Trinity of Deceits
We tend to obliviate our lies of compassion.
A muted gloom spreads beneath the Royal olive tree in Ithaca as Odysseus embraces his wife for the last time. As he steps back, their son in the arms of Penelope’s maid releases a piercing wail not of this world. The faithful pup Argos joins in the call, his ears flat with fear.
For a moment, even the man of wits panics; have they learnt he is destined to be a stranger to them for the next twenty years?
“Before next Autumn’s rains, I shall bring you gifts from Ilion!” he exclaims.
He looks at his father, but Laertes shakes his head, eyes filled with tears.
2/
A mellow melancholy fills the Oncology Ward’s day room. It is past end-of-visits and empty, except for the wife and daughter sitting before a reclining grey-haired man with sunken cheeks in a hospital gown.
Oh, and myself, the son-in-law wiping away the tears of laughter. The joke was a masterstroke of black humour.
They had removed the grey man’s excessive lung fluid just hours ago, and he is in that fleeting sweet spot between pain and opioid-induced drowsiness.
My mother-in-law had patted his forehead several times, and he snapped at her that he wasn’t a damned hot-water radiator.
A nurse comes in with a glass of water and pills.
“Next week at the same time?” I smile at him.
The tired woman in white nurse’s scrubs faintly shakes her head at me.
3/
A frail darkness envelops the trio as they stop at the meadow’s edge to wait for the ship to pick them up.
The woods behind them are deep and rustling, yet thunderous in their stillness. It is quite contrasting with the situation half an hour before when they concluded the ambush. One of them, a teenage conscript, had succeeded in running away, and Sorkaii had told Iaanda to leave him be as he was of no importance.
He was slow to follow her sudden sprint and caught up with them as she had just cut the boy’s throat.
“Iaanda, I see the darkness in you, but I know you were not born with it”, whispers Sorkaii as a bright light descends through the dim clouds towards them.
Gaarnaq the drone quivers his sides, subtly disagreeing.
Whether we remember our lies of compassion as gloom muted, melancholy mellowed, or darkness frailed, we are captives forever of the gritty and sweet taste of charcoal on our deceitful tongues.
This text was first published on X (Twitter) and is © 2023 by David Pahor. No part of my stories should be used to train AI technology to generate text, imitating my writing style.
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