The Sphere (47 page)
Authors: Martha Faë
The congregation stands and forms a line to walk past the coffin. Out of all them a little boy of about seven years old grabs my attention. He’s small, with an oversized head, and ears that stick out. He’s accompanied by a woman whose personality seems as withered as her body. She’s wearing a patched black dress and hoping no one notices the holes in her shoes. When mother and son approach the casket, my incorporeal body flies over to their side. The boy gazes at the man lying in the coffin, resting in all his finery on crimson-colored velvet.
“Goodbye, sir,” the boy says with a sigh.
His childlike eyes watch, entranced, as a powerful light glows in the chest of the dead man. The ray of light is so beautiful that he can’t take his eyes away from it. The woman tugs angrily on her son’s ear and drags him back to the pew. The boy turns back to look again and again, and his mother pulls him away again and again. He can’t stop admiring the glowing light as it emerges from the man’s chest and spills over the edge of the casket, illuminating the dome of the church. The mother brings the little boy around to face the front with another rough yank:
“Don’t bring me any more shame,” she whispers. “It’s bad enough being the only servant at this funeral.”
The boy hangs his head. Everyone in the congregation has said their final goodbyes to the deceased; the woman and her son had to wait until last because of their social station. The church, overflowing with people, has been watching the two small figures with interest. The priest urges the parishioners to say one last prayer for the eternal rest of the dead man. The people all kneel, their joints creaking. Soon the boy is the only one with his head raised. His child’s eyes are still fixed on the light shining next to the altar, and he doesn’t realize he’s the only one still standing. A cruel pinch right at his knee brings him down to kneel like the rest. In the little strip of bare skin between his short pants and his socks are red marks from the angry fingers of the embarrassed woman. A single tear rolls down the boy’s puffy cheek.
They close the coffin and the procession leaves the church. The light coming from the dead man’s chest pierces the cover of the casket and shines through the fog, defying the twisted branches of the trees that lean in to cover the short path from the church to the graveyard.
The boy and his mother walk at the end of the procession. I follow them, floating close by. With repeated blows the mother forces the boy to bow his head, to stop looking at the coffin with such curiosity.
We’re standing before the hole in the ground. Once again I see the flower-covered coffin and the people weeping. The ray of light passes through the casket, springs forth from the wreaths of flowers, pierces the fog, and goes up to the sky. The glow persists even after the coffin is lowered into the ground, but when the gravedigger throws a few shovels of dirt in, the light goes out. The boy’s face fills with sorrow when he sees what he thought was a star on earth disappear. Just when it seems like it’s all over, a spark shoots out from beneath the thin layer of dirt and explodes in a canopy of fireworks. The boy’s face lights up. My heart grows warm as I watch the glittering sparks float down through the sky, reflected in the boy’s small, dark eyes. Only the boy and I seem to notice what’s happening; the rest of the people in the procession are too deep in their own sorrow.
The sparks drift gently down, light as feathers, and land in the chests of all the people there—all except mine, and the boy’s, and his mother’s. A tiny spark floats close to the boy and he reaches his hands out to catch it. The small child’s hands close tightly, carefully guarding the treasure. The boy saw how some of the light went into everyone else’s chests, so he brings his hands carefully to his own chest. Then his mother slaps him on the back of the neck:
“Stop embarrassing me!”
The spark slips out of his hands, falls to the ground, and vanishes, taking with it the boy’s last hope. The rest of the mourners slowly leave the cemetery, embracing, leaning on one another’s arms. Some of them instinctively bring their hands up to their chests to the place where the light went in. The boy’s eyes grow cloudy with tears as he watches the others touch, without even knowing it, the love they shared in life with the dead man.
I feel the heat in my chest growing. I close my eyes and see the Count’s finger, pointing to show me where I should search. I hear the words that Axel said to me so many times:
“I don’t understand why you won’t let yourself be loved. To love and be loved, that’s the hardest thing to learn in life. And the only thing worth learning.”
Eurydice.
I hear the voices calling me over and over again. The ear-splitting beeps have stopped, and a relative calm has returned. I feel lucky, so lucky for everything I’ve lived. I open my eyes and find myself still in the graveyard. The boy has noticed my presence and is staring at me. His eyes ask
why
silently—why doesn’t he have the right to the light that everyone else has? I look at the small face. I want to hug him, stroke his face, but my incorporeal self won’t let me. I recognize those cow-eyes, the gaze of a fish, cloudy, without love.
“Necrus,” I whisper.
“I just wanted to be immortal,” the boy says. “The supreme work... If I could have created it... If I could have gotten the essences of the best characters from history, then I could have made the ultimate character, one that would pass from generation to generation. Then everyone would have loved me, and I would have had a little bit of light, too... If only I had been able to create something that reached other people, I would be like the man in the coffin. I would never die. I would always remain, even after I’d gone.”
I feel a tug, much gentler than the other ones. I wave goodbye to the child Necrus. I want to tell him that we all have some wound, that he too has the right to a little spark of love. There are so many things I want to tell him, but I can’t see him any longer, and I’m being pulled back through the fabric of space and time. I cross dimensions; everything that is and is not possible passes before my eyes. I cross places where color cannot live, and in them the light in my chest shines brightly, so brightly that I finally have to shut my eyes. I feel the flow of light running outside and inside me. The journey is over. I open my eyes. Necrus is gone. The clouds and sun of the Sphere have been replaced by a white neon light. I can hear the beeping again, but now it’s quiet, completely tolerable. I know I’m in a hospital. I blink and see the waiting eyes of my parents, of the twins, of Laura, Marion, and Axel. The eyes of all those people who have always shared my light.
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[1]
At the University of St Andrews first-year students have a
mother
or
father
; students in upper years who serve as guides both in practical matters and leisure activities.
[2]
What shall I do without Eurydice?
