Chronicles From The Future: The amazing story of Paul Amadeus Dienach

“The profits I had made were sufficient,” he replied gravely. “It was someone else’s turn to replace me.”

“And what sort of job did you do?” I asked, adopting a similar gravity of tone.

“Oh, I used to do something beautiful,” he sighed nostalgically. “Part of my good fortune was that I was given one of our more artistic jobs: we made combs. Mostly for women. I worked there for two years. Millions of combs passed through my hands. I remember thinking about how much hair that had been combed by them, the millions of young girls that had looked at their reflection in the mirror with pleasure while wearing them, the millions of plaits that had become tangled in them. If combs could talk, each one of them would tell me incredible stories. And I’m proud of my creations, which were the product of two of the most fertile and memorable years of my youth.”

His final words were filled with true emotion. But I stayed faithful to the cheerful tone of the beginning of his monologue: I didn’t want to show more credulity than I should. “That must have been interesting,” I said, awkwardly smiling again. “This story of the lucky and prematurely retired industrialist is definitely an interesting one, to say the least. Did our other rich friends have a similar fate, perhaps even starting from their early school years?”

“In the beginning, when I talked about luck, I was just joking. It’s not about luck; it’s an institution. You see us now, living a life of comfort, but all of us, men and women have been through that. Every single person you’ve met and everyone you’ll meet in the future, including Silvia, Aria, and Hilda, were ‘partners’ from the age of seventeen to nineteen. After finishing their basic education at school they went and earned their living. They worked in construction, in food, furniture and clothes manufacturing, in public transport, in utensils, machines, in everything you see around you and everything you can imagine. And if their lives are easy now, it’s because they dedicated themselves wholeheartedly for two years, and that required a great deal of effort. Thus, neither did we burden our parents financially, nor will our children burden us. Before our ‘service’, the previous generation worked for us, we did the same in our time and now, it’s the youngest generation’s turn to work for everyone.”

If I was sure that Stefan had stopped joking, I’d have a thousand things to ask him. But I’ll have time to judge if all this is true. For the moment, I just wanted to somehow switch the conversation to what I intended to say. “In any case, given my situation and my justifiably great curiosity, I think it’s not too difficult for you to understand that this air of relaxation and well-being is becoming almost agonising for me. So I was thinking if we could somehow exchange this holiday atmosphere with a typical image of modern life… As for the people, I find them all more and more lovable with every passing day—especially you and Hilda. I wish I could have you with me all the time.” Silvia’s name kept echoing in my mind. It so happens, sometimes, that we avoid talking about what interests us most…

“A typical image of modern life…” Stefan repeated, gradually speaking louder in a cheerful manner. “Did you say ‘a typical image of modern life’? Well, for the majority this is pretty much the most common way of life now. Simple life, surrounded by the beauties of nature, carefree, cheerful, among friendly faces and our loved ones... It is a life without ambitions or the slightest desire for posthumous fame, without the need to perform great deeds. To give the Ilectors and the Lorffes

their large palaces with all your heart without any secret desires; to live free and, above all, unfettered from all sorts of projects that will, gradually and without your realising it, enslave you for your entire life; to stay away from any contact with the institutions of our times, few though they may be; to see your life flow in obscurity among the treasures of the heart and of nature, happy in your anonymity, and to occasionally lose yourself in reading or in the pleasure of being a sensitive admirer of the fine arts; that’s the image of modern life you’re looking for!”

You could see that he was thrilled by his own words. It was obvious that for years he had been building his lifestyle around the imperatives of his own psyche and temperament and he wouldn’t let anything and anyone change that.

“You don’t understand me, Stefan,” I continued. “It’s not as much about the way of life as it is about the world as a whole and its people. After entering this developed community with its extremely cultivated and sophisticated —and “superior” for that matter— people, with their impeccable manners and civilised lifestyle, isn’t my need to see how most people live justifiable?”