Hippie

“Do you think people are noticing something?”

“No, nothing, beyond the bright smile across your face. It’s not a drug that was made to call others’ attention.”

Marie, meanwhile, had noticed something: her companion was nervous. She didn’t sense this from the tone of Karla’s voice—she didn’t need to hear her say anything, but could attribute it to the “vibration” coming from her. She’d always hated the word “vibration,” she didn’t believe in such things—but at that moment she could see they were real.

“Why did we leave the temple we were in?”

Karla shot her a strange look.

“I know we weren’t in any temple, it’s just a figure of speech. I know my name, your name, our final destination, the city we’re in—Istanbul—but everything looks so different, as though…”

It took her a few seconds as she searched for words.

“…as though we’d walked through a door and left the entire known world behind, including our worries, our despairs, our doubts. Life seems simpler and at the same time richer, happier. I’m free.”

Karla began to relax a bit.

“I can see colors I’ve never seen before, the sky looks alive, the clouds are forming shapes I can’t understand yet, but I’m certain they’re scrawling messages for me, to guide me from this point on. I’m at peace with myself and I don’t view the world from the outside: I am the world. I carry with me the wisdom of those who’ve come before me and left their mark in my genes. I am my dreams.”

They passed in front of a café, identical to the hundred others in that area. Marie continued murmuring “incredible!” and Karla asked her to stop because this time they really were about to enter a place relatively forbidden to them—only men went there.

“They know we’re tourists and I hope they don’t do anything, like kick us out. But, please, behave yourself.”

And that’s exactly what happened. They walked in and chose a corner table. Everyone looked at them in surprise, took a few minutes to realize the two girls weren’t familiar with local customs, and went back to their conversations. Karla ordered a mint tea with lots of sugar—legend had it that sugar helped to diminish hallucinations.

But Marie was having wild hallucinations. She spoke about bright auras around people, claimed she could manipulate time and had in fact just spoken with the ghost of a Christian who’d died in battle there, in the exact spot where the café stood. The Christian soldier had found absolute peace in heaven, and was pleased at having been able to communicate again with someone on Earth. He was about to ask her to give a message to his mother, but when he understood that centuries had passed since his death—Marie had informed him—he gave up and thanked her, then vanished immediately.

Marie drank the tea as though for the first time in her life. She wanted to show with gestures and sighs how delicious it was, but Karla again asked her to control herself. Once more, Marie felt the “vibration” surrounding her companion, whose aura now revealed several radiant holes. Was this a bad sign? No. It looked as if the holes were old wounds that were now rapidly scarring over. She tried to calm her down—that she could do, starting a conversation in the middle of her trance.

“Do you have a thing for the Brazilian guy?”

Karla didn’t answer. One of her light-filled holes seemed to shrink a bit, and Marie changed the subject.

“Who invented this stuff? And why don’t they hand it out for free to everyone seeking to be one with the invisible, seeing how it’s absolutely essential to changing our perception of the world?”

Karla told her that LSD had been discovered by chance, in the most unexpected place in the world: Switzerland.

“Switzerland? Where they only know about banks, watches, cows, and chocolate?”

“And laboratories,” Karla added. LSD was originally discovered to cure some disease whose name she couldn’t remember at the moment. Until its synthesizer—or inventor, as we’d say—decided, years later, to try a bit of the product that was already making millions for pharmaceutical companies around the world. He ingested a tiny amount and decided to ride home on his bike (the country was in the midst of a war, and even in a neutral Switzerland of chocolates, watches, and cows, gasoline was rationed), when he noticed everything looked different.

Karla noticed a change in Marie. She needed to get on with her story.

“Well then, this Swiss man—you’re probably asking how I know this whole story, but the truth is there was a long article on this recently in a magazine I read at the library—noticed that he couldn’t mount his bike…He asked one of his assistants to take him home, but then he thought perhaps it was better he go to a hospital instead; he must be having a heart attack. Then suddenly, and I’m using his words, or close to them, I can’t remember them exactly: ‘I began seeing colors I’d never seen, shapes I’d never noticed which wouldn’t disappear even after I closed my eyes. It was like standing before a giant kaleidoscope opening and closing in circles and spirals, bursting into colorful fountains, flowing as though rivers of joy.’

“Are you paying attention?”

“More or less. I’m not sure I’m taking it all in, there’s a lot of information: Switzerland, bicycles, the war, a kaleidoscope—could you simplify a bit?”

Red flag. Karla ordered more tea.

“Try to concentrate. Look at me and listen to what I’m telling you. Concentrate. This awful feeling will be gone soon. I need to make a confession: I only gave you half the dose I used to take when I used LSD.”

That seemed to relieve Marie. The waiter brought the tea Karla had ordered. She made her companion drink it, paid the bill, and they went out once again into the cold air.

“And what about the Swiss man?”

It was a good sign that Marie remembered where they’d left off. Karla asked herself if she’d be able to buy a sedative if the situation got worse—if the gates of hell replaced the gates of heaven.