“I’m almost afraid to ask,” Balthazar said. “Where are we going?”
“You’re the one leading,” Tekamthi said. “You always have been.”
“I was afraid you’d say something like that,” Balthazar said.
“Such fear,” Tekamthi said.
“Such expressions,” Balthazar said.
“You must learn to say what you mean,” Tekamthi said. “Be honest with yourself. Be honest with others. It is what you must do.”
“So you’d told me already,” Balthazar said.
“Because you still haven’t learned,” Tekamthi said.
“Maybe it isn’t important to me,” Balthazar said. “Maybe it isn’t really all that important to anyone. It sounds like a pet peeve to me.”
“It sounds like a motto to me,” Tekamthi said. “Tell me, I wonder: What do you honestly achieve by doing things this way?”
“Not everything is about getting things done,” Balthazar said.
“Everything is,” Tekamthi said. “Everything is. You must understand this. Every action has a reaction, which I believe is basic physics. If you went to school you learned this. I know you went to school. You had middling grades, which did not reflect your intelligence, as I understand.”
“Well, grades don’t reflect intelligence,” Balthazar said. “They reflect grades.”
“Very wise,” Tekamthi said. “Yet they also display a lack of concentration.”
“You got me,” Balthazar said. “I could never concentrate in school. You have to understand why.”
“If you couldn’t concentrate in school,” Tekamthi said, “what hope did you have when you left it behind?”
“I think I’ve done okay for myself,” Balthazar said.
“Yet you find yourself in these dire straits,” Tekamthi said.
“Every action has a reaction,” Balthazar said. “I might have brought some of it on myself, but not all of it. Everyone has a hand in this war.”
“An excellent realization,” Tekamthi said.
“I never had a doubt,” Balthazar said. “If I were to go around assuming everything that happened to me was my own fault, I would be very sorry indeed. It would be assuming too much responsibility, for myself, and having too little faith in the rest of humanity’s ability to get their own things accomplished, for better and worse. There are too many forces to think otherwise. It’s not all my fault.”
“This is another thing that you must keep in mind,” Tekamthi said, “because you do not always appreciate it.”
“Yes I do,” Balthazar said. “I don’t have a problem with that.”
“You think you don’t,” Tekamthi said, “but there are many things you do not yet appreciate about yourself, but they will come to you in time.”
“I wish you didn’t mince words,” Balthazar said. “What exactly do you mean? What don’t I understand about myself? Why can’t you just tell me?”
“Because it would not be an accomplishment,” Tekamthi said. “You would not grow. You cannot have everything done for you. This is another thing you seem to understand, but not appreciate. Do you not consider yourself a self-made man?”
“However contradictory it may seem, yes,” Balthazar said, “but that doesn’t mean I can’t seek answers to questions I ask. I see nothing wrong with that. And I grow tired of cryptic men.”
“You grow tired of yourself,” Tekamthi said. “There is nothing so dangerous, I assure you. Once you stop seeking answers to your own questions, you lose everything.”
“Sometimes the search isn’t enough,” Balthazar said. “Sometimes you search and find nothing, and still lose everything. You make the effort, and you fail. It’s what sometimes happens. I can’t be blamed for that.”
“But you can be if you accept defeat for its own sake,” Tekamthi said. “You have thus far managed to outwit defeat, because you have been letting others guide you. How would you manage without anyone?”
“If you can’t depend on others, you’re lost,” Balthazar said.
“If you depend too much on others,” Tekamthi said, “you’re lost. It’s a very difficult rope to walk, isn’t it? Never knowing exactly if you’re doing things right, if you’re about to slip?”
“It’s what life is,” Balthazar said. “It’s what you deal with every day. Shit happens.”
“You can certainly put it so crudely,” Tekamthi said.
“All of this because you think I have to find my own answers,” Balthazar said.
“I don’t think,” Tekamthi said, “I know.”
“Well, no one knows anything,” Balthazar said. They only think they do.”
“Oh, you can know things,” Tekamthi said. “You just can’t fool yourself into thinking you know enough to stop learning, even about things you already know, especially about such things. Once you tell yourself that you can’t learn anything new, you will stagnant. You can imagine, with such a word associated, that it is not a good thing. Tell me, how well do you know yourself?”
“I think I know myself fairly well,” Balthazar said.
“Balthazar, I have known myself for far longer,” Tekamthi said. “I still do not know myself that well.”
“I think I understand myself,” Balthazar said.
“This is not about understanding,” Tekamthi said. “You understand nothing, accept nothing. This is about knowing. You do not know yourself.”
“You’re wrong,” Balthazar said. “You think you know a lot, but in this instance, you’re wrong. Whatever you’re trying to get at, you’re reaching at nothing.”
“Do not close your mind,” Tekamthi said. “Closed minds lead to suffering. This is the essential truth of that.”
“All right,” Balthazar said. “Help me understand. Tell me about yourself. Tell me how you do not understand yourself, what you do not still know, after so many years.”
“I can do that for you,” Tekamthi said. “You already know what I’ve dedicated my life to, and the various means by which I have accomplished it. What you don’t know is why I have done so. You had to have been curious? What kind of a man spends a lifetime on seemingly selfless pursuits? You should know better than most. Such devotion does not come from a pure place. Such devotion comes from pain. Pain itself always has this result, the creation of new resolve. Sometimes it’s for the better, sometimes for the worse.
