This text is fictional, any resemblance to people or facts is purely coincidental.
Nobody really knows what a man is capable of. He was 19 years old, lived alone in a cubicle with a bathroom, and rent took up almost half of what he earned as a stock replenisher in a supermarket. The rest he paid for a Letters degree, precariously pursued at night, leaving him with little or no money. His bus expenses were saved by selling bus passes and meal vouchers. A little that multiplied, seemingly insignificant exchanges were deposited into a savings account. An urban, poor, and rustic life.
Daylight saving time, it was still dark. He washed his face, rubbing it hard. He ate some crackers and swallowed a sip of water. He didn't feel poor. It was him, Paulo Cesar, waking up another day, putting on the uniform left on the lowered lid stove, wrapping himself in a worn-out denim jacket, and opening his room door, letting out a warm breath that seemed to wake up the 12-apartment condominium, all larger than his.
He was at his post at seven-thirty, and at eight o'clock when he swiped the card that marked the start of his workday, he had already emptied two carts of canned goods. This was his job. To pull the cart from the stockroom to the shelves and there position one by one the canned goods, bags, cold cuts, fruits, and vegetables. It had been like this for over two years, but it seemed much longer. It seemed like a lifetime.
At noon, his lunch began; he just walked to a corner of the company. He was always hungry, but not always in the mood to eat. There was something that prevented him from enjoying himself. He knew what it was, but he didn't allow himself to think about it. He stayed in the cafeteria just long enough to eat, then he took some bread rolls, put them in his bag, these would be his dinner, and from there he walked to the square three streets away, where he waited for the time to return.
Eight hours of work a day, divided by two hours of lunch, so ten hours of his day were spent under the strong orange of the walls. He left with quick steps, he couldn't miss the next bus, and he always arrived at college at nineteen hundred. Classes were scheduled to start at eighteen forty-five, but Paulo Cesar's reality was not much different from the others there; after nineteen hundred, the professor would also enter the room.
The classes were very different from those in big universities; the professor, already known from the last four semesters and certainly to be in the remaining four, was there. They had already said that no professor would be competent in the subjects of Linguistics, Grammar, Brazilian Literature, Portuguese Literature. But here, anything was possible, if not to achieve, then to do. During the break, he ate the bread rolls kept in his bag, and at twenty-two hundred, he walked to the bus stop to wait for the bus.
The college was further from his home than the supermarket. But at that hour, the bus flew through the empty streets and bus stops. Then he arrived in less time than it took to go. At twenty-three forty, he was already bathed and in bed, ready to dream.
