The Journey to Eternity — Chapter Forty-Five: The Place I Came From

Chapter Forty-Five of my book, The Journey to Eternity, shared here chapter by chapter as I write it. Earlier chapters: Chapter One · Chapter Two · Chapter Three · Chapter Four · Chapter Five · Chapter Six · Chapter Seven · Chapter Eight · Chapter Nine · Chapter Ten · Chapter Eleven · Chapter Twelve · Chapter Thirteen · Chapter Fourteen · Chapter Fifteen · Chapter Sixteen · Chapter Seventeen · Chapter Eighteen · Chapter Nineteen · Chapter Twenty · Chapter Twenty-One · Chapter Twenty-Two · Chapter Twenty-Three · Chapter Twenty-Four · Chapter Twenty-Five · Chapter Twenty-Six · Chapter Twenty-Seven · Chapter Twenty-Eight · Chapter Twenty-Nine · Chapter Thirty · Chapter Thirty-One · Chapter Thirty-Two · Chapter Thirty-Three · Chapter Thirty-Four · Chapter Thirty-Five · Chapter Thirty-Six · Chapter Thirty-Seven · Chapter Thirty-Eight · Chapter Thirty-Nine · Chapter Forty · Chapter Forty-One · Chapter Forty-Two · Chapter Forty-Three · Chapter Forty-Four.

Chapter Forty-Five: The Place I Came From

On the day I decided to return to the world I came from, I woke before dawn.

I lay with my eyes open and listened to the wind moving among the trees outside the window. Through the night I had tried to imagine the moment I would stand again in the place I knew, but every time I thought about the return, things I had not meant to think about rose in me instead.

A breakfast table I had not cleared.

A pair of shoes left beside the door.

A voice that called me from another room in the house.

I did not know why those particular things returned to me. Perhaps because while I lived there I had not thought them important. They were part of life itself, and no one stops every time a door opens or closes to think that one day he will miss even that sound.

I turned onto my side.

For a long time I had been convinced that the greatest difficulty in eternal life would be bearing the years. Now I began to understand there was another difficulty: to go on living even after the life you knew can no longer exist in the same form.

I rose and went to the window.

I did not regret the choice I had made.

But this morning, for the first time in a long while, I felt its price.

Liara waited for me in the garden.

The bandage still wrapped her arm. Adra had examined her the evening before and approved her going on a short journey, on condition she not strain the hand and rest if she felt pain.

"Did you sleep?" she asked when she saw me.

"A little."

"Are you excited?"

"Yes."

She studied my face.

"Only excited?"

I smiled a small smile.

"No."

Liara did not ask me to explain.

Naama waited for us beside the passage. She checked its stability once more, handed us the way to contact her, and reminded Liara to be careful of her arm.

"I am beginning to think you all treat me as if I were made of glass," said Liara.

"Glass would not have survived what you did," Naama replied.

Liara smiled, but when she raised her hand to arrange her hair, I saw the small pain pass across her face.

I came closer and took the bag from her.

"I can carry it," she protested.

"I know."

She looked at me, and then gave in.

Before we entered the passage, I looked back.

The seventh stood beside the pool with Ayla. She pointed at something in the water and he bent down beside her. When he noticed me, he raised his hand in greeting.

I returned it.

Only yesterday I had been busy with the question of how he would manage in a world from which he had been disconnected for so long. Now I saw him absorbed in something that had nothing to do with me.

I was glad of that.

We entered the passage.

The light changed first.

After it came the smell.

Dry earth, grass, fine dust carried on the wind.

We stood at the edge of a dirt road, near a grove of trees.

From far off the sound of a car engine was heard, and from one of the houses beyond the field rose a dog's barking.

There was nothing spectacular here.

No glowing rivers, no skies in colors I did not know, no structures built by ancient civilizations.

Only my world.

I stood without moving.

"Is this the place?" Liara asked.

I nodded.

She looked around.

"I imagined it differently."

"How?"

"Larger. Perhaps because you told me about it so much."

I looked at the path.

"For me it really was large."

We began to walk.

The earth was hard in part, and in other places old wheel ruts remained in it. The tree branches leaned over the road, and a few dry leaves crunched beneath my shoes.

I stopped beside an olive tree.

I passed my palm over its trunk.

I knew its cracks. One branch bent at a strange angle, as it always had, but another branch had broken or been pruned since I was here.

"Did you come here often?" Liara asked.

"Yes. Mostly in the evening hours."

"Alone?"

