Apropos of the Sinners

by SpitFlame

Part IV – Chapter VII – The Final Explanation

"Yesterday night," Pyre began, "Airglow came to see me; incidentally, she talked me into moving into Golden Oak. She insisted on it, and she even blurted out that it would be 'easier for me to die among ponies and trees.' But she didn't say to die, but said 'it would be easier to live,' which, however, makes almost no difference for me in my situation. I asked what she meant by all this, but I found myself thinking that I would come tonight to look at 'trees' for the last time, especially a big one like this library, from the inside. When I observed to her that it made no difference whether I died in this tree or looking out the window at my bricks, and that there was no point in making a fuss over two weeks, she agreed; but still she insisted. I laughingly told her that she spoke like a materialist. She replied with a smile that she had always been a materialist. Since she doesn't lie, those words must mean something. Her smile is nice, but I don't know what to think of it all. I even hated her, and this hatred sprung precisely because she gave me so much money in the place of her cowardly brother, Nova Steel.

"Who knows, maybe I came to this party mainly to see her. But... why did I leave my room then? A pony condemned to death in two weeks should not leave their corner; and if I hadn't taken a final decision now, but waited till the last hour, then I wouldn't have left my room for anything and wouldn't have accepted the suggestion of moving out 'to die' in a library.

"I must hurry and finish this 'essential explanation' by tomorrow without fail. Which means I won't have time to re-read this and correct it; I'll re-read it tomorrow night when I read it to Airglow and two or three other witnesses I intend to find there. Since there won't be a single lying word, but only the whole truth, the ultimate truth even, I'm curious what sort of impression it will make on me at that hour and that moment when I re-read it. Besides, there's no need to lie for the sake of two weeks: that's the best proof that I'll write nothing but the truth.

"I think I wrote something very stupid, but I have no time to correct it; besides, I'm giving myself my word to purposely not correct a single line in this manuscript, even if I notice I'm contradicting myself every other line. I precisely want to determine tomorrow during the read whether the logical course of my thought is correct; whether everything that has gone through my head during these past six months is true or mere raving.

"The conditions of my life for the next two weeks are not worth regretting, and I shouldn't give myself up to any emotion; it can overcome my nature and command my feelings. But is this still true? Is it true that my nature has been defeated? But again, what difference does it make? If I were to be tortured right now, I would obviously acknowledge the pain and scream my lungs out, and I wouldn't say the pain isn't worth it just because I only have two weeks left to live.

"I remember when I first learned of my imminent death. A student I once knew had become a doctor at a large hospital in Canterlot—we were sort of friends even—and so I went to him for his bluntness: I needed somepony who would finally tell me the naked truth, without ceremony. He even told me readily, with pleasure almost, which was unnecessary in my opinion. He blurted out to me that I had some number of months left; the scientific advancement of medical magic is incalculable. We are able to tell exactly when a pony will die through forensics alone. Much later and I checked again; this time it was a month and a half left. Now I know it's two weeks. This student who told me these things—his name is Patchwork—he told me while flaunting his unfeelingness and carelessness somewhat, as if he were doing me an honour. He thought that in my mind, dying amounts to nothing. In the end, all the same, the fact is determined: I have two weeks and no more.

"When we die—when there is a permanent cessation of all biological functions, including everything to do with the brain—what happens to us? What happens to our consciousness? It's my conviction that we enter into eternal oblivion. After death there's nothing, no thought, no memories, no feelings or sensations of any kind, all because the brain ceases to be. I've heard the more optimistic crowd give me these poetic flourishes, that once we die we'll 'become part of the soil' or 'our atoms will rearrange into the stars.' Does anypony take that seriously? How could you say such things with a straight face? Eternal oblivion means no experience, of any kind, and all of our treasured memories of one another and of this world will be gone, as if it literally never happened. How can a pony, in believing such things, behave so casually? Because they're scared, scared to face the dread of death, scared to lose grip from life, so they live in delusion. What will it matter if we will all die anyway, and there's no afterlife? What in Celestia's name is the point of love and kindness if it will invariably be taken away from us forever? Life is a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Is there an afterlife? I desperately want there to be one, but I very well know for a fact that such a thing doesn't exist. In such a case, to continue living is sheer absurdity.

"Everypony," said Pyre, suddenly tearing himself away from his reading and even almost shamefacedly, "I didn't re-read it, and it looks like I wrote a lot of theorizing... about my beliefs."

