by Unknown
“That is so true, my friends… We seem to have forgotten nowadays that nudity is nothing but the truth of nature. I wish we could go back to those blessed years when the world was ruled by the masters of Science. Every time I read those old books I remember how special and enlightened those people were, the ones who bequeathed us with all those perfectly organised laws and customs. Back then, young people looked at life in a positive and rational way rather than in a romantic one. And I wonder: have we followed the right path? Is this torrent of sensuousness and emotion the right way to look at life? I don’t know… If you look closely at these girls who now run away from us like wild beasts, I’m certain that up close they would be as beautiful as paintings. But let’s not share these thoughts with our friend Syld’s teachers and the poets of the Valley, who managed to plant the idea of ‘the charm of hidden beauty’ in peoples’ heads.”
And it was with these words that Diseny left our company for a while. Close by, a group of teenagers, who paid us no heed, were taking a break from water skiing. Thousands of people had chosen the seashore as a place to rest and enjoy the wonderful breeze. Most of them were women, the majority of whom were wearing clothes surprisingly warm for this weather.
“I didn’t want to start a conversation in front of the physician,” Stefan said, interrupting my daydreaming. He leaned towards me so that we could hear each other and added, “But I could have asked him if, in those blessed years he feels nostalgic for, feelings had the same depth they have now, if they could reach the uniquely high level they reach now.”
He spoke slowly, avoiding looking me in the eyes, and I had a hunch that he was being careful not to say anything that would hint at my feelings for Silvia. I was sure that he had figured out what had happened between us; but he was the only one, nobody else. But as I’ve said before, they don’t care for gossip here, nor do they show it when they know something.
“Then he would tell you, Stefan,” I said, “that it really wouldn’t be a great loss if the world was deprived of all the pain and suffering of the heart…”
“He wouldn’t say that,” said Stefan. “No matter what he tells people, deep down he knows, like all of us. Like a real Troende, he firmly believes in the Volkic preaching. He couldn’t, therefore, deny that the Lipvirch, this ‘gentle illness of the heart’ , as you once called it, is one of the main reflections of the Samith, as is pure religious emotion, art, the great ideals and eternal spiritual values. It is the legacy of our ancient civilisation and the old dream for universal love. And while some might support that the sight of a naked woman might not diminish the Lipvirch, ‘the pain of the heart’, historical data and past experiences suggest otherwise. Remember, Andreas, the female dancers, their divine figures and stature… I know most of them and I know that they don’t only have divine bodies but also divine souls that are worthy of being loved to the maximum degree. Didn’t they look impressive in their full-length kjoles under the moonlight? Syld himself told me that looking at them revived some of the happiness that he used to derive from fairy tales when he was a child. Wouldn’t the charm and majestic presence of these women be lessened if they lay down or walked around naked among us?”
I left Stefan without an answer. His words about the “reflections of the Samith” haunted me, reminding me of something similar that Silvia said the other day. I remember asking her, “Where does this whole thing lead? It’s such a shame for our love to go to waste, not to last forever…”
The look of satisfaction on her face was beyond words! It was a mixture of joy and pride!
“Whatever happens, keep this in mind: it’s wrong of you to say that it’s a shame for our love to go to waste; this is the whole purpose of it! That’s when you can truly call yourself blessed! This love has now become our possession, no matter what is to happen next. It’s something that can never be taken away from us. It’s a part of another life, of another world now; it’s a part of the Samith.”
I turned to Stefan and in a voice louder than I intended I told him, “Tell me, then, Stefan. Is this whole world with all its truth, which the physician talked about, just a microcosm?”
“There is no person that believes the opposite,” he answered calmly. “And he’s not wrong about what he said, that the nudity of a young and beautiful body is a pure truth of nature; but it’s not the only truth and it’s definitely not the greatest one. I told you that the Lipvirch, the pain of the heart, is a reflection of the Samith, the Great Reality we now know to exist; we’re not making assumptions anymore, we know! So, nature, in turn, is another different reflection of the Samith. But the Samith itself is something superb; much greater and much more powerful than all its reflections. Even today, if someone spoke to us about how extremely great it is, we wouldn’t be able to conceive it. But nobody talked to us about it; we saw it with our own eyes! And that’s our main difference.”