"Sometimes."

She waited.

"There were days I wanted a little quiet. I would go out for a walk, promise myself I would return after ten minutes, and stay much longer."

I smiled.

"And then I would hurry home because someone was waiting for me."

I went on stroking the rough trunk.

I did not tell Liara who was waiting for me.

She did not ask.

When we reached the road, a car passed beside us.

The driver slowed a little because we stood close to the shoulder, and then went on his way.

Liara looked after him.

"Strange to think they do not know there are other worlds."

"I did not know either."

"And if you met yourself here, before you set out on the journey, what would you say to her?"

I thought a moment.

"I am not sure I would say anything to her."

"Why?"

"Because she would ask a thousand questions, and I do not know if I would want to answer all of them."

Liara laughed.

"Then she has not changed all that much."

I laughed too.

But as we went on walking, I thought about her question.

If I had met the woman I was, would she have recognized me?

Not my face. That was no longer her face.

Would she have recognized the way I look at people? My voice? What moves me?

Or would she have stood before me and seen a stranger, who had come from a place so far away that nothing in common could any longer be found between them?

The street where I had lived appeared beyond the turn.

I stopped before we entered it.

Everything was familiar, and yet it took me a few moments to understand what had changed.

One of the fences had been replaced. A small tree I remembered had grown and almost entirely hid a first-floor window. A house that had been painted white was painted a sand tone.

A few houses away a boy stood beside an open gate and called to someone to bring him his ball.

His voice reached me clearly.

He called again, impatient.

And then from inside the house a woman's voice was heard:

"Just a moment, I am coming!"

I stopped.

I did not know the boy or the woman.

But her tone, that same mixture of tiredness and affection, struck me with a force I had not expected.

How many times had I answered that way myself?

How many times was I called while I was busy, and how many times did I ask for one more moment without thinking that those moments would end?

The boy received the ball and ran to the street.

The woman remained in the doorway, looked after him, and called for him to be careful.

I felt my throat tighten.

Liara came closer to me.

"Are you all right?"

I nodded, but I could not speak at once.

She looked at the house from which the voices had come.

"Did it remind you of someone?"

"Yes."

She waited.

"Not one person," I said at last. "An entire life."

When we reached my old house, I stopped across the road.

It stood there, almost as I remembered.

The windows were open. A light curtain moved in the wind, and on the windowsill stood a flowerpot I did not know.

Someone tended the garden.

The bushes had been trimmed, and new stones laid on the path.

For a while I looked at the house without saying a word.

Here I had lived.

Here I woke on mornings when I was tired before the day had even begun.

Here I sat at the kitchen table with people I loved; sometimes we talked for hours and sometimes we barely exchanged a word.

Here I was angry about small things, argued, laughed, worried.

There were days I wanted to flee the noise.

There were evenings when all I wanted was for everyone to be home.

I stood facing the windows and tried to imagine the rooms as they were.

But the more I strove, the clearer it became to me that I had no way to enter that life anew.

A woman came out of the house holding a trash bag.

She set it beside the gate, went back inside, and closed the door.

The movement was so ordinary.

She did not even look toward us.

Liara stood quietly beside me.

"Someone else lives here," she said.

"Yes."

"Does it hurt you?"

I thought a moment.

"A little."

She did not answer.

"But I am glad the house does not stand empty."

I looked at the curtain moving in the window.

"It was not meant to wait for me."

We were about to go on when music was heard from inside the house.

Someone had put on music.

At first I did not notice it. Only when we had almost reached the end of the street did I recognize the sounds.

I stopped.

It was a song I knew well.

Not a special or rare song. A song I had heard so many times that in certain periods I had almost stopped noticing it.

Now, when the melody came out of my old house's window, I felt as if someone had touched a place I had not known was still exposed.

Liara turned to me.

"What happened?"

"This song…"

I did not finish.

For a moment I heard within me other voices that once used to mingle with it. A conversation from the kitchen. Steps in the corridor. Sudden laughter.

I would have given much to return to one such moment.

Not to change a thing.

Only to stand there, inside the house's ordinary noise, without knowing how precious it was.

Tears rose in my eyes.

They surprised me.

I had been through much harder things since I left this world. I had stood facing dangers, seen suffering, feared losing people who had become dear to me.

But this simple song was what managed to bring me to the verge of tears.

Liara did not try to comfort me.

She only stood close.

After a while I said:

"I thought I missed the house."

I looked again toward the windows.

"But I miss what was inside it."

