"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves.
Do not now seek the answers which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Try to live the questions."
Rainer Maria Rilke
I
The infant cradled in Richard's arms was bloody, blue and dead, having never taken his first breath. The umbilical cord hung uncut from the child's belly, attached at the other end to the placenta uselessly delivered of his mother's womb. Like so many before him, this child's mother would not hear his borning cry, nor look upon his tiny form. She was already gone. Richard had been unable to stop her bleeding as system after system in her body failed. The doctors called for his help when the woman's condition began to cascade out of their control.
She had refused to leave the island. Her husband begged. The doctors pleaded. But she was unmoved. She had complete faith in Ben, in Jacob, in the Island, that the inexplicable curse would not touch her, that the Angel of Death would pass over her and that she and her baby would be saved.
"Time of death, 21:46"
Richard sighed heavily as he placed the stillborn infant on its mother's breast then turned abruptly and began barking orders to the doctors and orderlies in the room, instructions for an autopsy, informing the woman's husband, disposal of the bodies. With everything in order, Richard snapped off the surgical gloves, tore off the hastily donned scrubs and strode purposefully out the door, past the rows of yellow houses and the playground where no children play, out into the darkness of the jungle.
Soon dirt and sweat mixed with the blood staining his formerly neatly ironed dress shirt. Branches and vines scraped his face and arms but still he pressed on. When he came to the creek he waded through without missing a step; his khaki slacks no longer pleated and cuffed but wet, torn and muddy from the journey. Arriving at the foot of the statue the anger and frustration that had been brewing inside this typically composed, unflappable man exploded like a volcano and spewed its pain and frustration like lava on the sand before him.
"Jacob!"
"JACOB! Are you there?" Richard bellowed, "Answer me..." pacing the beach like an angry tiger in its cage.
"JACOB!!" He roared again into the darkness.
"Of all the things I have seen on this island in my unnaturally long life," Richard continued, his anger gaining momentum. "This...this, I cannot bear! These people look to Ben; they look to me for solutions. They think I can save their children! ..." He spat out the bitter words. "But I can't! Nothing works. The just die. I can't take any more of this. What kind of sick, bloody sacrifice does this damnable island require of us?" He continued, incredulous, "Jacob, you are the one who will save us all. Not me! Not Ben! You. Ille qui nos omnis servabit! Jacob, save us now...."
Spent from the uncharacteristic display of emotion, gasping for breath, Richard bowed his head and leaned his forehead against the base of the statue at the entrance to Jacob's sanctuary. "I have served you long and well." he continued softly, his voice breaking with emotion. "I mean no disrespect but...I cannot take any more of this. These babies have committed no sin, no treason against this place. Please." Dark eyes closed, broad shoulders slumped in resignation, Richard turned slowly, his back to the statue, slipping down the side of the monument as if the weight of all the dead were bearing him to the ground, "Can you save them Jacob? Tell me what I must do."
His voice trailed off into silence. Richard sat as still as the statue above him. His breathing slowed to match the hypnotic rhythm of the waves breaking on the beach. The moon shone full against the dark sky with more stars visible in the night than there were grains of sand under his feet. A tropical breeze lifted the seductive island scents of plumeria and hibiscus on the cool, night air. There was nothing left to say, nothing left for him to do. So he waited and eventually drifted off into exhausted sleep.
"Richard..." a voice called softly.
Unsure that he had heard anything at all Richard stirred from his stupor and looked around him. "Richard" Again he heard the voice as if it came from inside his own mind, gentle and quiet yet compelling. He cast about for the source then caught sight of the man standing, waiting patiently beside the surf just down the beach from where he sat.
Richard struggled to his feet; mind and heart still groggy from dreamless sleep, arms and legs stiff and heavy as sodden logs. He lurched toward the man who was now so illumined by starlight as to seeming glow from within. The man's blonde hair shone in the moonlight like a halo of gold around his face and his blue eyes sparkled like jewels in the still dark sky.
"Pax vobiscum, Ricardus." said the man, continuing in English "You called me. I am here."
"I wasn't sure you would come," stammered Richard. "I cannot save them, Jacob. I cannot stop the bleeding. Ben has tried; the medical teams have tried everything we know. It is just beyond...everything." Richard babbled on incoherently as he approached the silent man before him. Jacob made no response until the distraught, disheveled man stood imploringly before him and then gently reached his hand forward laying his fingers upon Richard's mouth to silence his speech. "Shhh, Richard" said Jacob, looking deep into the man's dark eyes, "You are covered in blood. Go, wash yourself. I will return when you are clean."
