The Sadness

The other day I found this short story that I assume was written somewhere around the turn of the millennium. It’s about sadness, alienation, fear of intimacy and pain.

He looked out of his window, from the sixth floor - into the fog, he could see the time in the sky, smiling. What an invention. But perhaps it was a brilliant idea, to reflect time in the sky. For the sky was eternity and time was a reminder of the home of finiteness in that eternity. The thoughts of finitude in an eternal soul, the tooth of time; the spirit of time was the monster that existed in time, denied by the masses, denied by himself.

He wandered out into the darkness, out into the roar and buzz of the eternal city. Out to the city of all unanswered questions. He walked out towards all the questions of eternity. Yes, he had a goal for his journey. For the city with all its bridges, its light, its Poseidon had one of all his answers, he was sure. For in this city there was something that he loved more than the dry earth the voice of the rain, more than the wind blowing the contours of the houses and the trunks of the trees - it was that feeling again that he could not explain. He just couldn’t, because it was so painful, so painful to try to understand - how painful it would be to really understand. At the same time there was the desire to understand. To understand this longing and this lack. They always corresponded to each other in a way that conveyed the feeling he sensed the city carried. Because she carried it in her either-or. These words that so reminded him of the city further south, Copenhagen was also a beautiful city that enchanted him. Enchanted him with its history, where history was carried for him by one man, this wonderful Danish man who taught him to understand himself in his great either/or. He could not forget him and sent a sigh of gratitude up to the sky. He should be there, he couldn’t believe otherwise.

He made his way towards the old trams, slowly and surely. They were yellow and red and orange and whatever colors they could carry.

They symbolized something too, in all their tones. The diversity this city always showed. He came from the country far beyond this world, far beyond the city, from the town, the village, the countryside, the land - which he loved. It had first taught him to love some of the peculiarities of this city. He remembered it, and did not forget where he had come from, or where the lesson and the appreciation came from; he knew and was therefore grateful.

So he sat down on the worn seat, the station names memorized after a very short acquaintance. What did that have to do with his question? He thought about it for a while, but could not find the context, no reliable data that he could measure and weigh and so find the statistical truth he was trained to see. Would he find the answer to the question today?

He immediately realized that he was asking the wrong question, for the answer to the question was not as interesting as the object itself, indeed he preferred to call it the subject. This or that.

The diversity struck him again, how beautiful it was with all these colors, how magnificently it reflected the words, the rhymes, the rhymes, as speech and tone. Like a magic spell. There was a source somewhere, but where?

While in the city he could recognize the charm of the beauty she showed in her either, maybe it was in her or, it didn’t matter anyway - there was a certain stress in her pulse. It was never still; there was always life and movement. Someone was always calling for his attention. Buses, trams, taxis, cars, pedestrians, standing people, words with no purpose, shouts with no tone.

As if there was an inner stress that drove them on, and the fact that they were approaching a new decade, and even a new millennium, did not make it any better; as if they were afraid. And this fear took away some of the feeling he was looking for. The feeling was in the meeting, in the beautiful face, which was life, which was touch. She stood there.

Silent and weightless, his gaze died in the meeting that never quite reached him, his gaze fell downwards, towards the floor, towards the total darkness.

It was not her.

He remembered her so well, or was it the image of her, his own image. He did not know. But what he did know was that she, she was, he could not explain. He could only envision what he saw. He looked into her eyes, there in the fog, they met with time flashing across the sky, their eyes met over the steaming cup of coffee. But their words did not reach, for the meeting, the truth had not yet broken down those walls where either-or fought for supremacy, who would win. He looked up once more, and now they had broken through each other’s protective walls, now he could see her, what he loved so much about her, the eyes that radiated what was of her - the sadness.

Why did he love the look of this sadness? Why did he love it so much? He could not explain just sinking into those eyes filled with heavenly sadness. He knew the moment he saw her that he had to ask her. As if in a stream of inner conflict, the utterly absurd question was formulated:

“Tell me, what have your eyes seen?”

If he had thought she would go rigid with wonder, maybe start calling the police after this unpleasant assault, or maybe just start laughing - he was surprised after all. She started crying.

“I don’t know who you are, I don’t know you, I’m just…”

Then the words were exhausted, then it was all over, there was nothing left. When he was about to leave, he couldn’t resist putting his hand over hers, hugging it for a moment, and once again being absorbed by everything, her look of sadness, once again being caught up in what touched him so deeply.