We walked to the center of the village.

We passed a small shop where I used to buy bread.

The sign had been replaced, but the smell rising from it was familiar.

The shopkeeper asked if he could help us.

I answered him in a language I had not spoken for so long.

He handed me two warm rolls, took the payment, and wished us a pleasant day.

For a moment I almost wanted to ask him if he knew the people who had lived here once, if he had heard of me, if anyone still mentioned my name.

But I did not ask.

We went out and sat on a bench.

Liara bit into her roll.

"This is really tasty."

"I used to buy bread here almost every morning."

"Are you sure that is not why you wanted to come back?"

I smiled.

She smiled back.

Across from us a woman passed holding a small boy's hand. He stopped beside a puddle left from the watering and tried to step into it. The woman pulled him gently, and he insisted on staying.

She gave in at last and let him put one shoe in the water.

He laughed.

She laughed too.

I watched them until they moved away.

"Do you want to approach someone?" Liara asked suddenly.

I understood what she meant.

"I thought about it."

"And what did you decide?"

I looked at the roll in my hand.

"That I am not ready yet."

Liara nodded.

"Perhaps I will never be ready," I added.

"That may be."

"I do not know if I have the right to suddenly appear in their lives."

"And perhaps there is someone who would want to see you."

I looked at her.

"I know."

We fell silent.

That was the thought I had been trying to move away from since the morning.

I could reach the house, stand in the street, see that the world went on existing.

But the people I loved were not houses or trees.

They had not stayed in the place where I left them.

They had lived their years.

Some of them had surely changed, some had grown distant, and perhaps among them were some I would no longer be able to meet.

I did not know if I was able to stand before them and explain who I am now.

And I did not know if I would have a good answer to the simplest question:

Why did you go?

In the afternoon hours I asked Liara that we return to the grove.

She agreed.

The sun already leaned westward when we reached the path.

We walked among the trees until I found the large stone I used to sit on.

It was still there, sunk slightly into the earth.

I sat on it.

Liara sat beside me carefully, arranging her injured arm so it would not hurt her.

"Is this where you came to think?" she asked.

"Yes."

"About what?"

"About almost everything."

I looked at the branches above us.

"I used to ask myself how it all began. Why we exist. If there is something beyond what we are able to see."

I smiled.

"Sometimes I spoke with a bird."

Liara turned her head to me.

"A bird?"

"Yes. There was one that used to sit on a nearby branch. At least I liked to think it was the same bird."

"And what did you say to it?"

"All sorts of things. Sometimes I asked it if it knows where it flies. Sometimes I told it what troubled me."

"And it listened?"

"It stayed on the branch. That was enough for me."

Liara laughed quietly.

Then we sat for a long time without speaking.

The light grew softer, and the trees' shadows lengthened on the earth.

I looked at Liara.

She sat beside me, her arm bandaged, her eyes turned to the field.

I thought about how, not long ago, I had not known at all that she existed.

And now it was hard for me to imagine the road I had traveled without her.

She noticed my look.

"What?"

"I am glad you came with me."

"So am I."

"Even though I showed you almost nothing special."

"I saw a great deal."

"Such as what?"

She thought a moment.

"I saw the place where you learned to walk alone when you need quiet. I saw the house where you lived. I saw you standing before it."

She looked at me.

"I did not know you then. Today I understand you a little more."

I felt my eyes fill again.

This time I did not try to hide it.

"I miss them," I said.

Liara did not ask whom.

"I know."

"Sometimes I think about all the years I will have. About all the places I will be able to see. And then I think about them, and about how their time goes on passing."

My voice broke a little.

"I can set out on a journey, return in a hundred years, and discover that for me it was only one period in a life. For them those can be entire lifetimes."

Liara lowered her gaze.

"Yes."

She had no solution.

I was glad she did not try to find one.

"There are moments when I feel as if I chose to go on along a road others will not be able to walk with me," I said.

She reached out her healthy hand and held mine.

"You can still love them."

"I know."

"And be here."

I looked at her.

Those two truths existed inside me side by side, and I did not yet know how to live with them.

A rustling was heard among the branches.

A small bird landed on a low branch.

It tilted its head, looked at us, and hopped slightly aside.

I smiled.

"Hello to you," I said quietly.

Liara followed my look.

"Perhaps it came to hear what you have to say."

"Perhaps."

The bird cleaned its feathers with its beak.

I watched it.

Once I used to ask it, in my imagination, to fly far and come back and tell me what it saw.

