The elder and the youth- Copyright Robert Fullarton 2013

The elder and the youth- Copyright Robert Fullarton 2013

The sun descended on everyone. It was the end of the day. The city was teeming with people, facing amber, red and green. An old man sat alone, clothed in his dressing gown, he worked on his memoirs in his golden antique armchair. A young man stood alone, in another room, having tried to begin his life and having failed, magnanimously. He was anonymous underneath the sun that clothed everything and eventually left everyone. He was an ant, hidden beneath the invisible boundaries of a massive quarry that left him invisible to every eye above.

The old man called the butler.

“Bill”

“Bill, could you bring me a glass of water. I’m so thirsty.”

“I have never thirsted for anything so much in my whole life, other than a glass of water.”

There was no response from the butler.

The house was filled with the antiquated furniture and memorabilia of his youth.

The bareness was highlighted by the emptiness within him.

“Bill”, he called out from his little study.

“I need a glass of water. My legs are worn out. Could you bring me a glass of water?

Can you hear me Bill?”

The young man sauntered through the park alone. Light was being dredged from the roses, the birch trees and the backs of human beings. A lovers embrace, was the malaise to fill him with deep despair and futile want. He remembered how this very day last year, he had began a month long pursuit for love.

He was in and out of love for a girl he barely knew. Semi-drunk on a youthful idealism, full of good notions, he had successfully taken three interviews for work but failed to make the grade with a girl he become enraptured with.

“Every lonely man deserves a partner”, that is what he told himself.

But the world only yawns when a young man brings naïve notions against an ancient system of broken men, disappointed hearts and idealism bled of its hope.

The young man’s parents worked two jobs to support their youngest children; their education, the food on the table and the mortgage needed to be paid. But every life has a different aptitude and Dave knew that simple labour could not make a profound heart feel anything but antipathy for society. This aptitude could never make a songbird sing, but make another mute in the silent society.

In and out of scenes, men worked rough hours, bore insults, were hurt in countless ways, pilled on mountains of sorrow, they worked unto the weekends when each man got drunk in their inconsolable dive. No console for the soul!

The romantic gesture was in vain. The girl simply laughed at Dave, when he tried to leave her roses beside a scented candle in the work place.

“Why be romantic?” She said.

“Why climb mountains? Why do anything? It’s a gesture of good will!”

“There’s no romance in this world. What could I ever get out of a relationship

with a man like you.?”

“Everything or nothing! It depends upon the happening doesn’t it!”

“Yes, but it also depends on what I get out of it?”

“You don’t believe in being mutual.”

“I believe in making money.”

“Faith is a good word, but it more than likely extends out towards another. If you cannot do this then you become a cynic and you can never love, but remain perpetually cold.”

“Faith in what?”

“I don’t have to explain it. You know what I mean and if you don’t then I don’t think you’re worth the time.”

Dave departed and in his heart he cried. In his tears the silver linings of his consolation had dried forever, as the embankment had completely dried.

In his present time, he left the flashback and the memory and watched the lovers hand in hand strolling through the park. It sounded like Chopin’s funeral march was being played in his brain.

The old man took a brake from the laborious chore on the memoir. The dressing gown dropped. The Butler had abandoned station. The cats purred outside the back door.

Strangers lived next door to strangers, nothing different. The old man in a state of delirium had forgotten to change his clothes and went out walking to the park, looking for a grand and final conclusion for his hearty effort.

Through the wanderings of the ghost and the leper came the point of encounter in the city park.

“What is the grand conclusion?” Thought the old man aloud to himself.

“What is the purpose of my youth, if I cannot live it and enjoy it.” Thought the young man aloud to himself.

Then their eyes met. The old man smiled at the young man who stood perplexed for a moment.

“That’s who I used to be! God! Its my ghost!”

“That’s me”, said the young man aloud. “It’s the premonition!”

The old man had finally found his conclusion and the young man had to walk on, with every blister and pain until the tomb found him, unable to watch the sun or emancipate himself from the “sea of enemies” or the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.”

The elder had worked and lost youth, the youth was in the process of losing youth to the world. A grain of wheat truly dies to the tragedy of the world.