The Vibrant Red Psalms

Raindrops peppered the arched windows along the east wall of the living room of Armi’s apartment. The wall comprised three equal windows, side-to-side, each of them tall and ending in round lunettes. They were framed in cherry wood, the soft red hues of which accented the blank walls of the apartment. Small balconettes extended out over each window.

The rain on the windows cast soft shadows that fell across my body. My clothes were damp, though I had dried my hair with a towel offered to me by Armi when we arrived at her apartment. She was currently taking a shower so as to not catch a cold. The sharp pattering of rain on the glass created a harmonious contrast with the faint sound of water rushing from the shower, crashing on the floor.

I sat on the middle cushion of the couch in the living room. The couch comprised five cushions, three against the south wall of the room and two extending north from the rightmost cushion. The windows were to my right, and the dining table was to my left. Between the dining area and the lounge was a short hallway that led south, with the bathroom on the right, the bedroom on the left, and a closet at the end of the hallway. Before me was a small circular coffee table, upon the glass top of which a variety of magazines were neatly stacked next to an empty blue vase. The pale light from the windows faded into darkness as it stretched across the room. Shadows slid down my face.

It was a gloomy and grey scene, the kind that was meticulously crafted to wash away any hint of joy in a soul. There was nothing to do but to wait, to wait patiently, indeed excruciatingly, but still patiently. Seconds were as hours and minutes were as months, and I became confined in the small walls of my mind. It was a slow torture, to do nothing, and to think nothing. I could feel myself becoming less and less human with every drop of rain that ran down the windowpanes.

Although, wasn’t I the one who brought this rain about? With that ancestral raindance. I didn’t necessarily believe that it worked, but would it really have begun to rain if not for my faith in its power?

Or, really, the issue was my own mentality. Whether or not it rained, or perhaps because it just so happened to rain, my own want for rain was what caused the depressive mood. All things in this world had a reason, even the divine. In that way, there was nothing and nobody to blame for the workings of my mind, except for my mind itself.

A foolish man sows, and a regretful man reaps. I was experiencing the consequences of my actions. And yet, was this not something I had already known years and years prior? Armi had mentioned something related, earlier today. Those who are stricken with sorrow will become blinded to the real world– A sad man is a foolish man, and he is twice as sad when he must reap what he hath sowed.

How is a man meant to escape such a perpetual cycle of sadness and madness? To what extent does a man control his own actions, his own soul? Whereto does the looming hand of fate beckon the heads of all of mankind collectively?

Oh, hold the phone. Armi just came out of the shower.

I stared into the light of the candles on the coffee table. There were seven candles, arranged with one at the center surrounded by the others. Armi had lit them to counteract the darkness of the rainstorm. She was struggling to pay her rent, so, naturally, she couldn’t afford her utility bills if she so much as took a hot shower twice in a week. In months since she dropped out of high school, she had gone from working as a bookkeeper to beekeeper to a barista. 

Although the change from recording revenue to farming honey was rather comedic, it was more pressing to learn that she had quit her job as a barista no earlier than this exact morning, having decided to strike up a conversation with me outside the church instead of going to her job. Isn’t that a fairly concerning lack of work ethic? Though I’m not one to speak.

Armi was sitting to the left of me, legs crossed, slumped against the armrest. Her wet, dark hair glistened in the candlelight, and her glasses reflected rings of fire. She had changed out of her red blouse into a plain white tee and gym shorts, looking quite as if she was still attending school. But, indeed, she was instead alone in her apartment, with no electricity and struggling to keep a job. How merciless the world was to allow somebody so young to live so poorly.

No, wait, there was some sort of discrepancy afoot here, was there not?

“Hey, Armi, how many years old are you, exactly?”

“A little over seventeen. Why do you ask?”

Hm? Didn’t that seem a little off?

“At such an age that doesn’t quite yet exceed the age of minority, should you not be in your parents’ care?”

The candleflames wavered.

