The Journey to Eternity — Chapter Fourteen: The Memory That Is Not Mine

Chapter Fourteen 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: The Memory That Is Not Mine

"But you were not always the one who left."

The silver bird's words went on echoing within me even after she fell silent.

I stood on one of the upper branches of the Tree of Eternity. Beneath me stretched vast spaces, entire worlds I had not known existed until a short while ago. Had I still been in my human body, I might have found it hard to breathe at the sight.

But at that moment I was not interested in worlds.

I was thinking of a single silver leaf.

And of the hand that held it.

In the dream that had returned to me for years I had always seen the leaf, but not the one who handed it to me. Only now, when I was no longer in my body, did another part of the memory open before me.

And that part changed everything I thought I knew.

"I want to see it again," I said.

The bird shook her head.

"Why not?"

Because you are trying to remember something you do not yet know ever happened.

"But I saw it."

You saw a sight. You still do not know to whom it belongs.

I looked at her.

Until that moment I had thought my problem was that I did not remember enough. Now it turned out that even the memories that had returned to me were not necessarily evidence of my past.

Liara came closer.

"We should go back to the city."

"Not before I understand something."

"Precisely because you want to understand," she replied, "you need to step a little away from the sight. The harder you try to reconstruct it by force, the harder it will be to distinguish between what you saw and what you expect to see."

I wanted to argue.

But I knew she was right about at least one thing: I had already begun adding details to the memory that I was not sure I had seen.

Was the figure who held the leaf taller than me?

Was her voice a woman's?

Were we standing in a room, or under open skies?

A moment ago I had been certain I knew.

Now I no longer was.

Sahar sat on the stone at the edge of the branch. He looked exhausted from the way he had made to reach us. His eyes were open, but his breathing had grown slow and heavy.

"Is there a description of the leaf in your records?" I asked him.

"Yes."

"And a description of who held it?"

"Not a description that can be relied on."

"Why?"

"Because the testimonies contradict one another. In some of them the leaf was held by the consciousness that left. In others it was given precisely to the one who stayed."

I felt disappointment.

"So even that is not clear."

Sahar looked at me.

"There are things that survived thousands of years because people remembered them. And there are things that changed over thousands of years for exactly the same reason."

He rose carefully.

"I must get back to the passage before I can no longer walk."

Liara offered to accompany him as far as the ancient path. He thanked her, but refused.

I watched him move slowly away, now and then resting a hand on one of the tree's branches to steady himself.

I thought about how he carried a body in a place where almost everyone had given up theirs.

He seemed more vulnerable than us.

But at least he had a clear way of knowing where he ended and the world began.

When we returned to the city, I asked Liara not to take me to my new home.

"I want to walk a little on my own."

She looked at me, as if weighing whether it was right to leave me.

At last she nodded.

"If you feel a thought that is not yours growing too strong, don't try to fight it. Go back to one thing you know for certain about yourself."

"Like what?"

"Something small. Not a whole story."

She moved away, and I remained in a quiet street between two gardens.

The city looked different at that hour. There was no setting sun in it, and yet the light had softened. Shapes moved in the tower windows, and on the balconies sat consciousnesses talking with one another.

I passed a house from which rose the smell of bread.

I stopped.

The smell was familiar to the point of pain.

I came closer to the window and saw a woman kneading dough on a wooden table. Beside her stood a small boy, perhaps six years old, scattering flour across the table.

The boy laughed.

For a moment I thought I had returned to Earth.

But then I noticed that the woman was not truly touching the dough. Her hands passed through it, and it re-formed each time according to her will.

The boy raised his head and looked at me.

He was made of delicate light, almost transparent.

The woman noticed me and opened the door.

"You are welcome to come in."

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to disturb you."

"You didn't."

She smiled.

"You are new here."

I nodded.

"My name is Mira," she said. "We met some time ago."

I remembered her. The woman who had reconstructed her human kitchen in the City of Consciousnesses.

I went in.

The boy was no longer standing by the table.

"Where is he?" I asked.

Mira looked at the place where he had been.

"He is not really here."

I did not know what to say.

She sat down and invited me to sit across from her.

"This is a memory of my son. He was six when we moved into our first home. He loved helping me bake, although usually I had to clean the entire kitchen after him."

I smiled.

"And today?"