We were sitting far enough from other people that no one could hear us. Stefan kept silent for a minute, staring far into the open sea. He looked moved but he carried on. “We saw it and that explains the, unknown to the older generations, feeling of immense happiness that has filled our hearts since then. We saw it thanks to the Nibelvirch—the supreme Virch—after thousands of tormenting doubts, many tears, many moments of moral weakness and despair, and after being prepared for centuries by the Valley of the Roses. And you cannot say that Alexis Volky was some demi-god who was the only one that possessed and could convey all this wonderful direct knowledge. He was a mere mortal like the rest of us; only, before him, the Oversyn was something unknown to the world. He was the first one to withstand the ‘new vibration’ that had proven fatal to many others; he was the first survivor.”
Doctor Diseny started heading towards us right after Stefan had given his word that the next day he would bring me some books about the Nibelvirch, the Samith, Alexis Volky and the Oversyn. Oh God… I couldn’t believe all the incredible things I had just heard…
(Back in Stefan’s mansion)
12-X
(Midnight)
So that was it. No more sea. We all returned to Stefan’s mansion yesterday morning and are already yearning to go back. They wanted to depart early in order to avoid the heat, so everybody arrived tired; everybody except me that I’ve now become accustomed to sleepless nights.
While on our way to the villa, Stefan talked to me about how tiring the lifestyle of those who currently live in the big urban centres is. It seemed as if he was trying to give me an explanation although I could never understand this kind of modest and apologetic tone he sometimes assumed when he spoke. Was it a sign of modesty? Or was it a sign of guilt for being one of the members of the majority who just “rested” after his two-year service? I don’t know. But he told me that other people too, including the “Cives workers”, often gave up their cities and lived for a long period of time in the countryside. It wasn’t only a habit of the “unemployed”. No one, he says, could live in the modern, massive and populous cities for ever.
Look at that! Who would imagine that I would miss my little room? I’m so well settled here that I’ve started to love this familiar table, the small orange chest of drawers of books, my deep and comfortable armchairs, my glass vases and my few other possessions—few, but clearly mine.
We rested a bit in the morning and then, as agreed, went for an afternoon walk with Sylvia having told Stefan and Hilda that we were going for a tour above the lakes.
We flew over the old Bignasco, looking from above at the huge rectangular, crimson palace, the Civesgard that rested on the western mountain slope. I had seen many other buildings from above, in various places, but this one made a strong impression on me because of its bold colours that completely contrasted with the usual pastels that prevailed in this land.
From the terrace on which we landed, I could see the hanging gardens. It felt very refreshing and relaxing to be near them. Further away, on the horizon, young men and women in individual flying machines that resembled huge, mecha
nical wings were flying over and around the opposite mountains. I do not know why I'm so happy when I’m near her. Even this quick switch, from the sea to the mountains within a few hours, filled me with joy.
There are very few people, not even twenty, on this huge terrace and the adjoining large central hall with the immense aquarium. That’s a tremendous contrast to the thousands of visitors on the beaches, with their shouting, their laughter and their games.
Suddenly, Silvia turned to me and said, “I think about those places, behind the mountains, and that there are more lakes there, just as beautiful as ours.”
My heart was beating fast. The place behind the mountains was Switzerland. I didn’t say anything; I let her finish.
“We’ll go there, right? It’ll be so beautiful. I don’t know what happens to me, Andreas, but every time I travel to Switzerland, I don’t feel any particular joy. I feel as always. But when I look at these places from a distance, only from a distance, I feel melancholic, almost nostalgic…”
I had said nothing to Silvia or even Stefan about my old love for Anna. Every time I talk about my old life, I am extremely careful not to let anything slip out regarding that person, as if she is a secret charm that I want to protect from any foreign, profane human heart.
