Victor Alberto Bueno Marichal: Blue Opal

Blue Opal

I’m on the less western edge of the West Bridge, which connects the south and north of that part of the city.
Well, I’m not really there, just imagine it, please.
It’s (I think) 1970 and August. At each corner of the bridge, there’s a two-meter-high sandstone lion statue, sitting with its right front paw raised, I don’t know if it’s greeting or threatening.
Below, cars and motorcycles circulate in both directions (east-west and west-east) (bicycles are prohibited). I’m with a university friend. I like to cross the bridge with her. I always wait for her, leaning against the pedestal of the northwest lion. We live in nearby buildings, but we don’t consider ourselves neighbors. I’ve seen her in the hallways of the Humanities Faculty. I’ve also seen her with her military boyfriend. We only speak to each other on the way to classes, especially when we cross the bridge together. That’s where I met her. She was leaning against the railing almost in the center of the bridge, looking down at the cars passing by, and I jokingly said, “Did you drop something?”
She looked at me as if annoyed that I’d interrupted what she was doing, the violet in her irises flashing. That was the first time I’d ever seen her squint.
--It’s all so unreal--she shouted over the noise.
--Yeah, it looks like a river to me too, except it’s made of concrete and there’s no water, just cars. Please don’t jump.
--I don’t know, maybe it’s the noise, the danger, the fumes from the cars, the speed, the height. I don’t know, but I feel strange here. Maybe it’s because very few people walk around here, or because I’m afraid of people, or because everyone is in a hurry, I don’t know.
I’d been feeling weird for almost a year all over the stupid city, for the same reasons, but I hadn’t been able to list them all that well.
In the toilets of that time, the water swirled and formed a whirlpool through which the excrement flowed. I didn’t want to confess to her that that bridge attracted me like a whirlpool in a toilet, because she’d surely think badly of me.
I came to the city from an almost rural town where you could ride a bike and there were rivers where you could swim and fish, not like the pipe that carried garbage eastward between the two channels of the highway.
I didn’t fall in love, but a special place opened in my brain to record whatever she said or did.
--It could also be that it’s too real and that I’m not able to assimilate so much reality-- she said almost to herself.
I was impressed. I studied engineering, she thought like an artist or intellectual, my way of think was technical, I distrusted science, art, and the humanities more than politics, and I didn’t get involved in it. Her profile didn’t fit on any of my favorite porn magazines (the web hadn’t been invented yet), on the Pérez-Chang objective scale she didn’t reach 3.5 (PC < 3.5), and anyway she had a boyfriend, and worse, a military man.
The truth is that it seems that the neurons I dedicated to her have never lacked whatever it is they need to function well, because I still remember my conversations with her very well.
Now I am on the bridge, but today is May 8, 2035.
I haven’t heard from the friend I told you about in over fifty years. She must have died a long time ago.
The bridge is half battered, but it’s still holding up.
On each lion, there’s a large sign that announces clearly and without shame or fear: HAPPINESS NOW.
They closed the bridge to vehicles, allowing only pedestrians and the occasional bicycle.
I don’t know if I’ve resigned myself or adapted to living here. The truth is that I haven’t died yet, nor none have killed me.
A girl with a PC > 4.5, leaning on the pedestal of a stone lion, gave me a pill.
--Take it, old man-- she told me --so that You’ll be happy.
Blue Opal. I know it well. I like it. I take it from time to time. Their slogan is: “It’s not addictive, but it makes you want to take it all the time.”
I let the pill dissolve slowly, I slowly suck on it. Its effects come on quickly.
In the center of the bridge, a group of young people are jumping with ropes tied to their ankles. The idea is to touch the roofs of cars with their fingers, they tell me.
The electric pulley operator is sweating. He needs someone to relieve him. “I also have the right to jump” he tells me. I agree, but I don’t know how to operate the pulley.
--It’s very easy. When someone jumps, the button turns green after the sensors no longer sense any weight. Then you press it, the pulley spins, and the rope reels back in.
-And the person who jumped?--I ask.
--You always have to wait for them to let go. Anyway, the motor can’t pull the jumpers up; it only has enough power to reel in the rope.
I lean over the edge of the fence and see the corpses.
I tell him he’s causing accidents and that the police will be here soon to stop him from blocking traffic.
He gives me two handfuls of blue opals and says:
--old man, you need a strong dose. Hit it hard, don’t be shy. Almost no one uses the rope anyway.
Three blue opals, four coils of rope, more than eighty years of living here, and the whole stupid city still seems unreal to me. Thank goodness I’ve known for sixty years that this is because there’s so much reality here that it can’t be assimilated without chemical aid.
So when a policeman tells me to lie face down and put my hands behind my head, I do as he says, but I have blue opals between my fingers, because I’m sure he needs them and that he too has the right to happiness.
I’ve seen him dispatch back to the void several young men waiting for their turn to jump into the air. He’s clearly trying to earn merit, trying to impress his teammates. His weapon is the latest model and almost brand new. I’ve come this far. I don’t know if I can finish recording this.

Li Tao Po
VABM 28/Apr/2025
https://riistas.wordpress.com/2025/04/28/blue-opal/
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