LiTTLE CHERiNE Book 02 - post214
“It is part of the training I’ve had. Manoli, you really want to be impressed? You would have to trust me though. Take the knife and cut yourself. It would not need to be as deep as my wound was. Just big enough for you to believe me.”
1248
He stared at me grimly and taking the knife he cut himself. He winced from the sharp pain, but stood with his arm outstretched. He not only saw, but felt his wound healing. He crossed himself with superstitious dread.
I spoke softly, “I have shown you trust that I have not shown to many.”
“Why? Why me?”
“If the crew are right then I need a man like you on my side as a friend, not as my enemy.”
“You want me as a friend?”
“Yes.”
1249
“I must think about this. If you are able to heal yourself like that, your enemies must be very powerful for you to fear them.”
“I do not fear them. Not for myself. I fear for my family.”
“What kind of men are they that would attack a woman and children?”
“They have already done so. Manoli, they sent a small dog to my garden where my little girl was. She picked it up to pet it. Luckily I screamed at her and my wife threw the puppy away. As it left her arms the puppy exploded, it had a bomb inside. My baby girl lost both her arms from above the elbow.” My tears were running and he stared at me in horror. “If she had been holding it I would not have been able to save her. Manoli, I was able to heal her, grow her arms back again, but I cannot get rid of her fear and nightmares.”
“So you ran away?”
“Yes.”
“You left them unprotected to save yourself!?”
“They are protected. All the protection I had for myself stayed with them. I came out without protection so as to draw them after me.”
He thought for a while. “If that is true, then I am surprised you did not kill me or at least hurt me badly.”
“I cannot. Even if you were working for them, I could not.”
“Then how do you stop them?”
“I make sure the person who comes after me is now useless to them. They take care of those they consider now a danger to them.”
“You said they kill them.”
“You understand now?”
“You think the blood is not on your hands because they kill them for you? That is the way of a coward.”
I stared back, his accusation reverberating throughout me. I began to tremble and cried out, “If you do not believe in killing or hurting others but you are attacked, how would you handle it?”
“I do not know, maybe I would do what you do, but I would not pretend to myself that I do not kill them.”
“Oh god! Oh god! You do not know what you have done Manoli. You have taken away the only way I could fight back. If I am faced by one of them I will not be able to stop them, knowing that to do so I would be killing them.”
“That is nonsense! If they attack you have the right to kill them.”
I simplified my answer for him, “The healing you saw? My powers, they all depend on love. To kill or hurt others takes away my powers.”
“Then it is a useless power.”
“Not for as long as I did not think of myself as being responsible for their deaths. They knew the price they would pay and accepted it. I saw it as their decision. Now you have changed it for me. The minute I step off this ship I am at their mercy.”
We stood silently, deep in our thoughts.
“Manoli, you will not need to get your revenge on me. I hope there will be time for me to give the captain his money. I am tired and I have just lost my last line of defence. This time they will get me.”
1250
The crew could not understand what had happened. They saw a change in me after my talk with Manoli, which was not cause for remark, since I was a stranger to them, but the change in Manoli had them puzzled. Though he did not come close to me they realised he was watching over me, trying to protect me from something. I could not explain to him that physical power does not give me protection and so did not even try.
I was trapped in a world of guilt. With every metre the ship moved forward I knew I was condemning another person to death. I could not reach Ordinx and Solomon to stop them. From the figure last given to me I knew I was already responsible for over two thousand deaths. As Manoli had said, their blood was on my hands.
I spent most of the time within my cabin, coming out sometimes at the darkest hour to walk on deck. I forgot to eat for two or three days at a time. We passed through a bad storm just off the skeleton coast; the edge of that desert we had walked through, arrived by Cape Town, dropped anchor at the roads, and left without me being able to or permitted to go ashore and the haunting of the people ‘I’ had killed tormented me until I had no strength left.
The lock on my door does not work, though every single other lock does, yet nobody intruded, ever. I do not know if it was Manoli or just a feeling the crew had, but even those who had been friendly stayed away. Not that I noticed or cared. It was therefore a surprise when the door opened without a knock.
“You are coming with me. First you eat and then we go on deck, you need some sunshine.”
“Manoli, later perhaps.”
“Now. Do I have to carry you? It will not be difficult, you are starting to look like a skeleton.”
It was easier to do as he asked. It was not that easy to force the food down my throat. He kept on re-filling my glass with wine and I became quite inebriated. I was unsteady as we walked out on to the deck. The sun and glare hurt my eyes and I moaned. He moved very fast. He grabbed sunglasses another crewman was wearing and fitted them to my face.
“Now walk with me. It is time I think you explain. If you must die because of what I said, then I want to understand why.”
“There are people dying even now because of me, that is why. Their blood is on my hands.”
“That is nonsense!”
“I wish it were. Manoli, over two thousand have been killed by them because I made them useless. It is happening still and I have no way to stop it. I cannot reach those I ordered to do this.”
“Would it not make more sense to me if you explained from the beginning?”
“I wish I could. To explain would put my loved ones in danger, it would not help me.”
“You fear I would use it against them?”
“I do not know! If I had Cherine here I would know.”
“This Cherine, who is he?”
“She is my wife. You saw my gift of healing. She has the gift of being able to see into your heart and she could tell me whether to trust you.”
“She needs a gift to do that? You cannot see who can be trusted? Ask any simple sailor, they can tell you.”
“I know. If you trust no one then you are more often correct. That is what I hear them say.”
“That is just talk! Watch who they trust amongst themselves. They usually know who not to trust.”
“This is the life of my loved ones you ask me to trust you with.”
“You say you will die anyway. Let me be their friend for you. Maybe I can help protect them.”
1251
That brought me back to myself. I saw now the big heart and his intentions and I did not know what to reply.
“Let me ask you this. You have a reputation of being a troublemaker. Why is that?”
“I enjoy a good fight. Also my blood boils when I see companies cheating simple sailors, especially the Filipinos and other Asians and when an officer uses his rank to make their lives even worse, it makes me angry. I believe God made me strong for a reason. To not use my strength to protect those who cannot protect themselves would be wrong.”
“I’m sorry Manoli, what you say does not fit my picture of who you are.”
“I see. You think of me as the way you see me. A brute (κτηνώδης) who gets into trouble without reason. Tell me Roberto, have you read Homer, have you read the ancient greek tragedies? Do you go to see them performed on stage? If not, then to my mind you are not civilised, you have no culture.”
Weakly I retorted, for the truth is, I agreed with him. “And do you read Shakespeare, have you seen his plays performed?”
“Yes and I do not like him. I was told it is because I do not speak his language, that the beauty of his stories lie in his use of the language.”
“Are you familiar with the line about their being more things in heaven and earth than we are aware of?”
“I do not, but I see you speak of yourself. I can see that would be true.”
“You only see a tiny wave and think you see the ocean.”
“Then show it to me.”
“You will not believe.” I put up my hand to stop him. “What if I said that I have met races from other worlds. That there are at this moment hundreds of thousands of them on our world. Would you not think I was lying or crazy?”
“If I do or not, it would not stop me from listening and trying to understand.”
“I suppose that is all I can ask for. Do you have any cigarettes, I feel I need one.”
Αλέξανδρος Ζήνον Ευσταθίου
(Alexander Zenon Eustace)7th April, 2019
* posted on Steemit: 7th April, 2019
@nikosnitza
If you wish to have your name added above, I would be honoured.
