by Olivia Joy
A colleague of his had suggested a few other names at the time. Names of citizens he would not do too badly to be connected with. Among those had been some men, although Henry was of the staunch opinion that he would only be suited to the partnership of a woman. Say what you like, but he believed that despite the sexes being entirely equal and alike these days - except from the fact that women still incubated children - arising from the fact that nature just would not co-operate and allow those grown in man-made conditions to survive, a woman was still different. Their essences appeared dissimilar to his; he believed that it would be more beneficial to join forces with somebody with a different skill set to compliment his.
His father Reginald had disapproved of his choice at first, believing he could do better than Bathsheba Ermez. Despite being well immersed into the New World, Henry suspected that deep down his father would always notice appearances. More interested in securing Ophelium, Reginald had ultimately told his son he could do what he liked outside of work as long as they could turn the damn gas on soon, because it was making him decidedly itchy.
TWENTY TWO
On a drizzly Friday afternoon, he took her for what seemed like a final walk. The air was full of finality; it positively reeked of the word. She knew what he was going to tell her; he had already told his mother and Xandria had seen her tears streaming freely.
When they left she had glimpsed her staring numbly out of the window after them, watching them disappear down the lane, the tears drying in polygonal blotches on her face. She had understood, of course she did, and it was for the good of the world, but no mother wanted to send her son to bloodshed.
As they turned onto the lake shore, Lars turned to her slowly.
‘I’m going, Xandria,’ he said gently, looking down at her face. ‘I’m going very soon.’
‘No,’ she breathed, her head filling with dread. ‘You can’t.’
‘I have to fight,’ he said, pulling his jacket closer around him. ‘I have to go.’
‘When?’
‘Soon. Not yet.’
‘You’ll come back?’
‘For sure,’ he smiled.
‘Your God will protect you,’ she said.
‘That’s not how it works,’ he said.
She was trying not to cry. She was trying to hold back an enormous wave of poignancy and heartache. She had never before said goodbye to somebody she hadn’t wanted to leave. In her mother’s case, she had been willing her to leave sooner. She was so ashamed of that incident now. Today she was different; not even the strongest dam could hold back the sorrow of farewell.
‘That’s exactly how it works,’ Xandria said, her voice rising. ‘That’s what you told me. If your God supposedly loves you, then he will keep you out of harm.’
‘No,’ Lars interrupted softly. ‘The promise of God’s love is not to stop the bad things happening, but to be there for you when they do.’
‘Shut up with this rubbish!’ Xandria yelled, spinning to face the lake. She picked up a stone and hurled it in frustration. It went whizzing across the water’s surface, skimming several times before it disappeared.
‘You’re selfish! You’re going away for a cheap thrill, to fight for something that doesn’t even matter! Did you see your mother? She’s broken! Because of you! You’re selfish, selfish, selfish!’
‘Xandria, stop…’ he started, his face clouding with sadness. ‘This is not how I wanted it to be. I have to fight. For me. For you. Maybe one day you will understand.’
‘New America is the strongest force you’ll ever know,’ she continued yelling, quite ignoring him. ‘If you go and fight now, you may as well dig your own grave next to my grandmother!’
His eyes were wounded but he said nothing. Xandria took another stab.
‘It’s all so pointless! Just stay here and carry on with life, if you’re so strong you will find a new way to live. You can’t leave us!’ She hiccupped on her words. ‘It will be a better life! A life without all this oscillating of emotions! Your mother will never be sad again, don’t you want that?’
Still he remained motionless, dejection in his eyes.
‘You’ve broken her heart with your selfishness. You think you’re better than everyone else, always with a point to prove. You and all the others, you’re just the same with your own agendas. You may as well be in New America already!’
‘I can’t do this Xandria,’ he muttered, looking at the ground, biting his lip. ‘I must go.’
‘Fine, go!’ she yelled, as he turned away slowly, ‘Go and die for all I care!’
Lars walked to the trees without turning back; his figure becoming smaller and smaller before he could be seen no more.
* * *
Xandria could not concentrate on anything. Her mind was flopping and heaving all over the place. She hated rowing with Lars; she had seen the hurt in his eyes at her acid words and if truth be known, it had bludgeoned any spirit she had managed to build since she arrived.
She was truly, truly sorry. This feeling was a cousin of shame but it came with the distinct urge to leap up and immediately rectify the situation. She could not rest until everything was fine again.
He was right; of course he was right. She could see it now. Thinking of Lars and his intimidating integrity living in a world suffused with gas – it made her feel sick. It was against the natural order of things. He was a being who should never be silenced. Without emotions and morals, he would be just like everybody else in New America. He would no longer be special.
He was without doubt, the finest being she had ever known. She had never respected anybody before she came here. She was racked with hatred at her former country for trying to tamper with all the beings in the Old World. They were perfect as they were. Surely everybody in the Old World was lucky enough to have a Lars, somebody they looked up to and deep down without knowing it, doted on every word they said. They had no right to take it away, the beasts, the beasts!
