CHAPTER LIII: URGENCY

   The autumn of the year 35 was a puddle of tears and an irrigation channel of fears. It was not easy to overlook a prophecy when the threat becomes imminent physical danger. In a cold waiting room, Lucy was finally filled with apprehension but remained undaunted in the hope that, once something had happened, she would not consider more frightening possibilities, and continued to maintain her faith that her husband would survive. It was difficult to find words with which to persuade Nike, who wept inconsolably.

   The doctors had explained to them the situation clearly. Luke was full of pain, but all the time he was aware and after some tests, they explained to them what they already suspected: the beating had destroyed him both kidneys and they had to make a nephrectomy, remove his left kidney, now completely useless and which if it wasn’t removed could affect other vital organs. He was in the operating room and everyone looked restless and not knowing what to talk about. The operation, they said, could take several hours. Herbert Protch was there as Maude cared for the children and he wanted to convince them to sleep in Deanforest. Lucy and Nike would continue there, although she tried to persuade her husband that one of them should stay in charge of Paul and Kirsten and that possibly they wouldn’t be allowed both of them to spend the night in the hospital with Luke. But Nike said he would fill his time sometimes begging on the outside of the Philip Rage, at times waiting for Lucy to come out and explain to him how things went. Nigel said that he would take them by car to Deanforest in several trips, but Miguel, who had not yet gone to the Protch’s home, had convinced John to spend the night at Henry Shaw’s 'house'. Those days the others would at least not have to beg. Herbert and Maude would give them to eat. But all these plans were for later. First it was necessary to wait and see how the operation was.

   At the end it was more than three hours but finally he came out. It had gone well and he would now receive hemodialisis, but doctors spoke of the right kidney which was also in deplorable conditions and said he could need a transplant. Miguel and John were convinced that it was useless to stay that night at the Philip Rage, and went to the "house" of Henry Shaw and Nigel took on a single trip Mistress Oakes, Olivia, Bruce and Herbert Protch. Nike spent the night awake begging at the door with good fortune, as the ill people and their relatives gave something more than goodnight. Lucy came out at the exact hour and spent five minutes telling Nike, but Luke followed asleep until dawn. But at last he awoke. When he opened his eyes, he found the sweet eyes of the woman of his life.

─ "I can still see you, my love – he spoke faltering but safe -, to say goodbye to you."

─ "Do not speak thus, Luke. Nothing is going to happen. At the moment the operation was a success."

─ "How are the children?" – He did not want to argue, and changed the subject.

─ "Perfectly looked after at Deanforest. Maude stayed there and my mother is now with them. Yet they know nothing. Tomorrow we will tell them that father Luke is sick in the stomach and that he should spend a few days in hospital. I think we will not bring them here."

─ "I would like to see them for the last time before I go."

─ "You won't go anywhere."

─ "I see that you still have faith. Another question: what do you know of my brother?"

─ "I have phoned Jairo Yucuaiquín, but he has not picked up the phone. He might not be in San Pedro Nonualco. You know that they move through many places of El Salvador where a hand is needed. Perhaps it is good that James doesn't know anything."

─ "And what about Nike?"

─ "He is begging on the stairs of the entrance of this building. Every hour I inform him. Within ten minutes I will tell him that you have awakened. Then we will change shift, I will be begging and he will come to see you. Tonight he has not slept. I hardly have dozed off at all."

─ "Lucy, tell me the truth, what have the doctors said?"

─ "You know they have made you a nephrectomy. They say that everything has gone perfectly. Now they have to make sure that with the right kidney you can live. Perhaps you need a transplant, but they have still not given us security. So far you must have dialysis. You have to wait, Luke. But you've passed the first test well."

─ "My parachute is about to crash." –He gloomily smiled.

─ "Not always life provides us with a parachute, but the canopy of yours is still open. You should go through this hurricane, but you'll see again the breeze combing the Kilmourne."

─ "Finally my past has taken revenge. It had to be Bart. The blood..."

─ "I will never talk to him. I refuse to know him. Nothing unites me to that heartless man. Let him remain forever in his country of ruins I shall not go to."

