Hippie

3

Paulo and the man from Argentina had already discussed just about everything it was possible to discuss and now looked out on the flat terrain, but their minds were elsewhere—they both carried with them memories, names, curiosity, and above all a deep fear of what might happen when they reached the Dutch border, likely no further than twenty minutes away.

Paulo started to tuck his long hair inside his coat.

“You think you’re going to fool the guards like that?” the Argentinean asked him. “There’s nothing they haven’t seen, absolutely nothing.”

Paulo gave up. He asked his companion whether he wasn’t worried.

“Of course I am. Especially because I already have two Dutch stamps on my passport, so they start to think I’m coming a bit too often. And this can mean only one thing.”

Drug trafficking. But as far as Paulo knew, drugs were legal there.

“Of course not. They crack down hard on opioids. Same thing for cocaine. Of course, there’s no way for them to control LSD, all you have to do is dip the page of some book or a piece of cloth in the mixture and then cut it up and sell all the pieces. But everything they can detect can land you in prison.”

Paulo thought it better to stop their conversation there. He was dying to know whether his fellow traveler was carrying something, but simply knowing would make him an accomplice. He had been in prison once before, although he had been totally innocent—in a country with the same decal on the doors of every airport: BRAZIL: LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT.

When we try to dismiss negative thoughts, it only attracts more diabolic energy, and for Paulo, the simple act of remembering what had happened in 1968 not only set his heart racing but had him reliving in excruciating detail that night at a restaurant in Ponta Grossa, in Paraná—a state in Brazil known for issuing passports to blond and blue-eyed men and women.