The Old Man and the Boy

CHAPTER I - A TALE TO TELL

-- “Tell me, grandpa, tell me what happened..."

-- “What, my boy, tell me, what do you want me to tell you..."

-- “What happened, grandpa! How did it happen! How did we end up here!"

-- “Here? Where is here, my precious little thing -- just looking at you, I feel my heart melting, spreading out, as far as the eye can see..."

The little boy flashed a wide smile and raised his shoulders.

-- “Come on, grandpa, you know what I want... I want you to tell me how we were before! How we were before and how we ended up here, where we are now!"

The old man smiled too.

-- “Alright, then, tell me, where do you want me to start..."

-- “Start... Start from the beginning, there, just before everything changed."

The old man lifted the child by the waist. He lifted him as if he were a kitten—that easily—and sat him on his left leg, with the boy's little feet dangling between his own. The boy leaned his whole body backwards and sprawled comfortably in the elder's embrace, as if he were lounging in the most comfortable armchair.

It was a magical afternoon. The spot they had chosen to rest for the night was the highest point on this small hill, overlooking the valley below. Beyond this point, the journey became much more difficult as, not too far away, the smooth, soft hill was swallowed by an enormous rock, which could only be traversed by following a steep and slippery path passing by cold, dark, and inhospitable caves.

-- “I told you before, remember, how we were before -— how we reached the Great War..."

-- “The Third Great War," corrected the little one.

-- “Yes... The Third Great War... All you see... The soil, the grass, the trees, the birds, the sky, the air, the sea, all of these things weren't as they are today. They weren't as you see them now... Us humans, the first creatures on earth to have a spark of God's fire in our minds, came to believe that this small spark made us masters of this place and everything in it. And so, instead of reviving and fanning the spark within us, to warm and illuminate the world around us, we used it to start fires and burn everything that stood in our path.”

-- “And why did we do that, grandpa?"

-- “Because, my brave one, when that in which all creation lives and breathes and has its being sowed the human spark, offspring of the almighty fire of its own mind, all the creatures that lived in darkness gathered around us, like insects in the night around a lamp."

-- “And why did they gather around us, and not around the almighty fire, grandpa?"

-- “Have you ever seen insects fly toward the sun, my boy? Even they know they cannot fly so high. And even if they could, they would be burned instantly. In our world, little one, the sun is king. But even the sun itself, the almighty king, is nothing but another humble servant, assigned to give life our tiny world..."

With the last phrase, the old man raised his head and gazed at the sky. The sun had already begun to set, and the new moon had made sure to leave ample space for countless stars to come out of hiding. The boy followed the example of the elder. The old man started to speak again. His voice now concealed a trace of pain.

-- “Have you ever seen insects fly toward the sun, my boy? Even they know they cannot fly so high. Even if they could, they would be burned instantly. In our world, little one, the sun is king. But even the sun itself, the almighty king, is nothing but another humble servant, assigned to give life our tiny world..."

-- “So are we... Humble servants we are, and whatever light we have, it is for sharing. Only... We forgot, and started believing we were the kings, with no higher authority than them...”

-- “Authority... Why, grandpa? How did we come to forget?"

The old man turned his gaze to the little boy's eyes. He looked deep into his soul.

-- “What we saw was only a small piece of what truly lay before us... We started believing we were separate from everything else around us... Always remember, my boy, that nothing is separate from everything, and nothing flows only in one direction..."

The boy looked at him thoughtfully.

-- "I don't understand."

The old man smiled.

-- “When you truly think something, you create what you think. But it flows in the the other direcction too: By thinking it, you become it too. So it was with us. When the creatures of the night gathered around us to quench their thirst with our light, we saw in them our own glory. And the more we saw them surrounding us, the more we thought our glory grew. Instead of facing the light, we preferred to marvel our glory in them, so we made them part of our own flesh. That's how man became the gateway of evil into the three worlds. If there is such a thing."

No matter how many times the boy had heard this story, at this point he always had difficulty understanding exactly what his grandfather was saying. Somehow, though, he felt the truth of what the old man was saying. That was enough to call it a day and move on.

-- “And then? Tell me, grandpa, what happened next!"

