A Myth About Belief

When our class teacher, Miss Patmore, asked the new boy to introduce himself nobody found it unusual in remembering only the last part of his name; Levi.
His full name was an ancient word for creation. A word so ancient nobody knew what it was or how it was spoken.

"Adam and Eve spoke it," Levi once confided to me.

All I remember is how beautiful his name was and how musical it sounded.

If I shut my eyes and sink into the warm embrace of yesterdays I can see myself looking at the dust dance lazily in the morning sun. The usual golden rays had appeared more buoyant.

"If you listen carefully you can hear the music."

Those were Levi's first words to me, his voice a near whisper. I looked at him curiously unsure about what music he was referring to. But even then somewhere at the back of my mind, my subconscious seat- an abandoned warehouse I seldom visited- I knew what he meant.

It didn't seem foolish to my twelve year old self then and it certainly doesn't seem foolish to my now thirty year old self in admitting that Levi made sense to me. I believed him and because I believed nothing ever remained the same.

He sat behind me. The empty seat belonged to the day's absentee Emily Greenfield. Emily used to be my friend until she very unkindly pointed out I look ugly.

Miss Patmore started taking attendance.

I focused at the sunrays. All I heard was students answering "Present" whenever their names were called out.

"Aznath Petra."

"Present," I replied.

"You are concentrating too hard," Levi spoke quietly from behind.

I half turned my head towards him. "Can you hear it?"

"Yes," he whispered.

"Quiet at the back," Miss Patmore said sternly. I did not speak to Levi for the rest of the day.

Over years I've unsuccessfully conjured images of what Levi looked like. Some features of his are planted stubbornly in my memory; others have blurred with time. He was quite lanky for a boy of thirteen and his ever tousled hair was too dark to be called brown and too light to be black. I don't remember how his freckles were aligned or if he ever had freckles. Sometimes I get snatches of him but it is too short lived for me to register eternally.

Does this mean I am a bad friend?

All these may be forgotten by my infidel mind someday and I might forget I was his friend but I'll never forget how his eyes looked like. Blue, an unfathomable blue; it was like you could---

"---see the sky in my eyes," Levi said to me during lunch.

I stopped picking at my celery. He didn't blink even once the entire time I looked at him up close. I stared at the blue of his eyes and sure enough I could see the reflection of a clear sky as one sees in a pool of water.

I saw the sky in his eyes and till today it remains the most fascinating thing I've ever seen.

Earlier Levi had asked if he could eat lunch with me. I asked him why and he simply replied, "I can eat you share of celery and you can eat my share of jellybean."

"How did you know?" I asked Levi when I saw students in cafeteria with scrunched faces, untouched plate of baby corn and celery in their hands.

Levi smiled at me. "I was just speculating."

He speculated about lot of things and it turned out to be real. A week after I wrote him down my telephone number he called to say that Miss Patmore would surprise us with a History test the next day. I studied my lesson.