by John Fajo
“You see that beauty?” the scientist asked and poked him. “That’s my little skyscraper,” he said and pointed at a shiny facade of glass wall in the distance.
Nameless Andrew suddenly began to giggle uncontrollably, his body shaking. Then he inquired with sarcasm: “And will it outlast your lifetime? It would be beneficial to know just in case I wander under it.”
The scientist seemed greatly displeased. Then he answered haughtily: “Nothing I was associated with ever collapsed.”
“That’s what the baron said. After all, he was never found to be associated with any of the misconducts he was responsible for. And how about the perfect machine? It hadn’t turned out too well, had it?”
“It was an unfortunate accident,” rejoined vehemently the scientist.
“It was a key to a world more colourful and versatile than anything before it,” Nameless Andrew said. “But you never gave it a chance to work. You never had the guts to take the risks.”
“It’s easy to speak in hindsight, especially, if you weren’t the one bearing the responsibilities. I had to make that decision. No one else could. And it’s futile to ponder what would have been, and upsetting.”
They drove off from the highway onto a bystreet of a wealthy neighbourhood. The centre of town was still a great distance off, large gardens and parks were located here. Nameless Andrew soon lost track of the number of turns they had made, from one street to the next, right and left, left and right. The only thing obvious to him was that the houses were getting larger, and he could smell the ocean. Shortly thereafter, he could also perceive a beautiful sandy beach.
They stopped by a house in the last street, only sand dunes and the sea were visible beyond. By its size, it was almost a castle, with a large underground garage and surrounding park. He could hear the laughter of children from within the garden, the clacking of a lawn mower. He felt as if returning from the future to the past. The stillness and seeming remoteness of the scientist’s home reminded him of his childhood. This thought made Nameless Andrew fret, although he liked the intimacy of nature. But this represented failure to him, something degenerate.
They disembarked from the limousine in the garage, and ascended in an elevator to the ground level. “Hello, I’m home,” the scientist shouted, and headed immediately to pour a glass of whisky for them. “Here,” he said when finished, and handed him the beverage. Nameless Andrew simply shook his head. In response, the scientist shook his shoulders as if remarking: “It’s not obligatory.” They seated themselves on a sofa in the living room, or more realistically put, in one of the living rooms. In the meantime a maid passed by with a duster greeting the scientist with a bow given only for royalty. Then after some time the general appeared coming from the garden with an infant in her hands. She was still seductively beautiful. Her eyes told of her surprise at seeing him. Nameless Andrew felt uneasy, he felt like an intruder.
“I guess you know each other pretty well,” the scientist uttered. She nodded. He wondered what the scientist was thinking. After all, he had been her lover for quite some time. Was he jealous? Had that emotion developed in the scientist at all? Nameless Andrew was certainly interested. He thought he would find out.
“We meet again, don’t we?” He stood up and kissed the general on the cheek. “What a lovely daughter you have here,” he said and fondled the infant. She shrank back, and looked at him intensely. Nameless Andrew pretended surprise.
“If I didn’t know you better perhaps I’d believe you,” the general explained. “But your voice is full of sarcasm.”
“Nonsense,” the scientist said thinking the atmosphere was tense. “Let bygones be bygones.”
Nameless Andrew and the general sat opposite each other. In the meantime, the same maid passed by again, and picked up the infant. So only the three of them were in the living room. For a while in silence.
“How did you meet then?” Nameless Andrew asked abruptly.
“It was after the island was destroyed,” said the scientist. “I took on a new identity, and with it started a new life in the city. I made use of my only possession at the time, the catamaran. With it, I carried sight-seers and tourists. Soon the business picked up, I expanded the company. Built it from scratch really. Now I have a number of tankers, boats, frigates, you name it. Of course, as the enterprise began to vary its activities I needed a potent person I could trust with financial matters. By coincidence, I met the general at a ball. It was a natural choice.”
“Natural?!” Nameless Andrew laughed heartily.
“Yes,” the general answered and frowned. “I became engaged with financial matters after you disappeared. Where have you been, by the way, all this time?”
“Far, very far away.” There was some deep sadness in Nameless Andrew’s voice, a stunning longing for that farness. He looked at the scientist and scolded him with his eyes.
“I bet you had a good time,” the general continued on the offensive. “The babes were willing.”
