This story I’m sharing here, for the first time ever, takes place in Buenos Aires, Argentina. My English is not the best, but is important you read it. I’m stating to suspect this may be happening all around the globe.
It was in the afternoon, while I was waiting for the bus. It had been my first day of work at the private clinic, I had met my colleagues and soon I would be assigned important tasks, so I had been told.
I was thinking about that when I hear a voice calling me, “Spare change, please?” I look down, and see a middle-aged man, shaking a little metal jar.
I had done well that day, it was only fair to share my fortune with a fellow man, so I reached for the largest bill I had. “Thank you very much doctor,” the man said. I felt flattered and smiled. I was still short of being able to wear the title, but I didn’t care.
At that moment I saw it. A whitish-colored fuzz was peeking out from under the sleeve of his coat, it didn’t look like something healthy. I had seen that somewhere before, but I couldn’t remember where.
The man guessed my thought, “It has no cure” he said, and then clarified that it was not contagious, not from person to person. I had never seen anything like that, I didn’t dare to ask more. But the man began to speak, as if he had already prepared his speech.
He told me that in the past he had a hardware store, when the city was smaller, and there was not so much movement in the street. Until a supermarket opened right across the street. It was the first time he saw one. It was very luxurious, financed with foreign capital.
Many neighbors were not happy, the clientele in bakeries, delicatessens and bazaars had dropped a lot. But it didn’t affect him, neither for better nor for worse.
His counter faced the supermarket’s front door, adorned with polished white tiles. And he watched it all day, every day, always the same. But one day he noticed something he hadn’t seen before, a small patch of white lichen that was slowly growing.
He assured me he never touched it, never even walked by it, but that didn’t matter. This was a special moss.
From those days on, things started to go wrong: the door of the store was stuck every other day, the cash register was constantly failing, a car stepped on a stone that flew and broke the window.
Anyone would say it was bad luck, but he knew it wasn’t, something was interfering in his life, slowly, like the fungus growing on the sidewalk across the street.
One day, when he opened the store, he noticed that the cash register had disappeared without a trace and without explanation. While waiting for the police, he looked at his arm, and there he found a tiny white lint that never went away.
As the stain grew he complained to the supermarket, but they ignored him. He wanted to join the neighborhood council, but they turned him down citing “concern about possible contagions.”
From then on the lichen spread to his entire business, screws and nails rusted and twisted; then to his house, his mattress turned to dust and furniture rotted, and finally to his car, which stopped running forever.
At that moment I remembered where I had seen the lichen, in the German-named private clinic where I just had had my first day, in a corner of the stainless steel, digitally controlled elevator.
“Your bus,” the man snapped me out of my reverie. I waved awkwardly as I indicated my destination to the driver. I leaned the transportation card on the reader and red letters appeared on the screen: “Card Rejected”. Without thinking, instinctively, I looked at my arm fearing to find a small white fuzz.