A two-year-long lifetime was how long Erika and Justin had known each other, two years in which a mutual attraction had flowered into open affection, and subsequently maturing into that of which the word 'love' is a poor description. Two lives, once disparate, now convergent, twisting and weaving themselves into beautiful patterns, much like the braids in a little girl's hair, patterns of harmony and partnership.
Erika was to him his salvation from himself, his torturous bouts of solitude, his dangerously intense introspections. He defined himself by her, and found his sustenance in her happiness. Justin could never care for himself; Erika became the recipient of all his emotions, long penned up, all the emotions which he could not absorb. She was his panacea, and she made him feel human.
Erika, a diminutive girl, had been attracted to the intrigue of the melancholy boy called Justin, a certain lonely darkness about him, his omniscient eyes. The suggestion on his face that he knew so much more, a burden of truth. He didn't say much, but when he did speak she could feel the weight of knowledge concealed beneath the guarded witticisms. There was a certain wantonness about him, the recklessness of one who knew the consequences and had no respect for them. Nothing sacred. Justin lived in a social no man's land, where he was certainly no introvert, yet where no one knew much about him. He intended it so. With patience, perseverance, and not a little charm, Erika eventually infiltrated Justin's fortresses. She came to cherish the little child lost inside those world-weary eyes of his.
But in these last few weeks, Justin had not been Justin.
The Justin whom she knew was devil-may-care about everything from ice-cream flavors to politics. A smile was always in his eyes when he was with her. He could make the most eccentric remarks in his grave voice, a little quirk she suspected he had cultivated to amuse her. She had brought him around to her, and the fact that she was the only one he had opened up to somehow made him indispensable to her. But he had not been her Justin recently.
In the last few weeks, he had relapsed gradually into the pre-Erika Justin. Worse, perhaps. He had lost the twinkle in his eyes, and his voice had bled off all its life; it was now a pale low monotone, like a feeble ray of cold and dirty sunlight in winter. The smile on his face was now a bleached parody of what it once was; his eyes now sang a different song, a hymn of defeat. Justin ate almost nothing and had become weak, his protruding cheekbones accentuated to lend him the gaunt look of an old man.
She tried to talk to him, but all she got were superficial responses, and platitudes about how some things were beyond anyone's control, that she had done no wrong, that he loved her, and such. She cried useless tears.
Justin eventually reached the terminal stage one day, sitting hunched over himself, his eyes drifting meaninglessly from one object to another. Impervious to his surroundings, he was lost somewhere beyond Erika's understanding. He took her to the mountain that night.
"Look up at the stars Erika." She did. They laid on their backs listening to the wind tousle the grass.
"Look up at the stars and see them in a new light. Look at them and see the brotherhood. They drift out there for eternity, damned never to make friends, or enemies even. They are locked in their infinite freedom, Erika."
"A long time ago, so long that even infinity remembers it with considerable difficulty, the Sun and the planets were born out of a million years of fire and pain. The stars and the planets in their infancy pranced playfully about as is the way of any young creature. Saturn was the favorite playmate of young Mars; Neptune and Mercury were virtually inseparable."
"Mercury was, from the beginning, the Sun's favorite. They say that birds of a feather flock together, and Mercury's temperament was indeed the closest to the Sun's; secretive, authoritative, and tainted with the colors of a tyrant. Earth was, back then, a dreamer. The romantic. Always at odds with the conservative Pluto. "
"They were, in their infancy, happy with their new-found existence and their freedom. Always, though, under the watchful eye of the Sun. The Sun gave the planets all the liberty they could handle, but never let them stray. The Sun knew very well that any planet it lost would, in the lonely vacuum, die a quick and cold death. It always kept the planets in its authoritative grip, gentle but firm. The Sun, Erika, always the great Arbitrator. Had Jupiter taken one of Earth's moons? Was Neptune drifting too close to Uranus? The Sun had a despotic streak, good intentions notwithstanding. The planets respected the Sun, partly out of recognition of its benevolent aims, but for the greater part out of fear. The Sun, Erika, as you know, has great powers. Maybe it was wise of Mercury to seek the Sun's favor. I guess we shall never know."
Justin was silent. Erika looked over at his face. It was the face of one who sees his destiny, its how, its when, but not its why. His eyes were focused on the crystalline night sky above them, focused with his mind somewhere Erika didn't know of, somewhere she suspected she could never understand any better than the madman could understand the ramblings of the sane. A place devoid of pity, she knew, because a tear rolled down his cheek. It was a difficult story for him to tell, she felt, but she could also feel something driving him to tell it. The insistence in his voice said as much, a hurried urgency, and though she could not understand why the telling of a fairytale demanded such courage, it was so. She found his hand and held it.
"Venus, it was never her fault, her beauty. Venus was the beauty of the planets, and not one of the planets could not be said to either admire her or envy her. Earth made no secret of his admiration. He seized every opportunity that availed itself to flaunt his lust for her. Pluto, in his own rigid way, let Venus know that he desired her greatly. She was in no way responsible for provoking these sentiments, no, she was virtuous. Her great beauty was to blame, her beauty for which she was no more responsible than the cripple is for his handicap."
"Earth and Pluto were, to begin with, quite civil about their mutual interest. It was, amongst the planets, quite a common topic of discussion whether Earth or Pluto was to be the fortunate recipient of Venus' favor. But any competition for so great a prize can never remain within the bounds of harmlessness. Pluto's relationship with Earth grew frigid. Tension among the planets rose as the coolness gradually degenerated into contempt. And it finally spun quite expectedly out of control into ill-disguised hostility."
"A time came when Earth and Pluto nearly collided, and the Sun decided that enough was enough. The Sun locked all the planets into confining orbits around it, orbits from which there was to be no escape. Pluto was banished to the end of the Sun's reaches, from where he had only the odd few glimpses and flashes of light to tell him that Venus was there. At the end of the solar system, Pluto, damned to drift in a meaningless orbit far from Venus, quickly lost his will to be. He grew cold and died. Earth's punishment for his deeds was, perhaps, crueler. Venus in her orbit was placed just outside Earth's reaches, and it was his curse to see her but never to have her."
"The oceans are nothing but aeons of tears. Rain-clouds are grief embodied. Earth, Erika, its orbit is its eternal curse, for ever and ever, no end, just the sight of a loved one lost. Venus, the Sun saw it proper punishment to expel her soul, to send it flying haplessly off into the nowhere. Venus is just a beautiful shell now, orbiting, feeling nothing, her beauty frozen as it was when she lost her soul. God only knows where it is now."
Justin's eyes searched the night sky emptily.
"Once every thousand years, Earth takes a life. It takes a life and sends it off into the void, to search for the soul of Venus. Look at the stars, and don't see distant suns, but see the exiled spirits of people who once walked this ground. They are shining, Erika, not like scattered suns, but like mad diamonds on a search that has no end. There is so much loneliness out there, so much, Erika, so much." Justin was looking at her. The shadows in his eyes told stories of resignation and depthless regret.
"My time has come. No choice."
He kissed her gently on the forehead and got up. Erika could find nothing to say; she understood nothing, or she understood and could not believe. Justin started to walk away.
He stopped to turn back for a second.
"Remember me well." For the first time in an eternity, there was on his face a gentle suggestion of the old Justin's smile. He walked on.
And as Erika looked on, shadows, unnatural, preying shadows sprang up around him, like the sea greedily embracing a sinking ship. The shadows enveloped him, caressed him hungrily, and lifted him up to the night sky. And where Justin had been, there was Justin no more.
But there was a new star in the sky.
And the soul of Venus drifted on in the infinite vacuum of misery.
11 July 1996
Youssef M. Assad