„Will we live again times that will never turn back?”

Bardain’s trembling hand grabbed the box, the size of a bible, that was under his bed and he slowly dragged it to him, almost noiseless, till it has been only half-seen. Then, the movement of the hand stopped and froze above that „ghost-book.”

And… Brian used to call that box „ghost-book," each time he was seeing it through the cloth of the ragbag, which the old teamster used to take with him everywhere, calling it „saint relict with memories,” which was making him feel as if having a big treasure, something that was awakening emotions in his chest, feelings that made his breath stop at that moment and his hand froze above the box.

However, even if that box was something that Bardain cared the most about, and even if many could often see it, nobody knew what exactly was kept inside it. And that nescience wasn’t caused by Bardain’s stubbornness of not showing the box’s content to the world, even if it was his desire, too, but because the object itself wasn’t something very interesting to watch.

Besides its small size, of a cubic rectangle form, what, as we said before, looked like a bible, with those few insignificant perches above it and of its color of a dark brown, the box was really crude, and many of those who ever saw it felt sick only with thinking of touching it, and this was due to the fact that the box was made from a wooden material, enough coarse, even uncouth we can say, and it was often making someone think that it was in fact greasy as if being kept not at safe into the teamster’s ragbag, but somewhere at the kitchen, where a chubby and ruddy cook would have „fried” it continuously into lard.

But it was just an appearance. However, the only one who knew that was Bardain, whose heart started to pound, catching sight of the two angular edges seen under the bed and also because of the half-seen pattern from the middle, a pattern above which the old man passed the tip of his fingers, deeply feeling its outline that was representing two letters hidden in the middle of a five-pointed star.

Suddenly he winced, hearing the bed squeaking, and he right away looked there. But Stan hadn’t awakened: he only moved in his sleep, turning his face toward the old man. And the boy smiled, so sweetly smiled, that made the old man sketch a smile too, even if before this his heart had pounded with sadness.

„He probably dreams about something beautiful,” the old man told himself. „Let him dream then. He’s still young. He still has time for sorrow and disappointment,” the invisible lips of Bardain’s mind whispered, and his hands, so coarse and calloused because of harsh work and memories, stopped touching the box and held the edge of the blanket, which he later pulled up, covering the boy’s body up to the neck, not to feel the cold.

Stan, feeling the warmth around his body, wrapped himself in the blanket, catching its edges under his body, as if he was Moon laying on a hot kiln, and, soon after, the boy started to „purr” like a cat and it sounded so comic, heard coming out of the boy’s mouth. „He had probably learned it from the cat while sleeping together,” Bardain made a joke in his head and, after that, he turned to what he was doing, but not before making sure that the boy was sleeping like a log.

Only then did the old man dare to take the box out of under the bed and, holding it with both hands and somehow squeezing it not to drop it, even if it wasn’t heavy, he crawled on the floor toward the door of the stove through which the fire was roaring because of the hard oak wood he put inside the stove only a few minutes ago just to warm better their little room that they have received from Brian and Eva. But… even if the old man knew that they gave him and Stan that room in good faith, he still considered it as being too much.

„We’ll be fine in that small room from the stable, too,” Bardain told Brian when they came to Image. „There’s not necessary to bother by offering us a room in the house too. It’s only for a few days.”

Brian opposed that idea instead: „You aren't anymore in the flower of your youth, Bardain and times are harsh now, even if it had to be long autumn and warm as the flowers of the apple trees were announcing when they appeared on the tree for the second time this year. More than that: we don’t know for how long we will be here, for even if we planned to stay here for only a few days, Eva seemed to think differently. She missed so much these places, and, in her condition, we can’t allow her to travel that much.”

„But, mister Beneath, as I recall, these places remind her so much about her past pain. Especially about the fact that Alfred Stonebridge sold her to the „Red Ants” and…”

„I know, but still, I can’t oppose it. You know very well that there isn’t the perfect moment for such a talk. And… there’s one more thing that makes me think that it’ll be better to stay here for a while: the memories.”