He wanted to stroke her cheek, to apologize, and stifled a silent scream. He realized that the opportunity was over. Would he really have to experience this waiting for a millennium without an answer, alone with the hardship in response to the grief that the sadness in her eyes was not revealed? He wanted their meeting, he wanted her gaze.

She took his hand, for another moment their eyes met.

She said: “Come, the moment is still there, the moment is still alive.”

Then she grabbed his cold hand and pulled him with her; she led him up the street, upwards, towards Poseidon, towards the sea, towards life and questions. They belonged to the sea the moment they breathed in the raw winds and fresh smells of the West Coast.

“I am life, can you understand me when I say that. I am one with life, so she taught me, she who is no more. That is the answer I can give you to your question of what my eyes have seen.”

“But what do you mean, I don’t understand. Your eyes, I just got lost in them, so sad, as if they had been touched by something great and beautiful. Or perhaps some sorrow had struck them, even if the sorrow is not beautiful, something lovely was created in their meeting, a creation of some kind; from death to life. I do not understand.”

“Don’t talk so much, I’ll tell you in time. Just be quiet now for a while. Be quiet now.”

They sat down in front of the beautiful yellow building, like a proud Greek temple it stood there - listening to the sadness in contrast to her own exaltation. As if sighing over her grief, the wind blew through her openings. She was magnificent.

“She is gone,” she whispered to me.

“What do you mean? Who?”

Again he burst inside. Her beauty lay in the fact that she was touched, touched by life, by the questions, by the truth. But what was the truth? Should he ask the question of truth as Pilate once did or as the brilliant Dane? Truth is subjectivity. He was frightened by his total contempt for what he considered to be the truth, but knew in his heart what he still meant.

Poseidon stood for no truth; he was untouched by the passage of time, by the cold, by life itself. He stood there in his majesty, reminiscent of Adam, as a man, as a species. Unmoved in himself. In India there were untouchable people, who could not be touched, they belonged to another world, another class. In a figurative sense, they still exist today - the untouchables. They did not want to be touched, they wanted to be untouchable. What sadness.

So the story began. Her story. She had once been an untouchable.

“I didn’t want anyone to touch me, I wanted to take care of myself. I became cold and hard. That’s the way to be. Somehow I took what I saw to heart, somehow I learned to shut down. Love eventually abandoned me and I abandoned her. I only cared about the goals I had, only about my own dreams. Love wanted differently, and so I was abandoned by people. By myself.”

“But why, who are you today. Can’t you tell me, just who you are.”

She began to cry quietly.

“How tragic, that what you find so beautiful in me, my sadness, is the price I paid for a lie, for a love without truth, for a love without life. In the end I got nothing. I just had to have, that’s how life is meant to be. I never died from myself, so I am being punished. But I cannot be bitter. I have understood the truth about the grain of wheat, it cannot live unless it first dies.”

Silently I stroked her smooth cheek, where I got this courage from is a question for science. But I did it.

Very quietly she took my hand again and pressed it to her cheek.

“I am so afraid, I am afraid that I will never love again, that I will never dare to approach another person’s body with faith and hope and joy. That I will never again be at peace. But I have come a long way anyway, I dare to say that I am afraid. I dare to talk about the storm, about myself.”

We just sat still with Poseidon in front of us, on the high stairs. We dared not shout any more. Not to cry, not to shout in the voice of Ecclesiastes: “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity!” But there it is. All is vanity and vexation of spirit, therefore life has lost its fragrance. And that is precisely what time consumed with pride: Vanity and chasing after wind. They had lost their luster, lacked the seriousness of life and rejected melancholy as a source of truth. Sadness was beautiful the moment she was fertilized by the truth. It did not mean that she had arrived, but that she was on the way. It didn’t mean she was perfect, just a foretaste of what she would be, of what she could be. It was one of the beautiful contradictions life had given mankind. Grief and suffering and sadness - as the most beautiful or ugly and flawed. But from the lack, sometimes a search for the truth could arise. Suffering for righteousness. There was the encounter.

Once again I experienced something of hope. The hope that there was a possibility, a possibility in life itself, in grief and sadness. But who was she really?

“You, who are you?” she asked quietly.

Then she took my hand, said goodbye to Poseidon and gave me a quick hug. She was gone, but she had left something behind - the beauty of sadness in anticipation of the millennium, the touch of sadness in the encounter with life, with a presence that cannot be explained. With a confession of love.

He was back in Biskopsgården’s beautiful and colorful garden, at home, with himself.