5th Part

The hermit started talking to himself as a reminder that he was just one man, with one soul to call his own. They were never long conversations, and they happened only once or twice a day, but once begun they were never overlooked.

At first he only spoke of the old days, when his wife and daughter were with him. The initial time on the mountain was the best he'd known, working in the forest by day and sitting on the grass in the evening, listening to his wife talk or play music, watching his daughter laugh and chase rabbbits. It was the kind of life you never got to lead long, because something always interrupts pleasure, whether it's evil or simply another kind of pleasure.

Then he talked about earlier days, when he was a child or a young man, how he'd tried to learn all there was to know through books and listening to lectures at the University. He sneaked in because he was underage and had no money, but it was worth it because he learned so much. He'd go home after each lecture and write down everything he'd heard word-for-word in a journal.

Marriage stopped his search for knowledge temporarily. He learned to sit without reading, and to enjoy the presence of his wife. But eventually he was back to haunting libraries, and spending too much money in bookshops. The floors and walls of their house were lined with books, the spines worn and the pages underlined with dark ink.

When the family finally left for the wilderness, his attitude had shifted. He no longer sought mere knowledge; now he was looking for Wisdom, and he felt that only in contemplation, far from the demands of the city, would he find it. Everyday, he woke long before his wife and went outside to absorb the cold air and to think. He worked hard all day to give him more time for thinking, and at night he stayed awake long past dark to be alone with his thoughts.

It wasn't a long biography by any means. He was able to rush through the salient events of his meager existence in a few minutes, even recalling details and bits of conversation in that time. But it was good for him to revisit everything, though he never reminisced about the deaths of his wife and daughter because that hurt him too much.

He waited patiently for the wanderer's return, talking to himself, and living for nothing so much as the privilege of watching the calendar with something just a little more than resignation.