"There's too much of the personal, I agree," Maxim hastened to say.

Pyre looked weary and faint, and wiped the sweat from his brow with the side of his fore-hoof.

"You're too interested in yourself," hissed Bronze.

"Again, everypony, I'm not forcing you to stay: whoever doesn't want to listen can, and probably should, leave."

"Throw us... out of somepony else's house?" said Cold Leg almost inaudibly.

Pyre suddenly dropped his eyes and clutched his manuscript; but in that same second he raised his head again and, his eyes flashing, with two red spots on his cheeks, said, "Everypony, this was a stupid episode. There won't be anymore interruptions. Whoever wants to listen, can listen..."

And he continued.

"This conviction that life is not worth living for a few weeks began to take possession of me in a real sense some months ago, when I first learned of my consumption. It was apropos to this idea that this anecdote comes to be now, which refuses to be gotten rid of. I recall it now with greedy interest."

Let us now see this "anecdote" of Pyre's, not in the way he recounted it during the party, but the genuine thing, how it really happened, five months ago.

* * *

When Pyre Opus had become very ill, he broke off all former relations and dropped all employment. He was sullen, and ponies easily forgot him; though, they would have forgotten him even without this circumstance. He locked himself in his room, secluded from society, and nopony, not even his own family, bothered talking to him. He was incredibly irritable, and ponies put up with it for the sole purpose of not escalating anything beyond what was necessary.

One day, around the outskirts of the city—this all took place in Baltimare—somepony of the gentlefolk sort overtook him in the dark; Pyre did not make him out very well; he was carrying something wrapped in paper under his wing. When he came to a streetlight, some ten steps ahead of Pyre, the latter noticed that this something wrapped in paper fell from him. Pyre hastened to pick it up—just in time, because another pony had already rushed for it, but, seeing that Pyre beat them to it, did not argue, took a fleeting glance around, and slipped away. The object was a big wallet of sorts, tightly stuffed; but for some reason there was no money in it. The passerby who had lost it was already forty paces ahead and soon dropped sight from the crowd.

Pyre tried to shout, running after him, but nothing came of it. He followed the fellow into the gateway of some house. It was very dark inside, and there was nopony there. The house was gigantic, one of those buildings split up into countless apartments. Pyre ran to the corner and saw a stairway; it was narrow, extremely dirty, and very dark; but he heard the pony go up, so he followed. By the end Pyre was terribly out of breath.

A door opened and closed again on the top floor. He had run up, catching his breath on the landing, and found the doorbell. A minute went by. The door was finally opened to him by a mare who was lighting a kettle in a tiny kitchen; she listened silently to his questions, understood nothing, and silently opened the door for him to the next room, also small, terribly low, with horrendous furniture, and a small bed on which lay a stallion, drunk, as it seemed. On the table stood a night-light with a candle burning down in it and a nearly empty bottle of gin. The stallion grunted something to him while lying down and waved him to the next door, while the mare left, so that nothing else remained. Pyre ventured onwards.

The next room was smaller and more narrow, so that it was even difficult to turn inside; a narrow bed took up a corner; the rest of the furniture was three simple chairs with all sorts of rags on a wooden table. The same kind of candle burned there, too, and on the bed cried a tiny foal, maybe only a month old; it was being changed into a new diaper by a sick and pale mare, young-looking, in extreme negligence; the foal would not be quiet. On the sofa slept another child, a four-year-old filly, covered in a blanket. By the table stood a pegasus stallion, that same one from the street, unwrapping from a yellow paper what was about one-and-a-half pounds of bread, and a couple of hay straws. On the table, besides that, there was a teapot with some scatterings of black, stale bread.

In short, everything was in disorder. It seemed to Pyre that these two ponies were decent enough, but reduced to poverty to a humiliating state, the kind that reduces ponies to the bitter necessity of finding in that disorder, as it increased daily, some solemn and, as it were, vengeful sense of pleasure.

When Pyre came in, the stallion was talking rapidly and heatedly with his wife; she, though she had not yet finished swaddling the foal, had already begun to whimper; the news sounded bad. The stallion, by his face, looked to be around thirty; he was swarthy and dry, with a well put together moustache, which struck Pyre as rather respectable. He had that sullen gaze, with that morbid tinge of pride, that renders the pony all too easily offended.

Upon seeing Pyre, the pegasus stallion suddenly fell upon him almost in a rage; he spoked irritably, even offended, that somepony would dare to come into his abode and look upon his hideous situation so unceremoniously.

