3198 - The sudden arrival of the past

Ν. Λυγερός
Translated from the French by Vicky Baklessi

The reading of the codex reminded the old scholar of Bach’s sequels. He heard the violoncello fighting alone in the void, and he kept repeating the same theme in order to revise it and complicate it. It was a series of texts on the same theme. Their author analyzed and reflected on events that the old scholar did not know. Were they facts of the past or visions of the future? He couldn’t make his choice. In any case, the codex were books intended for temporal fighters of the mind. They described how to resist the greatest of human misfortunes, the most inhuman barbarities. They insisted on how to prepare for this type of extreme conflict, which seemed exactly like the notion of absolute war of the famous strategist Clausewitz. Only one of the two adversaries was innocent and disarmed. His fault was to be. Then the codex explained what a peoples without armor should do, and on which singularities it must rely on in order to oppose the annihilation of barbarity. He had hardly finished reading these sequences, when he heard footsteps inside the crypt. This visit was not foreseen. He quickly put the codex in a closet and carried with him the blade of the sword. This movement, he hadn’t decoded. He then recalled Schopenhauer’s famous phrase “We can do what we want but we cannot want what we want.” He went down into the crypt as quickly as possible. He was worried about the effigies. He finally opened the door. His surprise was so great that he thought he had an outburst. He saw a little girl in the midst of these men, which looked exactly like the effigies. The little girl held one of them by the hand as if it were her family. He did not have time to utter a single word. Besides, in what language would he have done it? He was still immersed in these exotic alphabets, so he was almost surprised that the little one spoke to him in his own language.

– He’s my grandfather, sir.”

– How?

– I could not leave him here.

– I do not understand.

– “I promised I would come back.”

– “Is he really your grandfather?”

He looked at the man in the eyes. He was barely twenty years old. He knew it was simply impossible. Yet he heard the word parev in his head. The man hadn’t moved his lips. The effigy communicated directly with him. This time it was beyond the understanding of the old scholar. He collapsed but the five men caught up with him before he touched the ground.