The silence between them stretched on for several moments as Richard struggled to damp down his objections. The questions and fury of emotions churned once again inside him. He fought to maintain his composure before finally bending to Jacob's will. Richard nodded tentatively and stepped back, neither man breaking eye-contact with the other. He may have ceded the moment but there was no surrender in Richard. He would obey but would not dismiss the purpose of their meeting.
Richard huffed a deep sigh of frustration, taking a few more steps away before turning his back completely on the man. He walked directly into the surf up to mid-chest, without stopping to remove his shoes or unclasp the belt from his waist. After a moment Richard submerged himself completely in the ocean. All sound now blocked from his hearing save the pounding of his heart. He stayed beneath the waters until his burning lungs could wait no longer for air. When he surfaced and looked back at the shore Jacob was gone
He lingered a while longer in the surf out of defiance and irritation. Eventually he splashed more water on his face, rubbed his eyes and ran his hands through to smooth his hair. Doing so he found the water had not only washed away most of the crusted blood but his anger and pain as well though the questions remained.
Trudging back up the beach he removed his shirt at last, wrung it dry and laid it out on the rocks. He did the same with his trousers then set his belt and shoes neatly to one side. Richard stood there alone in the fading starlight with the night air caressing cool against his wet skin. Thus once more he sat to wait for Jacob, this time in contemplative silence. He listened to the rush of the waves, the hush of the wind, and in the pauses between there was peace instead of chaos. He fancied he was hearing the celestial music of the spheres whose chorus can only be heard when a soul has found its way to be still.
He sat in meditation as the blackness of night gave way to the rose-hued yellows and blues of the dawn. "Look to this day for it is life, the very life of life. In its brief course lie all the verities and realities of your existence." The ancient Sanskrit prayer repeated in his thoughts as he watched the day being born over the mountain tops behind him.
"Get dressed, Richard" called Jacob, interrupting his reverie. "Come. Eat."
Unembarrassed he dressed quickly as commanded and met the other man down the beach by his fire. They ate fish and bread in companionable silence on the rocky shore near the statue. The dark man knew to wait for the other to begin, trusting that he had been understood the night before and that his pleas would be addressed in time.
Many moments passed in that friendly silence before Jacob offered, "It is not always easy living with the consequences of choices we make." Richard wondered to what in particular he was referring. It was not uncharacteristic of Jacob to begin speaking in what seemed to Richard was the middle of the conversation or of his train of thought. Richard in turn felt no compulsion to make an immediate reply and continued to gaze blankly to the far horizon.
Choices and decisions he had made over the years, all the things he had done, flooded his thoughts. A few stood out as particularly heinous, removing the US Army from the island in the 1950's and years later at Ben's behest purging the Dharma Initiative. In all his long tenure as the advisor to Jacob's people, everything he had done for good or for ill was carried out in the name of protecting the island and obeying their appointed – anointed? He scoffed internally—leader. He remembered everything vividly, simultaneously in his mind like a Tralfamadorian novel. The consequences of each act culminating in the certain death of any pregnant woman on the island as if the Island itself had decided that life here should die out. And he, Richard, had their blood on his hands.
Of one decision and its consequence he was sure. Had he not accepted Jacob's help years ago he would have died a natural death and none of this would have become his problem. "There's respect that makes calamity of so long life…" quoted Richard, quietly abridging Shakespeare's famous Dane., "but that the dread of something after death makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others we know not of…thus conscience does make cowards of us all"
Turning toward Jacob sadly he answered, "No. No, it isn't easy." Richard looked down at the sand between his crossed legs where he sat, the weight of all his deeds laid so heavily upon him he was unable to hold the blonde man's gaze. Jacob in turn smiled gently and reached out to touch the forearm of the anguished man beside him, in absolution, restoring the peace between them.
"I wasn't speaking only of you…" Jacob replied "Ben has a plan, no doubt."
Richard nodded in response.
"You and Ethan will go to Miami as he says."
"Yes, but it is not going to solve anything is it?"
"No, I don't believe so. I am sorry, old friend. What is done is done, not even I can rewrite the past. We live with the world we have created," Jacob answered as reassuringly as he could. Then glancing up at the ruin of the statue of Egyptian fertility goddess Tawaret above them, he continued, "Even so the future is not cast in stone. There is hope. We do not know what will yet be." Poking at the fire absently, stirring the embers into flame once more Jacob continued "So you go to Florida. You will do what Ben asks. You will also remind her that she has a choice. No matter what happens or how things appear, there will always be a choice."
