12.
Letter sent to Crows Hall Farm, dated December sixth
Dear Miho,
Thank you for your letter. I am glad you are well.
You don't owe it to me, but to yourself. You are the bravest girl I know, and that includes Antonia!
I can never thank you enough for looking after Jacob.
Doing what you had to do in the Bunny Bar for the sake of someone in your care, especially someone you are not obliged to in a family or friendship way, takes greater courage than Saints need.
I am glad that you no longer feel bad about Seiya. It is the same with me. This does not mean we have forgotten him and are just getting on with our lives (though we are, finally!) but that we have come to terms with his death.
I hope Sunrei recovers. She always seemed so fragile to me. I don't understand Shiryu. She is such a lovely girl. Of course she could not have expected the two of them setting up housekeeping or marriage, they are much too young, we all are, but why could he not just be with her? Be there for her, for a chance, not for Athena.
When I see how tender Nick, a friend of the Field family is with the daughter, Vimi, whom he loves, of whom he is so quietly protective, and not ashamed at all to touch her even in front of her parents, I wonder at Shiryu's attitude towards Sunrei. But I suppose we should not meddle too much, it is for them to work out.
Seika are right about love though. It is such a big word: love. Do we know how to? It means not just enjoying each other, but taking responsibility for each other as well. At fourteen, who is ready for that? Let's hope that they will sort it out.
One thing is for certain though: if I had someone like Sunrei in my life I would have damned Athena and turned my back on her a lot sooner, like I was on the verge of doing after the fight with the Silver Saints.
When you have someone who loves you, you take that into account. You are not prepared to lay down your life for fear of hurting them.
That, of course, is why my mother had to die.
The shipwreck was no accident. I should have realised that when I told the Fields about it, and Queer (he is the younger son, who took me in) remarked: "That's odd, loads of people are desperately trying to flee the Soviet Union and fail, and you've sailed out in style!"
When my mother's passport turned up in the Kido safe, all the pieces fell together. The private sailing yacht (only very important Party members have those in Russia!), the all-Japanese crew, the fact that they didn't observe the customary 'woman and children' first but grabbed me and pushed off the life-boat with all of them in it while my mother was still in our cabin, and when she realised the ship was sinking and came running out it was too late…
Kido. Ever and always, Kido. He sent his own yacht to pick us up at a prearranged meeting place, then had it sabotaged and sunk, coincidentally near to a training camp of Saints (they must have arranged for me to draw that lot!). And the sailors who before spoke not a word in Russian suddenly were fluent and talked about how only a Saint could lift the ship from the bottom of the sea! It was all a trap and I was cleverly manipulated into it. Kido. My father. My father who murdered my mother. All in the Service of the Goddess.
I howled when realisation sunk in, I was physically ill for days, screaming for revenge and crying all the while.
Without the care and patience of Mrs. Field, I think I would have gone mad.
I may not blame Athena for it: she was just a child herself at the time. Yet it makes one wonder what further horrors were (and will be) committed in her name. Does she know, now? Does she feel guilty? Is that why she insisted after Poseidon that we lead 'normal' lives, or was that just one more manipulation? We were too far-gone to turn back. Sometimes I think that we were meant to die in Elision, with Seiya, like happened last time round, when only Dokho and Sion survived. Half-god Saints were never part of the plan, most certainly not one who started to think for himself. But we had a rebellious streak from the beginning. It was a miscalculation not eliminating us. Or maybe they tried: that is why the Gold Saints never intervened against Poseidon. Our deaths would have been fortuitous and they could have stepped in and finish the job.
Is there truly a difference between Athena and the other Gods?
Yet she does have great love and compassion: I have felt it.
Still, I think it is a very good idea to mediate between the Gods. They are like locked in never ending combat, doomed to repeat themselves: the End is only the Beginning. It seems hopeless, but that is not a reason not to try.
With the Field's help, we can wake up the International Community and with them behind us, what can the Gods do but listen?
The Fields are the most wonderful friends one can have. They all go out of her way to help me, and give me lessons so that I may one day resume my schooling, even Vimi, although she is terribly ill. She suffers from depressions, and sometimes she can not bring herself to do anything but sit and stare ahead and I sense the bleakness in her soul: it is frightening. But when she teaches me, French for example, she becomes a different person. Exacting and dedicated, like my master Camu, but far gentler. None of them ever pressure me, the decision to study is all mine. When Vimi explains a point of grammar or reads aloud a poem, her eyes shine and I understand (I think) why Nick loves her.
Yesterday she read me a beautiful one I would like to share with you, it is from Paul Verlaine:
"Le ciel est par-dessus le toit,
Si bleu, si calme!
