The entire Chapter 3 of Ignorance, the Freedom of the Weak, volume I:
The sewer was a dark place, even if sunlight invaded its depths through the transparent slits in the manhole covers, between people’s feet. The darkness came from someplace else. It took a toll on your youth and health, leaving you a helpless burden at the mercy of others. It was a prison like any other. The same but different.
It was an endless maze of tubes you could always escape from. You never did since your existence depended on it. The dangers were many, and living was limited to survival. As such, producing somewhat healthy offspring capable of outliving their parents proved to be a major concern for those tasked with such menial jobs.
Novak did not concern himself with such unwritten rules. Serene was beautiful, a rare flower among thistles but frail and delicate like the dandelion in the wind. She loved him for accepting her the way she was, for loving a burden. He loved her for not willing to accept the way she was, for having the power to shine instead of walk. She loved him... He nurtured her with all his selflessness, but she faded anyway, gifting her life to this daring little boy.
Serene was the daughter of a waterworks laborer, being one step above the sewer people, who were seen as all-purpose waste collectors. The Water Supply provided a cleaner working environment, free of infection and various other hazards that plagued the sanitation laborers. But most importantly, it provided the privilege of affording to look down upon other people, being one notch above the bottom of the food chain.
The sewer people, naturally, had no one to look down on, and for them, looking down only meant catching a glimpse of their future. They didn’t like looking up either. Nobody wanted to stare the bigger fish in the eye and be reminded of the deprivations they were facing. Most of them preferred to move on with their barren lives, secluded, turning away from everyone and everything and slowly scattering into oblivion. Still, one of them ventured to gaze so far into the sky that nothing but the stars could temper his boldness, his thoughts flying above the obstacles of life as if they never existed.
His mother was a pearl, lost in a world where no one could afford the luxury of beauty and where beauty could not secure survival. With her strong heart trapped in a fragile body, she witnessed countless admirers in awe of her beauty, quickly driven away by her frailty. So she grew to despise being treated like livestock at an auction by the pitiful bunch of males she was allowed to choose from.
Survival not being an option for her, she never understood this obsessive concern the rest of the people had with finding sturdy labor-capable partners or robust women always ready to produce new offspring if the previous ones didn’t make it. She did not care for partnerships. She did not care about dying alone, too consumed by labor to be of any use anymore, feeble and famished, with nobody to take care of her. She detested these people and the way they leered at her. All she longed for was to love, to overwhelm the brave man who would forsake his future for a glimpse of happiness with the sweet nectar overflowing from her heart, wasted.
However, love could not pierce through the darkness of these lower layers of society where higher aspirations were dangerous goals, and pragmatism reigned supreme. Therefore, Serene pulled the curtain between her and the rest of the world, resigned, awaiting the conclusion of her fate. There was no reason to spend her short time constantly having to repulse the pity and the lust of her false suitors, who were merely passing by to steal away some nice memories for when their dull wives would become unbearable. Also, she did not need to be reminded of the scarcity of her choices and unworthiness of these hollow men.
Serene did not have much of an education, but she was intelligent as she was beautiful, and her suffering taught her about the things that mattered most in life. It taught her to feel. But there was no one who could treasure her gifts.
Until young Novak appeared one day with a treasure of his own.
Not a lot of people were willing to admit that the sewer was a cesspool of decay, which ate into your soul and mind a lot faster than it devoured your skinny sack of bones. They all knew it, though, more or less consciously. The hardest thing for a sanitation worker to hold on to was his dignity, his humanity. Most of them let go and preferred to die years before their hearts stopped beating.
Yet there were eyes that could see beyond darkness and souls who would remain clean despite being surrounded by filth. Those were the few who continuously sought to improve their condition. Given the circumstances, the others saw them as hopeless mavericks caught in a futile struggle, although it was this struggle that kept them alive.
Lacking the means of escape, they fought to make their lives a bit better with the resources at hand. Whatever was deemed worthy of being called a resource depended on every individual’s capacity to discover utility, to find a better name for something other than trash.
Novak thought of it as exploring. Sometimes, very rarely, if people searched hard enough, they would discover treasure. And so, embarked on his daily expeditions, Novak stumbled upon one of the greatest treasures, the treasure of knowledge, rotting away as a deplorable heap of paper books. Not long after paper became obsolete, libraries turned into deserted museums. But every now and then, private collectors perished as well, and the grieving families were more than happy to let their collections die with them.
