Chapter 23
Human Nature
Fleck's POV
Everything has a different side to it, good and evil in all things but then there is the hidden side, Take for instance, the image of a coin, its front possesses a man's face (in rare cases a woman) and the back some sort of other picture. But then there is the third side, the one around the edges, invisible except when flipping and even then passing in a blur of vibrating silver. The third side is what we all must learn to see, when looking at everything in this life. Even to the moonlight for behind its light lies the greatest secret of all. Moonlight, silence and most of all music are the most human things in this world for there is invisibility to all things. The third side is the most vulnerable for it is translucent, almost see-through because no one bothered to see. It is the hidden side of the human nature we show only to our most intimate partners. It is the one we guard in our inner heart of hearts. In the world where human nature is cheapened by a person's materialistic nature, everything from money to sexual lust can injure the purity of the translucent side. For that side is their soul, the side people cannot tell by looking at the nakedness of the human flesh. For even the ugliest man can have a beautiful soul.
There is darkness to every side of the moon, behind the pale light where the sun cannot reach. It is the side of the moon that changes with night and day. Where it glows brightly to the sight of one side of the world it is in shadow where the other has the brightness of the daylight. Just like with light there was the silence of sound, the one that comes after the noise itself. The awkward quit after the anger or the stillness after the final thump of the executioner's drum when the stick had struck its final thud on the skin. But the most prominent silence is one of anticipation, the gasp in a crowd when the magician does his greatest trick for the big finale.
But then there is the second side the one that holds the hidden music of the night beneath it, the silent side. The kind when the clunk of a trapdoor signaling the use of the hangman's noose, but there was no silence worse than that of the bells. It is a silence of music in the night, when the bells signify the waking hour every hour, like a low yawn in the late hours. It tolled for every hour depending on its age, signaling the death and rebirth of a day the way a phoenix would when it rises again from the ashes. One of blackness or gold, good or evil in its own right… a good or bad day will dawn with the unquestionable toll of the bells.
Ringing either in the joy or the sorrow of whatever people decided to feel about the turn of the sky. There are three ways to see the world and our world is a dark one where the bell tolls endlessly for the woe of mankind. But Ask not for whom the bell tolls, for it tolls for thee. In the shadows of the night rests the burden of the tell-tale heart when it beats with the blood of love unrequited. Love was a gentle creeping thing as it stole into the hearts of people the way music and stories did into the normal mind. Dulcet and gentle are the tones of music, ringing out in an ominous count. Bing, bong, two notes pulled twice by an invisible hand named the wind for it gently caresses the bell-pull. As if coaxing it to sing a song only it can understand because only it can take the time to really listen to its cry. And what a cry it is! The cry of music too beautiful to be heard by human ears, for to them it sounds only of aimless noise only there to mark the time of evening to the night for no one was ever keen to listen. And so the music falls on deaf ears of those who are captured in their lives.
It is in that music where the human minds are the most touched and where they can feel the force of a fear so beautiful that it hides in the shadows. True beauty, one found in music when the poorest soul finds something to live for. But at this hour rests the greatest power, the power of the deafening silence right after the toll of the bell. Music has hushed gently to the cover of silence in the night. Whispering to the deep feelings that the people were too shy to convey to others unless in pure isolation and only to the inner blackness of. No one is exempt from the secrets of the heart and no one can run from them.
There is indeed a sound to silence that tends to be louder than the noise of the human world seemingly asleep in the senses and the torment of the shadows in the dark and what loudness to the empty emotions of the world. There is a strange quality in silence. Dark and gentle, like a whisper of a traitorous lover in the far reaches of the night, both comforting and secretive all at once. With hands that hold and hide the secrets of those who whisper to it, either of love or of sinful desires too naughty to be voiced. There in the silent darkness, people release their sins, secrets and darkest thoughts. It happened whether they liked it or not, the darkness could do whatever it liked because along with the shadow comes the sleep and with the sleep comes the dreams.
In dreams there are no boundaries, the mental and the physical are meshed to where they are entwined with the fantastic and the terrifying. They can go from beautiful to hellish in a moment just like the night itself. Dreams and shadows come in darkness with the whisper of passionate music that only those who take the time to listen can hear, soft and caressing in the lightning of the candlelight. Music was deceiving when it came before the storm of desires to break forth in a sorrowful fog. It comes like the calm after a storm, when the lightning dissipates into the darkness of the blue sky coated in black.
