Chance wanted them to meet again on August 4 while they were queuing to board the ferry that links Agaete with Santa Cruz de Tenerife, the same day they met forty-odd years ago during a party at La Rama when they were young, rebellious and university students. He, then a communist militant, is today a successful businessman, promoter of shopping centers, tourist complexes and everything that smacks of easy business. He is happily married with two children, one works in a financial company in London and the other is a translator in Brussels. He was linked to corruption cases, but was never investigated. She, a compulsive reader, had to drop out of Philosophy due to the precarious family economy and now works in a public library where she advises high school students on books by Galdós, Machado or Rulfo. She is divorced, lives in a humble apartment, has a son with a precarious job and continues to be committed to social movements with the same enthusiasm as she was in her youth. Her ethics are still intact. He arrived in an impeccable high-end sedan and she in a second-hand utility. When they recognized each other, they remembered the past time. They remembered the clandestine meetings, the early morning when they went to paint graffiti (“Amnesty and freedom”) and ended up making love in the back seat of a dilapidated Citroen Dyane 6; They laughingly commented on the trip they made to Fidel’s Cuba as revolutionary tourists and the uncertainties they experienced the day the Caudillo died. After the transition, each one took their own path and they did not meet again until that August 4th. Suddenly, they kept a deathly silence in the midst of the bustle of the vehicles because they no longer had anything to say to each other and because they realized the long distance that separated them. She returned to her utility vehicle, he to her sedan and they headed to the bowels of the ferry that would take them to Tenerife. During the journey they did not return or did not want to meet. When the month of August is over they will return to their daily routine: he with his mind set on the next hit and she recommending to the students The Conquest of Happiness, by Bertrand Russell.
