Fading, Like the Stars

When I was little, when I was only just a child, I remember my mother would take me on her lap, in the corner of this very, very dark room. She would light only one simple lamp, and she would sit there in the tiny, tiny patch of light. And she would read to me. Read and read and read again. Everything. Day after day she would read to me. And then, later, when I was older, she would teach me how to read for myself. When I was little I remember my mother would read book after book to me, and those fictions were what gave me hope and courage.

Those are the best memories of my childhood. The bests of my life, actually. I opened a book, and almost immediately I was transported to a different land, a different time, a different life. Between the pages of a book, lay all the treasures that I would never discover. With these books, I could live all the adventures that I would never dare to live in real life, I could see all the places that I would never see.

“It has to remain a secret, Aimée.” My mother would always whisper. “Between you and me. You must never tell anyone about it.”

I didn’t really understand it, at that time. I didn’t know why it had to remain a secret, but it only added to my amusement. In my mind, it was exactly like all these stories that she’d told me. That was something that only belonged to us. We shared something, and nobody could take that away. I thought it just made the whole thing funnier.

That was before I learned that fiction was illegal.

But it wasn’t only just fiction that was banned. As a general rule, a lot of the things that allowed you to escape reality, or, perhaps, to dream of a better future, were illegal. I still don’t understand why or how it exactly happened. I didn’t see what was so dangerous in my mother’s books. Because all books weren’t banned… You’d find in practically every house one called the life and achievements of Rachel Perrin.

Rachel Perrin was an economist. One that had lived when the Crisis started. She also happened to be the Authorities’ first “guide”. The woman that took lead of everything and put things back to where they belonged, the one who set everything right… I’d never read a book more boring than the life and achievements of Rachel Perrin. No imagination. No poetry. Just fact. Facts, facts, facts, plain and unappealing facts. Nothing else than reality. That’s what was written on the back cover.

Reality. One of the regime’s favourite words. Only reality matters. One of their mottos. I have come to suspect that it is one of their ways of numbing people. Don’t let them know that there is anything more than the life that they or their neighbours live.

Reality, reality, reality….

You had no chance of escaping from reality. And so you have no chance of escaping from the Authorities.

But I didn’t know that fiction was banned, when I was still a child. I merely thought that my mother and I shared a wonderful secret. I didn’t know that she was playing with her life and, in a certain way, with mine.

When I grew up, I learned what the truth was, and I learned that all these books that my mother kept in our house weren’t supposed to be there. But I still didn’t realize how dangerous it was, how far it could go.

Until the day the soldiers barged in.

I think my mother knew that they would eventually come for her, because she seemed to have been ready for it. She had been in a rather strange mood for the previous weeks, tensed, nervous, worried. But prepared. She was able to make me leave the house before everything happened.

I didn’t go far, though. I stayed and watched. And sometimes, when I wake up in the middle of the night, having nightmares about that day, I wish I hadn’t. I wish I had run away like she had told me to.

The only things I saved from my previous life are a few books. Those same books that caused the ruin of that life. They’re stacked in my bag, now. They put me in danger with every step I take. It would be easier to throw them away. It would be safer to burn them, so that no one ever finds out. But I won’t do that. My mother died because of these books. But before she died, she passed them on to me. I don’t really know what I’m supposed to do with them. I don’t know what I’m going to do with those books yet, but I’d rather die than destroy them.

Even that meant that I had to be very careful.

I had found refuge in an abandoned house. It was by no means the safest place to hide, but I had managed to avoid detection for so many years now, that I was maybe starting to feel a little reckless. And there were so many abandoned houses in the towns now, that it was an easy solution. Of course, each one of these empty houses would be raided at night fall by the guards on patrol, but I would be gone by then. My plan was to wait here until the street was full with people going back home, and to slip out of town at that moment.

It was a simple plan, but one that I knew I could trust. Never in the many years that I had been travelling – running –, had it failed me. By nightfall I would be in the countryside, safe, if not comfortable.

Safety was all that I dreamed of. I did not wish for change. I knew that I would not bring about that change, and the hope that someone else would do it had long died. Safety, and peace. I was only dreaming of a place where I would be able to live in peace. I had not yet, unfortunately, found that peace. Wherever I went, there was a threat, to great to be ignored. Wherever I went, I was afraid that they would find us, me and my books, and that they would destroy us. All that I wanted was a place where I could leave all sorrows and worries behind, and live in quiet and peace for the rest of my days. But I had yet to find that perfect place.

Oh, there was a place. One place existed, that was still free from the tyranny that surrounded. One place that the Authorities had not yet managed to claim as theirs. One last free republic. … But that place was far, too far away. Way beyond my reach.

