We Lose Ourselves in Light
'Twere best at once to sink to peace,
Like birds the charming serpent draws,
To drop head-foremost in the jaws
Of vacant darkness and to cease.
34, In Memoriam, A.H.H.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
It was one shot for Moritz, through the head, and he sank into a quiet oblivion where, Melchior hopes, nothing could hurt him again.
Waking up every morning with the sun on his face and the memory of that day in the barn, of Moritz's sad eyes and how he didn't see, is a new wound for Melchior, another bullet tearing through his flesh, only he doesn't get the welcome black nothingness afterward to soothe it all away.
He dresses, combs his hair, tries to calm his breathing with the pulsing ache of Moritz's absence forever pulsing, forever bleeding. And all he thinks, as he thumbs the pages of his books, soundless to him now, is that it must be better to slip into that vacant darkness, to sink into that peace at once and cease to be. Anything must be better than to live with this, to shoulder the burden of Moritz's eyes, Moritz's death and know that he's a lesser man for staying here while Moritz slipped away.
He goes to the tree where Ilse said she saw him last. He hesitates before it, like the ground where he can imagine the bloodstains in his mind is consecrated somehow, sacred, holy, but then that's crazy talk because what is holy anyway? What is God in all of this? There can't be a God, all goodness and love and forgiveness, not when the grass before him is covered with the ghost of Moritz's blood and a fresh tombstone sits in the graveyard, nestled safe near the blessed church.
Still, though, he lingers beside the tree, stares at it until his vision blurs. The sun crawls across his back, dips down to his legs. Darkness starts to shade things but he's starting to see nothing but blackness everywhere he turns.
Any second now, any moment he'll hear Moritz's voice, feel him shake his shoulder and laugh, teasing. Melchior's asleep by the brook, and this is all a dream, some nightmare where he does the terrible, where he neglects his friend and though he wasn't there, though he didn't hear the shot, the blood is on his hands just the same.
The sun sets when he isn't paying attention and it's been hours. His knees are sore, his teeth chattering as the night air settles, suddenly cold, too cold for his thin jacket, for the socks he somehow manages to keep pulled around his knees. It's time to go in, to turn around and leave this spot behind, and he walks, his feet crunching in the frozen, stiff blades of grass.
The front door shuts behind him and he climbs the stairs, and if he shuts his eyes, he can almost hear Moritz's footsteps, clunky and unsure and missing a step here or there behind him. He isn't sure if it's almost hearing them, almost having him there again, or the silence that follows, the empty, broad silence that swallows the sound of his own footsteps, and he knows he's alone.
He left that spot, that memory, yet as he leans against the door of his bedroom, eyes weary as they scan the empty, neat room, he shivers, pulls his jacket closer because the cold of the night, of emptiness, hasn't left him. And he's sure even with all the blankets of the world – it never will leave him.
He's blamed then and it's on the train that he pulls at his jacket, fiddles with the buttons of a scratchy uniform and he wonders – is it his fault?
The answer comes to him easily in the noise of the train as it charges forward. Each new turn of the engine whispers iyes, yes/i until he puts his hands over his ears, until he shuts his eyes and tries to think, tries to find the something in this world that makes it worthwhile – that makes ihim/i worthwhile.
And well, there's the girl, isn't there? The one he swapped Moritz for, the one with the eyes that follow him wherever he goes, with the taste of her lips that still lingers on his own. There is that, there is Wendla and the moment of serenity, that sweet moment of completeness and joy he found with her in the spot that Moritz found his condemnation.
There is Wendla, and if he can just reach her, can just hold onto her and cling – then maybe he can save himself.
The voices of the boys are venom and he tries to pull his jacket around his shoulders, tries to block them out any way he can. He gets a black eye the first day; they steal his hat the next and he gets a rod across his back, tears in his eyes.
But this is physical, this is surface, and it's nothing to what burns inside Melchior for Moritz, for Wendla, for himself. It spills over into anger, into passion in the letters he writes Wendla because he has to release it somehow, has to turn it from the painful guilt it is into something productive.