─ "I am recalling the night that I fell in love with you. In Wrathfall Bridge, very close from here. There were few stars but we saw a couple of shooting stars. Now I can tell you that I asked for a family and the wish was granted. I will die if I have to die, in love with you, two children, a husband, a mother-in-law, our fellow mates, my brother and his wife, so many beloved ones. And I love you. I don't know if it is my last hours, but just in case let me remind you what is essential. Whenever I go, I have to go with your name in my heart."

─ "Your name is still in mine and there is no reason why it should be erased. To the shooting star I asked to be a lifetime with you and the stars granted that to me. I will not let you go without me. So many experiences and, believe me, they are not even half. We must stay together for many years. Fight, survive, we still have many alms to get. Life will give them to us if we keep our hands open. We will always be three. I will tell Nike."

  He found Luke almost sleepy, but when he came in he returned to consciousness. Lucy had told him that when he saw her he had broken down. And now a few fleeting tears escaped him unconscious when he saw again the other great love of his life.

─ "I don't know if this is the end, my love."

   Nike had swollen eyes and his heartbeats hurt, but he was able to keep calm.

─ "Do not speak thus, My Mate. You know that our wife keeps her faith and I cling to it. We have spent years fearing this moment, but remember that Bruce survived and he also believes that you will have the same fate and you will recover."

─ "What does Mistress Oakes think?"

─ "She can’t see anything, but she relies on Lucy."

   And he said nothing more. Certainly she didn't see anything because she said that she could not envision what could happen near her death. She thought that the third part of the prophecy would be fulfilled, but Nike didn't want to fill Luke's heart with sinister images.

─ "In case I don't have any other possibility, My Beggar, remember I love you. As much as that October 4 of year 29 when I fell in love with you. Well, now I can only live in memories."

─ "I only think of the days I still have to continue to learn from you."

─ "Do not forget, Nike, I came to the street only eleven months before you. Not even twelve months. That year 29 I fell in love with Lucy, I met you, our son was born, you stayed on the street, we made our Three and we conceived our daughter. A year full of wealth and learning - and changing the subject-, have you been able to sleep anything?"

─ "I have not been able to sleep anything. Nor do I believe that Lucy can. We have both spoken. Within a few hours you'll be again with her. Now she will take care of our children. Then she will be back, I will go to Deanforest, play with them awhile, the Protch will give me something to eat, a few hours trying to sleep something and return to the hospital. Tonight I will be here with you and our wife will do what I did yesterday and she will be begging all the time, but I will inform her and she will remain close to you."

─ "Remember once I told you: "if one day you cannot see me, because I have gone to where you cannot follow me...” If something happens, take care of Lucy, Paul and Kirsten."

─ "You told me about the harmony of the universe. I don't know what to believe, but if there is a great architect, he can’t have taken the trouble to build in you a mansion of wisdom to destroy it immediately and be again a site of ruins."

─ "The designs of God-Fate are unfathomable."

─ "They are, but you were given Beauty. And with you I learned that this is a garden where we, the gardeners, must find the tools with which to strip a rose of its thistles; a wheat field, where to gather a sheaf, a harvest to donate to our seed; an altar where with deity or no deity, we can sanctify the little things which build us; and if ugliness becomes wind, or rain that flooded us, we have to search the hallway or the tree that can be an umbrella for us preventing its drops; and if there is some fog, we must move away from dangerous walls and find the center of the sidewalk. Beauty is a collection of images and teachings. And this entire album of beauty has been filling with your pictures."

   They were days of blizzard in the heart and frost in the soul, difficult to work the streets and harvest the gifts. They could only rely on Luke to recover and, forgotten old prayers, they asked from the merciful chest of God-Fate or the everlasting harmony of Goddess-Universe. Everyone talked to him about peace and beauty. Mistress Oakes, so as not to evoke dire omens, talked to him about Lucy and Nike, how she had predicted that she would be a river of joy when she would dare to kiss without prejudice a bald head that needed her, of how with Nike he had won the future between losses and upheavals. Olivia told her how Paul and Kirsten were continuously asking about father Luke and their grandmother uselessly tried to avoid awful thoughts from them with games and tales but they only wanted to kiss his father and turn him into a prince and return with him to Neverland. Bruce spoke to him of hope, reminding him that he had already gone through that carousel and had come down intact. Miguel pointed out that after half a year without talking they had been born again friends as they had always been and renewed his promise to go to the street one day together. John told him of constellations and parachutes and joined Gemini and Leo under the same canopy.

