Valhalla lit the lantern, and the three made their way out in silence.
    “We two are going out first, and you come along later,” Valhalla said to Paulo as they were reaching the end of the tunnel.
    Paulo was certain that, just as with his girlfriendof fourteen years earlier, Chris would never again trust him.
    “Today, I believe in what I’m doing,” he tried to say before the other two left. It sounded like a plea for forgiveness, like self-justification.
    No one answered.