“Well, as true as that might be, nothing in this world is absolute, and nothing in this world is without exceptions… I do think that all things eventually end well, which is part of the reason I left home.”

“You’ve sure said a lot of words, Armi, but not a whole lot of meaning… What could it be that you’re hinting at?”

“If it needs to be put so bluntly, neither my father nor my mother did well as parents. My father was too immature, perchance, and my mother too immoderate, self-denying, and too dependent. Both of them were unwise to the pursuit of happiness. In respect to that, I thought I would be better off on my own.”

So that’s how things were with her.

“Life is really nothing but a rainbow of misery and pain, huh?”

“Nay, ‘tis closer to a rainbow of endless joy.”

We gazed out the window at the rainbow stretching across the early evening sky. Spates of rain rattled the windowpanes, each drop glittering like gold.

“You really don’t hold any grudges against your parents?”

“Can they be blamed for what they did? If somebody you knew did something bad because somebody else forced them to do it, would you say it’s their own fault?”

“I can’t say that I would.”

“Then, with that in mind, you might know what I’m about to ask. If it isn’t their own fault, then is it the fault of the one who forced them to do it?”

Ah. I’m beginning to understand Armi’s mentality.

“It’s not their fault either. They too were affected by some other power to do wrong. But, in that case, to whom can the first fault be attributed? What is the source of this original sin?”

“Hehe. You’re on the right track. But there is no original sin. If you tried to create a chain of causality, it would lead up to nowhere. Even if you did pinpoint some chap as the source of all your suffering, what then? But, no, the world isn’t so black-and-white to even be able to do something like that. The world, the common events that we all undergo, and each of our minds of which none are without imperfection– All are natural and unpredictable.”

“Which is to say that the bad things that people will do in their lifetimes are nothing more than mistakes. Mishaps of those who have lost their way.”

“That’s right. All people are inherently good people– Nobody is evil. Anybody doing things that are perceived as evil only do so because they are subject to the natural foolishness that all people possess. I don’t blame them, although I do pity them a bit.”

“But if people who fall victim to this irrationality can’t be blamed for their actions, doesn’t that suggest that they have no agency in their own lives, as if all of their actions are predetermined?”

“That’s the way of our world. The most anybody can do is to hope that they’re predestined for happiness. It isn’t as bad as it sounds– Most people are happy.”

Rivulets of rainwater ran down the windows. It had already begun to dawn on me, that she was putting up an optimistic front to hide her hollow self. Now it was only a matter of Armi realising that herself.

“You’re wrong. Happiness is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Our actions are not dictated by God. Only we can choose our own ends. If you live expecting things to eventually fix themselves, you’re never going to have what it takes to become happy. Life isn’t a slow stream that takes us to where we need to be. It’s ninety-nine percent sadness. It’s as bad as it sounds– Almost nobody is happy. If they are, just give it a week. It won’t last any longer than that.”

Armi turned to look at me, but I didn’t face her.

“Nobody is happy? But I’m happy, Théo. I believe in my destiny. Whatever it is, I’ll be happy– That’s life, isn’t it?”

“You liar. You suffer far more than I do.”

“Acting like other people deserve more than you do is the worst kind of self deprecation, you know? Have some shame, you dummy! We both know that acknowledging your own suffering vindicates you, so don’t deny other people’s pity.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“Hey, don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing! What are you insinuating, that I’m the one who’s denying your pity? That I said what I said to mask my own sadness, to pretend that I’m happier than you?”

I looked at Armi with what must have been a dead-eyed expression. Her eyes were round in what she would call exasperation, but it was just desperation.

“You’re hopeless.”

Armi looked away, grimacing. Contending with the falling apart of her façade. I left her side. There was nothing more to gain, nothing more to lose.

“You’re leaving me, Théo? After I treated you to a meal, after I invited you to my home? I quit my job for you. You didn’t even have one. You’re homeless, you’re unemployed, and you’re what– Three years older than me? You’re pathetic, you’re nobody.”

I turned the knob and pulled open the door.

“You too, my love.”