„The memories?” the old man asked, confused.

„Yes, Bardain. The memories that must be „healed” similar to the soul, for only this way we can’t move further. And… Eva needs this… to forget and to forgive.”

After that, Brian turned his back on the old man and, at a slow step, headed toward the entrance, leaving Bardain and Stan to bring the bags and the few things they brought with them inside the house.

„Don’t touch that!” the old teamster demanded in a shout to Stan that day, seeing him trying to take the ragbag in which he was keeping his things and his box with memories.

„What’s this, mister Bardain?” Stan inquired, amazed to see how the old man rushed to hide the box, revealed by the edges of the ragbag that moved aside, uncovering the wood of the box during the travel.

„Nothing important,” the old man rushed to say. „At least nothing important for you to poke your nose in it. So, be a good boy and just do your job for what you’ve been brought here. The bags and those boxes won’t move alone in the house.”

But the old man seemed to be sorrowful for talking like that to Stan that day, but… a word once said is like a sharp nail stabbed in the wall: it leaves deep traces on it and no matter how much you’ll try to cover it with the finger, not to be seen by the eyes, you still know that it’s there and that it will be always there.

Just as Bardain knew about the nail from his heart, stuck there by a woman he had loved long ago, and, even if the time took that nail out of the hole, there was still an empty place there, that had bled at first, but which later cicatrized, a scar which he still had on his heart.

„It will be history,” you told me then. But … even if time has passed, the pain is still there, Alice, just as our memories are. And our life has happened, too, just as the time of turning back our lives to look for something that we had once, but which we won’t have anymore, ever,” and the old man’s hand had slowly and carefully opened that box with memories and dreams, filled inside till the brim with old photos, with letters which had been written once with love, but which remained only a relic of time. And there was something more in that box: a white kerchief, with a succory flower embroidered on it, that was laying on the bottom of the box at that moment, carefully folded to keep its form, but such yellowed by time.

Taking the kerchief in his hand, Bardain’s eyes filled with tears while his heart was madly beating in his chest as if his heart was a nail on which a hammer was hammering on its small head trying to make it enter the wall or in wood, recently cut from the trunk of an old tree. Then, Bardain got the kerchief closer to his eyes, to see it better because of his myopia, and only that way he could see the two small letters embroidered under that flower: a red A and a blue B. „Alice and Bardain,” the old man murmured, passing the top of his thumb over them and feeling their embroidered form, still outlined on that small piece of cloth. „And again, useless memories, life, and I feel pain again in my heart, even if it was supposed that I’ve forgotten all this.”

But he hadn’t forgotten. And he couldn’t forget anything, for only because of him and thanks to him had happened what happened in the past and, choosing with his mind, and not with his heart, he had broken four wings, two hearts, and two pairs of eyes cried after busting up. But now, many years after that event, he wasn’t sure anymore that what he had done then was the right thing and it was making him feel remorse often lately.

„Maybe, we should have chosen differently then, Alice. Maybe, if we had gone onto this life’s path together, we would have had a different fate now, we would have had children and happiness together. But so, getting to the end of our life, the only thing we can do now is to look through old photos and ache for old memories."

And Bardain held the kerchief to his chest and closed his eyes, baleful, and he didn’t see Stan moving again in sleep and, awakened by a banging noise, he opened his eyes and saw the old man’s hunched back, who was a little bit bent in front while holding something to his chest.

„What is he doing?” the boy wondered, still lying in the bed. „Is he crying?” he thought, seeing how the old teamster’s body was slowly shaking under the mirage of the cry.

Narrowing his eyes, Stan could eventually see a sharp corner of something brown in front of the old man. „The box!” the boy had a notion of what happened, remembering that he saw that brown wooden corner of the box when they came. „He probably is a friend with the melancholy now,” the boy murmured, and, feeling again asleep, he closed his eyes. But… the boy didn’t fall asleep right away. And Stan also didn’t know why he couldn’t sleep, even if that melancholy which he mentioned wasn’t his.