"How dare you come in here! Get out!" he shouted, trembling and barely articulating his words. But he suddenly saw Pyre holding the wallet.

"I think you dropped this," said Pyre calmly and dryly.

The stallion stood before him utterly frightened, not understanding anything; then he quickly spread his wings and looked behind him, opened his mouth in horror, and struck himself on the forehead.

"Goodness! Where did you find that? How did you—?"

Pyre explained everything to him in the briefest terms.

"I can't believe it!" he cried, turning to his wife. "All our documents are in it, all my papers, everything... oh, my dear sir, do you know what you have done for me? I... I..."

Meanwhile Pyre had taken hold of the door handle, so as to leave without replying; but he was still out of breath, and he broke out into such a violent fit of coughing that he could barely stand. He saw how the stallion rushed to find him a chair, and sat him down on it. But his coughing went on and did not let up for about a minute. When he recovered, he was sitting next to the stallion, who was studying him intently.

"Are you... suffering?" he asked in the tone of a doctor. "I myself am a medical pony. I see that you..."

"I have consumption," said Pyre as curtly as possible. "I'll be dying soon." And he stood up.

The stallion also jumped up at once. "Maybe if measures are taken..." He sounded very bewildered and as if unable to come to his senses.

"Don't worry," Pyre interrupted again, opening the door, "I was examined not too long ago, and my case has been decided. Excuse me..."

He was about to leave the embarrassed, crushed-with-shame doctor, but just then another fit of coughing seized him. Here the doctor insisted that he sit down; he turned to his wife, and she, without leaving her place, spoke a few friendly words. Some colour even returned to her dry face.

"If I..." he began. "I'm so grateful to you, and so guilty, and... I... you see... at the present moment my situation—"

"Oh," said Pyre, "there's nothing to see; you probably lost your job, and you've come to explain things and look for another job?"

"How... did you know?" was asked in surprise.

"It's a well-known thing," he said with unintended mockery. "Many ponies run around like this, getting their hopes up. It's obvious at first glance."

The doctor began explaining his situation, starting with his identity, his lips tremblings; he talked, complained, got carried away. Pyre sat there for an hour. He had been a state doctor, occupying a government post; but then his wife got mixed up, and a change had occurred; there had been complaints; he had lost his job and was on his last means. He came to Baltimare for an explanation, but they did not listen to him for long. He was responded with a refusal. He was lured in with more promises, was responded again with severity, was told to write something, was refused again—the whole thing was a bureaucratic mess, typical of what happens when the government tries to take the reigns on something over the free market.

"Today came the final response to my petition, and I have almost no food, nothing, my wife just had a foal. And I... I..."

He turned away. His wife wept in the corner, and the foal was crying.

"I'll remember your name: Stout Cloud," said Pyre. "Well, and all the rest, too. I know a pony who's also a doctor, he was the one who diagnosed me. His uncle is a state councillor."

And Pyre, while assuring them that he would try to help them, nevertheless said that they should not place their hopes squarely on his shoulders, because he himself was very poor and humiliated. But that his personal doctor was close with his uncle, he was sure of it. "Maybe my friend will be able to do something for you, through his rich uncle..."

"If only I could be allowed to explain things to him!" Stout Cloud exclaimed, flashing his eyes.

Having exchanged a few more words, Pyre left, hired a carriage, and went at once to Patchwork. Having gotten there, he explained to him his request.

Patchwork sat down in surprise, and Pyre at once explained the whole story, and that his influential uncle might be able to do something.

"I will, I certainly will, I'll run to my uncle tomorrow! I'm even glad, and you told it all so well. But still, Pyre, why turn to me?"

"Not you, it's your uncle, but because you love 'ponykind' so much, I thought you wouldn't refuse," Pyre added with irony.

"You're right, you're right!" cried Patchwork, bursting into laughter. "I'll do it, even right now I'll do it!"

"Great... that's great."

The matter got settled, quite unexpectedly, in the best possible way.

A month later and Stout Cloud obtained a new post, was given travel money and even financial assistance. How it all went down, all the steps, all the details—Pyre did not know, nor did he want to know.

Pyre met up with his blunt doctor for the final time, at the latter's house. The sun was sinking into the bay. They sat across from each other. The doctor spoke of his joy that the matter had ended so well, and thanked him for something, that is, for his good charity.

