by kubasik
"Certainly, certainly," said the dwarf with a smile as he finished his life story again. "But I don't think Death is that concerned with the details."
"But this doesn't mean anything," I said, starting again.
"It's gibberish?" he asked with surprise.
"No. I mean, my life. The way it's written. It's meaningless."
The dwarf's arm stopped moving for just a moment, as if he'd suddenly regained some control because of the importance of his thought. "I don't think lives have meaning. Other than the meaning we give them. That's why we have words. So we can define things.
Define ourselves. Define what matters to us."
"But here, what I'm writing, there's no ... I never got around to defining my meaning."
He looked at me, very serious, and said, "I'm sorry to hear that." He stared at me a little longer, his hand still working away as we continued to look at each other, gazes locked.
Then he put his attention back on his story. He smiled at what he wrote.
I was too flabbergasted to do anything for some time. Even to think of being upset or angry. My hand just wrote and wrote and wrote. I wrote the short, pathetic narrative hundreds of times. Finally I turned once more to the pleased dwarf. "There seems to be some sort of mistake. I didn't mean for my life to be like this. I've learned my lesson, or whatever, and I'd like to go try again. Death is imprisoned. Correct? It is possible to get out of here."
"I think you need someone in the world of the living to do something. Someone to do some sort of tremendous feat to encourage a miracle." He smiled, delighted with an idea.
"Do you have anyone who will miss you? They might try to raise you from the dead."
I needed to think about it for only an instant. "No."
His smile melted. "I really don't know what to say then."
Frustrated, I asked, "So, what's your story." My tone was childish. It frustrated me that he was so happy writing his tale over and over again.
He smiled at me bashfully. "No. I really don't think I should. I don't even know if we're allowed to."
I wrote: BITTERNESS BECAME MY FINAL COMPANION. "Come on," I snapped.
"What are they going to do? Kill you?"
He smiled at that and said, "All right." He looked down, and as he wrote he recited his story.
"My story. I was orphaned and left to die." Already I felt uncomfortable. I knew he was going to take a horrible fate and make it good. "I had no faith that anything good could come from interacting with people. I trusted no one. I thought I would kill myself. As I thought about it, I realized that if made pretend I was dead, I could live out the rest of my life without risk of failure. I was already dead, so what would it cost me to trust people? I trusted people and spent the rest of my days enjoying the company of others." He laughed and said, "The End."
"I tried that," I exclaimed. "The death thing."
"Isn't it utterly ridiculous?" he exclaimed, expecting me to join in his mirth.
But I said, "It didn't work! Or, it did, but somehow I let it slip ... I went back ..."
"I am sorry," he said, eyes sad once again. "I really am." He looked back down, smiling at the preposterousness of his narrative. How could he really end up happy by lying to himself about being dead? Yet it seemed to have worked.
I continued to work as well. Hours passed. Days. I wrote and wrote and wrote. No stars or sun turned in the sky. Time became meaningless. All that mattered was that I had to write my narrative again and again and again. I kept waiting for some change to come in the words. It seemed that at some point I would be allowed to learn a little lesson. Come to terms with some element of my past. But no. Nothing changed. I was trapped writing the same thing over and over. At some point, after I'd written it thousands and thousands of times, a terror crept into my comprehension. I'd be doing this forever. No variation. No relief. No change. No happiness. I'd lived my life. It was done. This was it.
I wrote: MY STORY
I WAS RAISED TO MISTRUST OTHER PEOPLE AND THINK MYSELF
WORTHLESS. AS I GREW OLDER, MY LACK OF TRUST MADE ME KEEP
THOSE I LOVED AWAY FROM ME. TO MAKE SURE I NEVER GOT TOO CLOSE
TO ANYONE, I DID HORRIBLE THINGS TO THE PEOPLE I LOVED. THUS I PROVED MYSELF WORTHLESS. BITTERNESS BECAME MY FINAL
COMPANION. I DIED. THE END.
I had to get out. I didn't know how I would do it. But by the hundred millionth time, I knew I could no longer sustain this agony. Ultimately, my life was too boring to read over and over. Something had to be done.
2
My only clue as to the geography of the land of Death was the tablets that flew from our hands and traveled in the same direction. Even if they did not travel to an important place, it would, I reasoned, still be a place. If I could at least reach a place, I would have some point of bearing.
I spent a long time calling for help, demanding that someone take me to Death so I could speak with him. No one arrived, but a few of the scribblers smiled at me with smug wisdom, as if they'd seen my behavior oh so many times before.
I tried to hang on to my tablet as it flew off, but my life story slipped through my fingers again and again.
Finally I struck on the idea of grabbing someone else's tablet as it went by. The problem, the first one, lay in the fact that my hands automatically kept writing my story. They were no longer mine to control. However, in the moment between the tablet leaving my hand on completion and the appearance of a new blank tablet, I had a small moment of rest. In that moment I tried to extend my arm. I found I could do it. What was difficult was waiting for a tablet to fly by near me at the same time my hand was free. Each time I wrote the words THE END, I looked around for a tablet near me. They passed by from all directions, each one distracting me from all the others. I never made a choice of which one to grab for, and so all of them rushed by.