He had every right to go to war. She was the selfish one. Even if she did not want him to go, he was going to fight for something he believed in, and she doubted any man in New America would have the courage to do the same. What must he think of her? Cold, unfeeling alien foreigner from New America. Did he imagine she was just like all the others? That she had not changed one bit?
She had to go and show him; prove to him that this was not so. That thanks to Lars, finally she could see the light, she could see all the reasoning in his words and in the hearts of the whole of the Old World. This was where she belonged now. She wanted to feel, she wanted to feel so bad. If being with Lars every day was an inkling, a clue of what it could be like, then it was not so bad at all. She would learn to deal with the worst of emotions; she would learn no longer to be afraid. She could have that future, but only if it was fought for.
She herself, she couldn’t fight. Mrs. Olsen had told her she was not emotionally ready, that being from New America, she would put the surrounding soldiers in grave danger. She was a target, after all. To fight, you had to have clear in your mind every second of the day and night why you were risking your life. The reason had only just come to Xandria; she was not yet ready enough. In time she would be, but for now she would have to sit back and watch as her old world and new world came to fatal blows.
She ran out into the night to find Lars, to tell him that he was right and that she was sorry. She ran across fields and fields looking for his shadow, but she could not find him. Only his sheep could nuzzle her hand for comfort as the tears of frustration leaked down her face.
Tomorrow she would tell him, she vowed to herself, returning to the light of the house. Tomorrow will be another day.
But tomorrow was too late.
For he had already gone to war.
* * *
How strange what is remembered when everything is over. Little snapshots of time taken for granted. Xandria was enveloped by empty days; a million separate moments which were gnawing to be filled. Where was Lars when she n
eeded him? What was he doing?
He had left with Agnetha in the middle of the night. They could not bear a tearful farewell; it would have weakened them uncontrollably to remember it. By the time morning arrived along with his goodbye note on the kitchen table, it was regrettably far too late. They had already left the country and headed to the designated camp. Mrs. Olsen had snatched up the note and wailed in anguish as she read it.
‘I have gone to fight for you, for us, for this world,’ it read in his familiar script. ‘I love you all. Every moment I will be thinking of you and awaiting my return to a better life. Lars.’
His mother had been inconsolable at first. She knew that the day would inevitably come, but heartbreak always occurs too soon. We can never truly be prepared for it. Xandria wondered for a split second if he loved her, too. But she could not continue that impossible thought any longer for Mrs. Olsen had begun to heave miserably on her shoulder. Xandria was still shell-shocked. It must be a dream, a terrible dream. She had never told him she was sorry. How could she possible wait more days, years possibly, to relieve the guilt in her mind?
There was absolutely no contact from the soldier camps; Zachary DuPont had made it clear that if this war was to be won, man had to relieve himself of every creature comfort, every modern distraction, and fight like an ancient warrior. Spirits were reportedly high in the camps; camaraderie was built from scratch, the sort which DuPont intended would bond the soldiers from the start of the fight until the bitter end. No further instruction had come yet; all they knew was that they were waiting until their leader gave the word. Would they travel to New America as part of the war? They categorically did not know.
There was a camp in each continent of the world. Countries with vast areas of unoccupied land like mountain ranges and deserts were chosen for this purpose; it was the ultimate honour to house the potential heroes and saviours of the human race. Which country Lars was currently holed up in, she wished she could be privy to.
She sat with Gabe and Mrs. Olsen every day watching the mirages that revealed nothing new. The whole world was tuned in thirstily awaiting news which did not arrive. Every day was a new realisation that Lars had gone; that her days would no longer be occupied in the same way. No more lake side walks. The lake haunted her now; he needed to come back and save her from her imminent relapse into hell. I’m weak, she thought to herself miserably. Weak, weak, weak. It was never me; these past few weeks I appeared calmer – it was you all along. You stilled my soul. It was you.
Mrs. Olsen was more of a comfort to Xandria than Gabe. Gabe was too twitchy, it made her nervous. There was an angst and unsettledness in him which was not helping. Mrs. Olsen seemed to understand Xandria’s longing and confusion; perhaps she had predicted it long ago.
The days dragged by slowly and the nights offered little reprieve. What’s more, perhaps to match all of their blackened moods, since the day Lars left the rain had not stopped.
* * *
For the first time in her life, she went inside the chapel and prayed.
Sitting on a wooden pew as the rain continued to pelt down outside, she closed her eyes and summoned up all of her strength. She felt quite alone; she could not fathom how there could perceivably be somebody watching her from above. How far above, she mused. Did the view of her improve if she was higher up, for instance in her hundred and eightieth floor apartment back home?
Please bring him home safely, she muttered in the general direction of the sky. She did not know how to do this; she felt stupid. Please end this war before anything so terrible happens, she tried again, oh, I wish I could take it all back.
She realized that her interest in Lars returning to the village vastly outweighed her interest in the politics of the war. Who won what and why, she no longer cared. If she wanted the Old World to be successful in their mission, it was only because it meant Lars could come back and she would feel alright again. Sure, she understood his reasoning; she knew he was right. Feelings mattered. But they did not matter anymore to her when Lars was gone. Without him it was maddening. Her emotions were clawing back with a vengeance, like a bee newly escaped after being trapped in a glass.
