Daydreaming
Hurin was a misfit boy, the son of hippies, who was bullied throughout his childhood. As an escape mechanism, he developed the habit of indulging in daydreams. In this story, you'll follow Hurin's adventures in adulthood, in which he believes he can relive the incarnations where he was Franz Mesmer and Mario Vargas Llosa, and experienced professional and amorous success.
Throughout his childhood, Hurin was a chubby, shy and awkward boy, the perfect victim of bullying from his classmates. From an early age he had become accustomed to daydreaming. He did this to escape the harsh reality of everyday life. His classmates, who preferred the world of video games and streaming series, made fun of this weird kid, who seemed to live on another planet. In his case, it wasn't just appearances... Whenever he closed his eyes, he teleported to another world, where he was the most popular boy in the class, deeply envied for his knowledge of Andean culture.
What boy would be interested in Andean culture? In his case, it wasn't really a question of interest, he had grown up listening to his parents recount their past adventures. Hurin's parents were hippies who had given up wandering the east coast of Peru and returned to their hometown when his paternal grandfather died and the money remittances stopped. They had exchanged a life of adventure on the Andean roads for a sad routine of working in the family business. However, they still spent their free time reminiscing about the adventures of their wandering phase: the trek to Machu Pichu, the candlelit conversations with a shaman in Aguas Calientes and the bus journeys alongside cholas dressed in their thousand skirts, who, clutching their chickens and bundles, never lost their dignity or their haughtiness.
The house where Hurin grew up was more like a museum of Mochica ceramics. The vases in the shape of tubers from which the limbs of men and beasts sprouted, decorated with scenes of sacrifice or creatures from the night and humid world, had been smuggled in in his parents' backpacks when they begrudgingly returned to Brazil and were used to decorate every corner of the house. The very choice of Hurin's name was a reference to this netherworld, inhabited by beings of the shadows, the dead and the ancestors. Dissatisfied with the routine of his new life, his parents conceived him as a bridge between two worlds: between the spiritual world and the real one, between an adventurous youth and the sad reality of adulthood.
Throughout his youth, Hurin had dreamed of becoming a doctor, but his dreams hadn't come true. Medicine was a competitive course and his grades hadn't been good enough for him to be admitted. In the end, he had to settle for being a mediocre physiotherapist, who only treated patients with medical insurance.
Between therapies with infrared light, ice and ultrasound, he discovered the importance of manipulating the energy field in healing physical illnesses. Over time, he decided to quit his job at the clinic and open his own alternative therapy practice. But since medical insurance didn't pay for this type of treatment, the number of patients wasn't enough to keep his clinic running at full capacity. As a result, Hurin had a lot of free time between patients.
From an early age, Hurin's mother had told him that “An empty mind is the devil's workshop”. However, instead of using his free time to perfect his profession or read a good book, whenever he ran out of patients, he would lock himself in his room and, to the sound of Andean shamanic music, beat a sheepskin drum to the beat of his heart. Little by little, his body became lighter and he saw scenes from his past lives flash before his eyes. With a gentle movement of his fingers to the right or left, he moved forward or backward in time according to the desire of the moment. Most days he chose to go back to the beginning of the 18th century, when he had incarnated as Franz Anton Mesmer.
Today was one of those days and he suddenly saw himself as an established doctor and citizen respected by his peers, known for his innovative therapy that used the laying on of hands to cure physical ailments. At this very moment, he was explaining to a committee of scientists from the Royal Society of Medicine in Paris and to the audience that people with special abilities like his emanated a force more powerful than that of magnets, called animal magnetism. This force could be used to redistribute the patient's magnetic fluid and restore their balance.
Standing next to his working instrument, a wooden vat filled with sand, iron filings and water, into which several metal rods were stuck, Mesmer watched his patient as she touched one of these rods with her fingertips. The woman sitting in front of him was Franziska Oesterlin, a beautiful and talented pianist who suffered from intermittent blindness and convulsions. While examining her face attentively, he began to rub his hands together before bringing them close to Franziska's head, where they hovered a few centimeters above her hair. After a few minutes, they began to move back and forth between her head and shoulders, without touching her. Before long, Franziska, feeling intoxicated by the warmth emanating from Doctor Mesmer's hands, reddened and fell prey to involuntary muscle spasms. With half-closed eyes, she turned her face towards the rays of sunlight coming through the skylight and then collapsed. Everyone watching the scene was struck by the beauty of the woman's face, which, when she lost consciousness, showed a look of ecstasy.
Franziska was quickly surrounded by nurses bringing ammonia salts to wake her up. A few minutes later, the audience was in raptures when, standing up, she declared that she was cured. Leaning back on the stretcher in his office, Hurin enjoyed the scene with his eyes closed, vibrating with satisfaction. Then he was roused from his reverie by a knock on the door. It was Maria, an elderly patient who was a regular visitor to his clinic. Despite numerous sessions in which he had used traditional techniques combined with the manipulation of magnetic fluids, she still showed no signs of improvement. Today she had come for an extra appointment because the pain in her back and the migraine were unbearable.
Hurin looked despondently at the lady in front of him, living proof of his failure. For a few moments, he wondered if this story about him being a reincarnation of Mesmer was true. After all, if Mesmerism worked, she would be healed by now. For the first time, he felt stripped of all his fantasies. He was just an ordinary man. Perhaps there were no occult forces to dominate, perhaps he wasn't the reincarnation of anyone. Just a man, just a broken dream. At that moment, the illusion finally shattered, leaving him face to face with the only truth that remained: magnetism, after all, only existed in the will of those who wanted to believe. And he was no longer sure of anything.
Just then Hurin heard the doorbell of his office ring. As he opened the door, a young woman introduced herself. It was Denise, Maria's niece, who smilingly asked him if her aunt's treatment was finished. Enraptured by the beauty and friendliness of the young woman standing in front of him, he didn't know what to say and just led her towards his aunt. As his patient rummaged through her purse looking for her credit card, everyone was surprised by the ringtone of her niece's cell phone: 'El condor passa', the best-known song in Andean culture, invaded every corner of the office and filled Hurin's heart with hope. Was this a sign from the universe that not all his beliefs were pure illusions?
After they had gone, Hurin threw himself back into his chair, lost in reverie, and automatically began to drag his fingers to the left, looking for the most recent incarnation in which he had been successful with women. Soon he saw himself as the well-known Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, handing his friends invitations to one of his weddings, where Denise's name was displayed in silver letters next to his name. After all, mesmerism might not be able to cure, but how nice it was to be loved by that beautiful woman and envied by everyone!
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
Voltar