Remembrance: Chapter 1
Remembrance Chapter 1
The family members have tears in their eyes when they welcome Kalm back to the inn from his long journey.
"Thank you so much for coming."
He understood the situation immediately. The time for departure is drawing near. Too soon, too soon. But still, he knows, this day would have to come sometime, and not in the distant future.
"I might never see you again." she whispered to him with a sad smile when he left on this journey, her smiling face almost transparent in its whiteness, so fragile-and therefore indescribably beautiful-as she lay in bed.
"May I see Sarah now?" he asks.
The innkeeper gives him a tiny nod with his maroon face illuminated only by the dim light and says "I don't think she will know who you are, through." She hasn't opened her eyes since last night, he warns Kalm. You can tell from the slight movement of her chest that she is clinging to a frail thread of life, but it could snap at any moment.
"It's such a shame. I know you made a special point to come here for her..." Another tear glides down the wife's cheek.
"Never mind, It's fine," Kalm says. He has been present at innumerable deaths, and his experience has taught him much. Death takes away the power of speech first of all. Then the ability to see. What remains alive to the very end, however, is the power to hear. Even though the person has lost consciousness, it is by no means unusual for the voives of the family to bring forth smiles or tears.
Kalm puts his arm around the woman's shoulder and says, "I have lots of travel stories to tell her. I've been looking forward to this my whole time on the road." Instead of smiling, the woman releases another large tear and nods to Kalm. "And Sarah was so looking forward to hearing your stories." Her sobs almost drown out her words.
The Innkeeper says, "I wish I could urge you to rest up from your travels before you see her, but..." Kalm interrupts his apologies, "Of course, I'll see her right away." There is little time left. Sarah, the only daughter of the innkeeper and his wife, will probably breathe her last before the sun comes up. Kalm lowers his pack to the floor and quietly opens the door to Sarah's room.
Sarah was frail from birth. Far from enjoying the opportunity to travel, she rarely left the town or even the neighborhood in which she was born and raised. This child will probably not live to adulthood, the doctor told her parents. To this tiny girl with extraordinarily beautiful, doll-like features, God had dealt an all-too-sad destiny.
He had allowed her to be born the only daughter of the keepers of a small inn by the highway was perhaps one small act of atonement for such iniquity. Sarah was unable to go anywhere, but the guests who stayed at her parents' inn would tell her stories of the countries and towns and landscapes and people that she would never know. Whenever new guests arrived at the inn, Sarah would ask them, "where are you from?" "Where are you going?" "Can you tell me a story?"
She would sit and listen to their stories with sparkling eyes, urging them on to new episodes with "And then? And then?" When they left the inn, she would beg them, "Please come back, and tell me lots and lots of stories about faraway countries!" She would stand there waving until the person disappeared far down the highway, give one lonely sigh, and go back to bed.
Sarah is sound asleep. No one else is in the room, perhaps an indication that she has long since passed the stage when the doctors can do anything for her. Kalm sits down in the chair next to the bed and says with a smile, "Hello, Sarah, I'm back." She does not respond. Her little chest, still without the swelling of a grown woman, rises and falls almost imperceptibly.
"I went far across the ocean this time," he tells her. "The ocean on the side where the sun comes up. I took a boat from the harbor way far beyond the mountains you can see from this window, and I was on the sea from the time the moon was perfectly round till it got smaller and smaller and bigger and bigger until it was full again. There was nothing but ocean as far as the eye could see. Just the sea and the sky. Can you imagine it, Sarah? You've never seen the ocean, but I'm sure people have told you about it. It's like a huge, big endless puddle." Kalm chuckles to himself, and it seems to him that Sarah's pale white cheek moves slightly.
She can hear him. Even if she cannot speak of see, her ears are still alive. Believing and hoping this to be true, Kalm continues with the story of his travels. He speaks no words of parting. As always with Sarah, Kalm smiles with a special gentleness he has never shown to anyone else, and he goes on telling his tales with a bright voice, sometimes even accompanying his story with exaggerated gestures.
He tells her about the blue ocean. He tells her about the blue sky. He says nothing about the violent battle that stained the ocean red. He never tells her about those things.
Sarah was still a tiny girl when Kalm first visited the inn. When she asked him "Where are you from?" and "Will you tell me some stories?" with her childish pronunciation and innocent smile, Kalm felt a soft glow in his chest. At the time Kalm was returning from a battle. More precisely, he had ended one battle and was on his way to the next. His life consisted of traveling from one battlefield to another, and nothing has ever changed to this day. He had taken the lives of countless enemy troops, and witnessed the deaths of countless comrades on the battlefield. Moreover, the only thin separating enemies from comrades is the slightest stroke of fortune. Had the gears of destiny turned in a slightly different way, his enemies would have been comrades and his comrades enemies. This is the fate of the mercenary.
He was spiritually worn down back then and feeling unbearably lonely. Each of the soldiers' faces distorted in fear, and each face of a man who died in agony was burned permanently into his brain. Ordinarily, he would spend nights on the road drinking. Immersing himself in an alcoholic stupor-or pretending to-he was trying to make himself forget to unforgettable. When, however, he saw Sarah's smile as she begged him for stories about his long journey. He felt a far warmer and deeper comfort than he could ever obtain from liquor.
He told her many things... About a beautiful flower he discovered on the battlefield. About the bewitching beauty of the mist filling the forest the night before the final battle. About the marvelous taste of the spring water in a ravine where he and his men had fled after a losing battle. About a vast bottomless blue sky he saw after a battle.
He never told her anything sad. He kept his mouth shut about the human ugliness and stupidity he witnessed endlessly on the battlefield. He concealed his position as a mercenary from her, kept silent regarding his reasons for traveling constantly, and spoke only of things that were beautiful and sweet and lovely. He sees now that he told Sarah only beautiful stories of the road like this not so much out of concern for her purity, but for his own sake.
Staying in the Inn where Sarah waited to see him turned out to be one of Kalm's small pleasures in life. Telling her about the memories he brought back from his journeys, he felt some degree of salvation, however slight. Five years, ten years, his friendship with the girl continued. Little by little, she neared adulthood, which meant that, as the doctors had predicted, each day brought her that much closer to death.
And now, Kalm ends the last travel story he will share with her. He can never see her again, can never tell her stories again. Before dawn, when the darkness of night is at its deepest, long pauses enter into Sarah's breathing. The frail thread of her life is about to snap as Kalm and her parents watch over her. The tiny light that has lodged in Kalm's breast will be extinguished. His lonely travels will begin again tomorrow.
"You'll be leaving on travels of your own soon, Sarah," Kalm tells her gently. "You'll be leaving for a world that no one knows, a world that has never entered into any of the stories you have heard so far. Finally, you will be able to leave your bed and walk anywhere you want to go, You'll be free." He wants her to know that death is not sorrow but a joy mixed with tears. "It's your turn now. Be sure and tell everyone about the memories of your journey." Her parents will make that same journey someday. And some day Sarah will be able to meet all the guests she has known at the inn, far beyond the sky.
I, however can never go there. I can never escape this world. I can never see you again. "This is not goodbye. It's just the start of your journey." He speaks his final words to her. "We'll meet again." His final lie to her. Sarah makes her departure. Her face is transfused with a tranquil smile as if she has just said "see you soon." Her eyes will never open again. A single tear glides slowly down her cheek/
Kalm awakens, a shiver runing through his silver fur, to a dim stone prison wall.