"Today he is no longer six."

She was silent for a moment.

"In fact, I don't know how old he is now."

I looked at her.

"You can reconstruct him so precisely?"

"His appearance, his voice, the movements I remember. But there are days when I put words in his mouth that he never said."

She passed her hand over the table.

"At first I didn't notice. Later I began remembering conversations that took place between us here, as if they had really happened."

I felt unease.

"And how do you know how to tell the difference?"

"I keep the original memory separate. Sometimes I go back to it to check."

She looked at me.

"Why do you ask?"

I told her about the dream.

Not about everything that had happened on my journey, only about the silver leaf and the feeling that the memory had changed.

Mira listened without interrupting.

"Perhaps it did not change," she said at last. "Perhaps you changed, and so you see other things in it."

"But what if it is not mine at all?"

She looked at the place where her son had stood a moment before.

"Even a memory that is not ours can become part of us. The question is whether we remember that we received it from someone else."

I left Mira's home with a thought that would not let go of me.

In my human life I had been certain my memories belonged to me because I had experienced them. But even then I had memories built from stories others had told me.

Pictures from early childhood that I did not truly remember, but had seen again and again in albums.

Family events I had heard about so many times that I could describe them as if I had been present at them.

Was the difference between a memory of mine and a story I had heard always clear?

And if not, what will happen to a consciousness that lives thousands of years and can feel the memories of others as if they were its own?

I kept walking.

In a narrow street, between two tall buildings, I noticed a familiar figure.

Aran sat on a low step, facing a pool of dark water.

He did not look surprised when he saw me.

"I thought you would come here," he said.

I sat down beside him.

The water in the pool was still. Within it appeared now and then faces, houses, fields and places I did not know.

"What is this?"

"A pool of testimonies. It does not show only what you remember, but also memories left here by others."

"How does one know whose each memory is?"

"Usually it has a mark of origin."

"And in cases where it doesn't?"

Aran looked at the water.

"In those cases, it is best to be careful."

We were silent.

After a while he said:

"Sahar told you that he knows me."

"Yes."

"I met him when I was looking for a way to reach my wife."

I looked at him.

Until now I had known that Aran longed for his wife, but I had heard almost nothing about their lives.

"What was her name?"

"Tamar."

He smiled when he said her name.

"She was a woman who was hard to argue with. Not because she thought she was always right, but because she would listen to the very end and then ask a question I did not know how to answer."

He lowered his gaze.

"We were married for forty-three years."

The number sounded familiar to me, human. I could imagine entire lives within forty-three years.

"And when she died?"

"I remained another eleven years in the human world. After that I came here."

He touched the water with the tip of his finger.

"At first I thought I would find her at once. After that I thought that if I searched long enough, I would succeed."

"And Sahar?"

"He showed me a passage through which I might reach a place where traces were kept of consciousnesses that never arrived at the city."

"Did you enter?"

Aran nodded.

"I found there a voice that spoke like Tamar. It knew things that only she knew. It even remembered a sentence she said to me on her last night."

I felt a shiver.

"Was it her?"

"I don't know."

He looked at me.

"The voice asked me to give up my memories of her. It said only then could I meet her without the old picture standing between us."

"And what did you do?"

"I did not agree."

"Why?"

"Because I did not know whether I was about to meet my wife, or to lose the last thing that remained to me of her."

He was silent.

"Since then I wonder whether I was afraid for nothing."

I did not try to comfort him.

I did not know whether his decision had been right.

After a while he rose.

"Come. There is something I want to show you."

Aran led me along the pool to a low building whose walls were made of a semi-transparent material.

Inside stood thin columns, and on each of them rested a drop of light.

"These are testimonies given willingly," he explained. "Some of them describe the same event from different angles."

We approached two drops that stood side by side.

Aran asked me to look at the first.

I saw a wide garden and at its center a red tree. Two figures stood beneath it. One handed the other a small object.

The sight lasted a few moments and vanished.

"Now the second."

I saw the same garden.

The same tree.

The same two figures.

But this time the object passed in the opposite direction.

I looked at Aran.

"How can that be?"

"Two consciousnesses remembered the same meeting. Each was certain that she was the one who had given the object."

"Which of them was right?"

"We have no way of knowing."

He pointed at the columns.