-- “Well, it wasn't just one thing. Nor did it happen suddenly, from one day to the next... And yet, the way it happened, the entire world as we knew it was turned upside down... It was first heard in newspapers and magazines, and on radios and televisions, here and there but quite impressively, that in some major cities of the world, a new illness had broken out that was very different from all the others us humans had seen until then..."

The little one was captivated. The story now began to approach the point he liked, and he was eager to hear more:

-- “How was it different, grandpa?"

-- “Until then, almost all illnesses were studied by tribes of people called doctors and scientists, and sooner or later they discovered how these illnesses came to be, how and why someone got sick, and all or sorts of other things. And until then, for many of the illnesses, these people found ways to treat them—cure them in some cases, hide them in most others..."

-- “Yes. And with this one? What happened with this illness grandpa?”

The little one had heard this story a thousand times, and each time he became just as impatient as the last.

-- “Wait, don't rush, my little one... The doctors, no matter how hard they looked, couldn't find any part of the body of those who fell ill, where the disease seemed to have nested. And no matter how much they tried, they couldn't find the cause of all these people falling ill like that. And when the doctors who treated body illnesses gave up, two other tribes took over, they were called psychiatrists and psychologists. But they couldn't find anything either, so they all together decided to created a name for this new disease, and called it 'mass schizophrenia.'"

The little one laughed at the sound of the word "schizophrenia." He whispered it to himself with interest. The old man continued:

-- “These people who fell ill were, they said, otherwise 'of sound mind.' And yet, more and more people were experiencing the same thing, and this was happening in more and more of the planet's major cities."

-- “So what did they experience?"

-- “They heard voices! At first, they were scattered voices, here and there. But, as time passed, the voices became more and more frequent, and more and more of them were heard. And this, within a few weeks, became a big problem..."

-- “Why, grandpa?"

-- “Because, my dear, these voices flooded people's minds and made them suffer! And many of them were people with responsible positions, doing jobs like driving busses, flying airplanes, they were doctors operating on people, politicians making important decisions, that affected the lives of many people. And they couldn't do their job because their heads were full of voices... At first, many of them tried to hide it. Some of them initially succeeded. But soon the voices became so many, it became impossible for them to continue living their lives as they had been.”

-- “And then came Alexandros..."

-- “Yes. And then came Alexandros..."

Alexandros

-- “Tell me about Alexander, grandpa, tell me..."

-- “This illness, where people heard voices, seemed to spread more among children. The doctors then decided that children must be given medicine at school so they could attend lessons. But when the little ones took this medicine, most of them fell asleep in class, and so schools began to close one after another. It was in a small village, on a mountain in Greece, that a seven-year-old boy -- just like you -- named Alexandros returned home from school one day with his teacher. The teacher wanted to speak with the child's father."

-- “And what did he tell him? Tell me, tell me, what did he say!"

-- “Alexandros’s father, was a shepherd and his name was Prodromos. The two of them lived in a very small house on their own -- Alexandros’ mother had died when he was just four. The house on the edge of the village. The teacher arrived in his car with Alexander sitting next to him. The got out, and Alexandros followed a short step behind his teacher, as the teacher knocked on the door. Prodromos opened the door."

-- “Hello, Prodromos," said the teacher to the father.

-- “Hello, teacher," Prodromos replied. He looked at Alexandros standing behind the teacher, then looked into the teacher’s eyes. "What do you want?” he asked.

-- “I came here to talk to you about something very serious, which has to do with your son," replied the teacher.

Prodromos nodded them in. They all sat at the single, round, wooden table in the house.

-- “I’m listening," said Prodromos to the teacher.

-- “Your son told me that you told him he can refuse to take the medicine we give them at school."

-- “Yes, that's what I told him," replied Prodromos.

-- “If I may, I'd like to ask you why," replied the teacher.

Prodromos looked at the teacher with a stern expression.

-- “My son is not sick, so he doesn’t need medicine."

The teacher looked at him thoughtfully.

-- “... Your son, doesn't he hear voices, like the other children?"

Prodromos glanced at his son, with the corner of his eye. Then he looked back at the teacher.

-- “Yes, he hears them."

-- “Then the orders we have from the ministry are that he should take the medication.”

Prodromos remained proud and unyielding.

-- “No," he answered in a single word.

-- “Prodromos..." -- the teacher was about to say something, but Prodromos cut him off.

