One Billion Drops of Happiness (22 page)

He had left with Agnetha in the middle of the night. They could not bear a tearful farewell; it would have weakened them uncontrollably to remember it. By the time morning arrived along with his goodbye note on the kitchen table, it was regrettably far too late. They had already left the country and headed to the designated camp. Mrs. Olsen had snatched up the note and wailed in anguish as she read it.

‘I have gone to fight for you, for us, for this world,’ it read in his familiar script. ‘I love you all. Every moment I will be thinking of you and awaiting my return to a better life. Lars.’

His mother had been inconsolable at first. She knew that the day would inevitably come, but heartbreak always occurs too soon. We can never truly be prepared for it. Xandria wondered for a split second if he loved her, too. But she could not continue that impossible thought any longer for Mrs. Olsen had begun to heave miserably on her shoulder. Xandria was still shell-shocked. It must be a dream, a terrible dream. She had never told him she was sorry. How could she possible wait more days, years possibly, to relieve the guilt in her mind?

There was absolutely no contact from the soldier camps; Zachary DuPont had made it clear that if this war was to be won, man had to relieve himself of every creature comfort, every modern distraction, and fight like an ancient warrior. Spirits were reportedly high in the camps; camaraderie was built from scratch, the sort which DuPont intended would bond the soldiers from the start of the fight until the bitter end. No further instruction had come yet; all they knew was that they were waiting until their leader gave the word. Would they travel to New America as part of the war? They categorically did not know.

There was a camp in each continent of the world. Countries with vast areas of unoccupied land like mountain ranges and deserts were chosen for this purpose; it was the ultimate honour to house the potential heroes and saviours of the human race. Which country Lars was currently holed up in, she wished she could be privy to.

She sat with Gabe and Mrs. Olsen every day watching the mirages that revealed nothing new. The whole world was tuned in thirstily awaiting news which did not arrive. Every day was a new realisation that Lars had gone; that her days would no longer be occupied in the same way. No more lake side walks. The lake haunted her now; he needed to come back and save her from her imminent relapse into hell. I’m weak, she thought to herself miserably. Weak, weak, weak. It was never me; these past few weeks I appeared calmer – it was you all along. You stilled my soul. It was you.

Mrs. Olsen was more of a comfort to Xandria than Gabe. Gabe was too twitchy, it made her nervous. There was an angst and unsettledness in him which was not helping. Mrs. Olsen seemed to understand Xandria’s longing and confusion; perhaps she had predicted it long ago.

The days dragged by slowly and the nights offered little reprieve. What’s more, perhaps to match all of their blackened moods, since the day Lars left the rain had not stopped.

* * *

For the first time in her life, she went inside the chapel and prayed.

Sitting on a wooden pew as the rain continued to pelt down outside, she closed her eyes and summoned up all of her strength. She felt quite alone; she could not fathom how there could perceivably be somebody watching her from above. How far above, she mused. Did the view of her improve if she was higher up, for instance in her hundred and eightieth floor apartment back home?

Please bring him home safely, she muttered in the general direction of the sky. She did not know how to do this; she felt stupid. Please end this war before anything so terrible happens, she tried again, oh, I wish I could take it all back.

She realized that her interest in Lars returning to the village vastly outweighed her interest in the politics of the war. Who won what and why, she no longer cared. If she wanted the Old World to be successful in their mission, it was only because it meant Lars could come back and she would feel alright again. Sure, she understood his reasoning; she knew he was right. Feelings mattered. But they did not matter anymore to her when Lars was gone. Without him it was maddening. Her emotions were clawing back with a vengeance, like a bee newly escaped after being trapped in a glass.

Was it selfish of her? Of course. Lars, without knowing it, had become her anchor. If he was around, she could control herself, she felt sane. Every afternoon she mourned the coming and going of the time he had usually come by for a walk. She missed his opinions, his mannerisms, his self assured talk. Even those unusually blue eyes that both concealed and showed so much. But if she was terribly and brutally honest, she just missed
him
.