I used the time that I had, to explore the house I was in. It was an old, derelict house, with a garden that had turned into a jungle, and surrounded by high walls. Fortunately for me, ivy grew on these walls, allowing me to escalade them. I imagined that there had been a time when this house had been inhabited, a time when a family lived in there, with children playing in that garden, and people laughing and talking and crying and smiling. People just living.

Now it was empty of everything. Just four bare walls and a roof. Only the memory of what it had once been. A memory that would, undoubtedly, be erased soon, destroyed to make place for another of these grey buildings destined to house corporations and companies. Soon the world would be exactly like they wanted it to be, and even those little relics of a time that had long gone would disappear.

Somewhere, deep inside my heart, I felt sad at that thought. But my brain once again told me that there was nothing that I could do, that it would be way too dangerous to do anything.

Let this house be ruined. Let this world go to its ruin. It is not your fight, never has been. Care only for yourself.

My wandering through the empty house was careful. I did not want to alert the guards that were patrolling in the streets. I was terrified of them. They were almighty, held power over life and death, a power that had been granted to them by Authorities that, I knew it now, did not care about the inhabitants of their lands. The Authorities only cared about their own well-being, about their own fortune. That was how it had always been, ever since it all started. And the people had only been too easily fooled – we had only been too easily fooled. And it was too late now to fight back, had anyone actually wanted to fight back.

Suddenly, I heard the distant sound, in the street, of soldier’s feet stomping against the pavement. I retreated deeper into the house, holding my breath, hiding in a corner, my back pressed against a wall as if I hoped that the wall would swallow me and keep me hidden, safe.

The soldiers, the guards that paraded on the street at every hour of the day (or the night, for that matter) made sure that there was no rebellion. I was frightened by them, more than I could tell, frightened to death. Their uniforms, with the bright colors and the shiny buttons, were made to inspire respect and admiration, but to me, to me they only inspired fright. I knew what they did, those soldiers, I knew what they used the guns in their hands for. I wasn’t even able to look one of them in the eye, for the only thing that they would see, if they met my eyes, was how terrified I was. And my terror, to them, would only mean one thing: that I was guilty of something.

Hidden in the house, not even daring to breathe for fear that one of them would hear me, I waited. The same thought plagued my mind, repeated again and again.

It’s the end.

It’s the end.

It’s the end.

They’re going to find you. They will come in this house, and they will find you. They will kill you. Like they killed your mother. Like they killed your father, so long ago. They will kill you. It’s the end.

It’s the end.

It’s the end.

It’s the end.

But it seemed that my end had not come yet. The footsteps intensified as the soldiers passed in front of the house, and my heart nearly stopped, but they didn’t come to a halt. They continued to walk, and the sound of their stomping diminished until it disappeared completely.

I was alone again. Safe, even if for a very short time. Taking deep breaths to calm the erratic beating of my heart, I began to look around me again. There was nothing interesting to see downstairs, so I went up the stairs, secretly praying that despite their dreadful state, they would be enough to hold my weight.

It was almost a miracle, but the stairs did not crack, they did not break when I slowly walked up. They creaked and squeaked but did not break. The upstairs of the house resembled the downstairs in many aspects. It was abandoned, ruined. Four rooms looked onto the landing. None of these had a door. The doorframes were there, but each one had been emptied of the panel that should have shut it. I didn’t have the slightest idea of what could have happened to the actual doors. I could not fathom how they had possibly disappeared, or why someone would have taken them. It would forever, I guessed, remain a mystery.

Each one of these four rooms was empty. Except for one room that was toweled, the walls of the rooms were all covered in faded wall paper. The floorboard was, in some places, too damaged to allow a human being, even one as careful as I, to step on it. But in other places, it still bore the marks of the furniture that had once adorned the room. Here, I could guess from the marks that there had been a wardrobe or a cupboard here, and there, a bed. In the first room were the marks of the furniture. The second room seemed to have had a fire in it, for one of the walls was blackened and burned, and there was a large hole in the floorboard. It was in the third one that I found the message.

I was so surprise to find any kind of writing there that at first I could not believe my eyes. It was so unusual to see anything written, these days, and especially in an abandoned house. I was so surprise that when my eyes first landed on the message that had been tagged on the wall, I doubted its reality. It could not be, I told myself. It had no reason to be. Why would someone do that? Why would someone take the risk – for it was a great risk – of writing words, words that belonged to fiction? Who would be bold enough? And why? Why write something that no one else would see?

During a fleeting moment, my mind was convinced that these words had been written there in my intention. Someone had done that, for me to read. It was an encouragement of some sort. A promise that things would be better. A plea for me not to give up. The certitude that I was not alone, that I had things that no one could ever take from me. That was all that these otherwise very simple words said.