Just before the thunder comes the flash, and before the flash becomes white. Then after the light and the boom, comes the rain…those tears of the earth to make everything beautiful again. But my dreams as of late have not been beautiful, for I have my own sins to confess to the evening night. Here in the garden of the little flat mama and I own I wait, waiting for the night to call to him as only it could. He never sleeps at night nowadays as my desires for the sounds of the music that only he can hear and he makes that music in the deepest part of the city all alone in the far-reaches of the night
As the notes pour from his hands the way water does from the hands of a man trying too tightly to hold it in his fingers. He, Erik Mansart was the greatest composer of all time. He had written the greatest operas of all time, made the world a more interesting place and now was in my home. Showing us the third side of him, the human side where he is little more than a man with a tortured broken soul and I would come to find so much more when I walked into my flat.
I came home with my giant from the candy store down stairs to see the couple asleep on the bed. They had their arms wrapped around one another as she slept in his arms. She was very pregnant and looked so fragile in his arms it was almost heartbreaking. I did not know what to do when they had arrived at my door and the man had told me that they had nowhere else to go. I knew allowing them to stay in my home was a dangerous thing in these parts. When an oddity harbors a normy it is not taken lightly by society any more than if it were reversed.
We were not to harbor those who hated us and if we did it was all the worse for us and those who were close to us. The punishments for those who helped the normies were anything ranging from minor death threats to full-blown public executions on the piers. And those were not any laughing matter that was for certain, being shoved off the docks into the sea or even burned at the stake. Worst of all were the hangings in the square where people laughed at you and mocked you before ending your life in a most painful manner.
It is a truly barbaric world in which we live on both sides of the fence. In these so called enlightened ages it is a very dark world that we have created. Just as they torture us we torture them, leaving a frightened pregnant woman alone in the cold springtime night when the rain poured down. She was soaked, shivering and would soon catch her death and yet despite this no one was offering to help her. Well her and the man who was holding her as though he feared we would take her out of his arms and do something harmful to her.
Which, of course we had no intention of doing but he still needed to be convinced. The look on his face was one of absolute terror when Fabious answered the door. He appeared, not only utterly exhausted and soaked but terrified despite the oddity status he clearly possessed as evident by the mask. It was her he was terrified for. Not that this really surprised me, because in these parts physical beauty was seen as little more than an unforgivable curse. Something to be pitied or even scorned, they were not welcome here as we were not welcome in their world.
So I took the risk and allowed this couple to come into our home because really they are no less human than Fabious and I are. It made us no better to discriminate against them because when we made them suffer it only proved that we were just as bad. I had learned that people were people back in France when the very woman who was asleep in my bed now had shown me such kindness. I had known that she was only a child but still it was that sweetness and that innocence in her that made me realize how special she was. There was a long and tiresome conversation with him that night after they had fallen asleep. Tiresome and wonderful, although it hadn't started out that way.
"We could be killed," Fabious had warned me in broken French.
"But these poor people, they-"I pleaded.
"Aren't our responsibility…"
"But-"
"No buts! If she is found here do you know what might happen to us?" he hissed.
"There is no law against helping people Fabious." I replied.
"No not our people, but you know the law in these parts against people like her!" he said seriously.
He was right of course. In these parts those born with what 'civilized' society called beautiful was considered just the opposite. They were the ones considered ugly; they were the freaks in our world. Their men were our servants and their women were well considered less than that. The women who lived here were prostitutes with no respect and mere fodder for young men with a dollar or less in their pockets. They were worth less than a dollar the more beautiful they were and many of them were homeless beggars and eating out of trashcans or stale bread from the grocer throwing out old scraps. Those of us who took in the normies even for one night were looked down on and some had even been hurt or killed. But what was I to do? I could not leave the poor woman on the street in her condition especially when I saw her bleeding lip. I knew it had already begun and that things might get worse if she and her husband remained left to fend for themselves. All those bad things, the prostitution, the homelessness and eventually painful death, that might have been her fate and as for him it would be the torment of watching her die and not be able to do anything about it.
"I know, I know but-"
"Stop saying but Mattie, they could kill you, us and I…" he stopped cold.
"You what?" I prompted, softly.
"Nothing, it's—it's nothing."
It wasn't till that moment that I realized he was speaking French, "When did you learn French."
"I've been practicing, because I…" He trailed off again.