   The Protch alternated taking care of the children with the hospital but repeated that with Luke another child had been born to them and they would not neglect him now. Nigel Matts remembered him that he had met him there when the crisis of Paul’s eyes and that child still needed to see the world through his father’s eyes. Samuel still recalled that revealing meal in which Luke had confessed him so many things, and since then he had liked to count him among his best friends and was coming to see him every day. Richard referred him how bad they managed at the bar without him, but told him how both of them had a tail star, of the Swan or of the Lion, and he could feel safe because the head was still giving brightness and showing the way. Anne-Marie could not come because she knew nothing. She was with Brandon traveling by Europe's most historic cities.

   And there were also the Outcasts. Enoch had found calm precisely when he camouflaged with the problems of other beggars who came to Earthkings and ensured that he would never again allow himself to fall in love. Vince definitely seemed to be reaching the old age with Katie Chamberlain. It didn’t seem easy that she might give up drugs, but she now betrayed nobody, and in him she found consolation in her frequent crises. He didn’t criticize her. He understood that her life was not easy, that she needed the security of his kisses and hugs. Sometimes she still blamed herself for Vera’s death, for having taken her into absinthe. In those moments, her partner spoke to her with more tenderness and reminded her how much she and Vera liked each other. Evelyn and Loraine hardly had any crises. Evelyn had fallen in love too and they showed that, against appearances, love can arise from any mud and be transformed into a statue and together they were still walking the streets on sunny or cloudy days and life was a kiss.

   When the wake of a fear splashes your shore, you can dare to jump the bridge that you have not yet experienced. And talking to Mistress Oakes, and because she could give him no answers, he dared to pay attention to her advice that, since she could see nothing, he quietly looked to discover the future path of the Tree-Beggar now with no branches, and as despair already possessed him without hope, when everything is already lost, see if there was still some food in his saddlebag of need.

  So he found a quiet place among trees away from the parking lot and he began to look. And he found himself with a shepherd dressed in stars and he wondered whether he could be God-Fate and he saw what could be either an unknown constellation or a wheat field, but in both there were three wheat ears, all fertile and erect, of the same age and of the same healthy colour of harvest, opened to the sun with joy spring. But suddenly it became night and a shadow of fear covered the countryside and the shepherd returned with some eagerness to what was a sheepfold, as if he had left some tasks forgotten and he pulled out an old sickle and with reluctance he reaped in a single cut the three of them, which in death were together as in life they had been, they were together and seemed to kiss, and recognized their two seeds of wheat, which would be planted again so that the harvest could be perennial in the threshing floor.

   Mistress Oakes saw him coming back more hopeful than fearful and approached him and spoke to him.

─ "Now I can read you. I lost the glasses to see the future, but your face is always a mirror. A wheat field and a reaper. No doubt you have thought about Olivia and her wheat ears. She will soon have to face a big loss, but I don't think it is Luke. Ah – she sighed-, and how do you interpret that stellar shepherd cuts all three of them with the same scythe?"

─ "You are incredible, my mate. I have told you nothing but from my mind you have developed the entire photo. Finally, you were right in that I can see, but I don't know whether I am able to interpret. And, however, I feel secure, my heart is soothed and my thoughts are calm. I think that we are the wheat ears and one night a shepherd will mow us three at the same time. I would say that we will die all three together. It is never pleasant to feel death in advance, but it has something calm to think that none should mourn the other two. If this were so, Luke will be saved."

─ "If Lucy has always had that security and you have it now, it will certainly be so. I can’t see anything. Talk to her, tell her what you have seen and your faith with her faith will again achieve the miracle. Your vision is consistent with what I saw. Remember that noticing a tree in flames, these words came to me: "but it seems that it does not want to burn. It strongly resists.” I did not see it burn.