“Yes,” Nameless Andrew rejoined. “All the babes there were willing. You could have learned from them.”
The general gazed at the scientist, she expected him to intervene by saying: “Now wait a minute. I don’t allow such talk in my house.” But the scientist said nothing. The general must have been disappointed, Nameless Andrew thought.
“And then you got married?” he inquired further.
“Yes,” the scientist said. “She... we were about to have a baby.”
“So you thought it was time to establish a family?”
“Yes.”
Nameless Andrew understood everything now. It was crystal clear to him. And instead of blaming the scientist for what he had become, he felt pain and sorrow, the loss of a paradise. He remembered an island of beauty, imagined a world of beauty, yet saw nothing but fragments and disarray.
****
The scientist had to attend a business meeting in the metropolis. The children were camping in a holiday resort for rich kids. When the general had taken farewell from them, she behaved as if they were going to some wilderness. Nameless Andrew had been surprised; this showed she attained motherly care he never imagined she would. Otherwise, she hadn’t changed at all. Already on the day after his arrival, she questioned him when he would be looking for work. He wouldn’t want to upset her unnecessarily by telling her that that was something he had no intention of doing.
He was freed from the daily routines. A man without future, past and, of course, present had no worries about what the next day would bring. He utilized the scientist’s hospitality, relaxed in the garden. It was almost like the island, one could hear the waves crashing on the beach, see the stars at night. He was entitled to appeasement for the time he had lost. Naturally, the general had a different view about that.
“Finally I can talk to you in private,” she said and sat down beside him on the grass. “I don’t know what you have been doing before, and I truly don’t care. But it can’t go on like this. All you do is enjoy yourself on our cost. I advise you to find a job and get on with your life.”
“Afraid?” Nameless Andrew asked with an evil smile appearing on his countenance.
“Afraid? Of what? I don’t understand.”
“Sure you do, babe,” he said and embraced her.
The general looked furious. “Let me go at once or I’ll shout.”
“Shout then. No one will hear you. I have given the maid tonight off.”
“You...”
She made some futile attempts to free herself, but then gave up. Somehow, her face lightened. He knew she couldn’t resist any longer. He kissed her, and observed no more opposition.
****
The scientist was often away. He was frequently with the general, and was astonished the scientist had not yet noticed what was going on. Even the kids started to complain. Of course, the general quickly pacified their resentment; she was completely in control.
He hoped for a miracle. He wanted the scientist to rise once
again and finish the work he had begun. He believed by cheating on him with the general the scientist would eventually find out and return to his old self in a fury. However, even letting the maid in on their secret hadn’t produced any response whatsoever. There were no signs of the old rages; the scientist seemed well-balanced. Nameless Andrew thought the ideas and the fire of zeal died in him.
This is what he was considering on one late afternoon as well. He crouched on the sandy beach and watched the harbour in the distance with binoculars. The general was shopping, the scientist probably acquiring another part of the city he so much hated. A gentle breeze was blowing, wafting tempest clouds in from the sea. The climate was humid, curbing the development of abstract thoughts. At least that was what Nameless Andrew gathered by observing himself half-dozing. He sat there and peered at the ships coming and going. Workers were loading them, disembarking the wares. They were as small as ants even through the optics, and they worked as diligently as ants. He didn’t envy them for the life they had. He had nothing, that was true, but he was free. He believed possessions simply bound a person to places or conducts, tied one up and made one too cautious to take risks or change lifestyles from one day to the next. The scientist was the best example of a man who seemingly had it all: a big house, pretty wife, children, money and respect. But he had no dreams any more. No questions.
With the help of the binoculars, he could see the docks as through a tunnel, and in detail. Without it, he perceived the harbour in perspective. He was close yet distant; this provided him with reflection otherwise only the wisdom of old age could bring. In a way he was old, indeed, a relic of past times. He had been through more experiences in his life than most people would in millennia. These weren’t only events, but a development in the manner he thought. Software evolution. He had come a great distance from a man using only his instincts to a man completely suppressing them. Had this development been good or advantageous? Possibly not. Not in evolutionary terms anyway. It made him into a renegade more or less, entirely disjoint from other groups. There was no place for him under the sun, and he knew it. But he didn’t mind. He was still alive; the ocean continued rolling and the sea gulls hovered above him.
