A purpose. Everything has a purpose.
Satisfied with creation, God sat down satisfied under the shade of a leafy cedar tree.
"Lord, you brought me here to radiate the light of your kingdom, removing the darkness for the one who will come after," exclaimed the Sun.
"You know my desires," God added. "You will be the inexhaustible light, which will leave its discovery in the shadow of the man who walks in the day."
My father told me this story, told in turn by the oldest man on earth. Like him, I believe that man also has a purpose, an assignment made by God for each of us.
When I was a child I searched firmly to find God's design, to find my purpose and give meaning to my actions. Now, however, I find myself traveling, traveling on a train without light, without a destination. I stand surrounded by people whose faces I can hardly see. It seems that we all hide something more than our face, we try to hide the fear, the fear we feel for feeling alone.
Drops of water fall from the moth-eaten roof of the train, as if the rain turned into tears. I lift my face to receive a few drops of breath and quench my thirst.
"You are the Faith that my people need to overcome the dilemmas that arise," God said to the Sun with a majestic voice. "Faith that will last until the end of Days."
Finally an old hunchback broke the unbearable silence. "Somebody could help me?" uttered an old man near me. He was observing through a tiny hole in the side of the car that allowed a small beam of light to pass through.
“What do you want, old man?” A young man responded.
"Before I had more than five windows through which to see the sunrise, now I don't even have a pin that would allow me to make the flash of light that welcomes me bigger."
A pale-skinned woman emerged from the shadows and exclaimed, "If there was a pin in my clothes to help him, I would get rid of them, but if there was a sharp awl in them, I would stick it in the light to prevent his suffering."
At that moment no one understood the woman's words. It wasn't time yet.
"Lord, I must seek the west," the Sun spoke to God. "But what will become of the man when I have retired?"
"When you have departed, man will fear and fall prey to his own demons." Then he waved his hand and spoke ancient words, too old for anyone to understand, and created the Moon from the reflection of the Sun on the ocean.
"You will be the Hope," God said to the Moon. “The man who believes in you will not be alone, for you must be the mother of his children, and the one who announces the new Day.”
The mother is the first being we know, the one who makes us different. I remember that my mother was a quiet woman, but her eyes expressed too much, as if they carried the weight of the truth. Even so, with every blink they renewed themselves to give affection.
As the vigil passes, everyone sleeps, rocked from one side to the other by the train, peacefully, but the cold transforms the drops into frost. The train stops to the rhythm of the whistle, waking everyone up. Through the holes in the carriage the hunchbacked old man and the curious watch the spectacle: armed soldiers running and shouting, waiting for us. Putting everything in its place for what will be our last destination. The field surrounded by barbed wire to which the snow cannot whiten the suffering it harbors.
The woman was right.
The soldiers open the neighboring car and take out all the passengers. Everyone in my car backs away, hoping to hide in some way, even behind another person. The future becomes uncertain. I put my hands in my pockets, and I find my last memory of the day I left my parents' house to begin this forced trip—a pair of swallows lying on the side of the door—the only luggage I brought for this trip.
The door lock is lifted before everyone's captive gaze. While I place the swallows inside my shirt, near my heaving chest.
When the door opens, I understand then that innocence, that is what life is.
M. Ch. Landa