Young Novak gathered the books meticulously and provided a new home for them in his humble room. And then, he escaped. He ventured to live, to fight, to suffer, to love together with the characters in his novels. He started to perceive the numerous aspects of life that were beyond his reach and gained an understanding of how the world worked and how other people lived. His eyes learned to see deeper and slowly cleared away the darkness.
Anything that was salvaged from the trash and could be of use to someone else was given the pompous name of contraband. This trading activity was, of course, illegal and also impossible to stop or control since people’s desire to have things they were not allowed to have would often overcome their fear of the law. But most of the time, their survival depended on it.
The government considered it inefficient to waste resources on surveilling the sewers and the landfill. It was more cost-effective to make its presence felt only when things went wrong. Therefore, it was somewhat easier to deal in contraband underground, enabling Novak to set up a small network of regulars to do business with. Having a keen eye for practicality, he spotted items that others overlooked. He thus managed to add a bit of comfort to his life. Considering his living standards, this goal was not difficult to achieve.
During a trade, Novak caught a rumor that intrigued him. Someone needed books. Novak had never heard of anyone needing books. Even he thought he didn’t need books until he discovered them. It was strange for someone of the lower classes to demand something that was not strictly related to survival purposes. So, young Novak put together a diverse selection of titles, unaware of his client’s literary tastes, and, led by curiosity, rushed to deliver them.
Serene’s father greeted him with a glacial expression and refused to take the package from his hands. On the one hand, he didn’t want to touch the books or Novak, knowing where they came from, and on the other, he disliked touching his daughter. Although he did his duty as a parent, he resented her for being a burden to her family instead of letting the family be a burden to her.
So he settled for silently pointing toward a sort of larger closet. Novak pulled the curtain and found himself impaled by the biggest, bluest and most innocent eyes he had ever seen. She felt offended by this intrusion and, startled, sought words to reprove his indiscretion. But the way he looked at her stopped her.
Novak stood there like a fool with the books in one hand and the other extended, clenched on the curtain. He just stared at her, stunned, unable to put words together. For a sensitive soul dwelling in the dark, so much as a dim ray of light can be blinding. In that moment, beauty was blooming into reality after being stored in Novak’s mind as an abstract concept, a definition learned from one of his books.
No one this deprived of the elementary pleasures of life could stare beauty in the face and be left untouched. For Novak, this moment came with a revelation that plunged him into the thickest darkness, so far away that literature could no longer guide him back.
For understanding beauty meant understanding ugliness, filth, deprivation, helplessness, decay, death. Novak became fully conscious of his condition and felt ashamed probably for the first time in his life. He realized he did not belong there, having done nothing wrong to deserve it.
Ignorance was not bliss for Novak, but it was good enough. He could not return to his routine now, as he began to be repulsed by it, and he could not forsake it since he was bound to it. So, he returned to Serene.
She had never seen a man looking at her like that, and she was uncertain about the meaning of his gaze, but she allowed it to sink inside her heart, enfolding it, warming it. So she smiled, and her eyes finally smiled with her.
Young Novak couldn’t stay away anymore. He could not continue to bear his condition and sought an escape in her heart. He kept coming back for the most ridiculous of reasons and always ended up reading to her from some cheesy romance novel. She listened to him quietly, sometimes immersed in the story, sometimes immersed in the present, contemplating Novak until she fell asleep, protected by the sound of his caring voice.
Her father saw right through his silly excuses, and although he despised him, he was willing to pass down the burden to someone else and even accept the blow to his reputation. He and his wife felt cheated by fate, condemned to a horrible ending. They grew tired of taking care of their daughter, a task that weakened and impoverished them. A lot of their supplies were traded for contraband, whether to ease her pain or provide her with distractions so they could buy themselves some respite.
They did not understand love, but they understood the sacrifice Novak was making, and in a way, they respected him for it. So Novak, tolerated, continued to come over and spend as much time as he could with Serene. One day, he felt confident enough that he could take care of her by himself. He took her in his arms and left without looking back, leaving her resigned parents to crumble in their misery. For the moment, they were somewhat relieved and swallowed their tiny pride, influenced by their survival instinct. They muffled the guilt by forcing themselves to accept that this was the only option. But their blindness prevented them from understanding that love and happiness kept their daughter alive more than a fistful of pills or being one step above other people. They had no idea what her name meant. It was just a word with a nice ring to it, which caught their eye when they walked past a billboard.
Novak and Serene did not have a wedding ceremony. They went to an office to register their marriage and stood in front of a computer terminal that gave them a prerecorded speech, then popped an error warning and a disclaimer. Serene declared she was really sure she wanted to marry a citizen of a lower condition. The machine, defeated, registered their union in the qubase and issued their marriage certificate. No one invited them to kiss, but they did it anyway.
