One summer morning three years later, the already aged Filipino man came to the front of the building and, perching himself against his outstretched palm and leaning against the building, he began to wait. To those who asked, he answered, “I’m waiting for someone. But who that is, I do not know.” And claiming that he had performed bloodless surgery with his bare hands, he became known as nothing more than one of the country’s thousands of forgers and crooks. He waited for two years, never once taking his hand away from the wall, and without aging a day.
Later, on another summer morning, an Indian at least as old as the Filipino man, with a skull shrunken to the size of a fist hanging off his belt, came to the building. He came from the Andes. As protection against the revenge of the souls of those he’d killed, he shrunk their heads and carried them on his person. He was an Indian who lived deep in the green Amazon, an Indian of the Jivaro tribe.
It must have been that he already knew what he was going to do, because there wasn’t any hesitation when he came within four meters of the Filipino man’s hand, his palm against the building. At just the spot where he pressed with his two hands, the wall broke in and disappeared inside the building, the piece sliding to the right. And such it was that the building’s door was opened, just like the mouth of an enormous cave, never to be closed again. The two old men stepped into the corridor that appeared before them, and when they arrived in the room at the end, the building whispered their purpose into their ears.
“Wait!” it said. “Wait here. They will come to you.”
“Who?” asked the Filipino man.
“He who has found his life’s meaning. Those who have found the thing to which they will dedicate their lives. They will come. You will take out their heart and put that thing in its place. And then you’ll throw the heart away.”
“But,” protested the Indian, “how can someone live without a heart?”
“You’ll see!” said the building.
“And what if no one comes?” asked the Filipino man. “Who would be so dedicated to something they’d be willing to forgo their own hearts?”
“That, too, you will see!” said the building.
“But what about those who never find their life’s meaning?” asked the Indian. “What will happen to them?”
“As for them, they will rot whilst they still live, and so will that piece of flesh in their chests. And they will continue, but they will not be truly alive.”
The Filipino man had the last question: “But why now? Who knows how many people have dedicated their lives to something before now. Why has this happened now of all times?”
The building spoke for the last time: “Because a boy named DERDA has been born!”
“Who?” the Indian was going to ask, but it was as if an invisible lasso had caught him, and he was dragged outside the building.
THE FIRST
The elderly Indian ran down the slope and followed the dirt path disappearing into the forest. Slipping through the walls of trees, he arrived at a village to find people crowded around a motionless child lying on the ground, struggling to draw breath. Two ends of a piece of paper stuck out from the top and bottom of his clenched fist. The Indian, requesting the assistance of the onlookers, carried the child to the narrow room in the white building. The Filipino man pried the child’s fist open and took the paper. Then, tearing his heart out, he put the paper in the empty cavity in his chest. The first thing in the white building to be inserted in the place of the first ripped-out heart was one American dollar bill. It was the crumpled tip the child had gotten from a tourist a few hours before. The moment the Filipino child had seen the banknote in the palm of his hand was the moment he found the meaning of his life: MONEY.
The villagers who had come to watch saw that the child was healed, and two elderly among them dropped to their knees, prostrating themselves before the miracle child. And then the Indian told them that whoever had dedicated their earthly lives to something would become known to themselves, one by one. In time, they’d teach others the way, and thus the so-called FINDERS would form an army of thousands.
All over the world, the millions of people who had found the meaning of their lives were transported to the white building where their hearts were ripped out and thrown into the trash.
Some time later, the World Health Organization made an offer to store the hearts to use for critical transplants. But the building answered in no uncertain terms: throw away the hearts!
THE LAST
Derda’s eyes and mind opened again when he came back to his cemetery house. The three men with the white aprons left him just where they’d found him, then left the house, closing the door behind them. His hand searched for the book on his chest but there was nothing there. He scrambled to his feet and went over the house with his eyes and his fingers. But somehow he couldn’t find Tutunamayanlar anywhere. Then all at once he stopped, and he started laughing, a strange hiccupping laughter. Why do I need it? he thought. If I lost it, what’s the worst that could happen? Anyway, I already read it.
From that day on Derda never searched for Tutunamayanlar again. And he never ever thought of the white building, which he remembered in fragments as if from a dream. In any event, on the very day Derda had been born, that building sprung up in the very spot where Derda had found it. And in any event, after Derda had gone in and come back out again, that building was swallowed anew by the moss-green hill. It sank back