   But Luke worsened. As the days passed it was evident that, although he never lost consciousness, he was increasingly weakened. A transplant was necessary or he might not live more than two months. He was already on the waiting list, but there was another possibility that doctors told Lucy.

─ "One of us could donate him a kidney. But it is necessary the blood group matches. Unfortunately, I can’t. He is A negative and I am not. But if someone matches his group, then he must have a histocompatibility test. As I have been told and of what I remember of their long explanation, it has to do with tissues."

   Then they were unanimous in that everyone wanted to donate him a kidney. Nike knew that he was A negative but in the end his tissue antigens were not similar. None of the other five was able to pass the first test. What could be done? Samuel did try and even his daughter Joan Weissmann, Luke’s boss, but they could do nothing. Richard Protch and Nigel Matts also tried. Herbert and Maude were also willing, but always the same fateful fortune. It was urgent to find Rosa and James. Perhaps being brothers, they thought, they were compatible.

   One morning, after giving breakfast to the children, Olivia had just arrived to the hospital when suddenly she found her brother. Politely she asked him:

─ "Is anything the matter with you?"

─ "I come because of Luke, Olivia. Your daughter has explained the situation to me, and I have come to the testing. Paul and Kirsten cannot stay without one of their parents"

   How strange it was feeling a burst of affection when the danger makes you remember that no matter how long forgetting has lasted if the same blood bathes your adversary! And with what unusual affection he had pronounced all those names.

─ "Hope you are lucky then." – She said without clear bitterness.

   Several hours later, she found him in the cafeteria. He was alone in a table. She sighed, took there her coffee and sat beside him. He was drinking beer. He looked at her as if he could not believe that his sister had sat next to him.

─ "I'm going to drink this coffee with you. After all you have come with the intention of saving one of my sons-in-law."

─ "Useless intention. I have his blood group, but I have not passed the test of histocompatibility."

- "You have tried. And I thank you. I can’t promise anything to you, but we can talk. What happens to me is that I still tremble remembering the days of Hunter’s Arrows. You resemble Kirsten too much. To survive I need to get away from a childhood that I recall happy and I have lost forever. And unfortunately you are still stuck to that old album."

─ "Kirsten... I'm still crying her. I have never been able to tell you, but her memory still haunts me. But I had to lament the loss of two sisters. I was without you first and I will never recover you. Maybe if I ask your forgiveness for the umpteenth time, you will stand up and go."

   He was afraid that the clear drawing of her sister would have its lines blurred at any moment. But she was still there and her strength seemed to waver.

─ "At least I promise I will hear you while I am having this coffee. Talking to you is painful, but I had to do it some time."

─ "You know? In the end your curse reached me. I never had a good wife or good kids. I have only sown incomprehension and collected solitude. I have gone through life stumbling."

─ "You will find someone better than Katie Chamberlain."

─ "You know something of my story?"

─ "Barely have I been following it, so yes."

─ "There have been some women, but I loved Katie dearly and I guess that what happened to me with her has hardened my heart. Well, you know I was in prison and it was she that reported me."

─ "Believe me that I lamented such a thing. At least I want you to know I’ve always been interested in you. I know Katie, but we hardly talk to each other. And I've more or less learned your way later and the other women who have accompanied you. I am sorry for the curse, Gerald. That I can tell you. There was a time when I was desperate and I would have needed some friendly arms which could lift me. But now I really hope that the smile of love can rejoice you one day."

-"Now I don't need it. It would be more urgent to recover you - and suddenly getting on his knees to the amazement of the whole bar, he made a new effort-. Olivia, I am really sorry. I was a fool. The words I told you were a consequence of an ill-mannered and despicable young man. But I'm now getting old and in my last years I need you. Fortunately, you've had more family than this fickle heart. Have you been happy in life? Answer me that only."

─ "Stand up, Gerald. I don't want to see you like that. This coffee I'll finish with you and then I will continue longer. You can't always live not knowing that long ago I forgave you. It was necessary we should talk. Have I been happy in life? I really don’t know. First I survived; I took strength from what I love most in life: my daughter. And finally they have been years finding more people to love. A fellow mate who I've always loved as a mother, new fellow mates with whom I have created new gardens of loves and among them Luke and Nike, whom I know you know. And two grandchildren, the seas of my rivers. They really are a family. And a good litter sprouted from that wolf of my husband. Do you talk to him?"

