Well, I don't know how many pages I've written here, but it all flooded into my head in a few moments the other day, during Bright Week. Easter Monday. At exactly three in the morning.
I didn't dream, I didn't have any hallucination. I simply woke up calm, without any rooster crowing, any dog barking, or any motorcycle passing by on the road, I remembered everything I've listed here, but with lightning speed, as if your childhood were suddenly unfolding before you, like a bank card swiped through a reader when you're about to pay.
Then followed the thoughts I will describe in the following lines.
In my mind, the math teacher was trying to get my attention. I had no feelings, I was lucid and indifferent. It wasn't like a nightmare or anything to be afraid of. It was a dialogue in my imagination, something that emerged on its own. Artists often have this in the dead of night and aren't scared by it. That's how they write poems or paint surreal images, and no one condemns them. It's their way of empathically perceiving the world. If an artist were to tell everything they feel, hear, or see in their imagination, doctors would tie them up in psychiatry, and that's not the case. Most artists are functional and support families.
The pain that the man speaking to me was experiencing was something so profound that there are no letters on a keyboard, no teeth in a wolf's mouth, and no moon to howl it at. The colossal tormentor of yesteryear was begging for a moment of attention from me, who had traveled for Easter somewhere in the countryside, 300 km and 30 years away from his last appearance.
- Student Răvnic, congratulations, you've received communion after a long time, and you said in confession that you tried to forgive, to forget the bad related to everyone, to find an excuse for each of them. Even for colleagues who trample on you in the teachers' lounges, you found overwhelming qualities. And you somewhat forgave them, but you only did it with the recent ones. You forgot about me. You worked to forget, correctly. My mind here has no limits, so I sent you a quick reminder. I didn't bother you on Resurrection Night, as you were taking the light. Today is Monday, you're freer.
- And what do you want from me? How does the reminder help me? I have enough problems, and I already sleep with clenched fists. Memories of you were all I needed, I thought, staring at the ceiling. May Christ forgive you, it's His night. Christ has risen, and in these three days, by trampling death, He takes whomever He wishes from wherever they are, so hang on, why did you wake me up? I have nothing against it. I don't care.
I don't know where I got the nerve to address this two-meter-tall man informally. Maybe because I perceived him as crushed.
The teacher started to stammer. A stammer so heavy and deep, deeper than a black hole, like a wolf with no moon left to howl at, who has exhausted all the moons of all the planets of all the solar systems in the galaxy, and all of them dried up from howling.
-Well, He hmmm-he forgave mmm me a long time ago, Student Răvnic! Mmmardare, Antttoci and Bilaus, Ppppântea and Colțuneac, they forgave me too… And N-nnn-nimigean, and Rușcior. Logigggan forgave me more recently, you're the only one left to fo-fo-forgive me, he said haltingly. You, because I made you want to be that wretched dog from the dust of Zamca, you see nothing but a dog before your eyes. Release the chain, please. I can't bear another earthly year, I can't. The Lord has forgiven me, the Lord Himself, Student Răvnic. It's different here.
He was literally stammering like Mardare at the blackboard. This blocked me, as I knew him to be so big, and it struck me for a second, just that: pity.
I didn't say I forgive you, nor do I know if I did, but I felt a second of overwhelming pity, which crushed me and squeezed splinters into my heart.
I thought the following to him: it's alright, I hadn't opposed it anyway, but if you insist, I'll leave you to God's will, but do something in return for me. My middle daughter, the one with the math teacher's name, is in eighth grade and will take the national assessment in the summer, and she has no aptitude for your subject, no matter how many tutoring sessions my mathematician friends from church offer her. Do something to help her pass the exam, because she's different from her siblings before her, who all got tens. Ok?
- Student Răvnic, I've aaaalready dddd done it for everyone. Remember how many times you wondered and stated to everyone that you "didn't know where" the first boy, the Olympian, got his math genius from. That he brought you national awards in IT from third grade until he finished university. How you cried out that it was a miracle that he was the only one who found the answer at the last moment to a problem that no nation's team had solved at the international olympiad, so Romania took first place in the last ten seconds, because he hit your son, who was in the team, that the text was translated incorrectly into English by whoever conceived the problem in another language, and thus he rethought the paradigm from scratch and gave the correct answer…
From the caulddddron I shouted to him, student Răvnic. He needed ideas and I roared them to him, the boy is strong and I owed you, student Răvnic. But thirty years have passed, student Răvnic, that's a very long time, let go of that chain…
***
In the first seconds after that, I felt the most intense fear grafted onto happiness in my life. A sublime, wordless astonishment.
At the Liturgy, until the community repeats with the priest Amen, Amen, Amen, something isn't completed there, I have a feeling. So it must be and…????
It's so terrifying!!!!! Have I gone crazy from recent stress? Is it possible that we have SO MUCH power? Enough to confirm exits through gates? Who, us??? God!
Abyssal freedom, terrifying power.
It was awful, wonderful, fascinating, heartbreaking and apocryphal, you can't really tell anyone how it was, maybe Anca. Frightened by my own potency and responsibility as if by a ghost, my mind expanded and I saw all of Irini's sunflower heart Cosmos, illuminated by his ember lantern.
I felt sleep taking over me again without being able to resist, and I repeated to myself, laughing and crying in my head, splitting in two as in old times: don't forget anything, don't forget anything not until you write to Anca, she might understand you. I hope I don't forget a single line, yes.
Don't forget to mention this one too, the dead man with the lantern. I won't forget.
Ah! Yes! Dumitru! Dumitru!
***
Look at your hands, you who fall asleep with clenched fists like me.
How many chain links do you hold in your hand? Let go of another one. A minute spent down there is a terrestrial era. It's enough, it's enough. I think.
It's not for the one at the end of the chain, it's for you. "Forgive, because otherwise it's a sin" doesn't translate to "you are guilty of not forgiving"; on the contrary, it means "don't waste resources in vain," "it's a shame for your peace, for your time, for your happiness ‒ they could be complete if you unbind yourself from the chain."
It's possible that God doesn't want to manifest His omnipotence for now and respects your free will so much, just as He respected those in hell while they were on earth, that He doesn't override your will even when He forgives. He stops and waits for you to forgive too. Maybe that's why dying is hard…? He will judge, we don't know how yet. But, as an idea: can you enjoy Heaven knowing someone else, anyone, is beyond?
***
Relax that hand insistently kissed on the back by the ruler. And Christ's palms have marks all the way to the other end, and He holds no anger towards people for that.
Let them rise when Christ breaks the gates of hell. Release them. Let them cling to Him, trampling death by death. Enough.
Cosmina Dragomir
Photograph by Noemia Prada
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