It’s just me and him.
A friend — actually, not even that.
Someone with whom, along with others, I ended up sharing a weekend in the mountains.
We’re all going skiing and I — along with this friend whose name I don’t even remember — take the cable car.
I knew it: I’m claustrophobic.
Obviously I was going to be afraid.
But I tried, I really tried to push through it.
With him, poor guy: unaware that he had become a temporary ally in my battle against panic.
The cabin is tiny.
We’re standing, wearing ski boots, skis in hand.
For some reason I have a shoulder bag — totally useless for skiing.
No idea. Maybe I just felt like it.
We get in.
The doors close.
Panic.
I don’t know if there was a lot of snow, if he was wearing gloves, if I was still speaking a language free of insults toward whoever invented cable cars.
It’s called claustrophobia: fear of closed spaces.
Fear of being stuck.
Terror of places with no escape route.
When it hits you, your heart no longer knows whether it’s beating or trying to run away from you.
And you no longer know whether you’re the crazy one or it’s the others — the ones who don’t grasp the danger of having no control.
It gets you when nothing, or almost nothing, depends on you.
And so you end up trusting some engineer or construction worker you’ve never met.
And what if — I think to myself — the day he designed this damn cable car he was in a bad mood?
What if he tightened a bolt the wrong way?
What if he was a serial killer now watching us from a cliff, hoping to see us fall?
I’m scared.
I turn pale — green, even.
I tremble. He notices.
— Relax.
— If you tell me to relax, I panic even more.
— Nothing’s going to happen.
— Easy for you to say.
— Who do you need to say it?
— No one. I want to get off. You need to help me.
— Me?
— Yes.
— Why?
— Because you’re here.
— And if I weren’t?
— I wouldn’t be either. We agreed to this together. So help me.
— Are you always this scared?
— Only in closed spaces.
— There are a lot of those.
— Yes, too many.
— And how do people usually calm you down?
— They don’t tell me to relax, for starters.
— Meaning?
— They explain why I don’t need to be scared.
— But I didn’t build this cable car.
— Well, get creative. Or learn how it works.
— I think it’s safe…
— You think…
— And what do you think?
— That some unknown guy — a serial killer furious with his wife — designed this cable car.
— We’re almost there…
— How do you know?
— From the time that’s passed.
— That’s just a theory.
— You want to know everything.
— Exactly.
— But you can’t.
— Says who? I’m stuck here with you. You, who knows nothing about bolts.
— I’m a botanist.
— Great.
— You’re not very nice, you know?
— I don’t need to be. Not in a cable car. I’m stuck…
— You’re stuck in your fears.
— Excuse me?
— I don’t know. I’m just saying.
We arrive.
We get out.
The serial killer miscalculated: nothing fell.
The botanist — useless in calming my fears — did say one thing though: you’re stuck in your fears.
You’re stuck in your fears.
How many people are, I wonder.
And how many, maybe all, would just like to get off.