”For every time we hear a story about
our competence, we also hear that nonsense about our competences
being fake!” The old man saying this was seemingly furious at the
facade of teaming up with each other for the sake of blackmailing
him. But, on the other side, we figured, there was no truth in that
he, nor his family, were at all as competent as they made themselves
seem. Moreover, they had been trying to portray us too as nonsense,
of the kind that one shouldn't be handling as anything but pathetic
in their comparison.
But we were afraid too of the syndicate
they spoke of. They, even more, we thought, than the old fellow who
spoke to us, were dangerous and blackmailing in the sense that they
made us all seem awkward and silly by their comparison. However, I
have no idea about how we should be into seeming smart enough to
compete with them, without them thereby being able to see to it that
they were admired as our idols or something.
“You speak as though you were able to
resurrect us all from their blackmail. But how about that blackmail
that you've been spreading about our family?” my wife asked him.
The old man sighed, and did his best to
look honest enough to deserve our sympathy. “Our so-called
blackmail against you four has never been anything but showing them
what reality is about when one doesn't see how smart other people
are!” He looked certain that he and his family would pertain to
those other people, the smart people.
The certainty in his eyes seemed to
resurrect his self-confidence, and so also his family's. “I assure
you all,” he continued, “we all have the competence and clarity
on problems that we need to be able to cope with them when they come
here! But you people will not manage them without us nearby to defend
you!”
“Then how come,” my wife asked,
“don't you feel like pretending as if something about that they
have been gladly following you so much more than us? How come,” she
continued, “tend to pretend as if we were blackmailed at all if it
hadn't been for you guys?!”
He looked startled. “I assure you,
you wouldn't feel better if it had been we who weren't there on that
festival when they began chasing us for the sake of blackmailing our
competences, which we were presenting there! That is, we will not be
the ones to be as weak as you guys would, if they came after you!
But, then again, of course, you are not smart nor competent enough
for them to have anything to be chasing after in the first place, and
thereby you feel lucky, you feel free, as though you were free from
oppression, when you're actually in need of me and all the others
here that are of my business!” by which he meant mostly him and his
relatives.
We looked at each other silently for a
short while. About four or five seconds later our eldest child,
Oscar, whispered to us: “Let's just leave them just the same! I
mean it still isn't us, but them they're after! WE don't need to feel
incompetent in order to realize that we all are absolute survivors,
apart from their incompetence not to wake the attention of the people
they're into seeing us as the enemies of!”
My wife and I smiled at this. After a
while, my wife whispered back: “I can see that they will not have
anything going for them if those people come around here! Then, in
fact, the four of us can actually be free from the terror of their
rule over us, those fakers who really seem to be into that their
enemies are always ours, and moreover that their friends are also our
enemies, of sorts.”
“Yeah I know,” Oscar whispered,
“and they seem like what we need although they completely have
created almost every problem we have ever had!”
“Yeah exactly!” I muttered, almost
to audibly for them not to hear it. So I lowered my voice to the same
whispering level they had, and continued: “I face the danger now of
having to pretend that there's not any confidence in me to stand for
clarification on the issues that we are supposedly facing. It is as
if we were cowardly on our own record, and as if their cowardice and
also boastfulness was completely unimportant.
With that we carefully left the scene
where our neighbours were still bragging and inspiring confidence in
themselves from other neighbours who were seemingly more naive than
us. I assured myself that they were busy speaking with some of them,
while we left and saw to it that no trace could be found of where we
were going.
A few hours later, we left our home
town with the boat that we had bought five weeks ago from a gypsy who
we had not rally trusted, but who showed us that the raft was rather
impeccably seaworthy. This raft was not too easily recognized, and we
had bought it in preparation for this get-away. Thereby, we had from
the gypsy vehicle a possibility of escape that it was rather safe to
assume there would be no easy-to-follow trace from.
After at sea, we harboured in a nearby
town, where we also laboured as caretakers of the outward impressions
of a few business firms there. Doing that, we earned our food and
shelter for four weeks, upon which we continued in our raft to
another town, where we did the same.
After seven more similar sea travels,
we finally reached a place where there seemed to be shelter from the
rich and wealthy people that after all were likely to be harassing us
as well as our bullying neighbours. Thereby we had finally a possible
shelter for good, or so it seemed. But it was not totally worth it to
trust that notion of security! Because a few weeks later they did
arrive there, those people, including Hito, the notorious gangster
who ridiculed so many by seeming very innocent while preparing for
torment and torture for so very many innocent-or-not people they ran
into.
We heard about their arrival by rumours
from the locals, among which we had earned a fairly good reputation
as trustworthy and a bit more helpful than that they would want to
chase us away and keep our problems to ourselves. The people of our
present village could easily have been threatened by Hito and his
gang anyway, and were thereby not at all blaming us. Fleeing people
both asked for our assistance and told us to come with them, because
now they had arrived!
We joined the fleeing rally in that we
too felt sure that fleeing was the best defence against Hito and his
evil people. After a few days, we reached a place where the locals
said we could rest and hide, perhaps forever. It was there, though,
that after a few additional days, the gang found us. When they did,
we were not surprised that the old man and his family were trying to
survive as the advisors of these people whom they had spoken so much
against.
So, with their advice potentially working against us, we saw the need to convince Hito and his gang to be smart at realizing that
they were lying more than we would be against them. Secondly, we also
needed to convince the Hito people that we were not very far away
from being dangerously defensive against them. Thirdly we needed to
resurrect ourselves from the blackmail from our former neighbours
that made us seem worthwhile fighting just the same.
I had not until then realized the
potentials of neither Hito nor Pasa, who was his assistant, of
blaming blackmailers for whatever happened that was not seemingly
worth it. Anyone could see that the people who were our former
neighbours could not resurrect themselves at our expense, although
they tried several of their tricks. On the other hand, we all saw,
also, that the Hito people were sufficiently loth against accepting
anyone but themselves as supreme or even okay and acceptable people.
But, from here on, we would not fight
these people anymore, nor even feel they were to be feared very much, really,
because they gave us a free escape from their claws.
But a few generations later, Hito's
soul was there in an empire which was much worse than in the
reincarnation when I met him and his gang. ...
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