Silvia’s last words became a pretext for re-evaluating this discovery of mine. I feel like my old secret is still inaccessible and well-guarded in my soul and that nobody knows anything.
“So, what do these places remind you of?” I asked her.
“Nothing special. That’s why I don’t understand where this inexplicable melancholy is coming from. I was fourteen when I first visited these places,” she replied while pointing to the snow-capped mountain ridges on the horizon. “And not only do I not have any special memories tying me to that trip but also, because I was in the awkward phase of adolescence, I remember dealing with a thousand worries and problems.”
“And who tells us that, in another life, powerful memories did not connect you to this place?” I asked her, averting my gaze.
“Well, no one can know that for sure,” she said without looking at all surprised. “Maybe yes, maybe no… Within the scope of the Samith, everything is possible. But we are humans, Andreas, and we will never know everything.”
She seemed entertained by the conversation. The fact that she seemed to consider it neither heavy nor pointless, made me dig further into the subject, momentarily losing my control. “Do you believe, Silvia, that it’s possible for a person to suddenly recall incidents from a previous life? Have you ever tried to?”
It was the first time I ever talked to her in this voice trembling with emotion, gazing into her eyes with an expression of love and loyalty, almost as if possessed by a divine inspiration. I then remember telling her, “Who knows? It could be that we just met again after being separated for centuries…”
At first she looked somewhat puzzled by my rambling on “memories of pre-existence”, but soon she smiled with an expression of joyful surprise and eager acquiescence. “Do you think so, Andreas? That would be nice… But, I would prefer to remember everything that has happened to me in this life before I get to the memories of pre-existence. Because I think that there still are some incidents of my childhood buried somewhere in my mind. I’d like to remember those first…”
Obviously, her words did not satisfy me. They were somewhat irrelevant to my point. But I insisted, “What would you say if someone suddenly happened to remember incidents of a past life very clearly?”
“What do you mean ‘what would I say’? I’d call it exactly what it is: a rare metapsychic phenomenon.”
I was quite befuddled by this whole conversation, unlike Silvia who, as I said, dealt with it in a completely natural way, so I decided to change the subject. We kept on walking hand in hand in the woods.
I feel like our love is growing, day by day. The signs are too many to ignore, on both sides. We can no longer spend even a single day without seeing each other. Our loneliness grows heavier than ever when we do. As I had now read in the books that Stefan had supplied me with, one of the basic principles of Volkism is, for the Troendes, the “nostalgia of the Samith”, “the pain of the heart”, which is caused by the lack of it and which pervades the entire human existence without us being aware of it. In our species, this nostalgia presents itself in the form of “noble pain”, such as the anticipation of a great and true love.
“A voice inside me,” said Silvia interrupting my thoughts, “has always been telling me that there would come a day when someone would give meaning to my solitude and my sensitivity; so I had to wait. There were days when I sat, dressed up, in front of the mirror in the morning and thought to myself, ‘Maybe today…’ But I feared that I wouldn’t recognise him, that I wouldn’t be able to tell who he was. In the end I was right; it was you! Why did it take me so long to recognise you?”
She then started asking me questions about my childhood, meaning, of course, Northam’s childhood, questions quite difficult for me to answer. She remembered the first time she met Northam, at the Tebelen, during “The Prayer of the Wildflowers”. He was about to write his name on one of the windows, fogged up by breathing and she stopped him.
“I was so indifferent towards you back then… I think, though, that the first time I really met you, was in the Molsen institute, where I had come as a nurse, when I saw you wounded and helpless like a little baby. But enough of that. Now tell me one of these ancient stories that you like to read together with Stefan, the ones about the dashing princes and beautiful princesses…”
I started to tease her, saying that when she was young she must have been addicted to the Reigen-Swage and their three-dimensional spectacles. She admitted it. As for the fairy tales about princes and princesses, she has loved them since she was a child.
