“Even enemies have from time-to-time consciousness”

“Where’s Eva?” Brian asked Alfred Stonebridge who was staring at him as if he saw a ghost.

“Eva? Which Eva?”

“What’s wrong with him?” Brian wondered while looking at his rival, who was watching him with a cockeyed look. “Don’t tell me, is he drunk so early in the morning?” but when he looked closely, he understood that Alfred was almost out of reality, slowly shaking because of the fever.

“She left,” finally talked Alfred to him. “She left 17 years ago, to not ever return to me and it’s so cold inside me right now, when I’m looking around and I see nobody by my side. It’s so cold.”

The one who left 17 years ago was Helen Walker and not Eva, but Alfred wasn’t able to distinguish what was real and what was fake at that moment. The only one who understood instead had been Brian, who turned his back to Alfred and approached Bardain. “Go for the doctor,” he ordered to the teamster, who left the property in a rush, without asking additional questions.

“Wait! Wait!” Alfred yelled after the leaving carriage and started to run after it, ignoring Brian, who was trying to make him stay in place, but Alfred didn’t want to listen and this disobedience was closely related to his seeing things: Helen was in that carriage and he must stop her. Yes, he must stop her from going away again and apologize in front of her for everything he did to her.

“The curses of others finally reached him,” Brian whizzed through his teeth while looking with disgust at the madman, running after an empty carriage and calling the name of the woman, who he hurt the most, and Brian also can’t believe that Alfred Stonebridge is about to go crazy and this without any effort made by him.

“Mister Stonebridge, let’s move better inside. She will come back,” but instead of agreeing, Alfred exited the property and continued to run after the carriage, till it disappeared in the distance. Then, Alfred stopped in front of the field, where once he cultivated jasmine flowers, but it was now heath and he slowly let himself fall into knees.

“It still smells,” he mumbled and right away he laid on the ground as if he was listening to the refreshing breath of the soil. “I still can feel it, but it’s so far away from me.”

Brian finally caught the man up and stopping next to him, he started to breathe loudly to recover forces, but when he saw Alfred staring at him with kind eyes, Briand didn’t know what to think: “Is this man pretending or is he really mad?”

“I know what you are thinking, mister Beneath! You are asking yourself till where will reach my ravings, but to be honest, I keep myself in the same thoughts from time to time.”

“So, he recognizes me. It’s a good sign. I think,” Brian thought and approached Alfred one more step, but he didn’t dare to initiate a conversation, because he didn’t want to give explanations about his relationship with Eva, even if Alfred seemed to have no idea about it.

The spring gusts of wind are still carrying in their current body a small part of the winter harshness, but even so, outside, while watching the surroundings of the fields that once were full with jasmine flowers, make you think about the impossible: about past loves, about times that never return and more important - you start to tell stories that you wanted to keep them deep inside you, but now is the time to let others know them too.

“It started about 20 years ago, isn’t it?” Alfred asked Brian, without watching him.

“Yes. 17 to be more precise, but … I don’t think that’s the proper time to discuss such things. Not here.”

Silence surrounded them both after such words, but something inside them was scratching their soul, as if a chicken was hunting worms in the soil, looking for answers. But Brian was afraid now to know that answer. He waited for it for so long, he dreamt so many times about it, but now he’s afraid, and not because he unawares became vulnerable or cowardly. Simply … he was afraid not to lose Eva later, after finding out something he wasn’t meant to know.

But not the same thought Alfred seemed to have. “I loved her,” whispered the man, still kneeled and grabbing the fresh and damp soil in his hand. “But I didn’t know about it until not long ago.

My biggest regret is that I hurt her consciously because I wanted to be accepted by her father, who disregarded me and always saw in me a scalawag only. But I had a heart too. I wanted to be accepted and …”

“What about her? What about Helen? She also wanted to be loved, appreciated, and accepted, but instead of having a great life by my father’s side, you stole her from here and left her to die in misery. At least it’s what I think that it would have been fair for her.”

“What about her soul?” and Alfred looked at Brian for the first time, in those 40-50 minutes since he had been there, waiting for something unpredictable, ready to happen. “Your father never asked her what she considers and what she wants.”

Alfred’s remark provoked a smile on Brian. “And did you ask her?”

“Even if you doubt it, I asked her. Yes, I’m a jerk and a slacker, whatever you want - I am, but at least I had the shame, stupidity, or the courage to ask her what she wants and she chose me. It’s because of this we ran, but what she didn’t know … probably … was the fact that I more loved money than her.”

