A Ballad of Time and Madness

"Isabel!"

The voice sang through the streets and danced with expectation.

"Isabel," it cried again. "Isabel!"

The voice was a song, and it was the song of a man beholden to nothing, a man on the verge of storied accomplishment, a Conquistador under the arches of the chamber where his treasure had hidden for centuries. The song was mournful, having been uttered only in whispers and cries for over a decade. It was fearful, having been the theme of countless nightmares. It was hopeful, tinged with the magic of dreams and an unquenchable thirst for passion. And it was powerful, indeed more powerful than any tune in the long history of Time, but let us come to that later.

The voice sprang from the lips of our Conquistador as he sprinted down unfamiliar streets chasing after footsteps. A single turn remained in the road ahead, a blind corner between two souls and their destiny. But destiny is a shady thing, a mistress of the future, easily cast aside by the greed and jealous nature of reality once two souls are reunited. Reality, it's been said, maintains a disturbingly unromantic outlook on the nature of souls.

But Fernando, for that was our Conquistador's name, darted around that final turn with abandon, searching for his destiny, longing for his Isabel. He knew she was nearby, and his news could wait no longer. How many years had he worked toward this moment? How often had he dreamt it, rehearsed it, played out its conclusion in the quiet rooms of his apartment? When the questions came from worried family, when the bill collectors knocked down his door demanding payment, when other women snuggled close in bed, naked, satisfied, and asked why he was so distant, so untrusting, so secretive, what answer did he always want to offer? What answer justified their concerns? It was an answer he never spoke, because they could never understand. The answer was Isabel. And the answer would always be Isabel.

He sang her name again, and as before the song spun with expectation, licking at the cobblestones, twisting around the street lamps. It filled the night with warmth and anticipation, and every pair of feet walking the streets hesitated. Every man felt a pang of empathy. Every woman with a romantic heart recognized the longing, and each secretly wished she was the object of the singer's desire. Longing of such an exuberant nature is rare, as is the love that propels that longing into madness.

Isabel was a romantic soul, but there is a difference between wishing you were the object of someone's affection and hearing the wind cry your name in the night. Fernando knew this. He wanted to reach her before she fled in fear. And there she was walking with friends, ahead in the faint glow of a sidewalk streetlamp. They were heading home, all five of them, from a night at the theater, and they stopped to listen when they heard his song. He watched them tease Isabel, amused by the coincidence of her name on the tongue of a mystery. Perhaps they didn't yet understand, and perhaps that's why they turned, startled and in unison, when his footsteps chased them through the night.

"Isabel!" he cried. He stopped a dozen paces from the women, and a moment later Isabel emerged, at long last, stepping forward out of the crowd. She was as beautiful as Time itself, and he should know, for he had an intimate relationship with Time.

"Fernando?" she asked. It was only partly a question of identity. Mostly it was a demand for answers. She could fit more meanings into a single word than anyone he knew. But it was his name, and they were her lips, and nothing else mattered.

"I've been looking for you," he said.

"And you've found me. But why?"

He smiled at her. It was a proud smile, a naïve smile, a smile blinded by too many years of imagination.

"Don't grin like an idiot," she said. "It's cold, and my friends have places to be."

"Send them home. I have something to show you."

"Show me then, and be done with it."

"I did it, Isabel. It took me a long a time, but I found a way. You asked, and I succeeded."

"What did I ask, Fernando?"

"Remember your words on the pier when you touched my hand?"

"No."

"Come now, you remember. Under the stars, gazing at ships on the Med. Your hair was crazy from dancing in that lucky westerly wind. You touched my hand and wished upon the moonlight…"

"Fernando, that was fourteen years ago."

"I know you remember. It was your wedding night, and a woman never forgets her wedding night."

"Can you blame me for trying to forget?"

One of her friends, standing in the group of confused women, asked, "Is everything okay?"

Isabel turned and stepped backwards, nodding her head. "I'm sorry, Fernando. It's nice to see you. Been a long time. But I’ve got to go. Take care of yourself."

