Zbornik Mednarodnega literarnega srečanja Vilenica 2003 - Ljudmila

Guilt
/ short story /
No one knew he was going on a trip. He had said nothing about what he had in mind.
Tomorrow or the day after, those who loved and cared for him would ask, search and
get no answer. And as the days would go by without a trace of him, they would think
that he might have fallen victim of murder or robbery. They might have dismissed
suicide because he never had given the impression he was suffering of something ... He
always seemed in good mood, optimistic, and ready to do things alone or with others,
and get involved in something beautiful. Precisely, this disposition of his was his
strength. No matter how he saw the ugly, dreadful, inhuman things taking place in the
world continually, even in his own environment, that saddened him, he endured. He
endured personal pain, because deep in him, he believed he had to stay firm and
struggle for other people who needed him. At times, his care for people who were
suffering was obvious, something he didn't want to. He would like to do things in which
he took great pride, something that happened against his will. He was good because he
simply felt that goodness is man' s beauty and that it should exist in all people. With
goodness the world advances and becomes both just and fair.
However, this faith of his began to diminish lately; he realized that misery spread in the
world, faster and faster; poverty leads people to despair; millions of sick people die
without medicine in heartless, wretched countries. Continually, more and more children,
before even knowing life, depart from it emaciated in some edge of the earth, without
water, without a bite of bread or a smile even. Parents in the horror of need and famine
rooted in them, sell a kidney of theirs to some rich sick person; others become pimps
to a little angel of theirs. This misery is the greatest act of terrorism - - the panic of
famine, the need in which the miserables of life live; the panic which is not heard and
yet exists and at some instant will burst all over mankind like a dreadful volcano.
This is what he kept thinking; he doubted whether it would be useful to write more
novels, which despite all the good ideas he had invested in them, they could not help at
all make the word more humane. Even the brilliant books of great men couldn't change
his course of action any more. Everything in the world seemed now as if preordained to
follow evil. The power of those who possess money is heartless, insatiable, pitiless.
These conclusions were very vivid, as he was completing his sixtieth birthday. This
anniversary came at a point in his life that made him reexamine his course and try to
comprehend which way he was heading to. He wondered if there were left something
significant to create still. Despair overcame him as he contemplated how his life had
passed by and that if he were destined to live another twenty years or so, these years
would be years of decay, he thought; years during which all people become wasted and
lose the vigor of their liveliness. No matter how he wished his life to be, it would not
have its earlier radiance any more. Perhaps, whatever he might have written, it would be
less inspiring, revealing his setting sun. These works would have added nothing to what
he had successfully until now - - if indeed, he had succeeded something, which might
have remained beyond the end of his life. In essence, he feared that everything he had
done was a chimera and a deception. He pondered that as a man he had missed the
truth of life and had failed to create a family of his own and his own children; twice he
had failed to marry and now he was left all alone. Empty is his life, his home, without
the voices of beloved persons, without the warmth of some companion. What is the gain
staying in a home without any future?
What hope in life would give him a new impulse and the feeling of joy again? What? He
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could not get any answer. And so, last night, in his sleeplessness, he arrived to an
answer - - to leave, to disappear.
He hurried to throw a few needed things in a suitcase, as if he were planning an escape
for a few days only. Then, he left for the harbor of Piraeus and by chance he got on the
boat leaving for Patmos. Going to this island was a fine idea. Now, in wintertime, this
island would be quiet, as if uninhabited even; it was exactly what he needed in order to
forget and vanish in the wildness. There he would face himself out, awaiting his end.
Upon his arrival on the island, his first thought was to go and hide in the monastery - -
like someone destined to become a monk. His only wish was to gain the secrecy of all
the monks there and never become known that he had found a refuge. He did exactly
this. The monks welcomed him. They gave him a cell to stay alone; and as he passed
many hours together with other monks, he felt that he never left the world; simply he
had entered another community of men. Now, he started going out in the morning,
wandering in desolate places until sunset and at dusk he would knock again at the
monastery's gate to spend the night. Once, as he reached a deserted seashore at the
backside of the island, he came across a hermit' s cell with a low ceiling. No one had
lived there for a long time and it seemed to be the cell of some dead hermit. Suddenly,
this seemed to him to be the niche he needed to escape from life or even receive a better
illumination for his final years. He pushed the sodden door and entered. He found
himself in front of the poor household of someone who was a hermit and was no longer
living. A bed beside a wall, a plain table a little farther, a stool, an icon, and in the comer
beside the window, the few things needed for a poor anchorite's cooking place - -
everything needed for his own asceticism of soul. And as for other things he needed, a
mattress, blankets for his sleep and whatever else, he would buy them the next day from
the island' s town. He had taken along lots of money, and if he needed more, he would
go to the bank one morning and get some more.
That 's how all these things came to his mind; that's how he figured them out. He lived
in his cell and kept contemplating continually in the seagulls' companion flying over the
tiles of his roof and the roaring of the sea when it got fierce in the night. Very rarely in
the morning, he would go to the little town and buy whatever he needed - - a few thirds
for the life he had chosen. Then, as he was amid the people in the market place, he
remembered that the other life, the one open to the suffering of the world, which kept
going on. One such morning, a morning of wild winter, he was in a little store where he
overhead that a ship of slave traders carrying ill fated emigrants, not only men, but
women and children, some of them still nursing, appeared far off the island from some
Turkish coast. He heard that the slave traders abandoned their rotted ship in the night
secretly and left it seabitten and ungoverned to sink along with the desperate
passengers. or three full days and nights, fifty-two people stayed packed in this rotten
ship, without bread, without water, until a wild storm turned it over and all were
suddenly thrown into the frozen sea. Then, another ship passing by picked up only
twelve sick and exhausted people who came out on the island asking to find if others
were alive. When this became known, all the people of the island took care of them, as
if they were their own shipwrecked relatives; then, other ships and helicopters started
searching to find others who might have been lost.
That's what was said at the shop he had entered; that's what was broadcasted in the TV
news. This event shocked him instantly; he started thinking again what suffering and
fears have forced many ill-fated people to this feeling of despair and made them risk
their lives in the hands of amoral merchants of their hopes. He returned to his cell
saddened. Then, for several days, he kept going to the market to learn if other
shipwrecked passengers were found alive. The answer was that only three were rescued,
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