But yet, he started to feel it so alive in his heart and, putting his hand to the chest, he touched it and felt his heart madly beating. Then, he squeezed the fist and started to tap his chest with it to calm down. But… what can one do against a stubborn melancholy?! If it gets you, then you can’t get rid of it anymore. So, Stan turned back time, in his head, in his faraway past, and in his lonely years, when he was spending the winters and the cold or rainy days in the corner of an attic, half uncovered because of time and weather, holding the broken cloth of his coat to the chest to warm his body, and dreaming to have at least a small piece of dried bread. Now instead, being safe and not feeling hungry, the boy seemed that he died and that life sent him to the heaven, where only those with a pure heart can go while those old times, those moments of suffering and pain were just a bad dream, a time he hopped not to live again.

„He probably lived something similar in his life,” Stan said to himself, again opening his eyes and seeing Bardain’s trembling hand carefully putting the kerchief again in the box, smoothing it out not to crease it. Then, one by one, he was handling the old photos in his hand, was watching them, was caressing their yellow corners, in the end, to put them over the kerchief, in a pile. And those photos were stollen fragments of his youth, moments of the days when he had been luckier than the previous day and he could earn more money and put something in the pocket from his chest, scrupulously keeping that coin there for spending it by buying one single pleasure he had in his life: to take a picture of himself. And Bardain „borrowed” that pleasure from his old love, who was telling him all the time while they’ve been together: „one doesn’t live a normal life if he lives it in vain, and the only richness of a man should be memories: physical and mental,” and through physical memories, Alice meant the photos which one can look at while being old and live again, even for a short time, those moments from the past because the wheel of time moves only with the help of the photos.

***

Leaning in front a lot and stepping with difficulty, Alice Huntington was heading toward her room, barely crawling her legs on the floor.

Within a stone's throw from her was Moon that was sneaking behind her, for she knew that if she enters the old woman’s room, she won’t be left at fate’s mercy, but she will find a warm blanket on which to purr her dreams and a warm hand, too, to caress her black fur, feeling so pleasant that slight cattish tremble, known by everyone as a purr, a tremble that often shudders you inside and makes you also feel as if purring like a cat.

But… as if feeling the cat sneaking around, Alice stopped and waited for a few moments. Moon stopped, too, and she also waited, not understanding what made the old woman stop in such a place as the middle of the hall was, where it was cold and only the blind eye of the candle from the woman’s hand was illuminating the room.

„You’re again sneaking behind me, you, little ball of tricks, aren’t you?” the old woman told her, and right away two blue eyes, blinded by time, focused on Moon’s black ones.

The cat instead only briefly meowed, a hint that she wasn’t aware of what Alice was talking about and that she was going her way, which by the chance turned out to be the same as the woman’s way.

„Don’t even try to lie to me because I know you!” Alice hissed through her teeth, reproachfully, but with no offense. „You try first to enter the room and after that, you are begging for attention, and, eventually, you’re sleeping in a warm place next to the one who showed you mercy, right?” the old woman scolded Moon again.

And again, Moon briefly meowed: „what’s wrong with this? Isn’t everybody doing the same?! Well, if you, people, aren’t doing this, then, undoubtedly, the cats are. So… with no offense,” Moon’s eyes seemed to tell Alice, who, despite the cold that was making one shudder, sweetly meowed, a hint that it was just the perfect time to go to sleep.

„Be as you wish!” the old woman eventually dropped her bundle and, after another few meters of crawling her legs on the cold, cement floor, she opened the door and entered her room.

Moon didn’t wait for the invitation to enter, but she did this at the same time with Alice, sneaking between her legs that she was about to knock the old woman off her perch. „Goodness alive, you, sneaky animal,” Alice mumbled. „You could have knocked me down, no other!” But, despite the old woman’s transient upset, Mrs. Huntington didn’t chase her away, and the cat right away lay on the warm floor, next to the stove’s door.

