One Hundred Years of Gratitude

              There comes a point in the lives of all men when they must shed their beloved naïveté to develop a more faded outline of themselves. This rule permits no exceptions, and so it was under these inexorable circumstances that a once-in-a-lifetime event assailed me. 

My incandescent mind had just lain down on this particular night of midsummer nights when an inexplicable alacrity compelled me to visit my grave. For whatever reason, I heeded the darkness and defenestrated myself from the balcony. Clearly, my logical faculties had already fallen asleep. 

A cortège gracefully trailed me as I fell, twinkling with a passionate lustre seldom venerated. Over the years I have realised that the desire of novelty prevails not in the novelty itself, but in its abstraction. Thus, should they appear but once a millennium, I’m sure the eves would find no respite. With appreciation in my heart I spun about in airborne pirouettes, extending my indebted hand to the wanting Other. Thank you, spake the hand. What I owe, I cannot pay back, even with one hundred years of gratitude. 

All around me, fallen devils bore the slings and arrows of amoral virtues. Their minds were translucent to me, and in a colloquial tongue they philosophised in desperation: What outrageous fortune awaits us in this crumbling Xanadu? Vicariously, I experienced each of their lives, all as tragically unique as happy families are alike. Just as I was about to swear fidelity to a fair maiden named Karenina, however, the asphalt road suddenly released its unyielding maws from the earth with an unsatiated conclusion and spat me into the woods. 

The beaten path I limped along spanned twice three furlongs and ended overlooking a valley of iridescent flowers. At that spot, accentuated by light, a lone lupine figure silhouetted the heavens. 

‘They’re beautiful, are they not?’ came a voice I had never heard before. I knew its master. 

The unfamiliar dialect carried me home, and again I was taking in the blithe spring air as the morning wind heaved and weaved freely in osiers whose boughs extended down to a sunless sea; I was chasing squirrels on a halcyon October day, frolicking amongst soughing caramels and auburns; I was suspended in starlight as rime heralded midnight and a singular, luminary clock deprived the sky of truths and lies and wrongs and rights—and at that omniscient point a longing lullaby drifted low in the reeds and high in the trees to remind the earthworm of its niche. 

‘Bloody bucolic,’ I concurred. What else could I have possibly said? ‘When I died here, part of you went with me.’ She turned to me, infinitesimally, revealing one of her two large eyes, always too large in proportion to her head. ‘For the longest time I tried to return him to you, but you were too many years away. Now, by whatever boundless miracle, we meet again as we did last.’ 

We were silent for a short while—a fleeting, ethereal moment as the summer eventide breathed its nostalgic enchantments into our fibres. 

‘Take him. He belongs to you, not me,’ she whispered.

Plaintively, I whispered back, ‘I’m sorry, but I daren’t take him, for I am perpetually in your debt, and though gratitude permeates my heart, even if I were to whirl and twirl around with unfurled arms, not a drop of it shall ever reach you from my veins. What I owe, I cannot pay back, even with one hundred years of gratitude.’ 

 ‘That is more reason to take him. You’re trying to reimburse what you cannot. You’re trying to be a wise sage, or a brave warrior, or a triumphant hero. You’re trying to be righteous. You’re not righteous. Don’t bother to make a virtue of your so-called righteousness, because this foolishness does not end with any rights or wrongs; it ends with those who are dead and those who are about to be. Go ahead, waste the rest of eternity for recompense’s sake. You’ll be no further than when you started an eternity ago.’ Her timbre gradually crescendoed, till at last the resolving chord thundered with an adamant finale. ‘Take him away. Dig yourself out of your grave. Lead your life with abandon. And when the time is right, truly right, come back, and I’ll be here waiting.’