Was it selfish of her? Of course. Lars, without knowing it, had become her anchor. If he was around, she could control herself, she felt sane. Every afternoon she mourned the coming and going of the time he had usually come by for a walk. She missed his opinions, his mannerisms, his self assured talk. Even those unusually blue eyes that both concealed and showed so much. But if she was terribly and brutally honest, she just missed him.
* * *
She let herself into the study, timidly moving around the bookshelves not quite knowing what she was looking for. She wouldn’t know what to do with a book. It must take an incredible amount of patience to hold something still for so long. Lars had been an avid reader; she had watched one afternoon as he sat by the fire – a substance which still made her nervous – and devoured a book from start to finish. His mood transformed as he read. She had watched as his long, precise fingers turned the pages, how his face was lit with rapture and calm. There had been a moment she had felt a maddening jealousy but had managed to suppress and control it by turning to Gabe, engaging the old man in banal conversation.
Gently she coaxed a leather bound edition off the shelf. It looked like it would fall apart in her hands. Gingerly, she opened the cover and dove into the middle of the book. She read:
….I can write no other way but this,
Lament that you are too beautiful
for my dusty soul.
I could borrow all the words
To tell you that before you
My heart was all cloth and fraying seams…
She snapped it shut again, sending a spout of dust into the air. This was no good. It made her feel worse. Oh, if only she could find the tome that had pleased Lars so that day. Maybe it would have the power to snap her out of this strange reverie in this foreign land.
She returned to the study many times after that, reading many passages but never quite finding what it was in which Lars had found solace.
* * *
Gabe was restless. He had felt a burning in his chest every day since Lars and the others from the village had gone away, and he was wont to put a stop to it.
He could not simply sit at home and watch mirages all day, hoping to glean some particles of information which might console him. His daughter had barely spoken since her beloved son had left. The note he had left her after the midnight flit remained on the table, crumpled in a fit of distress.
There was a news drought; as far as he knew, the soldiers had all gathered in enormous camps all over the world, one in each continent. He wondered if Lars was eating and sleeping okay, Agnetha too. The whole world had pulled together in unison; billions of young people had reportedly signed up as soldiers and left their homes and worried families to fight.
How exactly they would fight remained a heavily guarded secret. Anything they threw over to New America in a fit of passion would only be hurled back at twice the intensity, and the whole world would be destroyed. Everything would be over before they knew it.
He was sick of waiting. He may be fast approaching one hundred and thirty, but boy he felt like only sixty three. He paced the house, imagining how he would pulverise the enemy if only he could lay hands on them. He suddenly felt incensed. Fury ignited within his bones as he thought about their conceit, their imperious assumption that they could uproot the world and live happily ever after from that heavily censored bubble of theirs.
How his love, Kristina, had managed to live there was beyond him. He was glad she left Alfred. The day he first saw her in the village was one he would never forget. There had been a large group of people clamouring around her, welcoming her back. He had never clapped eyes on her before. From a distance she seemed so different to everybody else. She had an air of sadness. Later he would discover the reasons why.
Although they never married, they became staunch
companions until the day she died. Through her final sickness he held her hand and wheeled her around the lake even when she was too tired to speak. He knew the ravishing sight was the one thing that could give her peace of mind before she passed. She told him that knowing he and all those she loved could still see the unchanging scenery, she would be content in her leaving the world. She had smiled as she warned that each time a ripple passed upon the lake surface, it was a gentle hello from her, she who was now an inseparable part of nature.
After her funeral they had scattered her ashes into the lake, both he and Lars sharing fistfuls of this remarkable woman they had adored, while Mrs. Olsen smiled through her tears watching the two men in her life perform this bittersweet ritual.
He and Lars religiously tended to her gravestone in the days of emptiness afterwards, visiting every day to sprinkle the softest water onto the roses they had planted adjacent. Later, it would be Lars’ idea to erect a bench and bury the seeds for a tree that would grow in her memory. The tree grew earnestly and in the years following, served as shelter for all mourners caught up in the rain.
Yes, his dear grandson Lars had been a natural at cultivating land, at tending to livestock. It had been in his blood for hundreds of years. It was something he loved to do, even when he was torn from his bed in the early hours of a breaking dawn for some sheep bleating pitifully with an ailment.
Damn, he was proud of Lars. The thought of that New America taking him away and changing him forever kick-started a dangerous drive in Gabe that he had not felt before.
Sod all of them, he thought furiously as he gathered some clothes together in a bag, who says he was too old to fight? The world needed every being that they could get if they were to have any hope of defeating the enemy. He felt fine, besides. He was twice the man that any of them were over the pond. He had strong hands, a strong heart and a strong constititution to boot.
He contemplated a second before grabbing his walking stick. He would only use it to walk down to the village; there were a few steep paths. After that he would be as fit as a fiddle. When he arrived at the airport later and demanded to be taken to one of the great army camps in the world where his grandson was, they could hardly refuse him. To fight shoulder to shoulder with his grandson; the thought filled him with pride. It was something Lars could tell to his own grandchildren one day; the story of how they saved the world.