The next paradise

Walking at night, a stone got into my shoe. I stopped, stretched out my arm, and leaned on the lamppost while I took the stone out. Before, in other times, I would have ignored that piece of rock and kept walking, even if it was very uncomfortable and painful. I would have endured it with my head held high, as if nothing were happening. Until the next corner; once there, I would have disappeared from sight and ended up sitting on the ground, almost crying with relief at being able to take that stone out of my shoe.

After emptying my shoe, I looked up; I wanted to know where the cold touch of the lamppost came from. There was an LED. Down below, in the shadows, there I was, with no stones in my shoes, in the middle of the beam of light on that winter night. At the same time, in the lit area, there I was making shadows. From lamppost to lamppost. Making shadows in lit places.

Is there any paradise around here that’s open at this hour? a man asked from the other side of the street.

He did not look bad, nor dangerous, nor painful; he gave me no reason to be suspicious, so I let that stranger come closer.

In fact, I thought, I’m going to help him, I’m going to tell him that I, precisely, am going to the paradise near the river. I could show him the way, I could even walk there with him.

Yes, I replied, there’s one open next to the river. And I pointed the way with my outstretched arm.

The man smiled, pleased to have been helped. I told him he was a lucky man because there was one near the river, right there. And the man laughed, we both laughed, as if we had been friends all our lives. Then I told him that I was, in fact, on my way to paradise, to that very same paradise.

The man stopped dead. No way, one has to go to paradise alone, he said, what is the point of being saved if it isn’t done unanimously.

My legs trembled when he said that. There, beneath the lampposts, he said that. And he started walking in the opposite direction from the river. Away from my outstretched arm.