CHAPTER 12. BURNED PRINCIPLES.

February 12, 2002.

Having hastily left his native, admittedly very modest home, a nine-year-old resident of the Yugoslav city of Herceg Novi, whose name was Luka Brkić, rushed headlong toward the home grove, completely clad in the color of fir. Having long ago found loyal friends among the silent and, what is more important, will-less, but by no means motionless or lifeless, trees, flowers, and other plants, Luka Brkić loved nothing more sincerely than to be alone in the spaces of the aforementioned grove, in a state of complete and unshakable solitude. It was there, and only there, that perhaps the greatest thoughts a human mind is capable of producing were born in his mind, chaotically yet not without reason. “This tree, this flower, and also this blade of grass don't need much for a truly and completely favorable life—earth, water, light. These plants consume almost nothing: their main principle is moderation. There is a lot of water in this world—enough to provide life for plants for many centuries to come. And light is infinite… But how many fruits do they bear, so moderately, using seemingly endless blessings? They produce oxygen, they provide shade—their very existence, their very inaction is already useful and active in itself! And what about man? How many actions does he need to take just to exist? He needs to build farms, prepare fields, shackle animals, create industries, and much more… and all just to exist!...” Such were the thoughts of the nine-year-old citizen of Herceg Novi.

Perhaps it was because of the presence of this kind of thought chain that Luka Brkić had no true friends among his peers. Perhaps it was because he towered over them, just as a superman, a super-child, towers over the previous form, a man, a child? It is very likely that this was one of the latent reasons, but the most obvious, frank, and open reason was that, by some random whim of nature, he happened to live with a very common speech defect that is called stuttering in modern society. But did this little dreamer have no loyal and devoted friends at all among all the existing representatives of the human race? Of course, he did, or rather… he had one! His only, and therefore true, friend was Marko Nikšić, his blood ancestor, his seventy-two-year-old grandfather, who throughout his life had often faced the kind of choice that Saint Gregory once faced… and, it must be admitted, Marko Nikšić did not always choose in favor of heaven…

Marko Nikšić—this tall, sturdily built man with huge hands, with the same facial hair as Pope Clement IX in Carlo Maratta's painting, and extremely rough features on a face completely furrowed with deep wrinkles, which were most vividly highlighted by a long vertical scar on the forehead of his completely gray head. However, despite all the roughness inherent in Marko Nikšić, he never raised his voice at his little descendant. He understood this boy perfectly, understood him in a way that no one else on this planet did, including his extraordinarily wealthy parents, because from his early childhood Marko Nikšić, due to his long scar, was mercilessly ridiculed by his now-long-since-aged peers, just like Luka Brkić. In that same era, when the relatively fragile Luka Brkić was called a “frail stutterer” by his peers, Marko Nikšić's lips called his blood grandson “my sweet Demosthenes.”

“Luka! My dear Luka! Come back to the house quickly: as you know, today is Tuesday… the day of our lessons… so I'm looking forward to which book you will choose for them today!”

Luka Brkić, who had been wandering alone near the lanky maples, stopped instantly—something inside him latently rebelled against this long-established, predetermined routine: “This tiresome Tuesday again!” These words passed through his childish mind with perfect clarity and, indeed, flawlessly. It must be admitted that Luka Brkić loved to talk to his alter ego within the confines of his continuously developing consciousness—he loved to do it there and in that way because he was unable to do so within human society: the words in his mind, unlike the spoken words during live communication, were always recited clearly and articulately. In addition, he was able to peel back the thoughts in his mind that he would never, ever dare to express with his lips. But why did this young resident of the Yugoslav city of Herceg Novi so dislike Tuesday? He disliked it because it was on this day of the week that Luka Brkić was forced to read the books or works he had chosen himself aloud.

Returning to the bosom of his home with the same swiftness with which he had left it, Luka Brkić, after a truly insignificant amount of time, meekly, or rather, submissively headed toward the truly colossal family library. It seemed that this distant, yet still blood-related, descendant of the Library of Alexandria contained everything, except for a reader, because ninety percent of its books were entirely and, surely, soundly covered in a hefty layer of household dust. Being, perhaps without even realizing it, the happy owner of such an amazing volume of a library, Marko Nikšić, due to his age, as well as, importantly, certain peculiarities of his former life, seemed not to know himself what quality and content of folios were on the shelves of his truly exceptional kind of treasure trove—that same treasure trove whose riches he deliberately, or perhaps instinctively, replenished more for his descendants than for himself, thus at this moment being the owner of that same dam whose moisture was able to grant a favorable cycle of existence if not to a whole forest, then, certainly, to a specific, very concrete tree.

Reluctantly approaching the wooden matter of the gigantic bookcase, Luka Brkić cast his gaze upon its contents—there were many books with magnificent bindings and extremely exquisite gold embossing. There were many books whose extraordinary appearance or, if you will, facade often did not correspond to the very thoughts that, in one way or another, constituted the contents of these truly unique vessels—many of them were like bright flowers whose hues ceaselessly attract mediocre bees, but whose content, pollen, is unable to grant the sweetness of honey. After studying the available options with extraordinary intensity, Luka Brkić quite confidently pointed to the very folio whose cover continuously shone with extremely cheerful tones—it was the book “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.” Immediately realizing his grandson's choice, Marko Nikšić didn't even notice that a displeased expression formed on his face—for the first time in his life, Marko Nikšić refused to obey. Something inside him boomed that this young Demosthenes had very naturally outgrown reading these, no more and no less than, children's fairy tales, and therefore he, Luka Brkić, should consume works with a much more serious content.