Then I realized my mistake. No one could possibly know that I was going to come here. But yet the inscription was there, written on the faded wallpaper in big, black letters.

Don’t give up. Stay strong.

And under these words, someone had added a quote: We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars – O. Wilde

I took a few steps towards the wall. The inscription seemed to have been there for a very long time, it was even starting to wear off, and the thought occurred to me that, perhaps, it had been written there a long time ago, before the crisis had even started. That had to be the reason why these words were on that wall.

But as I took a few steps towards the wall, I noticed that the quote was not the only thing that had been added to the words of encouragement. All around it, sentences had been added in smaller writing. I came closer to the wall, eager to read the words that had been written there. I immediately noticed that there seemed to be several different writings, as if words had been added by different people, at different moments in time.

I didn’t understand what it meant exactly, why this had been done, but I couldn’t stop looking at the words, couldn’t stop reading them. It was as if people, people I did not know, people had never met, and would never meet, were talking to me.

The hour before dawn is always the darkest, the wall told me.

They won’t get us.

They can destroy the thinker but they can’t kill the idea.

Hope. Hope. Hope. Hope. Hope. Hope. Hope.

You’re not alone.

And on and on it went, all messages of the same sort, all words of hope.

I stared in awe and wonder at all these words. Their simple presence there was a miracle. They had obviously been written by various persons. All people who had come here, for what purpose I didn’t know, and read the very same words I had been reading. Perhaps that had taken comfort in these words, perhaps hope had sparkled in their beings at the reading. Whatever reaction this had brought, it had been so strong that it had made them want to leave a message of their own, for the next person who would come.

I felt a warmth in my chest, a sparkle of hope. It was a strange feeling. I had given up hope a long time ago, and until now, I had believed that I was incapable of still feeling this. But as I looked at the wall, something woke up inside of me. It was an odd feeling, one that I had almost forgotten, one that I had not experienced in a very long time. I suddenly remembered, vividly, the evenings spent in my mother’s lap, listening to stories. I remembered my childhood, and how full of hope and confidence I had been at that time.

I wanted to leave my own message on the wall, a trace of my passing here. There was no one left in the world who knew me, who remembered me. But maybe I could still leave a trace of my presence in this world on the wall.

But unfortunately, I had no means of doing so. I owned nothing that would leave a trace on the wall. In my bag, I had only books and food. It seemed that I was destined to wander this world and leave no trace of my presence. Defeated, I sat down in a corner of the room, and with my back against the wall, I closed my eyes. A few hours of sleep would be most welcome, and very useful. I did not know when I would be able to rest again. Huddled down, with my knees drawn to my chest and my arms around my legs, I slowly fell asleep.

When I woke up, it seemed to be late in the afternoon already. The time had come for me to leave this town. Cautiously, I sat up. I tried to silently make my way out of the house and back onto the street. The street was still empty when I left the relative comfort and safety that the house had provided. Still cautious, I began to head towards the exit. I needed to leave this town as quickly as I could. It was smothering me. I needed to see the grass, the trees… the trees! Anything that was a bit green and alive.

People were slowly filling the streets, heading to their homes. Not talking to each other. The street was silent, except for the sound of their footsteps and breathing, until…

“Excuse me!”

I felt a pang of anguish at the sound. It wasn’t a polite exclamation, it was the sort of exclamation that preceded an order to halt. The same feared possessed me than the one that I had felt when I had seen a woman being arrested this morning. I forced myself not to look in the direction from which it seemed that the voice had come. I continued to walk, trying to ignore the fear that had once more invaded me.

“You, there! Halt!”

I took a deep breath and accelerated. I did not want to witness another scene like the one I had witnessed this morning. If I once more met the eyes of another of these poor souls, I was going to break.

“Miss, stop. Immediately.”

My heart missed a beat when I realized that there was no one around me, in that street. I glanced backwards, quickly. Everyone had retreated into a corner or another. And the soldier was looking at me. I quickly looked away, but it was too late. I had seen him, and he had seen that I had seen him. He knew that I knew it was me he was calling after. And if I tried to run away, then he would be authorized to shoot with no warning.

And yet, I did the only foolish thing that crossed my mind.

I started to run.

“Halt or I shoot!”

The soldier’s voice resounded loudly, and everyone around held their breath. But I was no longer thinking rationally. I turned round a corner. Never in my all life had I run faster than now, but deep inside my heart, I knew that I would never run fast enough to escape, not this time. Behind me, hurried footsteps told me that I didn’t have much time left.

I kept on running.

Until I hit a dead end. I stopped abruptly when I found myself facing a wall. The doors of the buildings around me were closed, offering no escape. The soldier’s footsteps were coming closer and closer.

I looked around me one last time, silently bidding my goodbyes to the world. Then I closed my eyes, and braced myself for what was to come.