6th Part

The young man was in prison for a long time. During the course of his sentence he turned from his destructive path and evidenced, first true repentence, then genuine humility and goodness. He was perpetually kind to the guards and his fellow prisoners, accepted his punishment as his due, and assumed an attitude of prayer whether anyone was watching or not. After a year it was decided his sentence should be shortened, and the former profligate released to do good in the world.

He took this news as one not convinced that his sins were wholly atoned for, but also as one happy to receive his freedom. It was time, after all, to return to the hermit on the mountain and reclaim his soul. It occurred to the young man briefly that the old man might not give it back, but he dismissed this thought as unlikely. Anyway, he reckoned, he could always retrieve it by force.

The guards took him outside the gates and escorted him within the city. He looked with rekindled interest at the stone walls of the houses, the puddles in the streets, the big horses attached to thick peasant wagons, the people everywhere talking and doing business. When the guards left him, the young man stood in the road for a long time, smelling and remembering and watching and thinking and hearing. He was in the way but he didn't move, not for any obtuseness acquired in jail, but simply because it had been so long since he'd seen anything that he was paralyzed by the sight of everything.

With no clear direction, he wandered from avenue to street to boulevard to alley, reclaiming the city through his dormant senses, awakening both memory and new hope. He proposed to himself to find food and a place to sleep, and accepting the proposition, went questing for them. A small restaurant advertised meat pies, so he ordered one stuffed with roast eel and another filled with pork, and ate them with a bottle of beer. Then he tried to find an inn.

He hadn't counted on being recognized by anyone. He'd made plenty of enemies during his final days of carousing, but how could anyone remember his face? In jail, it had turned pale, and his hair was much shorter. His skin clung tight to his bones, and though he was still strong, he walked with a sidelong gate come of long days edging from one end of a cell to another.

Still, someone recognized him. They took time to assemble reinforcements, then cornered him in a city square, blocking off every escape route and holding axes, hammers, and knives in their mighty peasant fists. The young man stood in the center, caught between fear and a lurking memory of cavalier humor, between a desire for self-preservation and a carelessness toward pain. He dropped the half-eaten pie in his hand and its insides fell from the crust into the street.

"You're out early," one of the leaders said. "What happened? Did you find God in prison? Were you freed on account of good behavior?"

"I was let free by the warden. It was his good pleasure." The young man smiled awkwardly, not sure whether to be open, or merely humble, or full of bravado. "He told me I could go because I'd made remarkable improvements."

"Remarkable improvements?" said another peasant. "Easy to do in jail; not so easy when you're on the loose. Where were you going, anyway?"

"Just to find a room for the night."

"The whorehouses are that way," shouted the first man. "You're in the wrong neighborhood."

"I don't want to sleep in a house of ill repute," said the young man. "I want to sleep alone in a warm bed."

"'House of ill repute'? Since when did you speak in euphemisms? There aren't any sluts here to warm your bed, I assure you, just this!"

No one knew who spoke the last words, or from what part of the crowd the shot was fired. The young man fell dead beside his dropped meat pie like a sack of sticks. He almost clattered against the cobblestones. The killing seemed to stop everyone short, to drain their excitement and replace bold emotions with sobriety and darkness. Everyone went his own way. The young man was left in the street to be disposed of by someone else. First the ravens pecked his eyes out, then the garbagemen carried him to the incinerator and threw bones and flesh into the fire. He was forgotten by everyone in the city before the last of him turned to ash.