TE19 Iberian Adventure

Patrícia Portela

in the battle against your absence. In the daytime I get by on coffee, stimulants, and loud music; at night, on tranquillisers and painkillers, and endless channel-hopping. But no drug is as effective as sleep. The most sophisticated world that virtual reality is capable of constructing is no substitute for a good nightmare; and when I wake from mine, I’m screaming at the top of my voice, but no sound is coming out. No one’s holding me back or stopping me from joining you, but I can’t save you and I can’t call for help. I wake up when you vanish beneath the surface of the water. When you called to tell me the results of your brain scan, I froze. Your electromagnetic brain activity, together with the newest medical research, gave you sixmonths to live. Our phone call lasted three minutes. The last time I saw you I set your kitchen on fire while trying to impress you with a new recipe I’d invented. You didn’t seem to mind. You actually enjoyed the chaos I brought back into your life, which was so full of blood tests, brain scans, alternative medicine, therapy sessions, and those inevitable bouts of vomiting with which you’d end your day, locked in the bathroom. I caught a train back home in less than 24 hours. We went out to a restaurant, knowing we wouldn’t find anything you could eat. We strolled through the city, stopping at every bookshop; we took tram number 6 all the way to the end and followed the signs to the Fluntern Cemetery. I talked and talked the whole way, hoping to postpone the end of our walk as much as possible. I told you howamazing it is that the twomost important theories in physics completelycontradict eachother, and howthe infinitesimal 56