"What…" I pleaded, "Come on tell me."
"Please Mattie…" he begged.
"No tell me!" I insisted, my heart thundering in my chest,
"I love you…" He whispered and looked me in the face.
It seemed as though my heart stopped in my chest…he loved me. The giant man who had held my secret affections for years loved me and all I could do to stand there but then again there was not anything else to do. I was torn with the three options, of jumping for joy, crying for joy and fainting from surprise. There was no way to know the exact reaction to have at a time like this. I loved him back of course but to hear his sudden declaration left me stunned and wordless.
Much to his disappointment, "Say something I just told you I love you and if anything happened to you I…" he cried his eyes moist.
I blinked, having no time to respond when he lifted me into his arms and kissed me deeply. The embrace was crushing and warm and God I loved it. He lifted me up into his arms and I sat on his lap cuddling him. His big eyes wide and tearful as he clutched me for fear I would be taken from him. I did not know how to react all I knew was that I did not ever want to be let go. I now knew what Christine had meant when she said that love was complicated as I nestled into his arms and snuggled into his midsection. It was soft and squishy due to his chubbiness, and so warm that it actually made me sleepy. I would have fallen right to sleep if it had not been for the fact that he was squashing me into him far too tightly for my comfort. I tried to wriggle away but he just held tighter to me. So tight that I nearly suffocated beneath the gripping weight of his embrace and I squeaked in pain. That seemed to be enough for him to lose his hold and I was now quite comfy. Or rather I would have been had it not been for all the noise he was making.
He was sobbing, bracing me in his arms as though he wanted me to be a part of him. I heard his cries, like that of a wounded animal, a bear or no perhaps a lion with a thorn in his big paw. I patted his chest and stroked his belly trying to shush him but it was no use, the more I soothed the worse he got. To the point of where he was nearly wailing and the only good thing I could think of was that he would eventually cry himself out and or fall asleep from this. But still it broke my heart to hear him so besieged by whatever torment he struggled with.
"Fabious what's the matter?" I asked him, thinking I whispered, "I love you."
He held me tighter, "They can't take you away from me, they just can't!" he sobbed.
"They won't love, I promise." I told him, trying to help.
"You cannot promise that…" he told me, "if they find her here."
"No one will find her here," I told him, "Now hush…all this crying takes it out of you." I wiped his weepy eyes as he nodded.
"Stay?" he asked, his crying dissolved into sniffles.
"Course," I said getting comfortable, and then yawning, "forever."
"I hope so…" he mumbled sleepily.
I suddenly had the very same fear, you see before today when I had been in love losing contact with Fabious did not seem quite as terrible. But now we had something to live for beyond my candy shop and just the minor friends I had come to know and care for. I had someone to call my own and there was no way I could lose that not for anyone. But then I looked into the bedroom and saw them sleeping and my heart just broke all over again for this poor pregnant woman who had never done anyone any harm.
She was snoring as anyone would in her condition, with the birth of twins on the way or more if fate decides. To turn her out would be plain cruel and where she would be then when her only crime was having loved a man who was not as handsome as the polite world would like. Her heart was in the right place as it should be and now having a taste of what she felt in this moment. It made sense that she would put herself in danger for the man she loved. I would do the same if it was called for when it came to my best friend and then I realized that I loved Fabious back. In that moment I knew what she felt the most for the man she loved. She would do anything for him and now that I thought about it she was not wrong to love him. Love was life, hence the expression the love of one's life. Now as I looked at him and her and rested in the arms of my beloved I understood why he wanted so badly to be loved. It wasn't about what he deserved or did not, it was just basic. The need to be loved and to love in return was the same as food, water and rest, vital to survival.
I snuggled him and settled into his massive snoring body, closing my eyes I thought of the couple staying with us. I relaxed into his arms and then I fell asleep for what I hoped would be the first of many nights with him and me together sleeping just like this. But then I thought of Christine, I could not let Christine suffer for a love she could not help. It was pure and honest and soon she would be mother to his child it seemed. It was just nature to love and to mate, whether you were an oddity or a normy, you were a human being. And so I would protect this normy with my beloved, for it was thanks to her that we had each other. Her arrival had prompted his confession which otherwise would have remained unsaid for who knows how long. And just like me and Fabious, she had the right to be human and the right to love whomever, wherever she pleased. It was not just her right, it was simple human nature.