II
This had been one of those weeks when Richard was acutely aware of being a pawn in some sort of cosmic chess game. He slid the card key into the reader, opening the door to a finely appointed hotel suite. Richard loosened his tie and slid off his black suit jacket, taking a moment to drape it neatly across the back of a chair at the dining table. Oblivious to the amenities around him, lost in thought and blinded by a mounting headache, Richard chucked ice into a highball glass and doused it with the contents of the first bottle he lay his hands on and stumbled to the balcony.
Who were the key players in this game? He wondered, not for the first time. Jacob? Certainly, but whom else? Is Jacob toying with humanity purely for his own amusement? Mankind represented in the game by Benjamin Linus and the long line of "leaders" before him whom he, Richard, has been required to counsel and serve. Perhaps the game is versus some other demagogue just as twisted who also takes delight in watching men squirm. Or maybe this grand experiment is just between Jacob and the Island itself.
Absently clipping the end off a convenient cigar, he gazed out to the city lights of Miami below and beyond to the vast blackness of the Atlantic Ocean. Richard tried to sort through the events of the past few days recruiting Dr. Juliet Burke to do fertility research for Mitlos Bioscience in Portland, but not really in Portland. The Island is most certainly not located anywhere near Oregon. He mulled over the miraculous remission of Dr. Burke's sister's cancer, the sister's improbable pregnancy; and the suspiciously coincidental and all too convenient death of Dr. Burke's domineering and arguably abusive ex-husband.
How much that went down this week was due to Ben's, or Jacob's or even his own manipulation? How much had anything to do with anyone's free will? He certainly did not see the bus coming for Juliet's poor ex-husband Edmund. "Apparently, neither did he" chuckled Richard morbidly.
He was instructed by Ben to recruit Dr. Burke by whatever means necessary and yet was compelled by Jacob to remind her of her free will to choose her own path. It was a tricky tightrope to walk between these two. No choice is clearly black or white; no decision is as simple as it appears on the surface to be. It was all so messy and distasteful.
"I really don't lie well, not like Ben, anyway" he muttered under his breath taking in another deep drag of the cigar's acrid smoke, "I sounded like a damned snake oil peddler or used-car salesman! It is a wonder she believed a word I said." No, observed Richard bitterly, the Machiavellian Benjamin Linus is the smooth liar. His facial expressions remain as inscrutable as darkened glass. With Ben one is never quite sure of when he is lying and rarely certain of why.
What could Ben hope to gain by recruiting Dr. Burke? He wondered. Yes, she is brilliant and if anyone could find a natural, scientific solution to the infant and maternal mortality rate on the island it would be the lovely Juliet Burke, mused Richard philosophically, downing the last of the amber liquid in one burning gulp. But that is the problem, of course. What is wrong on the island is by no means natural or scientific.
"If they only cared to notice for a moment how their actions affect someone other than themselves! What consequences arise when men play at being gods." He observed aloud, rising to refill his glass, noticing with amusement that it was a Baccarat crystal high ball glass into which he poured MacCutcheon Scotch Whiskey and Cupido Criollo Cuban cigars that filled the humidor. Someone, he thought, has very expensive taste.
The combination of scotch and cigars was not perhaps as healthy as washing clean in the ocean but had been similarly effective in achieving clarity. He had no more answers now than then but felt more peaceful, at least, and that was a start. He let himself relax further and be swept away by the waves of sound from the city below: the hum of the ceiling fan muffled by the sliding door, the constant whoosh of waves breaking on the beach, the occasional slamming of a car door punctuated by an errant car alarm or screech of brakes on the street and in the distance the syncopated rhythms of brass and bass from the salsa band playing in a bar down the block.
"However long I have lived and whatever else I am, I am still a man and know for certain that I am not a god. It is arrogance to think I might choose any better than these poor fools" Richard stared out at the world a long time before retreating from the balcony.
III
It was still early on the island when Richard arrived. He was met with a message to speak with Ben immediately. And so, without taking time to change out of the suit and tie he wore for the plane trip which began his arduous journey more than 22 hours before, Richard reported to Ben's office as summoned where he succinctly made his report and concluded by saying Dr. Juliet Burke would be arriving via submarine escorted by Ethan later that day. Ben dismissed him abruptly without acknowledgment or thanks, not that Richard had expected or required any courtesy from him. He simply nodded curtly at the dismissal and without another word briskly made his way across compound to the modest bungalow which served as his home.
