2. The port of St Cristobal

A quiet place, isolated and private, with huge crowds and virtually no one, a place of happiness and tears, somewhere people could relax and have their nerves broken, a busy summer resort and a monastery. That was St Cristobal in brief. It was a place where people came and went, a place never-changing where everything was rarely the same, a place like any other place where unusual things happened. Just another place, with its strange people and its absolute lack of any genuinely intelligent life forms.

It is no coincidence that the place's most distinguished visitor ever, H. P. Kar, after spending 2 days in St. Cristobal defined "a happy moment" as something pre-designed by nature with the sole purpose of augmenting the negative effect of the unavoidable impending catastrophe that always tends to take place in the end. Perhaps not the most optimistic view ever, but one which fitted the place like a glove.

The boat, thinking about what was happening with the moon, had no choice but to believe that this time was not going to be different in any way. The same story, lived and re-lived, a different protagonist each time. This time, the story simply included the moon. And yet these thoughts and presentiments were not enough to prevent him from wanting to take things further. After all, he was famous for his inability to take even one single reasonable decision in his life. So, he resisted and he resisted and he resisted, the temptation to get closer to the moon. He fought and he fought and he fought, keeping his distance from her. On every single occasion though, she was there encouraging him, rooting for him to keep going, not to give up, pushing, helping and hoping as hard as she could from her side. She was trying desperately to ensure that he would continue making efforts to get closer to her. After all, those efforts by the small boat were the only thing capable of managing to bring them together.

To say that the moon was not like the boat, would be a great understatement. But at the same time, boats have sometimes enough of dealing only with boats which are similar to them. Just as moons, have occasionally enough of dealing only with moons which are similar to them. On top of everything else, the moon in question was different than all the other moons and the small boat in question was different than all the other boats. Those two were so astonishingly uncharacteristic of their own kind, that they appeared virtually identical to each other.

The things they said to one another, the way they said them, the reason they said them, the timing and their mutual sincerity, was what truly surprised them both. All this, whilst feeling cut-off from the rest of the universe, both of them cohabiting in the sweetest bubble ever conceived, made for just that moment, made for just for that place, made for just them. Mutual attraction was as unavoidable as it was, in the end, insufficient. Insufficient or not, meeting each other did have the same powerful effect as someone being hit on the head with a frying pan.

Putting together a butterfly that pretends to be a wasp but always wanted to be a fish and a squirrel that pretends to be a vulture but always wanted to be an orchid is no easy task, under any conditions. And these were in no way, any ordinary conditions. Magnetism, the greatest connecting element of the universe, the real glue of things, the protector of unity and continuity had a big part to play in their story and it had to perform its role better than ever. And magnetism pulled it off. It really went for an award and a world record on that one. A performance of massive subtlety, of great sensitivity and of real effectiveness. No one in the cosmos could possibly have resisted it.