* * *

She let herself into the study, timidly moving around the bookshelves not quite knowing what she was looking for. She wouldn’t know what to do with a book. It must take an incredible amount of patience to hold something still for so long. Lars had been an avid reader; she had watched one afternoon as he sat by the fire – a substance which still made her nervous – and devoured a book from start to finish. His mood transformed as he read. She had watched as his long, precise fingers turned the pages, how his face was lit with rapture and calm. There had been a moment she had felt a maddening jealousy but had managed to suppress and control it by turning to Gabe, engaging the old man in banal conversation.

Gently she coaxed a leather bound edition off the shelf. It looked like it would fall apart in her hands. Gingerly, she opened the cover and dove into the middle of the book. She read:

….I can write no other way but this,

Lament that you are too beautiful

for my dusty soul.

I could borrow all the words

To tell you that before you

My heart was all cloth and fraying seams…

She snapped it shut again, sending a spout of dust into the air. This was no good. It made her feel worse. Oh, if only she could find the tome that had pleased Lars so that day. Maybe it would have the power to snap her out of this strange reverie in this foreign land.

She returned to the study many times after that, reading many passages but never quite finding what it was in which Lars had found solace.

* * *

Gabe was restless. He had felt a burning in his chest every day since Lars and the others from the village had gone away, and he was wont to put a stop to it.

He could not simply sit at home and watch mirages all day, hoping to glean some particles of information which might console him. His daughter had barely spoken since her beloved son had left. The note he had left her after the midnight flit remained on the table, crumpled in a fit of distress.

There was a news drought; as far as he knew, the soldiers had all gathered in enormous camps all over the world, one in each continent. He wondered if Lars was eating and sleeping okay, Agnetha too. The whole world had pulled together in unison; billions of young people had reportedly signed up as soldiers and left their homes and worried families to fight.

How exactly they would fight remained a heavily guarded secret. Anything they threw over to New America in a fit of passion would only be hurled back at twice the intensity, and the whole world would be destroyed. Everything would be over before they knew it.

He was sick of waiting. He may be fast approaching one hundred and thirty, but boy he felt like only sixty three. He paced the house, imagining how he would pulverise the enemy if only he could lay hands on them. He suddenly felt incensed. Fury ignited within his bones as he thought about their conceit, their imperious assumption that they could uproot the world and live happily ever after from that heavily censored bubble of theirs.

How his love, Kristina, had managed to live there was beyond him. He was glad she left Alfred. The day he first saw her in the village was one he would never forget. There had been a large group of people clamouring around her, welcoming her back. He had never clapped eyes on her before. From a distance she seemed so different to everybody else. She had an air of sadness. Later he would discover the reasons why.

Although they never married, they became staunch companions until the day she died. Through her final sickness he held her hand and wheeled her around the lake even when she was too tired to speak. He knew the ravishing sight was the one thing that could give her peace of mind before she passed. She told him that knowing he and all those she loved could still see the unchanging scenery, she would be content in her leaving the world. She had smiled as she warned that each time a ripple passed upon the lake surface, it was a gentle hello from her, she who was now an inseparable part of nature.

After her funeral they had scattered her ashes into the lake, both he and Lars sharing fistfuls of this remarkable woman they had adored, while Mrs. Olsen smiled through her tears watching the two men in her life perform this bittersweet ritual.

He and Lars religiously tended to her gravestone in the days of emptiness afterwards, visiting every day to sprinkle the softest water onto the roses they had planted adjacent. Later, it would be Lars’ idea to erect a bench and bury the seeds for a tree that would grow in her memory. The tree grew earnestly and in the years following, served as shelter for all mourners caught up in the rain.

Yes, his dear grandson Lars had been a natural at cultivating land, at tending to livestock. It had been in his blood for hundreds of years. It was something he loved to do, even when he was torn from his bed in the early hours of a breaking dawn for some sheep bleating pitifully with an ailment.