"This was very pleasant for me, but rest assured, the credit for this good deed is all yours, Pyre. What you did was an individual good deed, and those who preach against it are wrong!"

"Yeah, it was an act of individual charity on my part," Pyre began. "Whoever infringes on individual charity will also infringe on personal dignity, and even scorn it. Individual goodness will always be there, because it's a personal need; that's how we live. But whatever deeds you sow, whatever you give, none of that will matter, at least not for me. It makes no difference. It's an insult even. Everything's become an insult to me lately. Life denies me, so I must react accordingly."

"It's a shame that life denies you!" cried Patchwork with burning reproach.

"But do you know what entered into my head just now?"

"Surely not to end it all," he cried again, almost in fright, reading the thought in Pyre's face.

"No, for the time being it's just a reflection: here I am with limited time left to live; but with such little time I wanted to do a good deed that required work, running around and petitioning, to see if it would have any change in me, to see if I wouldn't discount it. I won't do anything as radical as killing myself, at least not now, because I do feel something pleasant for helping Stout Cloud. But sooner or later, if it dawns on me that it didn't matter, if it's no longer a comfort, then... then... Killing myself is such a matter of indifference to me that I feel like waiting for a moment when it would make a difference."

And after that, for the rest of his short life, Pyre thought these facts through, and the "conviction" came to be. What did it all matter anyway? Even if there was beauty in the world, with such perfect meanings, the march of time was indestructible. He admitted that he was being irrational, but that, perhaps, life itself were even more irrational.

* * *

Pyre finally stopped. The explanation was over.

There are some cases of incredibly careless cynicism, where a particularly affected pony, irritated and beside themselves, no longer fears anything and is ready for any scandal, even glad of it. They will throw themselves at others, with firm but unclear goals. The extreme, almost unnatural tension that had so far sustained Pyre reached that ultimate degree. He looked at Airglow, now his only listener, exhausted by illness and weak as a leaf, and that same haughty, almost contemptuous revulsion showed at once in his eyes. Everypony else was around the table with noise and vexation. Fatigue and champagne had heightened the disorderliness.

"Did I wear you out?" he asked Airglow. "Well? Speak, please."

But Airglow did not answer at first. Her face was downcast, and the look in her eyes, in its impression, was melancholy. She opened her mouth, but paused, as if pondering too heavily.

"Tell me what you think," Pyre said again commandingly. "You tell the truth, I know you do."

"I've talked to so many ponies by now," she replied, looking up solemnly. "I've listened to them, heard them go on about their problems, listened to all the things they wanted. It's... really something, to really listen to somepony talk about themselves."

Pyre gave her a look.

"Everypony is different," she continued, "everypony has something else to say. But after all this listening, I've noticed one thing that's constant, one pattern that keeps coming up. Everypony talks about changing the world, but one thing's clear: nopony ever talks about changing themselves. That's the way things are. There's exceptions of course, like Dr. Tubercuhoofis, but even in his case... and with my family... should I really let go?" she ended in a mutter, as if talking to herself.

"Do you think I'm capable of changing myself in two weeks?" he asked with unendurable spite.

"No..." she admitted.

"Then goodbye!" he cried suddenly to the whole public, flashing his eyes. "I'm to blame for everything... everything is an insult now. I'm leaving." But they all ignored him. He turned to Airglow once more. "They're all idiots!"

"Let them be; you're very weak..." She was frowning more and more.

"One moment, one moment... I'll go..."

He suddenly embraced her.

"You probably think I'm crazy," he said, laughing strangely.

"No, but..."

"No, stop, don't say anything, I'm going. Just leave me now, I need a moment alone."

He was very pale, his face covered in sweat. Airglow, ears drooped low, only nodded and slowly walked to the kitchen. After trying with her father, both her brothers, with Misty, she did not manage to make a positive impression on even him, was not able to convince him to stay. She had failed. But it was only about to become worse.

A second passed, and suddenly a general cry arose in the library. Then came a moment of extreme disarray. Pyre, having gotten up, stopped, reached into his saddlebag and pulled out a crossbow, a small one only meant to be held by one hoof. The councillor caught sight of this, and, filled with unease, announced to everypony what he was seeing and ran to Pyre. But he was too late.

Pyre stuck the crossbow in his mouth, tasting the metal of the loaded bolt. The councillor rushed him, as so did a few other ponies, but in that same second Pyre pressed the trigger. A sharp click rang out.