The general malaise he felt on the mainland had retreated somewhat but was yet lurking at the edges of his consciousness. Ben had given him a stack of files to read and a list of tasks regarding the new doctor and her lab. He stood in the doorway of his sparsely furnished bedroom, holding the files in one hand and his reading glasses in the other, and caught his reflection in the mirror across on the opposite wall. He barely recognized the face looking back. It was so unlike him, dark circles under eyes puffy from fatigue, stubble of a beard grown long past the 5 o'clock shadow stage, unkempt hair. Richard leaned against the doorjamb, exhaled sharply, pinched the bridge of his nose tightly in an attempt to stave off the weariness, and made a decision. The files would have to wait. He tossed them carelessly in a heap on his bed. With renewed energy changed into clothing more appropriate to the Island and began the final leg of his journey home.
This time, as he passed through the tangle of trees and vines from deep inland where he and the others lived along the bank of the river to where it opened to the sea at the foot of the Statue what increased with every step was not rage, grief and frustration but relief at being home. His true home was the Island, not that house with those people. Whatever difficulties would arise from Ben's suspect plan would be handled here. The questions of motive and manipulation, of choices and free will ultimately changed nothing. Whatever the consequences of this latest adventure turned out to be and no matter what the future held, he had thrown in his lot with Jacob long ago when the man saved his life.
Arriving at the beach, he found Jacob waist high in the surf fishing intently with a net. His face already preternaturally luminous lit up into a joyous grin at the sight of Richard emerging from the bushes. Jacob left the net in the sea and rushed to greet him. "I have been waiting for you! Welcome home." Richard stopped short in front of the man and put his palms together, bowing formally. "Namaste, Jacob." Not in the hippie counter-culture sense mouthed by the Dharma Initiative devotees but in its deeper, more formal sense: I respect the divinity within you that is also within me.
Jacob hesitated a moment, looked quizzically into the eyes of the man before him then bowed and silently returned the greeting before wrapping both arms around him in a hearty embrace. "Come fishing with me. I have left my net. There will be time to talk later."
Richard nodded and without a word took off his shirt and shoes and waded into the sea. The sun beat down on the men as they cast their nets into the surf. Seawater mixed with sweat ran down their faces; the sun's rays made even Richard's olive skin tinge pink at the shoulders. It was late afternoon when they retreated to the shade of trees where jungle meets the shore.
While they rested the shadows grew long as the sun sank low in the West; bright day giving way to the muted colors of twilight. Sunset does not last long on an island with only water for the horizon. They had spoken of everything yet nothing. As with so many conversations of significance the truly important topics are not touched on until it is time to part.
"How do you not lose hope for us, Jacob?" asked Richard, finally saying aloud what was on his heart. "How do you not give up? We continue to make such a mess of things. We deceive, we destroy. We corrupt. It is always the same."
"I know," replied Jacob, rising to leave then continued seriously, "But it only looks that way, Richard. From the air this island is just a tiny speck on the ocean. From space this planet is just a ball of swirling blue and green and white and brown, circling endlessly in the black. It is all a matter of perspective. I know how this all turns out, how it all finally ends; how we get there is what makes it interesting; the journey is the worthier part...So...you're with me for the long haul?" again, Richard nodded. With that Jacob turned and started walking off into the darkness.
"Wait, Jacob... I brought you a cigar" called Richard after him, reaching into his shirt pocket for the souvenir he had snagged from the hotel in Miami. Grinning impishly, Jacob returned, took the stogy and chomped down on the end of it. " Thanks, my friend" he said with a smirk,"We'll talk more soon. Get some rest; you and I have a lot of work to do."
IV Author's notes:
This is obviously set in and around the episode "Not in Portland." I owe inspiration to several other sources including the pilot episode of the Joss Whedon TV series "Firefly" in particular the exchange when Kaylee meets Shepherd Book. If you are wondering what or who a Tralfamadorian is and why its novels are so different, please consult Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse Five. Salutation to the Dawn is a sanskrit prayer by Kalidasa; The Shakespeare quoted is from the "to be or not to be" soliloquy of Hamlet in Act II; Additional inspiration not quoted directly but present in spirit is the song "Migratory V" from Myths and Hymns by Adam Guettel, the song "From a Distance" recorded by Bette Midler and then finally the poem Ithaca by Constantine P. Cavafy.
Oh, and if you've read this far...leave me a note please. (Even if you're one of my kids or my mom, eh?) This is the first time I've actually hit the publish button on something I've written and I'm feeling a little needy.
Thanks!
Jennifer
(The name "chet gecko" comes from a series of children's books that my youngest son used to enjoy. The protagonist is a lizard named Chet, as you might imagine. I've forgotten the authors name at the moment but google that if you're so inclined)