Eternal Summer

 

“It looks like a Monet painting doesn’t it?” she said, looking down at the cluster of tiny colourful houses, far away, beyond the apple orchards and the little stream that ran quickly, crossing the wild flower field where two ghostly figures dressed in white were standing, upward through the dark forest that murmured and whispered in the warm summer breeze. Wiry wild flower stems tickled their legs as they made their way through the vast field, stumbling and falling every now and then, rolling down the abrupt slopes, laughing and kissing. The sun slowly dissolved in an explosion of orange and purple and a startled deer came near the edge of the forest before vanishing quickly among the rustling trees. “Did you see that?”He pointed towards a vague point in the distance where nothing could be glimpsed now except the sombre forest full of magic. “Yeah”, she said hurriedly. “When I was a kid I used to see them quite often. I once managed to take a picture of a deer, it was a fearless one and didn’t run.” She lay next to him in the grass and looked at the white clouds moving across the orange sky to some unknown destination. “Everything around us is passing”, she said. “I used to think that those who are loved never die, because love is eternal. Do you think that we love because we are afraid of accepting the meaningless, ephemeral nature of things?”

“Do you see love as an aspiration towards immortality?”, he said.

“And beauty. Beauty is what causes love. Love is a motivation, a drive towards attaining knowledge, beauty and yes, a small piece of eternity. It is a promise of everlasting happiness.” He looked curiously at her caressing her hair, then said: “Everlasting happiness… that’s a bit of an oxymoron isn’t it? There is no such thing…”

He took her by the hand and they quickly descended the hill picking up wild flowers on the way, and crossing the green orchards, gathered the apples that fell on the ground and put them on the porch of the light blue house where they stayed, before entering the chilly large rooms decorated with silk embroideries and black clay vases. She filled the house with wild flowers and then threw herself on the bed among the white linens and he sat next to her caressing her sun burnt skin as they embraced. “Listen… I love the sound of old mechanical clocks in an antiquated room such as this, it’s so eerie. Makes you hope the insisting sound of calls and notifications on your mobile phone intruding into your life, disturbing your privacy, was just a bad dream. Makes you wish you wouldn’t have to explain yourself ever again to anyone as to why you sometimes may want a moment of peace and quiet. I wish we could stay here, like this, forever”, she whispered holding him tight.“You know, when I’m with you I am not hungry, I am not thirsty, I don’t want anything, I don’t want to be anywhere else or be with anyone else. I’m living in a different way than before, in a continuous, inexpressible state of bliss.” A flash of lightning lit up the room for a brief moment followed by a burst of thunder which resounded in the deep night and a heavy rain started to fall. 

The clock echoed its rhythmic beat throughout the house for a long time and after a while the rain drops turned into big white glistening snowflakes that fell softly upon the little streets of the village and the tiled roof of the light blue house and covered it in silence. Inside, the spiders weaved their delicate tapestry in every corner and withered wild flower petals lay scattered on the table where the old clock had stopped beating and there was no one to rotate its little wheels now. Time stood still here, like an insect caught in amber, enclosed in between these carpeted walls, in the flimsy maze of memory.