Un arbre, par-dessus le toit,
Berce sa palme.
La cloche dans le ciel qu'on voit
Doucement tinte.
Un oiseau sur l'arbre qu'on voit,
Chante sa plainte.
Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, la vie est la
Simple et tranquille."
I have attempted to translate it for you as I believe you don't know any French:
"The sky is, above the roof
So blue, so calm
A tree over the roof,
Waves its crown
The belltower one sees against the sky
Rings softly
A bird on the tree one sees
Sings its complaint
My God, my God, life is there
Simple and quiet."
It reminds me of Russia somehow, in summer, on those lazy days just after dawn.
But I can most identify with the last line:
"Qu'as-tu fait, o toi que voila
Pleurant sans cesse
Dis, qu'as-tu fait, toi que voila
De ta jeunesse?"
"What have you done, oh you there who
Ceaselessly weeps
Say, what have you done, you there,
With your youth?"
It seems like those lines were written for me, though they are a 100 years old!
But I shall cease weeping over what I have lost: I am still young and I WILL LIVE.
At first I could not understand why the Fields took me to heart. They were outraged by my story of course, but even so, such generosity!
Perhaps it is because they themselves have suffered loss and know the pain. For not only do they anguish about Vimi's illness, two of their children have died.
Mr. Field was married before with a half-English, half-Tibetan woman called Dolma, whom he met in 1947 while trying to do something for a German uncle of his whom was being held in a civilian prisoner camp at Dehra Dunn on the Indian border. * They married and had twins, a son and a daughter. But just as they were about to return to England an earthquake **struck Tibet and Dolma did not want to leave her family in need. Mr. Field left alone, and never saw his wife and children again, for the Chines came and conquered Tibet. For a full year Dolma sought permission to leave, but was refused, and then she tried to go secretly across the passes, like so many did. She was lost, probably swept away by an avalanche, with her children.
There is an old black and white photograph on the mantelpiece here of her and Aventine and Caelia ( Mons Caelius, after the hills of Rome, like Queer is Quirinalis, Vimi is Viminalis and the other brother, Esquilinus) and Mrs. Field regularly puts fresh flowers in front of it. They also do volunteer work for the Free Tibet organisation.
It makes one wonder at Mu, doesn't it? He is Tibetan, he has lived there for years, he must have seen how his people are being oppressed, and he has done exactly nothing about it. That is typical Saint attitude, that - and Mu is by far the kindest of the Goldies! But compassion with humanity? I think not!
What good are Saints then?
This must change. When I think of the Tchernobyl disaster in my own country: Camu could have quenched the heat in a flash!
Perhaps we can bring about that change.
But first I want to have some fun as well.
I would like very much to go with the cinema with you: you're right, it is part of life.
Queer often takes me and to the theatre. He knows a lot about it as he went to drama school, and is part of a group of street artists called 'Les Balladins du Miroir', the Wandering Troubadours of the Mirror.
He is mad. You never know when he is acting or not. "Life," he says, "Is too serious to be serious about."
Yet he can be quite serious, and cares deeply. There is always a scrap of paper pinned to the door of his room with a quotation, a thought, a bribe of poetry written on it: something that makes you think deeper.
At the moment, it runs:
"Je veux etre un homme parmi les hommes. Je sais: c'est le plus difficile "
That means: I want to be a man among men: I know, it's the hardest part.
That's me. What I want to be. A human being. Not a God, not a Saint, Human!
I hope we can talk about it and our plans for the future when we come for Christmas
Until then, Hyoga.
P.S. The quotation is from Jean-Paul Sartre's play, 'Le Diable et le Bon Dieu.' It is about an Army Commander who one day decides to do only good, but while doing that evil happens. I can identify with that too.
P.P.S. This turned out to be a rather long letter after all. Sorry about that.
To be continued
Authentic. In 1940 the Dutch Government rounded up all German nationals and possible sympathisers/collaborators on their territory in the Dutch Indies (now Indonesia) and after the Japanese invasion had them shipped out to India where they were kept in a civilian prison camp and forgotten until the British camp guards asked why these people where still in prison and what was their crime anyway? They were told by the embarrassed Dutch to sent them all to their respective country of origin.Ex-inmates will praise the British for theirvery correct attitude towards them, both during and after the
War.
** Authentic. Whole villages disappeared. The Tibetans saw this earthquake as an Omen of great Evil to come.
They were right.
Author's note: One line of the Verlaine poem has been skipped:
'Simple et tranquille
Cette paisible rumeur-la vient de la ville' = That peaceable sound comes from town.