He turns tough to survive but mostly he prefers to ignore them, to retreat to his bunk away in the corner and shut the world out around him. They know where to attack, though; it's what they're good at, after all, why they're here and the only thing they have left to hold onto anymore. A product of the educational reform system, an essay he might have written before except now when it's here, in front of him, in flesh and blood, he finds he doesn't have the words for those essays anymore.
They draw him out, draw him away. He doesn't know how they got his letter, wonders how many of them they'd managed to steal, but none of that is important now. Wendla is pregnant – a new life is coming to replace the one that Melchior helped to extinguish, and nothing matters anymore. He has no more time to waste punishing himself here, letting his guilt and his grief consume him.
He escapes to her, to his refuge, to his hope for the future and the chance to make amends.
He goes to her and their child, to the promise of new life and a new beginning. Somewhere in all this he can hold her, can kiss her again and find that fulfillment. Finally he can fill in the holes that Moritz left again, can fill in the holes he bore into himself and maybe he can sleep without nightmares.
The night is lovely, dark, and deep. The graveyard stretches before him, shrouded in mist and he waits for footsteps, hears them in the beating of his own heart. He needs this, needs her, needs to escape and find himself again, make sense of the world and his place in it.
He can see Moritz's gravestone even through the fog, can picture it as clearly as the first day he saw it. He traces Moritz's name, his finger freezing against the cold surface of the stone, the night air stealing through his clothes and chilling him.
Moritz was his fault. He's sure of that now, as sure as he is that he needs Wendla to go on, as sure as he is that Wendla is the key to a new life of meaning and purpose. He won't let that happen to them; he can't, now that he knows better.
When he finds her grave, he feels the blackness of the night swirl around him, draw him into its depths.
His hope, his life, his chance to try again, to start over – it's buried beneath him, with Moritz, and with whatever remained of his soul.
What's left of him, then, other than the physical shell, the flesh and blood? His soul has decayed; all that's left is for the outside to fall away as well.
The knife is cold in his hand and it doesn't glint in the moonlight when he holds it up.
He can still feel the phantom traces of their hands in his. His heart races in his chest and he isn't even sure where he's running to, but the ghost of his past, of who he was and what he did chases after him. He runs until his lungs ache and he feels his legs start to turn weak. He hasn't really had the chance to eat much these past few days, on the run, and he doesn't know what sort of a life he's going to stumble into now.
He stops by a tree, leans against it and tries to breathe. Everything's fallen to pieces around him, and he used to think that included himself, that he lay there amongst the ashes with Moritz and the remains of what he knew of life at home, but now he's starting to believe – maybe all he does have left is himself.
Later, he isn't sure if Ilse found him or he found her.
She takes him to the artists because – well, where else? The room is bright, scattered with paint and food, flies and he has to be careful to avoid stepping on bottles. It's empty though, save for the two of them, and he eyes her dress warily, torn at the hem and stained in a few places. He starts to frown, starts to wrinkle his nose and the thoughts are almost there, the concerned feelings for her wellbeing.
There's a mirror on the wall, slanted, with a crack running through it. It's the movement reflected in it that draws his eye, and he finds himself staring at a boy, face dirty and a little bruised, a present from the Reformatory; his clothes are torn, here and there, and mud clings to his trousers.
Ilse comes in with a shirt and he doesn't want to ask whose; she hands it to him with a smile, points to bread and cheese on a platter. Her laugh is easy, her legs bare as she pulls them up into a chair, splotched with paint.
"How are you, Melchior? I thought we'd never see you again! What was the Reformatory like? You know, the other night the artists all threw a big party. It was my birthday." Her eyes are glittering and it looks like pride, like she's holding onto her happiness as closely as he's holding onto guilt, and he smiles.
"Happy birthday, Ilse. Did you wish for anything?"
Her smile stays still. Her eyes falter and she shrugs, pulling at the end of her skirt. "What have I got to wish for?" Her answer comes late, after he'd felt the silence in the air after the question and tasted her lie.