Fernando reached for her arm. "I guess you don't remember."

"I'm sorry," she answered, pulling away and turning to her friends.

But our Conquistador was not so easily discouraged. He suffered, as all daring explorers do, from an abundance of ego and pride, and why not? He had achieved the impossible. And he saw hesitation in her steps.

"Isabel," he said. "Let me help you remember."

He lifted his chin then, inhaled, and began to sing. Isabel, to the surprise of her friends, stopped walking and turned to listen.

His voice began low, faintly audible beneath the sounds of wind in the air and leaves on the road, but soon it grew bolder, his words louder, and the wind gained strength. The Heavens twitched, the ground laughed, leaves jumped into the air. Clouds parted and the moon spun. They heard tides crash against invisible breakers in the distant sea. He sang, and the world lifted itself up into heightened awareness, and those who at that moment breathed the earth's air ascended into calm euphoria. They were drunk on the magic of his melody. And when he reached the song's crescendo, the last word of the last chorus, it being the wondrous and fantastical name of Isabel, the stars began to fall from the sky, cascading in a sparkly fall of illumination, as though the universe might collapse upon itself but remain beautiful amid endless destruction.

When he stopped singing, there was stillness. And silence.

"That was lovely," Isabel said with a sigh of bewilderment. "Mesmerizing and haunting and beautiful. Thank you for singing it to me." She stood sideways, facing neither him nor her friends, confused about which way to turn. "We did have a wonderful moment on that pier," she added. "I've never forgotten. But that was a long time ago, and I need to leave now."

Fernando's smile was broad and proud and happy.

"Goodbye," she said, but confusion had crept into her voice. Or maybe it was fear. A stoic, grinning fool can be an intimidating sight. As she turned and stepped that first step back to her friends, the confusion and the fear fell flat on the stones underfoot, and everything she knew about the universe proved itself unproven.

Her friends, like the world around her, were motionless. But you mustn't confuse an absence of motion with stillness. People can stand still, unmoving, as Fernando did, but there is always motion. Their tongues lick their lips, their chests swell and contract, their fingers twitch, their eyebrows furl, their hair blows in the wind, their weight shifts from foot to foot, and they grimace and sigh and blink with agitation, especially when, like her friends, they've been waiting too long. But her friends did none of these things. They waited like images in a photograph, snapshots of a moment in time. On one girl, a scarf hung at an impossible angle, as though she was spinning as she froze. Leaves on the cobblestones balanced on their edges; some even floated in the air. She looked further into the distance. A vagrant under a bridge had bent to pick up a bottle but never straightened. A candle in a window did not flicker. A boat on the water did not rock. And the sounds… There were none. No wind blowing past her ear, no crickets chirping, no distant train whistles, and no lapping of the sea against the docks. Everything had stopped. Or nearly everything.

She turned to Fernando, who continued to smile. "What happened?" she asked.

"I told you," he said. "I did it."

"What did you do?"

"Think, Isabel. Remember. We met months before you were married, and we fell in love. Tell me you remember."

"I remember that we met."

He laughed. "Of course you couldn't admit you loved me. That was our unspoken secret. But you were seven months with child, and the wedding would go on despite our secret. The cruelty of Fate would catapult me forever to the realms of friendship. And we had resigned ourselves to it. You know it's true."

Isabel looked at her feet. She did not argue.

"And on your wedding night," he continued, "while the guests danced and drank and celebrated, you snuck off for just a few minutes, across the patio to the pier, where you knew I'd be waiting. And we stood there together for a long time, gazing across the sea. Do you remember what you said?"

"I'm afraid not."

"I confessed a profound sadness that you and I never had our moment, that we never enjoyed the pleasure of intimacy or the laughter of young lovers, that ours was a tragic love unlived, cast into the role of reality's understudy. And you put your hand on my hand, and you said to me…

"'I sometimes wish we could stop time, Fernando. Then we could have our chance. Then we could share our moment. Can you stop time?'"

"My answer, of course, was no," he said. "But I can now.

"Look around you," he laughed. "For years I thought about it. I locked myself away and contemplated Time. Eventually I discovered that Time itself is alive. There is no secret to it, no undiscovered formula. There is simply Time. And Time, like all living things, can feel. And so I built contraptions to poke it, to prod it, to arouse it. I tried to scare it, to chide it, to tease it. But Time is a wise and patient soul, not easily coaxed or conformed. I built radios with which to speak to it. I invented vehicles with which to race it. Soon I had no money, no food, no friends, but there was always Time. And when all else had failed, there in my apartment, beneath candlelight because the utilities had shut off my power, I began, with no other options, to sing. And something magical happened.

"At first I sang of lost love, of desperation, of longing. And the winds would blow and the clocks would spin slower. I sang of war, of hate, of vengeance, and the clocks spun faster. Soon I discovered it was not the words that mattered but the melody. That was key. For each of us is a note on the scale of the world, and each of our lives can be stopped or started so long as we are part of that melody.

"Teach me," said Isabel.

"I cannot."

"But why?"

"Time is not mine to control. It may play along to my music for a while, but I cannot stop it forever. It would take years to teach you, and we have only a few short hours. Not enough time to teach, but perhaps enough to begin our moment…"

Fernando put his fingers to her cheek. She stared at him, amazed, confused. And he kissed her.

"No," she said, stepping away.

"This is what you asked for, Isabel."

"I don't remember asking."

"But you did. I know, because I've thought of nothing else since. And now the world is stopped. All the world but you and I. We have a moment now, a moment to live our dream, a moment to stretch that night on the pier into a magical moment between moments, a time without Time, a single night that can live in memory for all the single nights to come. It is ours."

Isabel turned back to her friends and stared. They remained motionless. She let her gaze drift across the landscape, and she marveled at the eerie nature of a timeless world. Fernando heard her swallow hard before she spoke. "This," she said, pointing to the night in every direction, "is a phenomenal gift, Fernando. I imagine it is the greatest gift the world has ever seen. And I can do nothing but bow my head in awe, both for what you have achieved and for the emotions that must have driven you."

"Those emotions needn't remain unspoken," he said.

"But yes, of course, they must."

"No, Isabel. Time is a poor keeper of secrets, without doubt. But Time cannot hear us now."

"Do you know where I'm going, Fernando?"

"You needn't go anywhere. The world will wait."

"But I have a home. A family. A husband. Two boys asleep in their beds."

"They will wait for you, Isabel."

"Of course they will. But what would I say to them in the morning?"

"Excuses won't be necessary. They don't know the world has stopped, and they won't know upon awakening."

"But I'll know. Don't you see? When you and I stood on that pier, I hardly knew the man I was marrying. I knew my son only by the jab of his foot against my ribs, and my youngest wasn't more than a passing comment on the tongues of the newly wedded. In some ways, I felt betrayed by the world, and so betrayal was as natural a thing to me as the waves beneath us. Touching your hand on that pier, wishing for so much more, longing to disappear with you into the sand beneath the planks and feel your passion just that once, such things did not raise the flag of betrayal then as they do now."

"Love is not betrayal, Isabel."

"But acting on it can be. Whether Time is busy with itself or no."

Fernando began to comprehend, and the shock displeased him. It must have been apparent on his face, because Isabel added, "You're right, though. I loved you. And I remember fondly our moment on that pier, though I may not remember exactly the words we spoke. I've wondered many times why you vanished and to where you had gone. But our love was naïve and impractical, based more on lust and a desire to escape the inescapable than on experience or affinity."

"That's not true, Isabel. Besides, affinity is what we feel for the material. Affection is what we feel toward each other. But whether you call it affinity or affection, I don't care. Don't you understand? Look around. All of this. I slaved for it, and for you."

"Perhaps you slaved for yourself."

The accusation stung. Fernando stumbled. His grip on Time faltered, and the wind stirred. Sounds rushed past their ears. "I have given up everything for you. Is that worth nothing?"

"Its worth cannot be measured. I promise. But I can only thank you for the effort and devotion. Whatever you gave up, it was too much. I'm sorry, Fernando."

He laughed, surprising her. "Nothing I could do in your service would ever be too much. Not in all the years of all the lives ever to be reckoned. You deserve the Heavens, Isabel, and if I could build them for you I would." He stepped closer to her. "But if guilt must keep our hands at our sides," he said, "if guilt must keep my passion imprisoned, let me ask a simpler favor."

"What would that be?"

"Tell me you love me. Let the words be lost to Time, lost to the world, lost to the lives and the minds and the hearts of those who needn't know. I ask only that you give me a moment. Prove that I haven't conquered Time in vain. You've admitted you loved me once. Admit you love me still."

He fell to his knees then, waiting. Time threatened to return, to ignore his song, for his mind lay elsewhere, and he could not bring himself to sing again, not without an answer. All his years of experimentation, of trial and failure and failure and trial, countless nights dreaming of an achievement too lofty to be dreamt, all culminated now with her simple answer. But love, he knew too well, was never simple.

Her head bowed to the side. "I'm sorry, Fernando."

And the winds began to gust. Isabel’s friends shuffled once more with impatience. Rain began to fall from a cloudless sky. He knew from experience it was a side effect of his song, and he let it hide his tears. His gaze fell to the road beneath him. It was a long road over many obstacles, a road that led him past the arches and glories of Triumph to a less celebrated ending at the jagged cliffs of tragedy. Whatever power he had gained on that road would prove useless if it couldn't get him what he desired. And if everything he desired was lost, whither then goes the power?

Isabel's friends, meanwhile, ran to her with an umbrella and began to drag her away. They did not know Fernando, and they knew nothing of the moment that had passed, but they knew enough to see the stranger on his knees had lost his grip. They would help her escape. Love, longing, and loneliness, it would seem, had propelled our Conquistador into the foothills of madness, and even the most romantic mystery has no place in it for madmen.

Except when the madman isn't mad.

For at that moment, as he knelt mired in despair, Fernando heard footsteps. Isabel had broken the restraint of her friends and raced back to him. She knelt down, wiped rain and tears from his cheek, and she spoke.

"Guilt, Fernando, is a terrible foe, but one to be admired. I cannot willingly give you what you want, and yet that part of me you remember so well desires nothing more. So take your moment, Fernando. Take it and make it wonderful. Take all the moments you desire, and let me know when you do, and I'll smile, and your effort will be repaid. My world belongs to others, but my time is forever your domain."

At that she disappeared with her friends. Fernando wept in the rain. He knelt there on the cobblestones for several hours before he understood what she meant. Then our Conquistador burned his ships and pressed onward, not because he was mad, but because, after years of exploration and discovery, there could be no turning back.

#

"In her room that night, as she changed out of wet clothes, Isabel shivered. The night's encounter had terrified and amazed her. As the hours wore on, she had begun to distrust her imagination. She was obviously a fool. Fernando could not sing away the world. He could not stop time. It had all been a lavish ruse meant to confuse her. She would try not to think of it anymore, but still it consumed her thoughts as she bathed in a warm shower.

She dried off with a towel and stood naked in front of the mirror. She ran a comb through her hair until it was straight. Just then she heard a voice raised in song, and she felt a chill on her neck as though fingers or lips had glided up her back. Her nipples had grown firm. She felt warm. Rain began to tap on the window panes. And when she blinked away the sensation, she stared in the mirror and knew the truth. Her hair, though combed straight a moment earlier, was now ruffled and tossed, as though someone had run his hands through it.

Time, it would seem, had had its way with her. And on the sink beneath the mirror, she found a torn sheet of paper that read, "Smile. The moment was ours."

And smile she did.


 
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