Damn, he was proud of Lars. The thought of that New America taking him away and changing him forever kick-started a dangerous drive in Gabe that he had not felt before.

Sod all of them, he thought furiously as he gathered some clothes together in a bag, who says he was too old to fight? The world needed every being that they could get if they were to have any hope of defeating the enemy. He felt fine, besides. He was twice the man that any of them were over the pond. He had strong hands, a strong heart and a strong constititution to boot.

He contemplated a second before grabbing his walking stick. He would only use it to walk down to the village; there were a few steep paths. After that he would be as fit as a fiddle. When he arrived at the airport later and demanded to be taken to one of the great army camps in the world where his grandson was, they could hardly refuse him. To fight shoulder to shoulder with his grandson; the thought filled him with pride. It was something Lars could tell to his own grandchildren one day; the story of how they saved the world.

Gabe left the house after hastily scribbling a note and leaving it on top of Lars’ attempt. ‘Gone to help Lars,’ it simply read. ‘Please forgive me.’ He paused for a moment imagining his daughter’s hurt face when she read it, but this was business, he told himself. It was an exceptional circumstance, and if all mothers forbade their children from going to war, then the gas may as well be turned on tomorrow.

Shutting the door softly, even though Mrs. Olsen was currently meeting with Magritte somewhere out of the village, Gabe fixed his eyes resolutely on the horizon and began to walk. Soon the lake was behind him and the steep paths leading up to the main town began. He wished he had chosen a better time to depart; a time when he could have taken the car. Unfortunately, Mrs. Olsen had taken it out today and he realized only now why he and Lars should have agreed with her when she had wanted to buy another just a short time ago. The men had assured her that the family really had no need for it since Lars loved to go everywhere by foot, and besides, the farming vehicles were really all they needed for their work.

Bloody hindsight, he grumbled to himself irritably. This path was getting steeper by the year. His breathing was becoming faster, laboured by the sheer pace of the exertion.

Damn it! Rain began to fall overhead. He hoped he could hot-foot it out of there before the paths became muddy and slippery. He knew the land all too well, unfortunately. He increased his pace, distracting himself from the exertion by counting the paces, each pace detracting from the grand number it would take him to be with Lars again. He was his best friend, he realised.

A wheezing sound was coming from somewhere. Gabe turned his head over his shoulder in case somebody was coming up behind him. It took a moment before the truth sunk in, that it was his own breath making that noise.

Oh no, not now, he thought angrily. Just let me get to the town and I’ll take some medicine to get rid of you. Just lay off a few more minutes will you? But his body could not hear him today. His bargains may have worked in the past, but currently his breath was getting tighter in his chest with every step he took.

He had taken his medicine that morning; it was supposed to work. He had not even considered that it might pose a problem like this mid journey. They would soon give him all the strong stuff he needed when he got to camp, that he was sure of. Lars would tease him gently and everything would be alright.

Except now his breathing was becoming less and less regular. It was as if someone had emptied the world of air. Had they gone and done it, he wondered between gasps, had the rascals finally pushed the button? The thought momentarily took his concentration off the path. His toe stubbed a rock and he stumbled face first into the accumulating bog.

The mud, coupled with his ailing breaths, meant that the precise location Gabe now lay – a previously insignificant snippet of land – was now the place that a good man lay down to die.

‘They found a solution,’ Bathsheba Ermez said, stepping into Henry’s office with a gleam in her eye. ‘Your heroic scientists finally found a way to deal with everything. They got the better of Alfred Reinhardt!’

‘Slow down Bathsheba,’ Henry said, peeling himself reluctantly away from his astral sphere. It was the one thing in the world which truly captured a semblance of his imagination. ‘What happened?’

‘Oh, they only went and did it. It’s over Henry, it’s over. The world will be ours.’