Читать книгу The beast of a thousand years - Ilmar Penna Marinho Junior - Страница 12

Chapter 6

AURÉLIEN KLÉBER, SON OF A FRENCH SOLDIER, during all his childhood and teenage years had to follow his father’s footsteps on all displacements on French territory. Although le petit continuously reinvented his love for the French soul and culture, these constant travels, in which he got acquainted with cities and people, in time became a burden because of the frequency in which they were made. He had to change schools several times. At each return, Aurélien would complain about not being able to keep the memories from the places and the people. He gained life experience, but the images and memories were so fleeting that they had faded in an invisible chamber.

“It’s just a matter of adapting,” his father François would sum up to justify the changing of houses, cities, and temperatures.

His maternal grandparents would always protest, in discontent:

“Why the hell can’t the boy have a permanent home, friends, and a normal education in Strasbourg?”

“No and no!” hollered the father, zealous, and, more than that, stubborn on giving continuity to the military tradition of his family.

The concern of his grandfather Jean-Philippe, known as Jojo for his lovable bulldog face, and his grandmother Michelle, a sexagenarian marathon runner, didn’t matter.

“You don’t understand. It’s le petit that worries us.”

“What about him?” his mother Dominique would ask.

“He’ll have to attend a different school? Poor boy!” the grandmother would say in anguish, distraught by her grandson’s wails.

“Well, Mom, he’s big enough to know that this is the way it has to be. Think on the positive side. He must be enjoying meeting new friends and the change of scenery. To have adventures to tell!” praised the mother, still young and happy with the nomadic life, not realizing how much the travels and changing schools bothered le petit. He was always huffing in a bad mood, outraged at each transfer.

It was only after the visit of his grandfather, a retired divisional general who lived in Marseille that things got better. The lieutenant colonel received a long letter in which the concerns about his son’s lack of military vocation were conveyed. A letter full of concern about the future of cadet Aurélien.

The father took the grandfather’s alarmist letter seriously, but he didn’t know how to reverse the situation. Luckily, everything was solved after the phone call from the High Command, notifying François of his relocation to Nancy, less than sixty miles from Strasbourg. When he determined that his son should move to his maternal grandparents’ house, his father’s only concern was that Aurélien received the best possible curricular preparation to be accepted to the Saint-Cyr Military School or the École des Officiers de la Gendarmerie, known as EOGN – the famous national security academy.

After living in so many cities, Aurélien had stopped believing that, one day, he would be able to get settled in one city. For him, returning to Strasbourg, the city where he was born, was cause for great happiness. Besides, because it had been designated one of the European capitals that housed the Parliament’s headquarters, the capital of Alsace had — unlike Nancy, in the Vosges — a flawless educational system. It had become the ideal place for someone who, according to his father’s wishes, would attend the strict French military schools.

His father had requested Grandpa Jojo’s involvement to supervise his son’s studies, so that there would be no obstacles to be accepted to the great military École, where the “action and reflection officers were trained in positions of command to be able to act in difficult situations to keep public safety.” His father’s request was a military order, although Jojo had other educational plans for le petit.

When he arrived in Strasbourg, Aurélien already had a solid background in Computer Science, Nichiren Daishonin’s practice of Buddhism, and a great curiosity for historical documents and monuments. He couldn’t tell since when he had been able to be interested in such different universes and things at the same time. He didn’t have any special feeling of affection except for his computer. Wherever his father was transferred to, he would carry with him his faithful companion, including to his new home. However, despite the short time he lived there, the é added a little human content to his cyber world. In Strasbourg, without letting go of the internet and the contacts of his virtual community, he made a loving connection with the owners of the house, in particular with his restless grandfather, a retired politician, former member of the Resistance, who had literature as his favorite pastime.

So, besides his dedication to his studies to get in EOGN, he was motivated and encouraged by his grandfather to research rare books, especially those on historical monuments, Gothic architecture, old fortifications, as well as famous manuscripts. He read the originals of the love letters from Napoleon to Joséphine de Beauharnais. Similarly, in Jojo’s beloved company, his grandson paid tribute, during his free time, to the great classics, permanent residents of the house. They were commented readings of the works of Stendhal, Flaubert, Balzac, Proust, Anatole France, Romain Rolland, read with the emotion of the celestial rapture that only reading bestows on the privileged literature lovers. In the gallery of classics, his grandfather also collected Aristophane’s comedies. They laughed a lot reading Pluto. Nothing more contemporary to portray the scenes of French politics and corruption, controlled by the evil power of money, the corrupting vile metal, in all times, since ancient Greece until today’s globalized world.

The texts that Aurélien read flowed gently to his ears, like the flowing stream of the River III, a tributary of the Rhine that, with its five arms, bathed the center of the city of Strasbourg — a scenery that was always evoked when the two travelers of imagination, grandson and grandfather, rambled and savored the delicious buttery cookies lovingly prepared by his grandmother Michelle, and thus felt enraptured in the peace of mind that followed a good night’s reading, after dinner.