After waiting for what seemed forever, scrawling my simple, miserable narrative over and over-again, I decided to focus on one area—to look in one direction and ignore the other options. As I wrote the last period, my hand was freed from its task of holding the tablet and I saw another rushing toward me. My fingers caught at the tablet, hanging on to the edge for just a moment, and then the tablet flew on. This encouraged me, however, for at least my plan was possible. The pull the tablet exerted was probably strong enough to drag me on.
"What are you doing?" asked the happy dwarf.
"I've got to get out of here," I answered, looked for another tablet flying nearby.
"Ah."
"There's no way to get out of here," said the miserable dwarf.
"I've got to try."
The happy dwarf said, "Yes. He's got to try. What's the risk of trying?"
"What's the point?"
"I take it your story didn't come out too well," I said.
"Useless," answered the miserable dwarf as he scratched it out once more.
"Actually," said the happy dwarf, "they all come out the same in the end. We all die. It's in the living of it that the tension lies."
"You were a stupid idiot!" barked the miserable dwarf.
"Did you two know each other?" I asked.
"No. But look at him. How can you review your life and be happy."
"But my life is so absurd," said the happy dwarf. "I've got to laugh."
"Absurd?" I asked.
"Certainly. I've read it to you. I spent my whole life needing to make myself perfect. I mean, that's not in the story, but I know it's there. My parents were always so proud of me when I did something. I was a stone-cutter, and they loved my skills. Loved them and loved them. Heaped praise on me for how I could cut up a gem. But no gem was ever good enough for me— because the more perfectly I cut it, the more praise I would get.
As I grew into an adult, more people praised my abilities. I strove for perfection in all things. I became the guildmaster in Bartertown. I bullied everyone around me to be perfect as well. I dismissed everything that fell below my standards—and let me assure
you, everything did." He began laughing, as if looking at someone else's memories from a great distance, and seeing all too clearly the foolishness of the poor man. "Everyone respected me, but no one came near me. I never fell in love ..."
"Me neither," said the miserable dwarf.
"I think I did," I said. "But I'm not sure."
"That's what I meant," the miserable dwarf said. He seemed completely confused as to exactly what his life had been about. If I had suggested we had all been born tadpoles, he probably would have considered it a possibility.
"Well, I thought I did, but I think now I didn't," said the happy dwarf. He continued writing as he spoke. A few of the other bodies crammed around us began to listen, but most kept to their task, faces glum. "I would give advice, and people would listen. I would cut gems, and everyone would come to look at them. I was spoken about. But I don't think many people spoke to me. They were afraid I would cut up their words as deftly as I cut diamonds."
"That doesn't sound very happy or absurd," I said.
"Well, that's the thing of it," said the dwarf, with a barking laugh. "I was miserable. I didn't think my cutting was very good. I'd come home from work and my wife would compliment me ..."
"I thought you said you didn't fall in love," said the miserable dwarf.
"I didn't love her," the happy dwarf said without missing a beat, then carried on. "She'd compliment me, so proud of me, and I'd think her an idiot— because I knew how useless and incompetent my work was. Nothing I did ever was good enough for me. I'd order her around the house, trying to snap her into something worthy of my approval. She thought I was so wonderful, and I so wanted her to realize what a terrible person I was. Only then would I be able to respect her." For a moment a flash of loss passed across his features, and he smiled as if in amazement. "And she was a wonderful woman! She had so much love!"
"You said you didn't love her," said the miserable dwarf.
"I didn't. She loved me. So this was my life. One day an expensive order came in from Throal. And I picked up a hammer and got ready to smash every one of the gems that had been entrusted into my care. I wasn't even aware of the fact until I was about to do it. I wielded the instrument with the same casual habit I used with my cutting tools. I raised it over the first diamond, beautiful and clear blue, and just before I brought it down, knew what was at stake. My wife came in and said, 'Dear?' I looked up, saw her staring at me, her expression of love and concern. The hammer felt ridiculously heavy in my hand.
Feeling out of place in my own life, I put the tool down. It occurred to me I had no idea why I cut diamonds."
"I'll bet you didn't even like cutting diamonds," the miserable dwarf said.
"No, actually. That was the interesting thing about it all. I ended up continuing to carve diamonds and gems until the day I died, when a giant eagle had a heart attack and fell to the earth, crushing me to death. I loved the work. People would bring me rare stones with so much potential for such beauty, and my Job was to bring that beauty out.”
The miserable dwarf was becoming irritable now. Then what was the business with the hammer?"
"I hadn't ever enjoyed it. Well, at least not from the first times I'd done it. I'd traded in my love of the activity for the approval of everyone else. I hadn't paid attention to my own passion for the work in years. I turned the task into one I did only for money and the approval of others."