After closing the door, Alice headed to bed. Halfway instead, she stopped and looked at the flames, and her eyes got life for a few moments in the dance of the fire. Then, her eyes moved to a chest-of-drawers that was to the left of the chimney, closer to the door.

Watching for long at a drawer that was on the upper part of the furniture, the second in the first line, and in which she was keeping her coffer with memories, Alice briefly smiled and looked at the floor, as if she felt ashamed. After that, her footsteps headed toward that furniture, and her hands, wrinkled and bony, opened the drawer and took out of it a similar box to the one Bardain had. But this new coffer with memories had something different, too: the letters engraved on the box’s lid were reversed - A&B instead of B&A how was written on the old teamster’s box.

And the old lady’s hands caressed for long the wooden material of the box that crossed harsh times, and she especially caressed the letters engraved on it and, holding the box to her chest, Alice Huntington eventually headed to the bed and sat down on it, putting the box next to her.

The squeak of the old loops, which was a sign that the box hadn’t been open for long, or it at least hasn’t been greased with oil for candles, made Moon raise her head and watch the old woman. After a few seconds instead, finding nothing interesting to watch, she turned back to her purr.

Not the same happened to Alice, who that coffer full of sins and memories reminded her of so many past moments: times when she has been happy, moments when she loved a lot, and when she had felt what felt the man that had held her hand or kissed her lips for long, but it also brought in her mind moments when she had suffered a lot, when life knocked her down, just as it has been the loss of her child.

And two yellow bootees were bearing witness of those times, closed in that box, right on the photos and onto so many small things the old woman considered important for her and has decided to keep them namely in that box.

Taking the bootees in her hand, Alice caressed their form, and her eyes filled with tears. But those tears weren’t only for the lost child, but for everything that happened to her, like the life she considered heaving lived in vain, and she started to think so after understanding that she was so lonely and that she suffered so much in her life.

„If we had chosen a different path in life, maybe we wouldn’t have been alone now,” Alice murmured, watching the bootees. But the old woman’s voice eventually aroused Moon’s curiosity who, thinking that the old woman was talking to her, rose from her place and, at a slow step, headed to the bed. Then she jumped on it and got her little, black nose close to those bootees which she saw on the lady’s palm and she smelled them for a long time.

Mrs. Huntington eventually smiled: „they are also dear to you, aren’t they?!” she told the cat. „They had been so dear for me all this time and maybe they would have been something valorous for my son, too, if he had lived after his birth,” and her eyes have been again bathed in the tears of the soul and of nostalgia.

As if she felt the pain that was holding the woman’s stomach as in tar, Moon abandoned the smelling of the bootees, which actually weren’t something that important to her, not being tasty to eat, maybe only for playing with if Alice allowed her doing this, and she right away lay on the woman’s lap, sticking her body of hers, and she again started to purr her spindle of dreams, but without knowing that her purring was so much calming Alice’s tormented soul.

And, the old woman held eventually those bootees to her chest, with both hands, closed her eyes, and deeply breathed in the barely warm air of the room, despite the fire that was still burning inside the stove, hungrily eating the oak logs which Alice put them inside the stove not long ago. After that, as if turning back to reality from her not that long travel in time, Alice’s hand started to caress Moon’s back, while squeezing those yellow bootees with the other hand.

„You hadn’t been a mother yet, Moon, and maybe you don’t understand me now. But still, I consider that you'll agree if I tell you that there’s nothing more killing than a mother’s pain and there nothing more destructive than the love of a hurt woman, of an abandoned woman. That’s why I understand Eva so well: I lived something similar in my youth age, I’ve been also betrayed and hurt, and I’ve been also knocked down and forced to live in the shadow, with fear, with regrets. Because of this, I want a different life for her. But it seems that the women’s fate it’s the same regardless of the time she lives: to love a heart that will later betray her, leaving her alone, abandoned, grieving, prey to the pain and to the times that won’t ever turn back.”