He wondered whether the clouds would assemble into a storm. He thought it would have been refreshing. The sun was certainly being wrapped up by the tempest clouds, its scorching arrows still reflecting on the waves though. The wind gradually increased creating a strange aura of decadence. The sand was blown by it quickly engulfing him as well. The waves crashed on the beach with jolting force.
Nevertheless, the commotion hadn’t ceased in the harbour, the disembarking had to continue. The metropolis was a vulnerable structure, regardless of its monumental buildings and appearance, it was reliant on outside shipping. If these were not forthcoming the city would be in dire straits, and soon chaos would follow. On the other hand, great and sometimes dubious transactions took place here.
After a sudden thundering, the rain started falling in fat droplets. He thought about hurrying to seek shelter, but then changed his mind. In a moment, he was drenched to the skin, his clothes adhering to him like soaked rags. The clouds of dust scourged by the wind vanished; soon he saw nothing of the harbour through the thick veil of water. He stood there in the rain and anticipated the wind would take him far away, blow him high above the storm. As a child, he had often felt this sensation; it gave him a feeling of power and strength.
He had no idea how long he could have stood there. Whether it had been minutes or hours didn’t really matter, the scientist was simply there all of a sudden.
“You should come in,” he said.
Nameless Andrew couldn’t see him clearly. “We have to talk,” he shouted, then shrank back in fright. It was the scientist, as he had known him before, meagre and pale in a protecting white cloak and with thick glasses.
“Our time is running out, my friend,” the scientist said sombrely. “You are right, we do have to talk.”
The rain was pouring, the storm relentlessly continuing, but they still stood their ground.
“I don’t understand anything,” Nameless Andrew said.
“Yet it’s all so simple.”
“Let’s start at the beginning. You are rich, are you not?”
“Yes.”
“You are the scientist, are you not?”
“Yes.” The scientist’s glasses turned foggy, his sickly body shivering.
“You do know I have cheated on you with your wife?”
“Yes,” the scientist said as if it were the most natural thing.
“What?!” Nameless Andrew was perplexed.
“She deserved some variety, didn’t she? I don’t care. I had a number of secretaries over the years, you understand. Our marriage was that of interests. She needed a wealthy and appreciated husband, I a representative wife, whom I would not be ashamed of taking to a ball.”
Nameless Andrew laughed sarcastically. “And what about your dreams?”
“They were lunatic ideas, my friend. I certainly hadn’t been on this Earth at the time.”
Nameless Andrew looked angrily at the scientist, although he realized he couldn’t see him. Then he unexpectedly said: “You buried your beliefs, dreams and emotions. You’re the beggar.”
“The what? I’m a millionaire.” The scientist shook his head. “Are you with me at all?”
“Remember what you told me about some people who stood up against the baron, but failed miserably. In fact, they became tools in his hands later.”
“Nonsense,” the scientist said. “There is no baron, never has been.”
“I weep for you,” Nameless Andrew rejoined. “I weep for all the lost years.”
“I’m sorry if you feel that way. But see things on the bright side: we have made it, we run the show now. We are independent.”
“The independence of money is the ultimate dependence.”
“Nonsense,” the scientist said, and tried to make Nameless Andrew leave the premises. But Nameless Andrew didn’t want to. He just stood in the rain, the water streaming down his body.
****
The sky was crystal clear. There were no signs of the storm, only a cool wind was left as a reminder. The stars shimmered at him; their reflections were shining in lines on the surface of the water. The harbour was relatively quiet, its lights almost invisible in the darkness. The sand was wet and soft, nearly as much as the landscape of the Green Planet. The Planet was out there somewhere in the distance, but too far away now to make any difference. The storm was over.
There was a white waterproof beside him spread out as if its wearer had submerged in the sand, leaving it behind. And in a way that was so. The scientist had disappeared and so had Nameless Andrew. It was only him now. Actually, it had always been only him. A man of thoughts and conflicting ideas that occasionally almost sundered his personality into two: the thorough and logical scientist and the instinctive and emotional Nameless Andrew.
He watched the night sky. For a second there was brightness among the sparkling stars. A meteor entered the atmosphere, but was quickly burned to dust. Its shine was short and indecisive.
There he stood. A man with glistering silvery eyes, tall and strong. A man no more in doubts.
He was the beggar.
###THE END###
