The rest of the day went by too slowly. During a walk around the dried up Avis Dam just outside Windhoek, David felt like the clock had stopped entirely. Sitting under an acacia tree after a half-hour uphill walk, he contemplated the landscape that had inebriated his senses just a week before. “What’s wrong?” he wondered. The trees with their twisted trunks and dry branches, the rocky, sandy terrain, everything seemed lifeless, colorless… even claustrophobic. He looked at the sky in search of some air and was reminded of its intoxicating and never-ending blue.
As his eyes fell back to the ground, he saw a meerkat approaching. With its slender body measuring less than half a meter in length, its big black eyes and its fluffy coat, it could move even the hearts of grown children. For some reason, the small mammal suddenly stopped in its tracks. Maybe it felt unwelcome, or perhaps it just did not believe it would find good company. The meerkat’s retreat made David feel like a bird of prey or a jackal.
As the lazy hours rolled on, he decided to take a break from his thoughts, longing only for sundown, partly because he wished to celebrate the end of a forgettable day and partly because he yearned for Jack’s company in the veranda back at the guesthouse.
And so, as happens to all living things, time marched on, unfazed by the toils of those it carried. The sun was just setting behind the mountains, as David stepped onto Gretha’s porch and settled into a strategically placed, comfortable chair next to Jack. David tried to look relaxed and, in an attempt to convince himself that he was, propped his feet up on a small footstool.
Jack ordered a cup of chamomile tea, which was no surprise. David asked for black coffee, in a desperate attempt to wake himself up from a long nightmare. The drinks were placed on a delicate table between them, along with a basket of toast. The men were in no rush to start talking but had not expected their silent prologue to give the sun enough time to hide behind the mountains completely. And it did not seem to be in much of a hurry either, drawing from them uninspired stares all through its descent.
“Time to celebrate another night, David. You’ll never see a sky as starry as this one anywhere else.”
“I don’t doubt it. That’s actually one of the few things I can say I’m certain of. But I’m afraid I’ve been cursed already. I’m not touched by its beauty anymore.”
“Were you thinking about Marie?” asked Jack, not quite following David’s abstraction.
“If she’s part of everything...”
“Let your mind rest, my friend. You’ll still need it. As for my Marie, if I know her at all, she really needs some time to herself. She’ll show up later, as she always does. Unless you’ve both come to some arrangement which I don’t know about. I do know, though, that she’s in love with you. What will you do, David?”
“Nothing. It has been done already.”
Jack handed him the toast. “I know you haven’t eaten all day; Mrs. Schwartz has already voiced her concern to everyone.” David’s smile lit up at the mention of their generous hostess. The basket of toast returned to the table having at least partly fulfilled its task.
“Look, Marie will reconsider. I know her,” Jack said. “She’s a damn tough Viking, and her default answer will always be no, especially if it involves her feelings. The real question is, my friend, will you be ready?”
In the next chapter of the conversation, the pages turned blank. David continued in secretive silence, while Jack resented himself for talking too much. At one point, he even thought that David had fallen asleep, which, given the circumstances, would have been the best thing to have happened to his friend.
“Do you think there’s a way out for us? I mean, the human race,” David asked, suddenly resurfacing.
Jack, who had given in to sleep by then, was woken by his friend’s voice and sat up in his chair. “I don’t know, David, but I don’t think you are in the right mood to answer that.”
“I will tell you just one thing, Jack. If we humans survive, it will be because of a miracle.”
“That’s convenient for you; you’re a man of faith.”
“l will tell you a story, my friend. Back home in Newcastle West, I happened to look at a bookcase in our living room one morning. In the past, at least during my childhood, it had always been full of great literary works, mingling with some Catholic publications. When my mother fell ill, the works were gradually replaced by self-help books, both in prose and fiction. But only recently did I carefully pay them any attention...”
“Why?”
“It became clear to me, Jack, that the spiritual and philosophical messages present in those books are egocentrically driven.”
“Really? Where did you get that idea from?” Jack smiled, both amused and surprised.
“Broadly speaking, their inspirational texts flood your brains with positive words, making you feel good about yourself and perhaps helping you make better decisions in your life. You believe you can do more and you can be more. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong about that, right? But all that empowerment and energy are channeled merely to rock personal projects, Jack, not to universal awareness, as you expect, or as we all need. Some talk about a secret long hidden from humanity that can transform people’s lives like magic. You just have to wish hard enough for something (a car, a mansion, a beautiful wife…), and it will manifest itself.”
“I don’t get it, David. You should know from the Bible that ‘faith can move mountains.’”
“But that doesn’t mean you should suddenly turn readers into ‘materialistic gods,’ or worse yet, I don’t see how it would help us understand that we are all inseparable parts of the whole. These books also fail to explain how their ideal of individual infinite material abundance coexists with a planet of scarce resources…”
“Now you have a point, Father!” Jack had some objections in mind or at least some judgments, but he was happy that his friend was, at that moment, able to feel passionate about something. He decided to keep his ears anchored and his mouth shut. Jack started to wonder, however, whether part of David’s enthusiasm was not an unconscious effort to mentally detach himself from Marie’s departure.
“That’s why, my dear friend John Paul Elliot, I have to believe in miracles.”