There's stilted conversation then in between him changing, splashing water over his face and hands. He realizes for the first time in a few days that he's itired/i – sore, exhausted. She lets him sleep and it's dark when he wakes up, in a strange place but really, when has he ever had the familiar recently? When will he ever have it again?
At first he thinks he's alone. Night's closed in, shaded the room in darkness and there aren't any candles, just the moonlight falling in between the thin sheets of cloth that stand for curtains. He sits, rubbing his hand over his eyes.
"Do you feel better?"
Her voice startles him, coming out of the dark. He finds her, a ghost in a white linen shirt propped against the wall. Her arms are hugging her knees to her chest, the moonlight leaving her face in shadow.
"A little. I should probably get going…" He stands and collects his jacket. She doesn't move, though he can feel her eyes, fallen stars following his movements as he feels around in the dark.
"What would you wish for?"
He stops, turns, and maybe he can hear tears in her voice, can feel something shaking beneath her words. "Ilse?"
"For your birthday. What would you wish for?"
He hadn't wanted clarification of the question but he shrugs, turning toward her, folding his arms over his chest. It shouldn't be that difficult of a question, but he bites his lip, thinks of graves and of everything he'd like to have again, everything he'd like to change. He almost says it, almost says them, but he bites his tongue, the words drying out in his mouth.
"I don't know," he tells the floor instead.
There's laughter outside. He glances out the window, sees the light of a bonfire and he nods his head toward it. "They're having another party?"
She snorts, her face still shaded from him. "They always have a party."
There's silence again, and he bites his lip, eyes surveying what he can see of her and he sizes them up, outcasts from the woods where they grew up, neither of them able to go back to days by the stream with wind in their hair.
"You could come with me, if you wanted."
Her laugh comes after a silence. He hears the voices of the artists outside, the laughter and the fire popping. Bottles clink, and he thinks he hears glass break.
"And where are you going? Do you know?"
She takes his silence for an answer. There's an edge to her voice, one he hadn't noticed before, sad, resigned – tired, and he realizes with a pang why it should sound so familiar. Moritz's voice in the hayloft comes to him again and he swallows thickly, pressing his eyes together tightly.
"Good night, Melchior." Her tone is final and his stomach wrenches. He steps toward her, crossing the room until he can see her face, barely, eyes shining in the light like a cat. His hand falls to her shoulder.
"Come with me, Ilse."
She stands then, pulls Melchior into a hug and he finds himself torn between being thankful for this chance to say goodbye to what he's leaving behind, to her and Moritz and Wendla and everyone else, or if he'd been easier without it.
"Good luck."
He finds her hand, squeezes it gently. "You too."
Lights shine in the horizon, and he's walking on roads now, feet sore but there's an end in sight, of some kind or another. The city is there, and his blood thrums; he can feel Ilse's hand in his still, can feel her arms pressed about him; and with her arms, there's Wendla, there's Moritz, and he pauses, stepping off the side of the road to collect his breath.
There isn't any turning back now, mostly because there's nothing to turn back too. The person he was, the child, has faded away and now he's someone different, someone who's lost too much. There's only the road before him now, only the gates to the city and then – he'll live for them because they're more a part of him now; there's more of them in him than himself, and it's his job to carry on, to live the life they couldn't.
The stars are above him, burning in the black velvet night sky. The darkness seems withdrawn, pulled far away from the road as Melchior steps onto it again, hands at his sides and his footsteps echo, softly, in the night.
Dear friend, far off, my lost desire,
So far, so near in woe and weal;
O loved the most, when most I feel
There is a lower and a higher;
Known and unknown; human, divine;
Sweet human hand and lips and eye;
Dear heavenly friend that canst not die,
Mine, mine, for ever, ever mine;
Strange friend, past, present, and to be;
Loved deeplier, darklier understood;
Behold, I dream a dream of good,
And mingle all the world with thee.
129 - In Memoriam, A.H.H.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson