How to Survive in the Roanoke Colony-Chapter 207 - Fleeting Eternity (1)

207: Fleeting Eternity (1)

207: Fleeting Eternity (1)

A man gazes briefly at the hill covered in white snow.

No other color appears on the snow-white field that resembles death, but there are things rising from it like stone flowers.

Gravestones.

Yes, this was a cemetery.

And this man was a visitor paying respects.

The man pulls his expensive fur cloak up to his neck to block the cold and carefully stops in front of a particular gravestone he remembers.

Others had long inscriptions listing tribal songs or life achievements, but the inscription on this gravestone was so short it was almost laughable for its simplicity.

‘A great father and grandfather.’

This was John White’s grave.

“…Heh, really.”

Though knowing it was disrespectful toward the deceased, the visitor couldn’t help bursting into laughter that kept coming.

A great father and grandfather.

That short inscription was woefully inadequate to capture the story of a man who had built North America’s first English settlement and sustained the Virginia community’s agriculture.

Above all, he was an ‘apostle’ of a new era.

A man who tried to spread his community and sacred commandments with a holy angel.

For such a man to have a gravestone saying ‘A great father and grandfather.’

It’s excessive even for humility.

Yet on the other hand…

it was also more than enough.

Every time he pondered that short line, he vividly recalled the image of a man joyfully embracing Virginia Dare.

That was remarkable.

Mysterious.

After finally containing his laughter and placing flowers from his coat in front of the gravestone, he hears someone calling from behind.

“Baron?”

The baron turns his head at those words.

There stood Vicente González.

The only baron in this Virginia land, Roanoke Baron Walter Raleigh, waves his hand in response.

“Yes.

You recognized me well despite my cloak.

What brings you here?”

“Isn’t it the deceased’s birthday?

Mrs.

Dare and others will be here soon.”

“If that was the case, I should have come together with everyone else.”

“Well, I’m seeing you here anyway, aren’t I?

That’s good enough.”

“…Yes.

That’s good enough.”

“…”

“…”

In front of a friend’s gravestone, two men.

Having quickly run out of things to say, they helplessly sat down nearby.

Looking around, several natives who had come to perform something like a ritual for the dead were dispersing.

It was a desolate winter.

The two men began pulling topics from their memories and soon found themselves sharing trivial stories from their lives.

Vicente talked about how he came to be governor of Santa Elena, and what adventures he had experienced as a sailor.

Raleigh described the fierce battles he had fought in France and Ireland.

As their conversation topics gradually flowed from their teenage years to the present, the two soon found a common topic they had been thinking about but hadn’t voiced aloud.

“…Do you remember?

What he said that day?”

There was no need to ask which day ‘that day’ was.

It was obviously the day John White died.

Raleigh nodded.

“Of course I remember.

It was so puzzling that I’ve been turning it over in my mind…”

“Do not fear hell.

Also, do not hope for heaven.”

“Because it is fleeting, it is more valuable than eternity.”

“You have lived a good life, just remember that.”

After saying these things, he looked directly into Sir John White’s eyes and promised.

“Your gravestone will say you were a great father and grandfather.

I will carve it myself.”

So.

So that was how such a short inscription came to be carved on that gravestone.

Not with the skill of a professional stonemason but with rough yet sincere craftsmanship.

Recalling this fact, Raleigh chuckles again.

Vicente, as if just remembering, places the flowers he was holding in front of the gravestone and says:

“I still…

can’t believe those words came from an angel’s lips.”

That’s true.

They are Christians.

All their lives they’ve been taught to fear the heat of hellfire and hope for the warmth of heaven.

They were all taught not to be enchanted by the fleeting things of this world.

They had heard that only a life moving toward eternity was valuable.

To such people, he had said:

That it wasn’t so.

That the fleeting moment, or rather because it was fleeting, was more valuable.

“…”

“…”

Though they knew it was nonsense, considering whose mouth those words had come from, they couldn’t just forget and move on.

“How…

can a drop of dew defeat the ocean?”

Raleigh, like the poet he is, produces a metaphor.

But Vicente easily understands what he’s trying to say and nods.

How can a drop of dew defeat the ocean?

How can a moment defeat eternity?

How can finiteness defeat infiniteness, and how can something small overwhelm something large?

“I don’t understand.”

“You too?” frёewebηovel.cѳm

“Yes.

Honestly, I don’t think I’ll understand even if a lifetime passes.”

That’s…

me too.

Raleigh murmured thus.

Even after constant pondering, he couldn’t understand the meaning.

And the more he couldn’t understand, the larger those phrases grew in his mind.

Raleigh has now passed fifty.

Using John White as a reference, he has only about 10 years left in his life.

It is ‘fleeting.’

During the past decade…

he had shamefully thought of himself as someone whose salvation was assured.

Because behind his back was an angel.

Because he served none other than an angel.

Before him, Nemo had said to White, who was facing death, not to hope for heaven.

Don’t hope for heaven or death,

Don’t waste this life looking toward the future,

Know the preciousness of this life now,

Be faithful to your finite life.

…I still don’t understand.

It all sounds like good advice yet somehow deeply irreverent.

No, it actually is irreverent.

What on earth…

“Ah, I’ll bring some food.

I forgot that others are coming.”

Ah.

Raleigh momentarily breaks from his contemplation at Vicente’s words.

As Raleigh waves his hand, Vicente slowly retreats from view.

While waiting for Vicente, Raleigh takes out tobacco to clear his mind.

A stream of rising smoke adds to the clouds.

“…”

As he sits quietly, someone’s silhouette enters his vision again.

After grinding out his finished tobacco on the ground, the silhouette becomes clearer.

“…Nemo?”

It was him.

When he asked in a half-dazed state from the pungent tobacco smoke, the figure quietly nodded and walked toward John White’s gravestone.

He cleared away the snow on the gravestone and added his own flowers on top of those placed by Raleigh and Vicente.

“What are you doing sitting alone?”

“I was just…

as you can see…

clearing my mind while smoking tobacco.”

Saying this, Raleigh gestures to him and makes room for him to sit.

When he hesitantly sits down in the snow, Raleigh offers him a tobacco.

He hesitates, then takes one and puts it in his mouth, but soon coughs and spits it out.

He says something unintelligible like “Without a filter I can’t do it…” and returns the tobacco.

Raleigh takes it back and puts it in his mouth…

then suddenly remembers something and speaks.

“I participated in the war in France when I was in my teens.”

“You said you fought alongside Protestants.”

“Yes.

Though I returned after just a few years.”

“…”

“At that time, when I was young and hungry for glory, I went to France confidently.

I thought I would cut down dozens of enemies and be remembered in history as a great figure.”