I have realised that these ancient, for them, stories exert a very strong appeal on the people of this contemporary Universal Commonwealth. In my view, the reasons why they appeal to them so much are the depictions of youth and beauty, fate and destiny, the ideal of “happiness”, and all that combined with the extra charm that huge temporal distance gives. The notion of “political power”, which is completely alien to them, is certainly not one of the reasons.
I talked to her about some of our great names, such as Goethe and Pasteur, and found out that she knew them very well. Then we wondered what the great creators must have felt while creating. This subject brought to mind the painter Nichefelt, the Lorffe we had seen a few days ago. They told me that, as a child, feeling the sacred flame within him, he had mythologised and idealised all the great personalities of the famous artists of the past generations. His dream was to be like them one day and the happiest day of his youth was when he was accepted as their student. If someone could have shown him back then the position he would hold thirty years later, he wouldn’t have been able to bear such boundless happiness. For years he couldn’t escape the feeling that his works were mediocre, no matter how much others admired them because they didn’t meet his own expectations and couldn’t quench the thirst of his heart. But there came the day, after working for decades, when he finally reached his much-coveted dream. Then, the already mature man, burst into tears in front of his finished composition. That work of art brought him recognition and endless praise from “the Palace Boulevard”. The new Lorffe was then offered the same position that his teachers once held in the Valley of the Roses, but at a much younger age than them.
It was obvious by the way she talked about them that Silvia worshipped these truly great men. And as for Nichefelt, she strongly believes that he owes his incredible artistic creation to the thirst and longing for the Samith. She claims that if that longing did not exist, he never would have reached the point of artistic greatness that he reached. Everything seems to be connected to the Samith. I don’t completely understand it yet. It looks as if it were their God, but then again it isn’t. It seems to be the “source of everything”.
“I wond
er,” I commented, “when he walked through the Palace Boulevard and saw your Sacred Arch, did he find the salvation he had been seeking for thirty years? Or perhaps not?”
“Of course not,” she replied. “What he wanted to touch was untouchable… But he did enjoy it whole-heartedly.”
“Nowadays, the prevailing view is that you should authentically rejoice and celebrate the spiritual happiness that this era has to offer, for it is a gift! People need to think about how many challenges the world has faced and how many obstacles and dreadful dangers it has overcome. They no longer believe that it is temporal distance that embellishes things, persons and situations and what makes difficulties and problems fade away and be forgotten. They don’t believe in psycho-physiological interpretations in general or, to be more accurate, they consider them very superficial; even shallow. They say that the ‘Nibelvirch’ was what gave them the true, deeper explanation. Through the acquisition of ‘direct knowledge’, they saw the Samith and, therefore, the Truth. They clearly saw that that light didn’t belong to this world…”
She talks to me, thinking I understand everything completely, not knowing my true situation; and this confuses me even more. Sometimes I am truly myself and other times I impersonate Northam; for how much longer?
“Silvia, have you ever thought that I might disappoint you? That I might never completely recover, never remember and never regain my old self?”
“You know better than I do that I didn’t love the old Northam,” she said with a smile. “As for your research and your papers, they mean nothing compared to the person with this enormous heart that I have now here, in front of me!”
These words of hers had nothing to do with the words of hope and encouragement of the early days when she kept asking Stefan why I didn’t try harder. I remember when, one day, Stefan caught her crying alone, following a discussion they had on whether or not it would be beneficial for me to go to Markfor for a course given by the very simple and understandable Astrucci, former student of one of their great educators, Gunnar Bjerlin, and continuer of his work in their educational institute. I think it’s something akin to the special schools of our era, for people with mental retardation, something very demeaning for the old Northam. Stefan told me to go see what was wrong with her and, when I found her still crying, I clasped her hands, kissed her and told her, “I won’t go if you don’t want me to… I just don’t want to see you cry… I can’t bear it.”