I checked my emails and found nothing to fill the emptiness. Eleanor leaving had hit me harder than I thought. There was this chasm inside me, not craving food, drink or lucre but a human being who had provided me with some semblance of security amid the mediocrity of my life. Beyond this chasm was something more that this world could not fill. It was a purer depression and it frightened me. Eleanor had kept it at bay and now she was gone, it was threatening to spill and engulf. My face was shadowy that day, as if haunted by some premonition that Hell was knocking on the door of Leonard.
My secretary walked in and asked me if there was anything I would like her to do today. Joan was an old lady with large glasses, greying hair in a bun and a disposition that can only be described as scripted straight from the ‘Secretaries for Dummies’ guidebook. Another robot. I muttered no and she left only to return a few minutes later with a new file for me to look at. My heart, already in the process of sinking from the sad ghoul haunting me, crashed to the bottom of the ocean. Joan left and I struggled for breath.
It was my damn soul. It was trying to escape, as if it had sensed a way out of my scorched insides. I was having a full blown panic attack and I slammed my head into my desk and kept it there. Tears slowly streamed down my face with my eyes clenched against the tide. All I saw was memories in the darkness of every stain on my record, every lesson unheeded, every opportunity that had passed me by because of me and Burt.
Epiphany arrived and I realised a divorce was inevitable. Everybody does it these days. They can be messy painful affairs, but oh so necessary for peace of mind. I picked myself up, and called up Shamdul.
Revelations and Beggars
“Who the hell is Shamdul?” interrupted Burt with a groan, as he began to brush the sand off his shoulders.
“A great man” I smiled.
Shamdul Tabrumi. The man who unplugged me from all that eventually turns to dust and rowed me to the eternal rivers of soulful gold. I remember how I met him more clearly than anything else, which convinces me destiny was certainly at play. I was walking down the street and saw a dishevelled mess of a man with a small beard and baseball cap sat on the kerb, smiling warmly with a little cup beside him for any loose change from passers by. What struck me about this particular beggar was his smile. It was genuine and rooted in a firm conviction that no matter what happened, he would be fed and kept warm as was promised in the covenant to those pure of faith. In the blazes of central city life sat a man who believed in the ‘nonsense’ of destiny. It intrigued me, so I approached him and offered a cigarette. I remember the exchange perfectly.
“No thank you good sir, not all that are materially deprived crave the substances of forgetfulness!” he beamed, baring his white teeth. I have to admit, I was struck by what I perceived to be backhand to my offer and the cleanliness of his teeth – he was a beggar after all.
“I’m sorry, I have no change” I muttered angrily, blushing.
“Come sit with me a while” he said invitingly, enticing me with his vivid light brown eyes.
I obliged and to this day I have no idea why. I was compelled by instinct.
“I wish only for you to stand before an immense sky” he winked.
I remember my confusion, not at his words, but at the stirring of something unexplainable in the hidden chambers of my very being. He looked up to the sky and spoke the epiphany, the war, the revelation that made me pregnant with a feeling which I knew was to tear me apart and build me anew.
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer”
I was dumbstruck.
“I wish only for you to stand before an immense sky” he grinned.
I bowed my head. He placed a little note on my lap with his number on it. I looked up and he was gone.
“Sounds like utter nonsense to me!” cackled Burt, before he began to cough again and double up on his knees. The man was in clear pain, yet could still not resist the urge to win back the Leonard of old.
“You know what he said when I called him up that day? ‘I wish only for you to stand before an immense sky’. That was it and it made sense. That’s why I am here” I said quietly, brushing my hand through my hair as I looked beyond the shore, to the wonder of the lamp in the sky to the reflection of the heavens in the water.
“I don’t remember this…how can I not remember this? I have always been there with you,” said Burt with eyes wide and a puzzled visage.
I laughed and lit up a cigarette as I walked past him to stand on the shore.
“No you have not”, I sighed with satisfaction, “In those rare moments when my soul awoke, you were locked away from view. Only the purest of heart can enter the purest of places, Burt”
Art Thou Leonard?
“Don’t you remember the good old days, Leo? The early years?” pleaded Burt. His time was up, and he knew it.
Of course I remembered those days. We stomped like scoundrels on the graves of optimistic youth, danced to the rain as if enraptured by the voodoo larks of our masters and delivered blows that thundered across the world. Or so we thought.
“Don’t you remember that time when you were all alone, in a small flat with nothing to your name and together, we embarked on a journey to ensure we would never find ourselves there again?” he pleaded, desperately trying to provoke me out of my silence.