Staggering to his feet, Alfred finally stood up. Brian stretched his hand, by reflex, to help a poor man, but Alfred had his own pride and he denied the help. Being it because of pride or only because he understood how much suffered Brian with his father’s death, caused by Alfred, the man decided that it wouldn't be fair to accept somebody’s help. Not now. Not after finally understanding how much he hurt the people who ever surrounded him.

“I had many women in my life, but none of them loved me as sincerely as Helen did. She had a big and kind heart. She could forget and forgive everything, and she waited for me, but I wasn’t there. I came to her only when it was too late and she left. Then, the one expecting me had been Eva, but again I sent her away to pay my gambling debts. And now, when there's nothing left next to me, I wonder for what I lived an entire life.”

Suddenly, Alfred’s left hand touched Brian’s left shoulder, taking him by surprise, but watching him, Brian saw the man looking in the distance, past him and he looked in the same direction, but he saw nothing.

“She used to spend hours there … on that snag … waiting for me and reading. But now there’s nobody waiting and it hurts. Don’t do what I did, son! Don’t waste your time for rubble!”

Alfred walked away, heading toward his house, slowly crawling his feet and bending his head to watch down, at the ground. It looked like a prisoner serving his sentence, but only his hands grabbing each other at his back revealed the world a simple walk.

Brian continued in place a long time after Alfred’s departure. He was staring at the log and imagining a teenage Eva reading a novel and waiting for him. He saw at that moment again the innocence in her eyes, how he saw it in her glance the first time they met at the lake, and Brian felt guilty for that. For taking away her innocence and instead of making her his wife, he made her his mistress, and for some unknown reason he compared himself with Alfred because he knew that he did the same as Alfred did to Helen 17 years ago, but in his own way.

Behind Brian is left only a large, empty field, expecting for a new lot of jasmine flowers, but there, in the end, remain only weeds and a lot of regrets of those who left, because that field was now without an owner: Alfred had died the next day, after his last conversation with Brian, in front of the jasmine nest. “Pneumonia,” the doctor told Brian after checking Alfred, who right away went to bed … he was tired … tired, and anxious to leave this place. “He won’t last long,” the doctor said again. “It will be a good idea to ask his children to come if he has one,” but Brian had no idea about where Eva could be and he felt that Alfred would die without somebody to mourn his missing, to cry for him, and to call him father for the last time.

***

“Forgive me, Eva, for hurting you,” the letter Alfred left for Eva had been started this way and then left unfinished on the bed.

There were still a few words more, but those were addressed to Brian: “I made a mistake when I didn’t accept the deal you have proposed then. I was a fool. Now, my daughter, instead of being the mistress of one single man, she’ll be the lover of many,” but Alfred didn’t know, till the last of his breath, that his wish had been fulfilled and that Brian and Eva were already having their story and a common baby was coming into this world. A baby that was meant to wash the hatred and the shame between Stonebridge and Beneath.

Reading the letter, Brian decided that Eva shouldn’t know about it or she will suffer more, so he burned the letter, right after reading it, but when he was about to leave the room, still without knowing that Alfred was dead, he saw a piece of something black exiting from the under the pillow. Approaching it and dragging it out, he saw a small, black diary … Helen’s diary, where she wrote her last thoughts and lessons for her child, but that diary never fell into Eva’s hands.

“He read it,” and Brian smiled. He couldn’t believe that simple pneumonia could completely change a man like Alfred Stonebridge, but when he heard Bardain, calling his name from downstairs, in such a hurry and preoccupied as if somewhere was a fire, he left the room and took the diary with him.

“You must follow me, mister, Beneath. It’s urgent!” the teamster told him.

“Where? What …”

“To your father’s grave. You must see it by yourself,” and both men got out of Stonebridge’s house in a rush.

***

Alfred’s dead body was lying on Lord Baron Beneath’s grave as if he had been looking for forgiveness from the one whom he practically killed. His head was next to the wooden cross, while his right hand was touching his chest.

“Repentance!” whispered Brian and turned his back to the grave and simply walked away. “Finally, you saw justice is done for you, father. It’s over” and it definitely had been over, two days later, when Alfred had been buried without a ceremony and without a daughter to mourn his loss.

Brian didn’t assist at the funeral. He considered it being hypocrisy, because of the hatred and rivalry they had all those years, but anyway he passed by and left a white flower on the grave, two days later, as a sign of forgiveness and of dreaming about a new life, but fate had other stories to weave and Alfred’s funeral day became a mourning day for one more family when the world found out about Edward Anderson Bell’death and it was a sign that the wind is blowing from another way and Politics changes were about to happen.