|
|
Lady_Milena
Honorable
Known Hero
Grannie Sweet Cheeks
|
posted April 12, 2004 02:00 PM |
|
|
Savoir
This is a story that I wrote a while ago. Since it's Easter, I wanted to share it with you. I hope that you're going to appreciate it.
You're welcome to love it or hate it. :-)
==============================
SAVIOR
"It is never going to work properly."
Christian sighed and gave her a look. "We will try until it starts working." He turned his eyes to David, exasperation crawling even in his own heart.
David nodded, then shrugged. "Once again," he spoke to the cast. No clapping hands this time, Christian noticed. It seemed hunger and depression could and did affect all of them.
But Christian could not think of that now. If they wanted dinner tomorrow, they had to impress the audience with a good performance. He climbed on the steps of the cross and fixed the improvised crown of thorns on his forehead.
David gave him a sign.
Christian pretended to hang on the crude wooden cross, his expression bore pain and despair. "Oh, why did thou abandon me..." he said and drooped.
The rest remained in silence for a minute; Christian did not move a muscle. He could feel the heavy frame of the cross stirring in the ground but he was totally aware that should he interrupt again, they could not find the spirit to resume the rehearsal.
Hunger did not help either. But hopefully tomorrow...
The other four actors began the final song, the death of the Son of God. The cross shook again. Maria was looking at it with fear as her turn came but she did not dare interrupt either. Christian's fellows, still in character, came to him and took him off the cross.
Jesus had died. They were to place his body in a tomb, Christian carried to a far corner of the stage and placed down.
David clapped hands; exhaustion was overwhelming him as well. The actors gathered at the front and bowed. Maria's face was pale. She was way too frail for this kind of work, Christian sadly thought as they finished their part.
"Enough for today," David announced as he saw his brother approaching from the rear end of the theater. The group did not wait for another invitation. They all sat down on the floor; Maria literally dropped to her knees.
"How many?" David didn't waste his time with greetings and formalities and went straight to the point.
"12 for tomorrow and 13 for Saturday. 16 for Easter."
David nodded. Hopefully they would have enough money for food. Everything to the last cent went for hiring the stage for three days.
"Let's hope we'll see more the next few days." A faint smile appeared on Daniel's lips. He sat down next to his brother and started delivering sandwiches to the cast. They all took the modest supper with gratitude.
It was Christian who finished first and started to rise. "I'm going to bed," he announced. He could be the most strong-willed of them all but there were too few tickets sold. What he needed now was rest. Only rest and his mind set elsewhere.
Maria bid the rest goodnight as well and followed her husband in the tiny backroom. They didn't have enough money to rent a decent room while in the city and accommodated the actor's backroom for a place to sleep. A single mattress lied on the floor. Christian collapsed on it.
Maria shook her head. She wished she had the courage to tell him. She wished she could move her lips and speak the words. Instead, she stripped herself of the robe she wore on stage and lied down next to her husband. Both drained with exhaustion, they cuddled and fell silent.
It was Maria who spoke first. "We are finally going to make it," she said quietly. She wondered if she could force her own self to believe it.
"If we believe," Christian replied. The fatigue in his voice was palpable. His body was tired. So was his mind - of hoping. "At least we will have enough money to buy food and fuel till the next play."
Maria nodded her head.
"I wonder how he felt," Christian said unexpectedly. His wife looked at him in the darkness. "Jesus, I mean. When he died on the cross. When he died to take people's sins upon him."
"I've been asking myself the same question." A pause. "I wouldn't know. How do you think he felt?"
"Betrayed, I'd say."
Maria raised eyebrows. "Betrayed?"
"Yeah. Remember his last words? But I also think relief. Because of his pain. You see, his mission on Earth was coming to completion. I think it was like a dream. A dream that he could save people and he was living his life because of it. And it finally came true."
Just like you and me, Maria thought. Only that we are not Jesus. We are God's children and we do need as much mercy as his son Jesus did. Because we followed our dreams.
"What did you say?"
Maria realized she had said that aloud. "I said... I said we are like him in a way. We followed our dreams. To be actors."
Christian rolled his eyes. "Yes. Like children. We dreamt to be rich and famous."
They did not need say it aloud. They were neither rich, nor famous. Maria bit her tongue to stop the tears stinging her eyes. "Oh, yes, we did."
Christian considered in the darkness. "I wonder if Jesus was Christ, a savior indeed."
"He took our sins upon his shoulders and paid with his life."
"Our sins? What sin have -I- committed, Maria? I followed my dream like he did. I die every single day when I see my dream dying away, my wife starving. When did I -sin-?" His last words came out as a howl.
A single tear ran down Maria's face. She couldn't tell him tonight. Tomorrow. But not tonight. "Perhaps Jesus saved people when he gave them hope for a new life."
"Another dream?" Christian said rather tartly.