I wanted to know what lies beyond the horizon, beyond the skies, beyond the life I knew.

Now I could reach, by myself, places that had not existed even in my imagination.

And yet I sat on the same stone, facing a bird that knew nothing about me, and felt a need to tell it I had returned.

"I went very far," I whispered.

The bird hopped to another branch.

"Farther than I thought possible."

Liara sat quietly.

"But there are things I left here," I went on, almost without a voice.

The bird spread its wings.

For a moment it hung in the air between the branches, and then moved away over the grove.

I followed it until it disappeared.

When the sun began to set, Liara rose from the stone.

"I will walk a little," she said. "Take your time."

I thanked her.

I remained alone.

A light wind passed among the leaves.

I laid my palms on the stone, felt its roughness, and looked at the road by which we had come here.

I thought about all the times I had sat in this place and wanted my life to be different.

Not because it was bad.

It held love, beauty, work, dear people.

But I always felt there was something more I did not understand.

I was convinced that if I found that thing, something inside me would grow calm.

I found much more than I had searched for.

But today, when I stood before my old house and heard the song that came out of its window, I understood that no knowledge could give me back that afternoon, those voices, the possibility of entering the house and finding everyone as they were.

I closed my eyes.

I let myself miss them.

I did not try to turn the pain into a conclusion.

I did not look for a great meaning in it.

I sat until the wind cooled a little and the shadows covered the path.

Liara returned when the sky had already begun to darken.

"Do you want to stay longer?" she asked.

I looked at the trees.

"Not today."

She reached me her hand and helped me rise.

We walked slowly.

When we reached the edge of the grove, I stopped.

"Liara?"

"Yes?"

"I think I will want to come back here again."

"Then we will come back."

"Perhaps next time I will need to do something I was not able to do today."

She looked at me, but did not ask me to explain.

"When you decide," she said.

I nodded.

We went on walking.

Naama opened the passage for us as darkness fell.

Before we entered, I turned to the grove.

The trees looked dark against the sky, and in the distance the houses' lights came on.

I thought about the people sitting now to eat dinner, about children asked to come inside, about conversations taking place behind the windows.

I did not know if anyone of them thought of me.

I did not know if there was anyone who still waited to hear from me.

I raised my hand to my chest, as if I wanted to calm the heart that still ached.

And then I entered the passage.

When we returned to the station, Naama received us beside the gate.

She asked if the road had passed safely.

Liara told her about the grove and the small shop, and even insisted on describing the bread she had tasted.

I listened to them with half a smile.

Beside the pool I saw the seventh.

He sat on the stone's edge, his feet almost touching the water.

When he noticed me, he rose.

"You returned," he said.

"Yes."

"How was it?"

I looked at him.

"Not as I expected."

"Was it bad?"

"No."

I thought about the house, about the boy who called his mother, about the song.

"It was harder than I thought."

The seventh nodded.

"Sometimes I think about the place where I was," he said. "I want to see it again, but I am afraid that if I return, I will feel I still belong to it."

"And perhaps you will feel something entirely different."

"Perhaps."

He looked at the water.

"I am not ready yet."

"I was not ready for everything I met today either."

He looked at me.

"And still you went."

"Yes."

He smiled slightly.

"Then perhaps I will go one day too."

"Perhaps."

He sat back down beside the pool.

I went on my way.

Liara waited for me at the house's doorway.

The light coming from the windows lit her face.

"Are you coming?" she asked.

I came closer to her, but before entering I stopped for a moment.

I had a place here.

People who waited for me, a road not yet finished, a life that went on opening before me.

And in another place, far from here, people remained whom I loved and to whom I did not yet know how to return.

I felt the two worlds inside me.

I did not want to choose one of them and erase the other.

"Are you all right?" Liara asked.

"Yes," I replied.

She looked at me another moment.

"You look sad."

"I am a little sad."

"Do you want to talk?"

"Not now. Perhaps tomorrow."

She nodded and opened the door.

I entered after her.

Before I closed it, I looked once more at the sky.

I thought about how for a long time I had wanted to know what awaited me beyond every boundary.

Today I discovered there are also boundaries I do not yet know how to cross.

I did not know when I would return to the first world, and whether I would have the courage to meet the people I left in it.

But I knew I could not go on treating my previous life as if it had ended only because my new life had begun.

I closed the door.

Inside I heard Liara calling me from the next room.

I went to her.

And the question of what I would do next time I returned to the world I came from remained open.

End of Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six — Between Two Worlds →

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