Aurélien started to be always in a good humor, he had even ceased to huff. Unfortunately, he resumed his addiction when he enlisted at the recruitment center number 17 D, at Molsheim Street. After the usual interviews, he was finally accepted to the EOGN military academy, all as the rules of procedure dictated and his father’s stubbornness had ordered. He did all the operational exercises, carrying his frustrations in his backpack and his weapons at the waist through French territory. Fortunately, France had not engaged in the Iraq war, or, by his father’s wishes, he would be riding a camel in the desert.

The time in the army only increased his existential anguish in search of his true calling and his personal choices. He then got into the habit of practicing crossbow shooting — a bow-and-arrow weapon like the one used by the legendary Swiss William Tell. He particularly liked the name of the weapon, which alluded to the old papal ban on using it against other Christians, although it was allowed to shoot at the infidels and at the vampires. “Aurélien, the Archer” — as he became known in school — won several shooting competitions, and joined the Royale Arbalète Brainoise.

However, this time fate decided to go against the family’s military tradition and give the archer a big scare. When he was a sophomore in military school, during training in Saint-Astier, something uncanny happened. Suddenly, Aurélien’s face showed a rigidness and a waxy paleness that made everyone around him certain that the cadet had abruptly died. The stern chief of the battalion, Lucien Beauchamp, in charge of the command, declared, without a shadow of a doubt, that he was clinically “dead”, and panicked. Only at the hospital, moments before the funeral home was called, the doctor on duty found out that Aurélien suffered from a severe neurological disorder, which caused the temporary loss of organic functions due to voluntary contraction of the muscles. The disease was then diagnosed as a rare case of an unknown etiology, a variation of the Gélineau syndrome. After the serious incident, the EOGN school allowed Aurélien to graduate as a police officer, but soon retired him prematurely from the gendarmerie due to his “unreliable” state of health face his operational requirements, in which he would have to deal with “difficult situations to maintain the public order.”

Relieved, Aurelien welcomed the goodbye to arms and complied with the daily medication for the rest of his life so as not to be ill again and maybe fall into a deep sleep with no return. He decided to enroll in the public tender for the position of librarian. The exams were held in Strasbourg. The approved candidates would be distributed through the libraries and media centers in French territory. Henceforth, he intended to travel to great capitals and exotic places only for leisure. And finally fulfill his dream of being a qualified librarian, not just a dilettante researcher.

After lunch with the entire family, in which he told them he had passed the librarian exams, Aurélien saw his father for the last time at the station. He thought he looked troubled, feverish. He realized that the cause probably wasn’t due only to the disappointment with the fact that le petit hadn’t pursued a military career and was leaving for Paris. Aurelien had become a practicing Buddhist who prayed the Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo every morning. And, during that visit to Strasbourg, he thought his father was going through the six bad paths, which are states of life in which people are pulled by negative external influences. He was perplexed to be asked when his father, recently promoted colonel, became interested in his opinion for the first time in his life:

“How’s your Buddhism, son? Have you been practicing?”

However, his father, maintaining his habits, didn’t wait for an answer. He apologized for having received higher orders to return immediately to Nancy. He sneaked a kiss on le petit’s cheek and left running, not waiting for the departure of the train. What was his father’s intention in creating a rapport with his Buddhist faith, after all? What was so weird about that? wondered Aurélien. He sensed that the silent goodbye was rooted in something personal, which unfortunately remained unacknowledged.

When the train departed, without his father’s presence, the only things left were the affectionate goodbyes of his grandparents and his mother, who was crying, sad, holding her handkerchief on the platform of the Strasbourg station, full of waits, people getting in and out, crowded with nervous voices. Amidst them, her last words stood out:

“Go and live life, mon petit.”

On the fast train ride, his father’s worried, pale face lingered in his thoughts for a good while and was projected on the window pane during the high-speed trip. Suddenly, the wistful image became fluid, gave way to the magnificent scenery of the flowering fields and productive plains of northeastern France. A clear sign that he had freed himself from the past, like a pressed champagne cork hitting the ceiling, and the hopes of a happy, fulfilled life as a librarian arose.

Aurélien Kléber was first on the public tender for librarian in Paris, thanks to his knowledge in computer science and History books. He was assigned to a mediathèque of the Ministry of Culture and Communications near Place des Voges. Thus, in the City of Lights, in addition to becoming an influential mediator between readers and books, he could choose to wander the Seine River or go to Notre-Dame Cathedral or Sainte-Chapelle and listen to their magnificent organ concerts. Possibilities that would open up for him in Paris, at only a good walk from his new work location. Little by little, Aurélien gained, inside, a growing conscience that life is a journey full of mysteries and surprises, connected to the great adventure of being in the world, that marked man’s evolution on Earth.