Decisiones

Tomás has wanted a bicycle since he moved to Medellín. The metro is good, but it’s always full, and his office is only four kilometres from his flat.

A new bicycle costs more than he earns in a month, so last Saturday he went to see a second-hand one. He found it online: blue, almost new, and half the price.

The seller was a young woman called Marcela. The bicycle was in her living room, next to a box of baby clothes.

“Why are you selling it?” Tomás asked.

“I’ve had a baby,” she said, and laughed. “I haven’t ridden it for a year.”

Tomás tried it in the street. It was perfect, but it was still a lot of money for him.

“If I had the money, I’d take it right now,” he said. “Can you wait until the end of the month?”

“Somebody else is coming to see it this afternoon,” Marcela said. “If he wants it, I’ll sell it to him. I need the money too.”

Tomás walked to the corner and called his brother. He hates asking for money. If his brother said no, he would feel terrible. If his brother said yes, he would feel worse.

His brother said yes before Tomás finished the question, but he could only lend him half.

When Tomás came back, Marcela was waiting at the door with the bicycle.

“The other man has cancelled,” she said. “Take it. Pay me the rest at the end of the month.”

He has ridden to work every day since then, and he has paid his brother back. On Sundays he sometimes sees Marcela in the park, walking with her baby. They always stop and talk.

Catalina is a nurse from Pereira. Two years ago she moved to Tromsø, in the north of Norway, for a one-year contract at the hospital. She has stayed for two.

Now the hospital has offered her a permanent job, and she has to decide by the end of the month.

The first winter was the hardest thing she has ever done. From late November to the middle of January, the sun doesn’t come up at all. She couldn’t sleep, she missed her family, and she didn’t understand the jokes at work. Twice she nearly went home. Her mother, who has never left Colombia, told her: “If you’re unhappy, come back. Nobody will think you’ve failed.”

But she didn’t give up. She found out that people in Tromsø don’t stay at home in the dark — they ski, they walk, they meet for coffee by candlelight. She started to go with them, and slowly she got used to it.

Then came the summer, which is the opposite: for two months the sun doesn’t go down at all. The first time she saw children playing football at one in the morning, she thought something was wrong. Now she plays with them.

Her Norwegian has improved a lot. She has made friends. She has learned to ski, badly. Last winter she saw the northern lights for the first time and cried, and her friend Ingrid laughed and said, “We’ve all done that.”

If she takes the job, she will earn good money and she will be able to help her parents. If she goes home, she will be near them. Her father isn’t very well. Her brother looks after him, but he also has three children and a job.

“What would you do?” she asked Ingrid last week.

“I’d stay,” Ingrid said. “But I’m not you.”

Catalina has made a list, and the list hasn’t helped. She keeps putting the decision off.

Tonight she called her father. She expected him to say “Come home.” He didn’t.

“When you were small,” he said, “you were afraid of the sea. Then one day you went in, and we couldn’t get you out. You’ve always been like that. So if you come back, I want it to be because you want to. Not because you’re afraid.”

She hasn’t decided yet. But for the first time, she thinks she understands the question.