-- “My son is not sick, and he will not take medication!” he said, this time with an almost threatening expression. And before the teacher could utter a word:

-- “Do you have your wallet with you?"

The teacher was puzzled.

-- “Yes, I do..." he answered.

-- “Your identification card, is it in your wallet?"

-- “Y... Yes..." The teacher answered, even more puzzled.

-- “Give it to me." Prodromos commanded.

The teacher hesitantly took his wallet out of his back pocket. It was a wallet made of brown leather, turned to yellow around the seams. He reached out to hand it to Prodromos, who practically snatched it from the his hand.

-- “Give it to me! From now on, I will not speak. Only my son speaks,” said Prodromos.

Alexandros turned his chair toward the teacher and got to staring him in the eyes, motionless. The teacher felt quite uncomfortable. He was about to say something, but at that moment Alexander began to speak. He had a strange tone in his voice, like that of an adult.

-- “These words that come out of Alexandros's mouth are not words generated by my son's mind. They are words generated by my own mind."

The teacher looked at the father and then the son, and then back again. He started to protest,

-- “Prodromos..."

-- “Silence, teacher! Listen!" Alexandros shouted...

The teacher rebelled.

-- “How dare you, Alexandre, speak to me like that? This is a lack of r-"

-- “Andreas Chaniotis, son of Angelos..." Alexandros began to say, and the teacher's last word slipped from his mouth and fell silently down onto the stone floor...

The little boy laughed. He always liked it when his grandfather used this expression. The old man smiled too. He put his finger on the boy's mouth and made a gesture with his fingers forward, showing words falling. The little one laughed even louder. The old man gave him time to enjoy it. As soon as the boy settled down, he continued his story.

-- “Mother's name, Vasiliki, surname Tsagaraki..." Alexandros continued.

The teacher was left staring at Alexandros, mouth open. He looked up at Prodromos, who was holding his identification card, reading it silently. Alexandros has his back turned! It was impossible for the little one to have seen what was written on the card. And yet...

-- “Date of birth, March 16, 1993, Dermation Karpenisiou. ID number..."

The teacher's jaw kept dropping.

-- “ID number Ypsilon Sigma Five, five, three, eight, eight, seven, one, two..."

Alexander paused for a moment. With a somewhat changed tone, more childlike, he said to his teacher:

-- “My father asks if you want us to continue..."

The teacher was too confused. He looked at Prodromos, then at Alexandros.

-- “Mr. Andreas, my father asks if you want us to continue..." The boy repeated.

-- “N... No..." said the teacher, who could barely collect his thoughts.

Prodromos slipped the identification card back in the wallet, then walked over and threw it on the table, in front of the teacher.

-- “My son is not sick, and he will not take medication!” said Prodromos, and got up from the table. He grabbed the walking stick leaning against the wall, opened the door and walked out.

The teacher and Alexandros were left looking at each other.

-- “Yes..." said Alexandros. "I hear you too."

The teacher took a breath, about to say something, but Alexandros interrupted him.

-- “Yes..." Alexandros said again. "All of them. All the children who hear the voices are like me. They just don't know that the voices they hear are not their own."

A second or two passed...

-- “Adults too...” continued Alexandros.

Then he leaned forward, frowned and pocket his lips somewhat.

-- “Please, Mr. Andreas, they're suffering... They don't know how to distinguish the voices, and that medicine puts them all to sleep...”

He then abruptly turned his head somewhat in the direction of his father.

-- “My father apologises for shouting earlier. He wants to respect you as a teacher. But, he says, you have to prove yourself a teacher first, by doing what's best for your students."

The teacher frowned, pucked his lips, looked toward Prodromos first, then back at Alexander. Then, as if bit by a horsefly, he charged for the door, stumbled out of the house into the front yard and then staggered onto the earth road where his car was parked.

Prodromos watched him as he fumbled for almost a minute, trying to put the key in the ignition. When the teacher finally managed to start the engine, he stepped on the pedal and sped away towards town, leaving behind him a cloud of earth and dust.

-- “I smell trouble,” Prodromos mumbled to himself.
-- “I know,” Alexandros replied. "And earth, and dust."

Translated from the Greek. Story / translation by Leonidas Kossis.