La gran cacería

A man, in his cabin, at night, cannot sleep. Images of other ships, of other voyages, come back to his memory again and again. It is, perhaps, more of a journey through time than through space, because the Mediterranean is much more than a witness to the history of Europe: it is a protagonist, it is a jailer, it is an undertaker, it is a forger of character, it is the food of passions, it is a god and a devil, it is myth and reality. The traveller crosses a sea that forms the backbone of an idea of Europe, as the cradle of a culture capable of the best and of the worst. Images that keep him awake at night and that lead the traveller to think of the animals that are travelling with him in the ship’s hold. Together they are crossing that sea that has seen the civilisation to which it belongs grow, a civilisation that has developed culturally but on the back of wars, conquests, and revolutions, often considering other civilisations as vulgar beasts. The traveller is absorbed in these thoughts when he receives an invitation to participate, along with the rest of the people on the ship, in a simulation of a disaster, for which he has to leave his cabin. Does he really leave it? Is he really awake? Because it seems that he is attending the simulation, but perhaps he is only imagining it, he is only dreaming about it. Is dreaming not a poetic simulacrum of what one has lived and what is yet to be lived? What happens at that moment, perhaps lived, perhaps dreamed, is that the beasts, taking advantage of the simulation, take control of the ship.