Maria couldn't find an appropriate answer to this. "Perhaps," she said at last. "But he gave people a new life as well. If it weren’t for him, we wouldn't have our dream bow. Probably we wouldn't be alive."
"I guess I should be grateful to him for that?" Christian said more bitterly than he had intended.
"You play him. You should know better."
"Maybe."
Maria merely wiped the tears before they could spring out of her eyes and lied in the darkness cuddling to her husband.
He was there for her. He was her savior - because the thought of him gave her strength.
Her Jesus Christ.
31 people came to see the play on Friday. 31 tickets sold.
The audience was quiet and watched the play intently. The temple, the Garden, the cross, it was a bold and interesting interpretation to make up for the lack of stage decoration, the crude settings and costumes.
Christian made an amazing performance. One of the women in the audience cried when Jesus prayed in the garden; a few more followed at the scene of carrying the cross to Golgatha. Christian set the cross its place and Daniel, playing a Roman, fastened him to it.
It shook but no one paid attention. Their eyes were fixed on Christian and his character's pain.
"Oh, my Lord, why did thou abandon me?" he cried out and shook in his bonds.
This time the unstable cross he was fastened to didn't remain erect. Its base, not set correctly on the poor stage gave in and dragged Christian to the floor.
It fell down with a bang.
Maria shrieked in horror as she saw the crude cross killing her husband.
Christian didn't die immediately. All the actors could do was take him and his wife, in deep shock and going through a nervous breakdown, to the nearest hospital.
Maybe Maria did hope for a miracle, like the one that took place with Jesus. Christian wasn't God's son, though.
Hours and hours passed. Finally the doctor came to see her, her and the other actors, who stood gathered in the waiting room.
They had fought for his life, but no, Christian was already in deep coma. A way to be saved? Hardly. His body was almost intact, the heart still beating, but the brain was dead, destroyed by the lethal weight of the cross. Maria just stood there in the middle of the waiting room, listening to the words but half hearing them. They could prolong his life with the machines breathing instead of him, the doctor explained. Could they afford it?
Maria looked around herself. Pale, exhausted and devastated faces. Faces of underfed actors.
"No," she whispered.
The doctor considered something and asked the rest to leave him talk in private with Christian's wife.
"Christian brain is dead," he told her quietly, carefully picking up his words. "We are going to turn off the life support when you are ready. However, there is still something that he could do... that you could do... that could help you further in life and would..."
Maria listened on and on. Her face was paler than snow, her knees ready to betray her. How she found the strength to hear it to the end, dismiss the doctor and summon the remaining part of the cast, she didn't know.
"It's your decision, Maria," David said. "He was your husband after all."
"He was Jesus and he died on the cross to save people," Maria said with a hollow voice.
They all nodded. She was going to do it.
Christian Junior never knew his father. His mother rarely spoke of him, except for when the people Christian Senior had saved, came to visit them.
Six of them they were. All six were in die need of organs and the man who played Jesus Christ and died in an accident, hit by the cross he was tied to on the stage, had donated them. A liver. A heart. Kidneys. All six were going to die if it wasn't for Christian, their Savior, to bring them back to life.
They lived because of him.
He lived in them.
Just like he lived in the hearts of Christian Jr. and his mother.
____________
God does not need exist to save us...
|
|
Vadskye91
Promising
Supreme Hero
Back again
|
|
posted April 12, 2004 07:05 PM |
|
|
Wow. Amazing story, Milena. No wonder you have 2x QP stars as post count stars. +QP!
____________
Knowledge is power...
|
|
Svarog
Honorable
Supreme Hero
statue-loving necrophiliac
|
posted April 12, 2004 07:10 PM |
|
|
Indeed, God does not need to exist to save us.
____________
The meek shall inherit the earth, but NOT its mineral rights.
|
|
Consis
Honorable
Legendary Hero
Of Ruby
|
posted April 12, 2004 07:28 PM |
|
|
Inspired By Daytime Drama?
Interesting piece Milena. I found it to be similar to a daytime drama show. I wasn't really moved by the way Christian lived his life. I was moved by what his wife chose to do after his death. To me, that was a very comforting scene.
I especially related to your description of the Christian character. I have known many actors who are very similar. I feel it was a good piece because of your portrayal of this character. I think it was very close to a real-life person.
His wife, on the other hand, roaming in a troupe, staying near her husband, both hungry from low wages...I felt not enough background was written on her. Perhaps if she was assumed to have been an actress with the troupe before meeting her husband then it would lead me to believe that she, herself, had a passion for the performing arts.
In real life I don't see any woman staying with a man that leads them to poverty.
Their relationship definately doesn't seem to have been a long one. Lengthy relationships in a situation like this might have other factors such as a physical incapability to have children or an addiction to performing. I have seen both. And in both cases, the couple was highly jealous of their partner when in company of the other actors of the opposite sex.
____________
Roses Are Red And So Am I
|
| |
|
|
