"A Story in Breaths" — 7 — A Human Being

Thoughts from the Heart

— 7 —

— A Human Being —

A child — hardly had life dawned in his eyes when the fates let down a veil between it and him. They toyed with him and made sport of him, as though they held some grudge against him; until, when he was about to step into the seventh of his years, they robbed him of a mother, at the very time when he needed her most, in that hard season.

He was not one to ask questions, as little ones usually do, nor did he press insistently in the pursuit of knowledge; rather, he saw more than they see, and heard with two keen ears; and so he understood, with all his awareness — in the midst of his play and merriment — and decided on the spot...

If he committed a mistake, he did not care, because he tried everything for a pleasure native to his own soul, without seeking the help of others — indeed, without letting his inner self be worked upon by them.

His mind, which was always at work, was a raw mind; habits, for all their abundance, had not been given the chance to take root in it. Nor was it stamped by the divergent currents that surrounded him.

He loved play as no boy like him ever loved it: he never wearied of it, nor did his need for it abate, nor did his hard muscles tire of it, until a late hour of the evening.

And he was forever busy devising pranks for all the people of the house, small and great without exception. If one of them fell into one of those pranks of his, or nearly did, he would begin to laugh and set others laughing, his exquisitely formed features breaking open upon a present happiness — as though life for him were some rare, delightful thing with which the jaws of the hours are filled, and which comes out of him in broken bursts of laughter.

He was, besides, light and winning of manner, pure of heart; he could hardly leave the house for a moment without the family feeling an emptiness where he had been.

He was likewise pleasant in company without descending into triviality, even if his companion sensed in him, at first sight, a native rawness of temper and a self-willed arrogance.

And he was pure of intention, frank of opinion — often to the point of much embarrassing the situation, whenever an adversary sought to strike at him slyly, at the expense of his good nature.

From the time his mother was taken from him, a sister three years his elder took charge of him — took charge of him with attachment and with ardor... And he yielded to her, drinking in tenderness from an unfailing spring; and he loved her in spite of all the loud mockery his realistic nature carried; and she loved him too, indeed for all the thinking her transparent idealism carried; and nothing joined the two of them but this great love, for all the difference of their natures and their inclinations.

For she would not have yielded up even a small measure of that extreme idealism to anyone but her brother alone, whom she began to prefer above her very self, until it sometimes seemed to her that thanks to him she lived in a flood of happiness.

For in taking care of him, she felt that he had added to her independent personality the quality of motherhood... only it was not granted her to understand that she was in fact wronging him by imposing that personality upon him.

She was truly a mother to him — but an obsessed mother. In watching over him, she watched over him with much solicitude, and with obstinacy as well; yet an obstinacy that left no room for resentment, but aspired to implant good habits. And while she counted his small faults against him lest he grow used to them, black thoughts would sweep over her, insistent, if one day he fell ill or was wronged in some matter.

If he did not apply himself to learning with the application of the diligent, we see her pressing him without respite, reading him the lesson over and over, till he almost reckoned that this lesson had become for him a nightmare among nightmares; yet he accepted it without complaint and without grumbling. That was because he loved her truly, and felt for her a respect he had never felt for anyone else.

And because of this love and this respect, he began to hide from her certain of his affairs which he thought might pain her, were she to learn of them.

But when the nature of things compelled him to turn away from school, he saw no way out but to convey it to her by hints; then he set about using the family as go-betweens, so that this might be a paving of the way to an understanding between them.

At last it was granted him to obtain her consent — though only after no small amount of give and take, in which he was the victor and she the bewildered one who gave in.

And he went striking out into the world, a boy not yet fourteen, alone save for a hope that spurred him on, relying on himself, to live the life that suited his temperament.

This self of his tempted him greatly, and solitude opened before him door after door, which he entered headlong; he did not want to ask — he wanted to live this questioning as far as life allowed him, so as to stand upon reality himself, without any curtain.

And he took for himself an unjust motto: not to believe everything that is said, or everything that is seen — all this without giving a thought to the ill effect this might leave upon his dealings with his friends and companions.

Yet in spite of that he was, in everything he did, truthful and true; and for one whose way this is, people's breasts open wide, and his lapses find a door through which to be dismissed.

And his sister began to swallow choking griefs one after another, without gentleness and without respite.

It came easy to him to step outside the circle of his surroundings without regard; but this going out of his was not so for her, since their family, respected in standing, had bounds and conventions which none of its members had ever ventured to overstep; and if he did not take heed of them and bind himself to them, it would be no great matter for that family not to count him among its members.

And at that hour, what would his stand toward it be — and what its stand toward him?