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

And then there is that charm of the place name: the great Stella Maris Park, the Little Anolia, Rosenborg (a simple district of Markfor, no relation to the great state of central Europe), the two Fiammes—the east and the west—Fiammarosa and Fiammazzura, the seven-lane Roads of Jasmines (parallel and numbered motorways), ancient Magenta… I get drunk at the mere mention of the names… And strange as it may sound, I felt a pang of jealousy when I heard a ten-year-old boy that I ran into on the street two days ago so naturally talking to his mother about their coming back from Smirilud, on the west side of the town. I was jealous because he was born here, he speaks with such ease about all kinds of things, he mentions with such naturalness the name “Smirilud”, he lives among them, he remembers names from his earliest years. As for me, who knows how long it’ll take for these places to accept me as “one of their own”?

(Later)

Stefan finds all this impatience, thirst, enthusiasm and overall “fever” of mine normal. It’s the same thing that Jaeger had told me about five months ago: that if I could get used to the idea of my unbelievable, personal destiny and could finally let my heart breathe, incredible images and experiences were awaiting me, unattainable by any other man of my era. And he was right. I never forget how much my mature friend helped me tame my nerves and anxieties and calm down, look my destiny straight in the eye.

PROMINENT INHABITANTS OF MARKFOR28-XII Again

(At night)

This spiritual El Dorado has no end! At some point, when you get out of the settlement and into the open spaces, you feel like you arrived at the outer regions of this giant state. And suddenly, behind the dense trees of the large park, you see another city popping out of nowhere and the lure of the unknown flares up again inside of you.

“Markfor is for all of us who were born in this ancient Italian land, and share its pride and joy,” Stefan told me tonight. “It is proof that, no matter how many misfortunes Europe had suffered due to the criminal naivety of its own children, the human mind never faded under the Mediterranean sky.”

At some point I asked him how it would be if people from my era and of my generation came here. Would this place change them? He told me that it depended on the mentality with which they arrived. Would they arrive with the mentality of the old times?

He considers this matter for the most part as a purely internal one. He sees it as a question of preparation. Then he said something—I don’t know if he did it to make me feel better—that gave me courage: “In many aspects, your heart was quite prepared for us. And yet, think how long it took even for you to detoxify from the poisons of your time.”

His way of thinking made me smile.

“It’s not a compliment,” he said gravely. “Jaeger is the one who first said this about you in his closest circle in Norfor. And you know well enough that Jaeger doesn’t pay compliments.”

Then I opened my heart to him and talked about all that I had seen in the forests of Filiatura with its freshly washed, light-coloured pine trees, about the crowds that flocked to the docks of the Transportation Cooperative, where they drank iced and sugared mineral water in the shade, about the happiness that fills my heart every time I see couples on the street. I told him that it feels like I have found the right climate for my soul to grow.

“I feel like all this is mine too,” I told Stefan with a chuckle. I was laughing at myself since I was speaking with the naivety of a child, avoiding his gaze.

Stefan grasped my hands, trying to make me look at him, and told me, “Of course they are yours too! They are yours if you feel them yours! That’s how you should

feel. You have become one of us; that’s why I’m now holding your hands. That’s exactly what wealth of heart is all about: being worthy to rejoice with everything and live everything. The landscapes, the sky, the songs and all the divine messages of the Samith. That is true richness of life and not spending a lifetime toiling unnecessarily in order to make everything yours! Woe to those who wait to first buy something and have it in their name until they can start enjoying it and feel it is theirs.”

“That’s how it worked in my time.”

“I know… You even had individual ‘land and property registers’,” he chortled somewhat sarcastically. “How did you manage to bring so much misery into your lives? That’s some perception of happiness you had back then!”

I remember that at that exact moment he raised his hand and pointed at something outside the window. “How would these gardens and those flower beds make us happier than they do now if they were our property? Would the relief that they offer to the eye and soul be any different? Trust me… Rich is the man who can enjoy them; not the man who possesses them.”