The boy made of memories

a tale

There was once a boy made of memories.

But not, let’s say, in a conventional way.

Oh no.

His body was a mere puppet, a mean to an end.

His feet, hollow mismatched shoes with several laces and papers glued to them. His legs and arms a collection of the most random artifacts one could think of. Keys and books and leaves. Pens and feathers and stars. Jars with butterflies and empty jars. Socks and frames, sweets and bottles of forgotten wine. Candles and lamps and oh, is that a crown- right there?

His head was very particular, and it was difficult to point at what exactly composed it. Buttons and pieces of fabric. Little notes and poems and love declarations. Dying flowers and thorns.

The memories were infinite, and even as new ones were added each and every day, they could find a way to fit in the thin body of the boy.

Why, one may ask, was he made like that, when everyone else was not?

Well, it was his job to collect them, of course.

The memories.

He ran all over the world, searching, discovering, collecting.

Picking and stealing and never once giving one away.

He had been doing that since he could remember, never once stopping, never once questioning his purpose in the world.

He remembered all sorts of things.

So many lives and loves. Losses and triumphs.

A family laughing near a lake. A girl picking strawberries and another singing in the opera house. Two lovers, in secret, keeping their love to themselves and a girl filled with envy that was watching them from afar. A painter painting the stars and another painter yet, in that same place, although in a whole different time, painting the exact same sky, the exact same stars, although neither would ever know.

There were so many memories. All so unspeakably unique and beautiful.

And so, the boy’s happiness came from that. From observing and wondering. From dreaming and collecting more things to admire and dream about.

For all his life, it had been enough.

Until it was not.

Someday, something changed.

As it always happens in every story, there would be a moment, capable of undoing all that was done, all that was known and accepted, that would build a new path, a path until now hidden by mist and the illusion of life, and this path, when enlightened, was difficult to forget. Once it had appeared, it would always find a way to intersect other paths and root itself into one’s mind, always pushing, always persuading us, for once, to follow what can be rather than waiting for when there’s no more time, no more paths, and all that’s left is what could have been.

And it was during a night of howling and lamenting winds that this particular moment would take place.

That night, naïve to how his story would change, the boy made of memories was walking and wondering alone, as he always was, through a garden.

He was there not because a memory had drawn him there, but because there was something else about the place that seemed to call to him. Like the sea calls the sailor, the sword calls the soldier, the void calls the poet, the lover calls the lover, the garden called the boy.

Although not the garden itself, but something about it. Some eerie and yet magical sense that almost forced him to go there. The promise, of perhaps the precise lack of it, the questioning feeling of the place, as if the scenery itself could not properly decide where it fitted in the world.

The garden was as something from a fairy-tale.

Tall, towering bushes of a very dark green formed something like a labyrinth. There were roses and vines and trees that seemed to cover every surface.

Even in the night the colours were vibrant, somehow distinguishable with only the light of the stars and the Moon to guide the boy’s way.

At every turn it was possible to find the most rare and uncommon marvels.

Statues and shelves of books and empty teacups in a forgotten table, fountains of the most different shapes, cages and keys and paintings and what it seemed to be a stage with even a piano visible on top of it, although now entirely covered in vines, and so many other things that were as treasure to his starry eyes.

He walked, mesmerized with this place that looked abandoned and still was so alive, and stopped in front of a shelve of books.

As he was going to reach for one, something caught his eyes.

A figure, sited by a fountain of an angel.

He silently went closer, careful not to be heard.

And when he was able see the figure clearly, his mouth opened in fascination, completely bewitched by what he saw.

It was a girl.

She was gorgeous, the most gorgeous creature his eyes had ever seen. Nothing, not even the most delightful memory he’d collected could dream of resembling to her.

She looked like an apparition, too graceful to be real. And yet she seemed almost part of the place, her brown hair falling in chaotic waves, only long enough to cover her breasts, her feet were bare and muddy as if she had just gotten out of the bushes.

She was sited there, by the fountain, naïve to the fact that she was infinitely more beautiful, more angelic, than the angel of the fountain could ever be. She seemed to be reciting some poem, but her voice was too low for him to hear. 

The boy could not help but to step closer.

The girl turned and gasped.

She looked so scared, so surprised by his presence. And he too was surprised by the fact that she saw him, truly saw him when no one else had, that he couldn’t speak.