I recall having nothing, while watching the sun set out of a dingy window in a God forsaken apartment block. I remember the days when I had nothing but a pack of noodles and chicken giblets on the stove to appease my hunger, such was the threadbare nature of my pocket. I remember the tears and agony of poverty. I tasted each bitter rejection, each penny and each grumble of stomach and heart as I strived.
He saw the fire in my eyes.
“That glint! See? It is still there!” rejoiced Burt, his face creasing with joy, “We both vowed that we deserved better and would never find ourselves in the doldrums of poverty again. And we didn’t! So, am I really that bad? Look at what I gave you! We never had to worry about provision. Warmth was there, food boomed in our fridges and garments worthy of Kings were at our beck and call!”
I began to have doubts. That was a difficult period in my life and without Burt, would I have escaped? No matter how much a man attempts to cleanse his soul, nobody ever wants to feel the solitary confinement of poverty. Once tasted, we run to all manners of things to make certain we never cry ourselves to sleep again. I did not sleep for 6 months. I was too poor to sleep. My legs were becoming weak. Fear, that old pretender, came to sit in my chest with his awesome hand of cards. My anxiety was back and the vulnerability of my old mental handicap made me feel cold.
“I’m here to kill you” I whispered.
“Am I making you doubt? Poverty is a crime. Nobody deserves it, not least you. What did you ever do to feel the pinch? Nothing. We broke those in front of us because they were weak” he spat, eyes wide and arms in the air.
“Weak?” I replied with a furrowed brow.
“Too weak to know that it is a world of savagery and brutality. A man must not be afraid to throw his emotions to the wind. He must study the statistics, throw compassion to the wolves and slice his way to the top” screamed Burt.
The wind was biting once more, making the old man gasp for breath. I was still. It seemed fear had a weak hand of cards this time. He left the building and with it returned my strength, my reason and my humanity. Anxiety bid adieu to be replaced with my fabled decisive streak, infamous for its wrongdoing in my past life. This time it was not tainted with a desire for power. It was imbued with selfless sincerity and complet
e integrity. I felt like a man.
“You will never know how close you came to convincing me this was a bad idea. But as is the case with blind fools, they eventually slip” I muttered under my breath.
Burt raised his eyebrows, but before he could utter another word I approached him, shushed him with a finger and gave him an almighty backhand to the face. He crashed to the floor, his jaw hanging by a thread of a face now deformed. He was no longer moving, but I knew he wasn’t dead. He would only die when I wanted him to.
My hand was throbbing from what I had just inflicted. I walked over to the shore and looked up at the immense sky before me. My body was tingling with a wonderful relief as serendipity finally embraced me tightly after an unforgiveable youth.
“There has never been a more perfect situation in which to have a final cigarette, old sport” I chuckled to myself. I lit up and inhaled. As I blew the smoke of my last cigarette into the air, I saw the sun beginning to set and paint my surroundings in a beautifully rustic amber, adding an antiquated feel to everything I saw. There was a stunning nostalgia and dream like quality to where I stood. The sea brushed against my legs, the sand was soft beneath my feet and the breeze of the sunset magnified a soul I once thought dead.
I wrenched myself away from my daze and looked at Burt. He was twitching slightly. I had to finish the job. I walked over to him, rummaged in his dirty suit jacket and found the revolver I was looking for.
Burt’s eyes quivered with resignation but my aim was true.
‘Goodbye Leonard’
BANG!
I dropped the revolver and fell to my knees. Something was happening inside me and it felt seismic. A feeling began to bulge in my chest, it began to throb against my ribs and groan at my body to finally escape. I let it all out for the first and final time. I screamed, shrieked and let the weeping of a man who had finally conquered himself ring across the earth. With every sob, I felt lighter and my past ran from every pore as my heart finally found bliss. I prostrated and put my head to the ground. My face was drenched, my eyes raw but my smile was wide. The joy was unexplainable, as divine elation warmed my very limbs and cleared my brain of the toxic thoughts which had led me here. I was finally free and as I lifted my head, I saw the beauty of the world ahead of me, I felt what it meant to be truly alive.
The sun had nearly faded, when I looked out at the ocean from where I was sat. The stars were beginning to wake and flirt with dusk, as the sun accepted his eternal promise to the moon to die every night just to let her breathe. I was finally before an immense sky. As my ego lay there dead, my third eye finally awoke and I saw through the prism of a clean heart which was once blackened by the impiety of an ego. The sight! My soul began to sing ballads of my childhood when all was good, pure and sincere. Leonard was dead. Leonard is alive. Leonard lived without his ego, without his Burt. It was no longer a dream. I was finally before an immense sky.
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