“My pain can, in its general sense, be felt across this land, in the displaced nature of my people. We had been told that we were not wanted. You know what this did to your friend Hopper already. Imagine that on a grander scale. In my case, I chose to dedicate my life to ignoring the stigma, but the stigma itself still defined me. I could not escape it, not even in pretending that I could ignore it. I still fight it, in fact, tell myself that it’s imaginary, that the only power it possesses is the one I give it. That’s an illusion. The stigma is real, the great Diaspora, real, even if no one ever grieves it but those who were dispersed from their own land, not to any meaningful degree. It is a silent persecution, and even after all this time, we have no sympathy. We have suffered long enough so that we know we deserve it. Some sympathies are earned, Balthazar, because some injustices are profound, no matter if they are recognized or not. We did not ask for this, and yet we were given it, and had it demonstrated time and again that we had no other choice but to accept this defeat. It’s is our great sorrow, and it is a heavy burden.
“All burdens are meant to be cast aside, yet we still do not know how to do that. We still think we need help in doing so. We do not. I took it upon myself to begin the change. That was when I dedicated myself to bettering mankind itself. There is so much to do, and very little that can actually be accomplished. You must choose your approaches, Balthazar. That is the painstaking task I have been at my whole life. It is, in effect, another burden I have willingly taken upon myself, and that makes two I carry. You thought living your dual life was wearying. Try carrying the burden of humanity, twice-fold.
“But my motivations for such greed, and I cannot call it anything else, do not end at my history. Like you friend Hopper, like my people, I was orphaned at a young age, raised by a grandmother who did the best she could. Eventually I would argue that it was not good enough, but I had to learn to appreciate how much of that was her fault and how much of it was my own. I still do not know. She did the best she could, and hers was the first selfless example I came to appreciate. There were others, of course, people who helped me along the way, helping me pay for things when I did not have the money, for example, or who found sympathy for myself when I couldn’t, not when I was looking, mind you, but when I wasn’t. You never find what you’re looking for, Balthazar, until you look the other way. Truth has a way of bringing itself to you. You just have to realize it, accept it. You did not exactly look for me, did you, not to find me, correct?
“Of course not. You simply find me, because you did not know you were looking. That was what I eventually found I needed to do, when I’d gotten past the need to see immediate results. I would never have taken your challenge upon myself, Balthazar, if I expected immediate results, even ones I would ever hope to see for myself. Great things are accomplished in silence. You do not even know it when they happen, not the truly great things. You see what results from them, not the great things themselves. It is something you must learn to appreciate.
“Yet I still do not know myself. In the process of my early work, I took on the notions of many of my collaborators, little knowing at the time. I have frustrations I can’t begin to understand, why I cannot accept them for what they are, why I can’t deal with them more rationally, because I consider myself a rational being. I believe it is my responsibility to help others, but not to show them the way. I suppose in some regards it’s because I believe there is no single way, but I can also appreciate that my aid becomes cryptic, almost self-sabotage, because I am not willing to go as far as I seem to should. Yet I cannot impart anything more important than this, Balthazar: In all things, you most only be concerned with being aware. It does not matter if you understand everything, but rather that you should keep your mind open enough so that if you needed to, you could begin to understand what you needed to.
“There are so many battles to be fought, Balthazar. You must learn to choose which ones are yours and which ones you can allow others to fight for you. If you assume too much responsibility, you are lost, because you will eventually be forced to realize how overwhelmed you really are.
“I can tell you one thing, Balthazar, which you need to know: Do not be comfortable with what you think you presently are. It is an illusion. It does not matter if you do not understand. You must appreciate this advice. You believe you have nothing left to lose, but you are wrong. It will be when you lose everything that you gain everything back again, when you begin to appreciate what you lost to begin with.
“I have another revelation for you, Balthazar. All this time we have been talking, I have been dying, so it has been good that you have allowed me to talk. I am glad that you were wise enough for that. Lotus visited me, not long after you did. He offered me a choice, and I chose what he thought to be the wrong one. I refused to help him, and he decided to take from me my life. I have lived as long as I have, Balthazar, because I still thought I was needed. He showed me that I was wrong. He gave me a wonderful gift, Balthazar. You have no need to grieve. Traverse has no need to grieve. A man in the line of so many others will be gone soon. The world will not preclude it. That is what happens to all men. I leave behind nothing, Balthazar, I want nothing more. I have already received everything I needed. I am giving myself back.”
***
One more loss precious to him, one more loss amidst so many. Tekamthi believed he had more to lose? If that was true, he still could not fathom what it could be. What more could he afford to lose, what more was there?
***
Lincoln Mather, who alone discovered its secret, entered the shed. He stumbled in the dark for what seemed like hours, until he finally found himself. It would be some time before this discovery would mean something to him, but the discovery alone was the greatest breakthrough of his life. It would change his life forever. He took off his red cap and set it aside, in the dark, emerged back from the shed, and went to see his father, who soon enough would die and facilitate his son’s journey.
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