No Tears in Spring

Parth Mishra

 Life was easily discernible when his mind was free of crummy little ambitions. When  understanding and realization didn’t dog him like flies, when the anxiety of wanting to do anything overwhelmed him into doing nothing. 

Everything he desired was within his reach; the rickety little TV remote that could still somehow turn on the television, layers upon layers of cold white sheets to drown himself in, drab food contained in a foil-wrapped plate. But still he found himself struggling to put on an unused pair of slippers, struggling to pull on a relentlessly stringent door oh so taller than his little self. 

All because the lady from beyond the door had told him that today would be a day he would not want to miss out on- the first day of spring. 

He didn’t really know what spring meant. There was no one around that could explain to him the existence of seasons, or days, or even time, except for the lady that came in every few days or so. She had described spring to him; a season of rebirth, when everyone fast asleep during the preceding winter wakes up and participates in a joyous celebration to a new start of life.

She never sated his curiosity, however, hurrying out of his room in a matter of minutes, blaming her tight schedule for the abrupt departures. The boy felt as if he aggrieved the kind old lady, for he could often make out the sliver of a tear from the corners of her worn face.

He failed to ponder upon such concerns as he walked through the strange hallways, his attention instead diverted to the crowds of tall beings passing by him. They were multiple heads long, a stocky two boys tall. There was a severe turn to them, a meanness accrued only in the face of immense concentration, or perhaps boredom.

The boy could just make out the hints of a colorful sign as he tiptoed at the speed of a snail through the hallway, his eyes seeking a relief from the stress of rushing through such a tight throng of men and women, the crowd paving their way through the hall as if they were joint by invisible threads of concentrated force, unconcerned of anyone below their waistline, or anyone not related to the task at hand in general.

The sign belonged to a room. The boy didn’t know how to read or write, but he could infer that the colorful walls, the animated jumble of elephants, the masses of jolly little children belonged to it all denoted the existence of a boisterously crowded play room.

Play room?

In the middle of it all was a little girl who seemed slightly older than the boy himself. Her blonde locks were swishing to and fro, her face weathered despite the obvious youth of her figure. There was so much to look at, the motionless keep of her sky blue frock, the unearthliness of her movements, those unnerving eyes of her, staring right through him…

“Are you that boy who’s locked into Room 365 every morning?” she uttered quietly, in that raspy voice of hers.

Room 365? Was there a need to put numerical value to something as unique as the boy’s room? He couldn’t comprehend that certain necessity; he would vacate it soon enough, as those unseen visitors declared in hushed whispers early on in certain mornings. 

“I suppose introducing myself would be customary. The name’s Fiona.”

“Joel,” The boy murmured. This pathetic, awkward noise didn’t belong to him, or so the boy thought.

Her eyes widened ever so slightly. A shadowy smirk materialized into existence on her face. 

“Hey Joel, mind going on a stroll with me?”

No, not particularly. Perhaps she would act as his guide, this perplexing little woman with a gaze resolute enough to bend metal- in this case, the boy’s weak, fragile will.

“Follow me. It’s about time I go outside- the plants need some watering.”

The boy followed Fiona out through a door made entirely of glass. She pushed it open, and in came a breeze, one that entered the boy’s lungs and blessed them with a great spritely cheer, a pleasure unforeseen by the boy.

He felt a fair push to his chest as he ran towards the girl, clumsy steps creaking his joints, yet the boy remained steadfast in his limber towards the twin pillars holding the veranda over their heads. Blonde locks longer than the stem of an ethereal tulip shined in all their glory, even when the sun didn’t truly caress their being.

“It is a joy, is it not, Joel? To wander through these halls, without the fear of monsters, or the ominous whispers of men talking about the misfortune of our existence.”

He couldn’t understand her, and perhaps he didn’t need to comprehend her every word. A lack of fear for the worst to come was all he needed to embody. 

Somehow, he couldn’t become comfortable with that notion of fearlessness.

“We have a long way to go, Joel. A ways from here lies a garden, some tens of steps or so. A garden more beautiful than the frescoes of the local church, with a huge round tree in the middle.”

Frescoes! They were nothing but a peak away from the window, a hidden tease shrouded by trees with dark velvety leaves, the kind that begin to shrivel away following the end of Fall.

Frescoes were one unpassable dream, but trees, they were nothing but a look away, and yet they entranced him. The lady broke open a smile of pure merriment when she talked about trees, about how they were a sentient being of healing and forgiveness, yet a carrier of shame all the same, an artifact to be born of a million different deaths, and a bearer of human markings spanning thousands of years.

A crater, an ugly little fleshly scar below her right nostril, baggy eyes holding glorious gems tinted a dulled blue:, the girl was also similarly etched with such markings.

Would her scars fade, or perhaps gloss over so as to vanish into a faux masquerade of normality? Perhaps. Or perhaps they would remain there forever, never to change or to sink into irrelevance.

The girl was right in front of him, her gait uneven as if she was walking on without a cane, her right leg favoring the touch of the ground far more than the grumpy left one. 

These steps seemed serene, almost as if they suited the girl and her imperfections. Even more so when her feet touched the loamy ground beyond the parameters of the concrete floor.

She paused her slight jog, and the boy had to slowly pull the brakes on his frail little body to avoid bumping into her. His heart pushed against him as if it had began to bleed.

Blood. The boy had failed to take caution, as if pain was an old friend. Blood leaked out of his mouth, a short rivulet of dark crimson.

He doubled over, his body reprimanding him as if an effort to divert this destitute fate had enraged it.

“Are you going to stop here, Joel? We have a ways to go.”