"What did you do?" I asked. His story was different than mine. But I heard similarities in both our tales. I thought I might learn something from him.
"First, I cancelled the contract with Bartertown. In fact, I got rid of all the work I'd scheduled for the next few months. I had a bit of money saved away, and knew I'd be all right for a while."
"I'm sure your wife appreciated that," the miserable dwarf grumbled.
"She was very supportive, actually. She wanted me to be happy. She had always wanted me to be happy. My misery had made her miserable."
"Why did she stay with you?" This was pertinent, for I could only believe that Releana had always expected some sort of transformation to take place within me. Why else had she given me so many chances?
"She loved me. And for that I have no explanation. Whether it be my wife's love for me, or anyone's love for someone else."
I had never believed something so simple could be the reason. My mind had reeled out countless excuses for Releana's affection. She had no taste. She was weak. She was an idiot. She felt a need to save me. She had nothing better to do with her time. The possibility that, despite all my flaws, she might simply care for me, came as a tremendous shock. "What did you do?" I asked.
"Well, as a craftsman in the jewel and gem trade, I had, over the years, accumulated quite a few stones of my own. Small pieces. Not the stuff of marketable value that might appeal to princes and kings and wealthy merchants. But attractive nonetheless. And they were mine. I took them out of storage, where they'd been waiting, some of them, for years, and set them out on a black cloth in my workshop. Each of them, a dozen in all, sparkled different colors in the sunlight that rushed in through the window. I spent a day just looking at them, thinking about how to cut each one. And then I got to work. It took me months, for I wanted to try some cuts not so obvious. Because they were mine, I could take the risks I needed to take. Most people, you know, want to buy what they've bought before. They think they're getting something new, but usually they're not. As a cutter it was rare that anyone expected me to try something different. But now I wasn't working for anyone else. I was working for me.
"So I spent months on my delicate stones. A strange peacefulness came over my household. Without a need to busy my wife with countless words, as my own thoughts had so busied my head with countless criticisms of myself, we actually had the silence we needed to be able to speak to each other. I discovered that she loved to take long walks through the streets of Bartertown at twilight. I had thought she rushed out of the house to avoid me. But I soon learned she did not rush. That was my own imagination at work. I also learned, once I asked, that she would love for me to accompany her on occasion. Not all the time, for as she said, 'These are my walks.' But sometimes. So we wandered the city. Without the need to judge everything poking at my mind all the time, I was able to listen to the voice of the people around me, and to see all the sights, the small ones, I'd missed so often. A child helping another child up from the ground. A man whistling a song as he carried lumber. A woman peeling the skin off an orange, eyeing it hungrily in anticipation.
"Things lost the meaning I'd previously assigned them. Success was found in the details of daily life fitting together calmly, not the ability to bully those around me and prove them incompetent. On these walks my wife held my hand. Perhaps for the first time I really felt its touch. It was a wonder to me. For all our time together I'd seen her body as a collection of items to be judged. I had kept most of my thoughts to myself, but I think she always knew. But now—how do I say this?—her flesh was no longer flesh, something isolated from her. It was an embodiment of her life story and who she was in the present. I was drawn to her not only because her body was appealing, but because it was one way for our stories to meet, merge, connect."
Almost everyone in the dwarf's immediate area was listening now, even as their hands continued to write out time after time their narratives. Some smiled wistfully at the dwarf's words, others looked down glumly. Still others had tears in their eyes. All of them, I'm certain, were reflecting on their own lives, before their deaths, when they had had the chance at living, the chance now gone. I know I was.
"What did you do when the money ran out?" said the miserable dwarf with a bit of a sneer. He clearly wanted to find some loose thread of despair hanging from the happy dwarf's narrative tapestry.
"I went back to work, of course. One does what one must to eat. But the work was different now. It was during this time I imagined killing myself. I really thought it through, because I felt the dragging depression of my past picking at the edg
es of my newly found joy. I thought: If I kill myself, my wife will be sad, and my neighbors will have something to talk about for a while. But with time, my death, which would be the defining moment of my life, would be forgotten, along with my life. Others, even my wife, would have to get on with theirs. That would be all. But with that in mind, I could live as if I had died. Freed from the need to succeed, I could enjoy this second, accidentally found life. I could work at cutting precious stones not because I had to, but because I chose to. So I surrendered my life to the Passions, and decided to live with the absurd notion that I could be happy, not because I had a reason to be happy, but because I had no reason not to be happy."
Only the sound of the scratching of stylus against tablet continued after the happy dwarf had finished. The lot of us, our bodies pressed up against one another, remained silent for a long time. Until finally someone coughed, and one by one the others turned their attention back to their own stories. Stories that, for better or worse, they would apparently write out again and again for the rest of eternity. I could only think that the realm of the dead was filled with more regret than any place I'd ever heard of.
