Madness

The young woman was stepping tiredly through the thick fog that made the dry, grey trees merge with the pewter sky. The man was looking at her sadly, with his lips split. She was scratched, bruised, with a crumpled, dirty dress.

“Didn’t you make it?” – he asked silently when she stood in front of him and looked at him.

She shook her head, without answering. The man sighed and put his hand on her shoulder. 

“I don’t know what you had expected but… you’ve always been a daredevil. Come on, come here.”

He snapped his fingers and they found themselves into a vast room in which a few lost in patina candlesticks and the blaze in the big stone fireplace were throwing glares and penumbras on an antique bookcase, pictures with mythological scenes, carved desk. Two glasses appeared in his hands, he nodded at a massive armchair and leaned back on the other one by it.

“That will warm you up” – he passed one of the glasses at her.

“I’m not cold” – the woman murmured.

“I know it. It’s just a habit” – the man shrugged and waved in the air. – “Just as all of that here.”

“I’m not cold, it doesn’t hurt” – she kept speaking as if she had not heard him. – “Or, rather, it hurts because people are so blind!”

“I told you but you didn’t believe me.”

“I had to convince myself” – the woman answered.

A dull roar came from outside, the windows jingled silently in the night and the woman startled.

“The rock” – the man said blankly. – “It collapsed again.”

“What’d we do wrong?” – she looked at him.         

“I don’t know… I don’t know if we’re wrong at all or we don’t have any chance fundamentally.”

“Did you give up?” – she stretched out. – “Could you give up?”

“You heard the rock, didn’t you? I didn’t give up but sometimes even I lose hope.”

“We shouldn’t, dad. You can’t afford it! I’m sure there’s a way!”

The woods in the fireplace were cracking silently.  

“What happened down there?” – he turned to her a little.

“Nothing” – the woman sat more comfortably and sighed. – “Or, to be more punctual, I achieved nothing.”

The man was looking at her in silence.

“I tried to make people go out of their lethargy” – she started speaking. – “I saw no another way and used all of my skills to provoke different situations, different events which could make them move, see through the truth how much they’ve gone with the flow but whatever I did, everything went wrong. Or not.. it did not go wrong but people reacted so unexpectedly that the result was terrifying…”

Her eyes were gazing at the flames in the fireplace.

“I suggested them they should change the order they have created by themselves and which had put chains on them though they had never made an use of them; to find a way to build a new life which could give them more freedom but everything, absolutely everything I achieved every time was anarchy… I suggested them a sense of goodness to each other but they turned it into a fight; I wanted to help them live together but they found a reason for struggle…”

The man shook his head.

“Some of them realized that life could be better but they were just a few. The rest either denied everything and dedicated themselves to depravity or sunk into despair because they did not understand how to achieve it, or they started wars with those who did not understand them and everything led to troubles, conflicts, riots…” – the young woman leaned back and took a sip. – “Everybody who was able to hear me was announced to be mad… and that… that was a real madness..”

“And what did you expect?” – the man raised his eyebrows. – “As if you don’t know that I’ve ever tried whatnot. As if I haven’t told you how I wanted to give them life that could rationalize the knowledge and they accepted the knowledge but got afraid of life; they said I was a snake, they blamed me for their own sins and figured out their own usurpers they filled the sky with and chased me away of there by chained me to a cliff. After that they sent that eagle to chew my flesh. It was good I got rid of it…”

The man laughed at himself.

“And with all the ignorance of theirs, they called me, who gave them fire, Lucifer – The Light-Bringer!”

The young woman was nodding thoughtfully while the man kept speaking:

“I told you how I wanted to give them life I had thought they deserved. I descended again among them, destroyed death and in result – here, you heard it by yourself, the cliff outside…I should push it up again tomorrow. And I went back one more time to tell them that the Kingdom was inside them, that they were free but they distorted everything and crucified me because I had broken the laws of their God and afterwards turned me into God just not to be responsible for their lives, purging with me…”

            “Stop it” – she interrupted him. – “I believe they deserve it. There’s got to be a way.”

“Maybe but they are not ready yet, my girl. You can’t give, you can’t teach people to something they’re not ready to hear, to accept it.”

The young woman kept gazing at the fire but suddenly she winced and turned to him sharply.

“And maybe that’s where we both are wrong: people! We always think about people but we miss the person!”

The man looked at her in surprise.

“You see, dad, we want to help people just like that, at once” – she kept speaking excitedly. – “And maybe we should help to a certain person.”

“A person by person? And how do you imagine it?”

“I don’t know but I feel like… no, I’m sure that’s the way!”

“That would already be a madness” – the man tightened his lips but saw that there was no trace of her scratches and bruises.

“Madness or not, I’ll try it!”

The young woman clapped her hands, the fire flashed for the last time, the furniture dissolved in smoke, the stone walls spilled into a vanishing dust.

A young man was looking tiredly at the sunset behind his desk at the end of the work day and asked himself what had happened to his dreams. He had wanted to travel all over the world, to see unknown lands and eventually he turned out to be dozed off with accounts, reports, and statistical data. The sun was going down behind the distant mountain picks and something forgotten stung him. Suddenly he turned around to the computer, wrote an email and while he was gathering his things, his supervisor busted into the room.

“What does it mean?”

“I quit.”

“But how’s that … overnight?” – the supervisor roared, putting his fists on the desk. – “How can you imagine it? There’s a period of notice!”

“I haven’t used my annual leave and if you want, you might put me on disciplinary leave” – the man answered calmly.

“And you’ll give up your salary? Did you go crazy? What are you going to do unemployed?”

The man was going downstairs without hearing his supervisor’s fading voice. He took his necktie off still while he was going into the street where he bypassed a bright girl. He did not know that she had just finished her first painting after she had postponed her dream to draw for a long time. She had always found some excuses and hardly now she realized they were just such. The girl smiled at a woman who was pleased that finally she signed up for an Argentinean Tango Lessons. The woman knew it she had lost her youth grace but though everybody at home had accused her that she was mad, she was about to make her dream true – to learn at least a few steps of that refined dance.

The fog had lifted and a few green blades, stretching to the sky, could be seen among the dry grass. The father was observing the invisible shadow of the wings flying from a person to a person from above and was murmuring:

“Madness! It will take her centuries but maybe she will turn out to be right…”

He kept observing a while more, scratched the healed scar by the eagle’s beak and laughed:

“Mine is madness, either but let’s see which and what.

He rolled his sleeves up and started for the cliff that had rolled down the hill.

~~~~~~~~~
Translated by: Vessislava Savova