"They gave the testimonies long after the event. One of them may have been mistaken. Both of them may have been."

I came closer to the drops again.

"Or perhaps there were two different meetings," I said.

Aran smiled faintly.

"That is also a possibility."

Suddenly I understood why he had brought me here.

"You think my memory of the silver leaf is like this."

"I think you are looking for an answer inside a single picture, while perhaps what you are missing is the story around it."

I looked at the drops of light.

"So where does one find the story?"

"Not always does one find it. Sometimes one must learn to live with more than one version."

When we left the building, Eliya was waiting for us.

She stood on the other side of the pool.

Aran looked at her, then at me, and moved away without a word.

We remained, the two of us.

"I was looking for you," she said.

"I wanted to be alone for a bit."

"I know."

She came closer to the water.

"Liara told me what you saw on the tree."

"The memory in which I was the one who stayed."

Eliya nodded.

"Is there something you want to tell me?" I asked.

She gazed at the water.

"I do. But I am not sure I can do it without influencing what you remember."

"Then tell me what you remember, not what you think I need to remember."

She looked at me.

For the first time since I had met her, I felt she did not know how to begin.

At last she said:

"I remember a room with two windows. Outside one window there was a black sea. Outside the other there was nothing that could be seen. We stood there together, and you were holding a silver leaf."

The heart I did not have seemed to contract.

"I was holding it?"

"That is how I remember it."

"And what happened after that?"

"You asked me to stay."

I looked at her.

"But in my memory someone else asked me to stay."

"I know."

"So one of us is wrong."

Eliya lowered her gaze.

"Perhaps."

"Or there were two occasions."

She did not reply.

I came closer to her.

"Eliya, do you remember me as I am now, or someone I was before my human life?"

She raised her eyes.

"I remember a consciousness I loved. But the more I get to know you now, the more I understand that I cannot know whether you are that same consciousness in every sense I thought."

Her honesty hurt me.

And also relieved me.

"And if I am not her?"

She gazed at me for a long time.

"Then I need to get to know you as you are, and not demand that you be someone else."

The water in the pool moved slightly.

For a moment I saw in it two figures standing facing each other.

One of them reached out a hand.

I did not know whether it was a reflection of my thoughts or a memory rising from the water.

I averted my gaze.

"I don't want to see any more memories now," I said.

Eliya nodded.

We walked together along the pool.

On the way back to the city I asked her about the room with the two windows.

She told me it had belonged to an ancient place that no longer exists in its former shape. Consciousnesses used to come to it before deciding to move between different spaces.

"Why were there two windows in it?" I asked.

"One showed the place you came from. The other, the place you wanted to reach."

"And what did they see in the second window if they had not yet chosen?"

"Sometimes, something."

I felt the words were familiar to me.

"A black sea in one window, and emptiness in the other," I repeated.

Eliya nodded.

For a moment a sight flashed within me.

A room.

A bright floor.

Two windows.

A silver leaf.

But this time a new detail appeared.

On the floor were three shadows.

I stopped.

Eliya turned to me.

"What happened?"

"You said we were two in the room."

"Yes."

"Was there someone else there?"

Her face changed.

"Not that I remember."

I closed my eyes.

I saw the floor again.

Two shadows were close to each other.

The third stood at a distance.

I could not see who cast it.

But I noticed something strange.

The third shadow did not move.

Even when the others moved.

I opened my eyes.

"I think there was someone else there."

Eliya looked at me in silence.

"It could be."

"You don't sound surprised."

She hesitated.

"There are parts of that time that I cannot remember. I did not forget them gradually. There are clear gaps in them, as if someone took them out of the sequence of memory."

I felt a cold that had nothing to do with temperature.

"Someone erased memories from you?"

"Perhaps. And perhaps I am the one who asked not to remember."

I looked at her.

"Why would you do such a thing?"

"I don't know."

She said it quietly, without trying to hide the helplessness in the words.

We kept walking.

But the thought of the third shadow would not leave me.

When we reached the street where Liara's house stood, I noticed the silver bird on a low roof.

She looked at me.

I knew she was waiting.

"You know who was in the room," I said to her.

The bird came down to the railing.

I remember the room.

"And who was in it?"

Not all of them.

I came closer.

"Why are all of your memories partial?"

She was silent.

