the maelstrom.4

"Profanations," 

I thought to myself...

As I regarded the little bird...

Freezing on the bar beside me.

I took a swig of the Samohon... 

Ukrainian moonshine...

From a flask I'd had tucked in the pocket of my cloak.

Hours had gone by...

The winds swirled and there was a perilously ill mix of colours attempting to texture the near nocturnal sky.

The war was the suggestion on the air...

Not rain...

Not snow.

Nadja had long since gone to sleep...

I imagined...

And so there I was with nothing much to do but wait...

And think.

For some reason, the thoughts that came to me filled me with hope...

The little bird slanted its head with interest.

I felt my heart pounding with an excitement that only circles the truly living...

Not the soon to...

Die.

I felt the same way I had felt just two weeks earlier, when I'd departed Salzburg...

With Billings shouting and waiving at me from the exit door of the funicular at the base of the Hohensalzburg Fortress in the exquisite, old city...

Salzburg.

 The venue had been extraordinary.

We had gone there to attend a seminar that was focused on the ever and increasingly perilous plight of engaged and interested non-combatants in contemporary war zones.

This included journalists, human rights organisations, Doctors Without Borders...

And so on...

It was the first time that I had met with Billings since back then...

Since the Balkans...

25 years.

When we'd met at the funicular to go up, it was awkward.

He embraced me as he used to...

As a father, or mentor...

But with an almost palpable dread dripping from the fingers that had touched me.

Dread for the lost one he'd thought me to have become.

But...

The occasion...

The venue...

 

I had done some research prior to having arrived and had learned that the fortress had been built in 1077 by Archbishop Gebhard, and that it was the largest, fully preserved fortress in Central Europe.

 

During the 15th and 16th centuries, the devastation of the Hungarian/Peasant's war had forced much of the clergy to seek refuge behind the walls of the great fortress.

 

"Not much has changed," I'd thought absently.

 

I had been looking forward to meeting once more with a man...

A friend...

Who had made such an unassumingly huge impact on my life.

 

Indeed, after Billings had given his presentation, and the contingent of journalists and correspondents gathered there had spent some time discussing global conflict and the factors that create and perpetuate it, we found ourselves sitting in the hotel at the long bar.

 

Soon we were toasting health, good fortune, and reunions.

 

“Well then,” Billings began. “I suppose I should get to the point and ask you what I’ve been meaning to ask you for some time.”

 

He paused and peered down into his glass of whiskey contemplatively.

 

I took a sip from his glass and encouraged the other to ask whatever he wanted to ask.

 

“It’s a bit off-putting to me to even have arrived at the existential point at which I feel the need to ask this, but the world is as it is, and I don’t know how much longer I have, so if there is something to be done, I suppose now is the time. I look around and I see everything and everyone coming apart… moving further apart rather than closer together. All this talk of the war in Ukraine...

Left versus right...

UFOs...

The 'refugee problem,'

Has only made it more of a compelling and urgent debate within my own mind. 

So… what I wanted to ask you...

Xavier Cross...

Was… is… what will it take to heal the world?”

 

I had just taken another sip of my whiskey and immediately spit it back into my glass.

 

I fixed my old friend with a glare and rather than succumbing to laughter merely asked, “Are you serious?”

 

Billings was generally a playful, witty sort, but in this instance, he said blankly, “I suppose I am.”

 

I set my glass down upon the bar and placed my hand on Billings' shoulder, “But why? Why are you asking that? And why for fuck’s sake are you asking me??

 

Billings lowered his head and seemed to be fighting back some tears, “Because despite everything I tried to teach you about maintaining a rational, detached approach to our profession… even to life, somehow you have lived it. You have bled it, and I have as e’er remained… a witness. I don’t want to die having only ever been a witness. Do you understand? Can you? Of course, you can’t. How could you? You are my counterpoint, you know? You are my antithesis in the rendering of deed. It’s not that I don’t feel. I assure you that I do. It’s not that I don’t wish for things to be different than they are. But I have too long remained an analytical observer to all that transpires around me… to the point that I have now come to suspect that I have been an observer of my own life. Not an actor… not a force for change and momentum in any direction… just a witness, and this is no longer acceptable to me.”

 

I'd considered this.

 

“Well, it seems that you already have the answer to your question regarding how one can at least try to heal the world.”

 

Billings smiled.

 

“But is it as simple as that? One simply has to do something to slip the chain?”

I considered this.

He went on...

 

“Of course, that is an over-simplification. But, if mortality is a consignment, and humanity represents an existential Gulag, of sorts, then in my days I have witnessed little more than recognition and analysis of the labours undertaken by others. I have not laboured alongside the others. I have done nothing to even attempt to break the chain. And it seems to me that the only chance one truly has to break the chain is from within it. One link in the chain must do something uncharacteristic... rare, even, to alter the functionality and the potential of the paradigm.”

I smiled.

"How long have you been waiting to discuss this with me?"

He blushed.

"Since Nadja."

Just then the barred wooden doors at the opposite end of the hall burst open and winds came to circle us all...

To adorn us.

The orchestra had rippled into shadow on the stage...

Released from...

Or freed unto some passage of Berlioz's "Symphonie Fantastique, Opus 14"...

The torches set about the place swayed diabolically.

 

There was a woman sitting alone across from us at the long bar.

 

I had not noticed her before, but when I did, I immediately saw the resemblance.

 

Billings witnessed recognition dance across my eyes and raised his glass.

 

“To Nadja,” he said solemnly.

 

I remained silent. 

 

I took a long sip of my whiskey.

 

The woman smiled at me invitingly.

 

“That’s where all of this started for me… and for you, I think, by the way. It all started back there in Bosnia… when you just wouldn’t listen to me regarding the necessity for objectivity,” said Billings in a whimsical tone of admonition.

 

I turned to him and grinned wryly.

“Always a pleasure to be a source of inspiration, if not merely contemplation.”

 

The smile faded from Billings’ face, as he gazed back down into his glass...

And descended once more into his thoughts.