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

And it was with these words that Diseny left our company for a while. Close by, a group of teenagers, who paid us no heed, were taking a break from water skiing. Thousands of people had chosen the seashore as a place to rest and enjoy the wonderful breeze. Most of them were women, the majority of whom were wearing clothes surprisingly warm for this weather.

“I didn’t want to start a conversation in front of the physician,” Stefan said, interrupting my daydreaming. He leaned towards me so that we could hear each other and added, “But I could have asked him if, in those blessed years he feels nostalgic for, feelings had the same depth they have now, if they could reach the uniquely high level they reach now.”

He spoke slowly, avoiding looking me in the eyes, and I had a hunch that he was being careful not to say anything that would hint at my feelings for Silvia. I was sure that he had figured out what had happened between us; but he was the only one, nobody else. But as I’ve said before, they don’t care for gossip here, nor do they show it when they know something.

“Then he would tell you, Stefan,” I said, “that it really wouldn’t be a great loss if the world was deprived of all the pain and suffering of the heart…”

“He wouldn’t say that,” said Stefan. “No matter what he tells people, deep down he knows, like all of us. Like a real Troende, he firmly believes in the Volkic preaching. He couldn’t, therefore, deny that the Lipvirch

, this ‘gentle illness of the heart’ , as you once called it, is one of the main reflections of the Samith, as is pure religious emotion, art, the great ideals and eternal spiritual values. It is the legacy of our ancient civilisation and the old dream for universal love. And while some might support that the sight of a naked woman might not diminish the Lipvirch, ‘the pain of the heart’, historical data and past experiences suggest otherwise. Remember, Andreas, the female dancers, their divine figures and stature… I know most of them and I know that they don’t only have divine bodies but also divine souls that are worthy of being loved to the maximum degree. Didn’t they look impressive in their full-length kjoles under the moonlight? Syld himself told me that looking at them revived some of the happiness that he used to derive from fairy tales when he was a child. Wouldn’t the charm and majestic presence of these women be lessened if they lay down or walked around naked among us?”

I left Stefan without an answer. His words about the “reflections of the Samith” haunted me, reminding me of something similar that Silvia said the other day. I remember asking her, “Where does this whole thing lead? It’s such a shame for our love to go to waste, not to last forever…”

The look of satisfaction on her face was beyond words! It was a mixture of joy and pride!

“Whatever happens, keep this in mind: it’s wrong of you to say that it’s a shame for our love to go to waste; this is the whole purpose of it! That’s when you can truly call yourself blessed! This love has now become our possession, no matter what is to happen next. It’s something that can never be taken away from us. It’s a part of another life, of another world now; it’s a part of the Samith.”

I turned to Stefan and in a voice louder than I intended I told him, “Tell me, then, Stefan. Is this whole world with all its truth, which the physician talked about, just a microcosm?”

“There is no person that believes the opposite,” he answered calmly. “And he’s not wrong about what he said, that the nudity of a young and beautiful body is a pure truth of nature; but it’s not the only truth and it’s definitely not the greatest one. I told you that the Lipvirch, the pain of the heart, is a reflection of the Samith, the Great Reality we now know to exist; we’re not making assumptions anymore, we know! So, nature, in turn, is another different reflection of the Samith. But the Samith itself is something superb; much greater and much more powerful than all its reflections. Even today, if someone spoke to us about how extremely great it is, we wouldn’t be able to conceive it. But nobody talked to us about it; we saw it with our own eyes! And that’s our main difference.”