Chapter 7
A little time later we heard someone
knocking at the door.
«Is everything all right?» –our guest asked. I went nearby George for
asking him how he was feeling.
-«I am very well, thank you»– he answered trying to hide from Mr Winningoes’
sight. Then in a low voice, eluding the hearing of Mr Winningoes, who however had
kept discreetly quiet distant, he added in anxious tone: - “What are we going
to do? I can’t stand staying here anymore. Let’s jump on him and...”
-«Just excuse me for a while, my friends »- the man said with persuasive voice,
still holding politely at the same distance–“before you turn a decision, that
is up to you to be taken, I would like to ask you only the courtesy to be able
to end my own history. You don't have to be afraid of me: if I wanted to hurt
you I would have been able to do it and I will show you that I am not lying. Follow
me, please.”
So saying he started walking for the long corridor. We followed him turning on the left; then we stopped in front of a wooden small door, on the top of the ample staircases that led underneath. He fumbled in the lock reassuring us with a mild look. A long snail iron scale, introduced us in a square big room. The room was bare and badly illuminated. Mr Winningoes directed toward the opposite wall to the entry and after opening a big window he said:
- “Please, lean out and take a look down there.”
We leaned out. The view gave on an ample downed square, visible over the
brushes of tall and
mighty trees. I recognized the landing airfield of which Mr Winningoes had
informed us, early in the morning. I realized that we had to find us on the central
tower of the building. Then he opened a small door wall and after fumbling in a
small niche recessed in the wall, he gently told us, winking again with the chin besides the
window:
- “Have a look now, would you!?”–
We benched outside: the open space, just a while before, plainly empty, was now occupied by another
vision. I kept for an endless time watching at it, astonished, incredulous,
confused, while my heart was galloping fast and the blood pressed on to my
temples as if it wanted to squirt out of them.
I crossed George’s eyes: he also was astonished and interdict; then I looked again down there. With unchanged
emotion I observed that scene once more. The same scene that we had seen, some
days before, not far away from home, was there now, under my eyes! Everything was
perfectly equal: the high enclosure of tables, the big working machines,
immovable as they were sleepy animals, the long iron pylon with the writing 'Winpey', in red-dark block letters. It was with admiration
and curiosity that I turned toward Mr Winningoes. I wanted to know, I had to
understand what was going on!
The old man fixed me intensely with a mocking look. Fantastic and madding,
diabolic and fascinating Mr Winningoes! What kind of cheat was he plotting at
our expenses?
He fumbled in the niche again and invited us, with the usual accomplice air, to
look down.
The scene had changed again: I immediately recognized the alley of the agency
‘Geenna Geld', with the big front door and the cardboard insignia moved by the wind as that day. This scene,
never the less, didn't have anything unreal. It seemed simply and naturally to
be there, after all, where our eyes were seeing it, identical to the past, but
still live and present. There must surely be a trick! Of course it had to be that!
But which one?
- “I understand your wonder, my friends, but I can
explain you everything".
What you see does exist indeed. Physically, however, it exists in another
dimension. If you were not so convinced that only exists the reality that is
shown and explained to us since our birth; if you, that day, had doubted of
what your eyes were perceiving, and with a straight mental attitude you had
verified the materiality of it, you would be aware that everything around you
was just an illusion and there was not exactly the things that you were seeing;
actually they were there, but in a different way from your being here now, or
this house or those trees that outlined the landscape over there!”
-“Just a moment!” –George cried out, showing off his best grim–“if that day we
had taken some pictures, would have come out those things that we perceived or
they would not?”
-“A camera is only a machine, without any mind, with no soul. I don't know what
it would have come out if you had taken any photographs of it. Both of you
would have certainly come out. Or may be only one of you would have been
impressed. But don't be concerned at it.
My words didn't want to make any offence to you. I have spent all my life on
studies and meditations to understand these things that only appear to be inexplicable.
I assure you however, that they show
such appearance in the vision of our ordinary reality; in the description of
the world that is provided by former and daily education, because we believe it
as absolutely sure. As if our life were all in the banal obviousness of which
we feed our mind. But is not this way! Oh certainly is not!
- “And the two men that we met there, on that day? Were also they an illusion?”
–George burst out again in a pugnacious tone, not at all satisfied by those explanations.
- “Such a question, my friends, belongs already to the following of my story. I
hope you will allow me to conclude with it. I won't subtract me to your opinion
and to your judge, but grant me to defend myself simply telling you ‘till the
end about the suffering of a scientist, of a father and of a man. I want you to
know, if this can reassure you, that I have only killed other men during the
war. The war is always absurd, in some way and is pursued by manhood for greed
of power, because men are sick of weakness and only in power they succeed in
finding an antidote to their innate deficiency. And though after the war, the
value of human life, for me was under graded, I have been preserved by the
shame of killing another man and I think that it could not be otherwise, for
the man predestined to lead the humanity through the path of the peace and the
truth!”
These words of the man seemed to reassure George. From my point of view there
was not one single reserve on that man. My adhesion to his application was
totally unconditional. We silently agreed to listen to the final part of Mr
Winningoes’s story. After all we didn't
still know, incredibly, what that man really wanted from us. And in a way or in
the other he succeeded capturing our attention again.
-“Since you kindly grant me your time in order to conclude my story, we will do
it sipping a good cup of tea that I want to prepare myself for you”–took back in
jovial tone Mr Winningoes, squirting from his eyes a radiant and comradely satisfaction.
He led us back through the staircase down to the big room where we had our
former lunch, with the table still prepared; finally we found, passed another
door, in a pleasant small room, furnished in Renaissance style, with some
pictures on the walls, which seemed to be stupendous reproductions of work’s
talent of the best pictorial school of that memorable epoch.
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