─ "He despised the Rivers very soon. He only came to see us to talk about divorce and when you divorced he never more wanted to know about us. Now if we meet, we politely say hello to each other, but we do not talk more. You had reason to separate from him. He has lived a shady path. Curse him."

─ "Years ago that I know you know Lucy and my grandchildren. I hope that you know that I never was against the possibility that you met them."

─ "I have always been grateful to you for that. Due to Lucy I have often known about you. And I also know Bruce, Miguel and John. And later I met Nike and Luke. Luke... When tests told me that I could not donate him a kidney I broke down. I feared that you would blame me. I would do anything for Lucy. I love her so much, Olivia."

-"I know. I am glad to know she has accompanied you. And I would never blame you for something which is not in your hand. Don't think that of me."

─ "Let me talk to you about your grandchildren. Paul is charming and if I can, I will help him one day to find his way. Now he hesitates among several options, but he is very young. The time will come when both of them must know who their father is and who is not and I will find impossible words if one day they need the help of their uncle Gerald. Now they know that they can speak to me about their grandmother, but not to their grandmother about me. And Kirsten... she is the living portrait of our sister. She even speaks to me often of the same issues: sunsets and butterflies and life that emerges in the river. Remember that she was always interested in the inhabitants of the lake, especially since they installed the stained glass to us. Well, I don’t want you to cry. With your granddaughter, I can see Kirsten again, but with a new heart. Just as charismatic but less vulnerable. And Paul fortunately does not resemble me and the new Rivers have thawed and they flow on the Leo shores of Elased and Regulus. And in this lake the fisherwoman Algieba, your daughter, who will take them in her boat to a placid shore. "

   The lake. Years of life covered in water until finally the waters were boiling. Painful or not, she had to recover her blood. They could not always be rushes from opposite shores. And from stagnant moisture, the river was again moving, crawling on still unknown landscapes but of well remembered swans and Olivia began to sense that she was in a calm harbor, a break in the turbulent journey of two rivers that could navigate again parallel to the sea.

─ "I have heard of the prophecy. But Lucy has never believed in it. And I… I cannot stand it anymore - and he sheltered himself in a trembling cry, as an abandoned child-, I fear that when Luke’s crisis is over, you won’t talk to me again. For God’s sake, my darling, decide what you will do with me. My heart could not stand losing you again."

─ "Gerald - Olivia knew finally that only a new weight in her heart could balance her weighing scales-, we won’t be far from each other again. Give me a hug. I cannot stand it either, but even if the wind bends me, it finally has to straighten me. And when for years they have swept us away to different towers, the weathercock tells me there is only a possible course and I love you. Together we will accompany my daughter and my grandchildren. Now the only important thing is Luke. I need some time. At the beginning I won’t talk to you much. But for how much we love Lucy. For Luke and Nike. And for the immense love we both have for Paul and Kirsten. Hug me."

   And when she embraced Gerald she finally knew that her heart, empty for so long, was filling again with bloods and that with all her nerves bristled, her heartbeat finally ticked the clock of calm.

─ "Come with me. I want you to finally meet my mistress."

   Mistress Oakes saw them coming hand in hand and she finally knew that she missed nothing now and she could leave her child in the conquered shelter of her brother.

─ "Madeleine, I introduce you to my brother Gerald. Gerald, she is the fellow mate of my life, my dear Madeleine."

─ "I will leave that name for you, sweetheart. Nice to meet you finally, Mistress Oakes. Some things your granddaughter has told me about you. I want to be one more friend. But I'm not starting well. I have not been able to save Luke."

   For The Tree-Beggar increasingly lost more leaves and he was more defeated by the winds. Medicine was only science and not a miracle and they did not know with which they could strengthen his trunk. It would be impossible to keep him erect long without a graft, without a transplant that did not arrive, because they could not find a sower who could winnow his seeds which would make new wheat sprout among the tilted wheat ears. His heart dwelt in the same withered threshing floor and among frightening winds life escaped him.