She wore only a thin little white dress, that went almost to her knees.

He had no words to describe her.

‘Hello?’ she said, turning her head a bit to the side.

‘Hello’ he said. His voice failing, as he hadn’t spoken in hundreds of years.

They were looking at each other, curiosity taking over both.

She took a step closer to him, looking at him with wondering eyes.

‘What are you? I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone like you before’. She looked at him, fascinated.

‘I don’t know’.

‘How can you not know?’

‘I don’t know.’ His thoughts were blurred.

‘What are all those things in you?’

‘Memories. I collect them.’

‘Why?’

The boy tried to think while they circled each other,  as if trying to understand what the other was.

‘I don’t know.’

‘You seem not to know a lot of things’

He didn’t answer.

‘Are they all yours? The memories?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, you collect them. But do they belong to you?’

‘Of course.’

‘How do you collect them?’

‘I search for them. Steal if I have too. But mostly I just find them around, when people no longer care for them.’

‘Don’t you have memories of your own?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Well, you seem to have a whole lot of memories from other people, but what about the lives you’ve lived, the adventures you had? Are them in you too?’

The boy stopped walking.

And then he realized that no.

He couldn’t remember. He couldn’t remember where he’d been, all the places around the world he’d gone, they were all faded to someone else’s memories. He never talked to anyone, he had never loved, had never laughed, had never lived. Had never seen anything with his own eyes, except for lives that weren’t his own.

And then time seemed to stop, air seemed to fail him, and the stars seemed to rain over him.

He fell to the ground.

‘I’ve never lived.’ He said, with silent astonishment.

The girl seated on his side.

‘What do you mean?’ she said.

He started crying, starlight running through his cheeks.

‘I’ve never lived.’ He turned to her. ‘I’ve been in this world for so long, and all this time, I’ve been living through other people’s lives. Always longing for the next memory for me to feel something. I’ve never asked myself why I did it. I just knew I had too, as if was my mission. And then I would watch them and feel completed, while everything else just floated away.’

She looked at him and held his head in her hands.

‘It is never too late to start living, you know.’

He looked at her and after some moments in silence he said:

‘What were you reciting there before, by the fountain?’

She looked away. ‘Oh. A poem.’

‘Can you recite it for me? Please.’

She turned to him again, not meeting his eyes, and recited:

            “You are left

            unremembered

            in a room

            of forgotten things.

            Your fair hair

            falling in waves

            touching your untouched

            bare skin.

            The music is quiet in your head

            the silence of the room is loud

            wind blowing in your face

            but no windows for the air to pass

            A dream, perhaps

            where feelings are kind

            the reality hurts

            because there is no one there.”

She finishes and look at the boy, her eyes unbearably sad.

His heart aches with the sight.

‘Is the poem about you?’

She nods.

‘How could someone forget you?’

‘It’s not anyone’s fault. I was lost. In case you haven’t realised, this is a place for lost things.’

‘How long have you been here?’

‘Longer than I can remember.’

‘Is there no one else here?’

‘Oh no. No one has come here in years.’

‘How is that possible? Everyone seems lost these days.’

‘But not in the way you and I are. Most people today are lost to ordinariness, to routine, to the illusion of life, or better saying, the illusion of society. I am lost because I have not yet found myself. Most people are already too deep in the lie to come back now, others simply don’t want to, for the risk is too great to compromise their safety. They don’t understand the simplest truth of all. And so, few are the ones who dare to dream.’

‘What truth?’

‘Isn’t it obvious? You have to be lost to find yourself. Otherwise, you’ll only have the slightest grasp of what you could have been.’

‘How could you not have found yourself if you are so long in here?’

She looked at him.

‘I don’t know. I guess I needed someone to find me.’

‘I found you.’

They sited there in silence for a second, just looking at each other’s eyes.

She said then: ‘Your eyes are like stars.’

But before he could answer, a man suddenly appeared in front of them.

The boy and the girl gasped and got up.

‘Who are you?’ the boy asked.

‘No one.’ Said the man. ‘A mere messenger.’

‘Who send you?’ asked the girl.

‘The Moon, of course.’

‘Why are you here?’ the boy and the girl asked at the same time.

‘Because a decision must be made.’