"Sahar doesn't know, Eliya doesn't remember, and you know only parts. There is something here that all of you are afraid to say."

The bird opened her wings slightly.

Not everything we do not say comes from fear. Sometimes we truly do not know.

I looked at her.

"Then tell me what you do know."

She gazed at me for a long time.

And then she said:

I remember that the silver leaf was a sign of a promise. Not a promise to return, but a promise not to forget that there is someone else, even if the memory of yourself changes.

"And who gave the promise?"

More than one consciousness.

"And the third?"

The bird did not answer.

But I felt the question had touched something.

She looked over my shoulder, at the empty street.

For a moment I thought she saw someone there.

I turned around.

There was no one.

When I turned my gaze back, the bird had already risen into the air.

Do not try to hold on to a memory by force, she said. Look for what remains steady even as the picture changes.

She vanished among the branches.

I entered my home.

There was not much in it. A wide room, a window facing the floating gardens, a small table and a chair I did not truly need.

I sat down anyway.

I wanted to feel the shape of sitting, the pause between movement and movement.

I remembered Liara's words.

Go back to one thing you know for certain about yourself.

I closed my eyes.

I thought of my name.

But the name was not enough.

It was given to me in my human life. If I had other lives before then, perhaps I had other names.

I thought of my face.

But it too belonged to the body that remained beside the tree.

I thought of my memories.

And now I was no longer sure they were all mine.

For a moment I felt fear.

If the name can change, the body can change, and the memories can mingle with the memories of others — what remains of me?

I tried to recall a small moment from my human life.

Not a great event.

Not a birthday, not a wedding, not a parting.

Just one morning.

I stood by an open window. The air was pleasant, and outside a bird could be heard.

Someone called me from the other room.

I remember that I turned around.

Not because I had to.

Because I wanted to answer.

The sight was so simple.

And yet I felt it belonged to me.

I did not know whether all its details were accurate. Perhaps the window was closed. Perhaps the bird was not singing. Perhaps the conversation took place on another day.

But I remembered the choice to turn toward the voice.

To acknowledge that someone was waiting for an answer.

And suddenly I thought of the girl I had heard from within Sahar's artifact.

Is there someone there?

And of the way I had answered her.

I hear you.

Perhaps that was the steady thing I had been looking for.

Not a name.

Not a face.

Not even a life story.

But the way I choose to meet what is outside me.

The thought calmed me.

But only for a moment.

Because then I heard a voice.

Very faint.

It did not come from the window or from the street.

It sounded within the memory itself.

Do not believe the leaf.

I opened my eyes.

The room was empty.

I tried to identify the voice.

It was not Eliya's voice.

Not Liara's.

Not Sahar's.

There was something familiar in it, but I could not understand what.

I closed my eyes again.

The room with the two windows appeared before me.

This time I did not try to enter it.

I only watched.

I saw the two shadows close together.

And the third, the distant one.

And then I noticed a detail I had not seen before.

The third shadow was not standing on the floor.

It was cast upon the wall.

As if whoever created it stood outside the room, behind the window in which nothing could be seen.

I felt my thoughts falter.

If the third figure stood outside the room, how could I see her shadow?

And then movement appeared.

In the empty window a faint light kindled.

And within it I saw a face.

It was familiar to me.

Not because I had seen it before in the City of Consciousnesses.

Not because it had appeared in a dream.

But because it was my face.

The human face I had left beside the Tree of Eternity.

The figure behind the window looked at me.

Her lips moved.

I did not hear her voice, but I understood the words.

You remember what happened to me.

I recoiled.

The window went dark.

The room vanished.

I remained sitting on the chair, trying to understand whether I had seen a memory, a warning, or something someone else wanted me to believe.

And then a possibility rose in me that I had not dared consider before.

Perhaps the question is not only who I was before I was born.

Perhaps my human memories, too, do not tell everything that took place.

I thought of the body that remained beside the tree.

Of how I had not checked what had become of it since I left it.

And of the face I had just seen behind the window.

For the first time since I parted from my body, I felt a fierce need to return to it.

Not in order to live in it again.

But to find out whether I had truly left it empty.

And if not — who is in it now?

End of Chapter Fourteen

---

FOLLOW ORORGANI    Website · Blog · YouTube · Instagram · Facebook · Threads · Medium · Substack