He couldn’t. Life was being snatched away from him, bit by bit, as if a hole was poked through his vitality. “I can’t go on any further, I think,” he said.

“Perhaps you can,” Her gaze remained free of judgment, as if he had merely stumbled upon a rock, made a common mistake to be learned from. “There is too much you still have to see, too much you still have to accomplish. Do not say such things before you get the chance to experience the first tastes of spring.”

“Do you not want to live for the sake of delusions, Joel?” She let the question hang in the air, the silence thereafter a sea of deep thinking and quick flashes of time slipping away from the boy’s grasp. 

But not for long.

“I don’t know about you, but I sure do.”

Perhaps she was right, or deceptive, or double-faced to an irrational degree, as Joel did indeed find himself to be amazed at every little blade of grass he gazed at in the park;, every second spent frolicking through this garden of green life a memory of pure purest free-headedness;, every second spent enduring the pains of terrible inner turmoil, of painful existence, made worthwhile by the simple act of living, of experiencing various mundane wonders he had never seen before.

The frescoes were an art long foregone, left for the descendants of a people far more beautiful than their successors, who loathed the word “realization” and actively lost themselves in a realm of abstract concepts.

The tree in the middle wasn’t grand; it was perhaps a hundreds years old or so, yet the children had marked it theirs a thousandfold. Not in the sense of bondage, but rather as a friend, one to be bantered with, one to share camaraderie with, one to argue with in the coldest winter days.

Spring. It had a certain effect on the pace of life, a tempo of grand speed in the face of magnanimous love and joy, and a terrible crass remark for the worst aspects of hardships and trials endured. 

Fiona referred to this joyous period of bliss as “playtime”, when kids like them hastily made for the playground, ready to retire from the stresses of medical life.

It was enjoyable, this “playtime”. It made for a delve into our creative self, or a self untouched by our hourly regrets, those who we have done wrong to, even our very own selves. Our brilliant, pathetic, pessimistic little brain, and its constant moans and groans.

Nevertheless, it is our individual understanding of relieving oneself through the application of “playtime” that makes us unique, much like our individual tribulations and trials, all so unnecessary cryptic, left to the wildest of imaginations and thinking.

Rest was unnegotiable. The huff-puff induced by the overextended periods of physical activity had wrung the boy clean of energy. The painful ebb of his bleeding heart, wheezes and gasps originating from the deepest reaches of his weakened lungs, a lack of moisture on the tip of his tongue, they were all customary signs of a return to those nightmarish dusks, when the contents of his stomach poured out onto the porcelain floor in an acidic rivulet, when the constant jittering and shivering of his person rocked him from the top of his skull to the bottom extremities of his toes, a terrible angina persisting throughout it all, leeching him of precious energy. 

They were all but mere inconveniences as of now. He had this girl who showed him around, who recited to him the stories of romantic spring he so loved;, or Father Lou who had died praying to the biblical frescoes under the mossy church;, or the tens of young, unfortunate souls buried beneath the youth of a tree, in the middle of the innocent bustle, at the center of the lively park.

Sleep inched closer than ever.

The release was nigh, in the form of a bench so woody brown in color it appeared to be a bizarre amalgamation of the environment itself.

On its precipice sat Fiona. Her blonde locks of flaxen hair unknowingly frayed, like loose wires hanging off a plump pole. Her eyes an icy blue, her arms starved revealing a wide display of pulsing veins. Her complexion surprisingly pale, belying the fact that she was seated on a bench fully exposed to the relentless light of the sun.

He couldn’t stay upright. Even sitting down was too strenuous of an ordeal. His head slowly descended down to her lap; Ice-cold, bony, even painful to the touch.

“The sunlight, the green grass, the breeze.e, It is everything you ever desired, Joel,” she peered into his eyes, searching for an answer. 

The boy didn’t know how to answer back. He had envisioned an escape.

An escape from a confined existence. From isolation. Pain. Anguish. Bitterness.

Hopelessness.

“Disappointing, is what it all is,” he muttered, feeling her hands go slack.

Her eyes roamed the perimeters of the park. Her arms drew closer and closer. The boy didn’t pay them heed.

“Perhaps we can go out to the waters tomorrow? You were chirping on an on about holes filled with water the color of brightest azure,” She tightened her arms around his body.

“There are plenty of lakes nearby. All wonderfully magnificent, just like the park itself.”

“Disappointing, then.”

“Another reason to look forward to tomorrow.” she said, as her arms tightened around his neck into a warm embrace.

The Sun was sinking westward, taking with it the lights keeping the wonders of spring in sight, descending upon the globe a curtain of rest and revitalization. For the park- seeped in true effervescence- it meant the end of a joyous celebration.

And for the boy, the beginning of anticipation.

To him, the Sun was no friend. All he needed from life was familial warmth, a ray of light to keep him away from the pains of belonging, the miseries of expecting, the mental anguish of understanding.

So what if her alleviating reassurances, her pain-filled eyes, didn’t strike him into purpose, and his frantic shivers didn’t signify a new lease on life? Why must dreams crumble, under the weight of improbability, into shards of dark regret and longstanding anger?

Maybe he would let his short lease on life be cut short for the sole purpose of living amongst half-lies and faux affection. Pragmatism escaped his understanding., and Genuine concepts of ambition, success, and withstanding love eluded him at every turn., So why would he remain amongst the well-meaning, those who lived life with a purpose and a goal in sight?

The taste of Spring was of a pleasant tangy type. It evoked careless joy the boy had never experienced in the halls of solitude, when time had proved to be a curse more bitter than tragedy. And so he had forsaken everything for Spring, for a chance to join the poor and the needy, in this little green celebration.