The man continued, looking at the boy: ‘People don’t care for memories anymore; they don’t need you to keep them any longer. Your mission in the world is over. You can leave this life and start another. However, the memories must stay here. In the garden. Not just the ones you collected, but the ones you made in this labyrinth.’

‘What? No recollection at all? And what about her?’ the boy asked.

‘I am afraid she has been lost for too long, and if she went back now, the world would be too different for her, and far to cruel. She cannot leave.’

Then the man looked at them both and said: ‘you have until tomorrow night to decide.’

With that, he disappeared, as if he’d never been there, leaving the boy to decide his fate.

The girl only let go of his hand and said: ‘perhaps we should sleep.’

They laid there, by the fountain, the girl and the boy side by side.

She fell asleep so fast.

The boy, however, didn’t sleep at all. He stayed there, looking at the girl he had just found and couldn’t bear to lose and thinking about the messenger’s offer.

The moment had come at last. A new path had been enlightened to him, and he knew that if he stayed there, he would always think about the other path. About the life he could have had.

So, he just stayed laid there and whispered to her, thinking she could not hear, even though she could, that he didn’t want to forget her.

When it was morning, the girl was awake and was as beautiful as the night before.

They ate berries and talked the whole day. He talked about the memories he collected, she talked about the garden and the things she discovered there, and of course by then they were already in love.

Just before the sunset, the girl said to him: ‘You have to go. Or you’ll forever regret. Live all the lives you didn’t live before, and when you come back, tell me all about it.’

He looked at her confused. ‘Come back?’

She went closer to him then and whispered in his ear: ‘If you get lost, you’ll find me. You don’t need to remember me, I’ll remember you. And I’ll wait for you, after all, I’ll always be here.’ And then she kissed his cheek, like a promise.

And just before they noticed, the messenger of the Moon came back.

Nor the boy nor the messenger said a word. Neither had too.

The boy just walked up to the man and turned one last time to the girl to whisper: ‘I’ll come back.’

And just like that, the messenger of the Moon took the boy away, and all the memories left him at last.

-

Many years later, a boy was born.

His hair was like the moon, his eyes like the stars.

He spent his life always feeling like there was something missing, as if he had lost something and did not know what it was.

However, he lived his life to the fullest, and never let the false temptations of life or its lies fool him.

He loved and laughed a lot, and he had the most incredible adventures one could ever conjure.

Even so, he always felt deep inside him, that there was something not quite right.

It was in his death bed that he remembered, after living all he ever wanted, a dream he had very long ago, about a girl and a boy and a labyrinth, and a promise long kept, a life in wait.

And so, the old man took all the strength he didn’t have and walked.

He walked and walked and walked without rest, and only after there was no more breath is his lungs did he look around, and realized he was lost.

-

Many say the man was never found.

But only a girl with balletic feet and the face of an angel knows the truth.

That he went back for her, just as he promised so long ago.

He was a boy again, no longer old. Tall and beautiful, fitted for the angel that waited for him.

When he saw her, everything made sense again, and all the memories came back.

He looked at her, as if for the first time, and whispered very low: ‘you are left unmembered’.

And the girl that didn’t recognize the boy at first, as he was now made of flesh and bone, suddenly looked at his eyes that were like stars and whispered back: ‘in a room of forgotten things.’

He smiled then. And just like that it was as if no time had passed at all, and all the space between them was closed.

She ran to him, and he caught her, and he kissed her with the longing of a whole life, and she with the longing of thousands.

She said then that she loved him, had loved him since the first time she saw him, so many, countless nights ago.

And he said that he had loved her even before he saw her, and that she was the magic that draw him to the garden the night they met.

They are there still. Both remained young forever, discovering the secrets of the labyrinth side by side.

And even though the boy no longer collected memories, he was made of them, and from them his happiness continued to come.

But this time, the memories were all his own.

And that’s the story of the boy made of memories, and if he was the one telling this story, he would just like to enlighten, that if you ever feel lost, that’s the way is supposed to be, for everyone needs to be lost at one point if they ever hope to be found. And also, he would like to remember that there is always another path, and even if it’s hidden, one must not hesitate to take it and follow one’s deepest dream (for more absurd it may seem) as soon as it appear, for even if he lived more lives than most people, he only ever needed one.

-by Antônia D.G. Lau