From that moment on, Novak struggled with inhuman zeal to give her as many healthy and happy days as possible. He knew all too well the sewers would drain her life faster than her parents’ birdcage. And suddenly, he found himself torn apart by fate’s irony. He could either spend his spare time in her arms, watching her fade, or devote every waking moment to searching for some useful garbage to trade, buying her more days she would spend alone, waiting for him.
Having his existence reduced to choosing between two losing options, Novak lived tormented, caught between guilt and longing. His heart rebelled incessantly against his mind, unable to find balance or acknowledge a lesser evil. So, sometimes he let himself be led by feelings and sometimes by reason.
At first, he was reluctant to leave her side, both of them unwilling to deprive each other of the happiness they shared. But her every faint cough or sigh impaled his heart, and he began to feel selfish for pursuing his happiness at the expense of her health. He would then tear himself away from her arms and rush to the chutes, raking through the garbage until his fingers stiffened.
And when he finally fell down on his knees, exhausted, his chest burning with longing, he felt eternities had passed since he left her. At the end of the day, he would begin to question whether the items he gathered bought her more hours than he spent digging them up. He always came to the conclusion that the water purifiers, the air filters, the extra pills or some better food could never make up for the lost time. He would run back to her, asking forgiveness, and again rest in her arms until guilt overcame him.
Once a new life burgeoned inside Serene, struggling for a place in their unwelcoming world, his choice became clear. Novak redoubled his efforts, and his contraband activity increased dangerously. Being obligated to make this choice spared him from his old torment. Soon enough, however, he would be facing a new one. Too much trading could have exposed him, and his imprisonment meant losing them both. Less trading meant the same. Novak worked as hard as he could, reckless at times, but he kept digging and evading the law until the day came and she went into labor.
Novak rushed her to the maternity hospital, relieved that his efforts had been successful and that she managed to carry the pregnancy to term. They put her on the gurney and hovered her to the delivery room. Serene lifted her head, seeking the protective figure of her husband, and extended a trembling hand toward him. But this time, she was on her own. He gazed into her azure eyes and caught his last glimpse of heaven. The door slide severed their farewell brutally, kicking him back to reality. Two hours later, Novak was presented with his newborn, a healthy, lively baby boy and condolences.
He never saw her again. He had no chance to say goodbye. He was not ready to say goodbye, and he refused to do so.
Novak did not have a picture of Serene. He had been so busy keeping her alive he never realized he would need something to remember her by. Every day, he compelled himself to paint her image in his mind, carefully adding every tiny detail until he found himself, once more, standing like a fool with a pack of books in his hand, staring at her.
Late at night was the best part of the day for Novak. Those simple moments that came before unconsciousness, when he would let himself fall in his resting place. When he would separate himself from the filth and the pain and be a human being once again. Only then, he would come before her memory, cleansed, worthy.
Falling in love was Novak’s rebellion. He stopped there, always too busy to dare for more, too busy paying the price.
For a while, Novak had been fiercely envied, ironically, by the same men who paraded by her bedside but lacked the selflessness to claim her heart. Until Serene passed. Then, every hurt ego was put at ease. Justice had been served. The rebel had paid for his insolence.
Novak would have surely fallen prey to decay had it not been for his son. His source of happiness, severed so abruptly, brought him to his knees. But Case was his new anchor. Case kept his mind clear and prevented him from crumbling into depression and death. Forced to recover quickly, Novak tried to fulfill his duty as a father and as a mother to the best of his abilities. Although he lacked the experience needed for taking care of an infant, he surprisingly found it less exhausting than caring for Serene. Case was healthy, so there was no need for special medication to be dangerously acquired or out-of-the-ordinary contraband to be traded. His necessities were few, and most of them were covered by the government.
Knowing that his son was safe and well, with no threats lurking about, brought Novak some well-deserved peace of mind. He finally allowed himself to claim a victory against the restless waves of remorse, which tore him apart for failing her. The guilt-ridden husband gave in to the responsible father. All of a sudden, there was nothing above his mortal strength to fight against. He just had a son to raise, like a lot of single fathers out there.
His life became simple, his longing did not. He thought it was simple because he had struggled harder than most people, a struggle he would have gone through all over again if it had brought her back. With Case in the nursery, Novak went back to his older passion and escaped into the world of books. He continued to live inside love stories, stepping in the characters’ shoes together with Serene, time after time, endlessly falling in love with her. This was a torment he could live with.
Growing up, Case found his father’s novels silly and failed to understand the characters, their motives and their behavior. Those stories happened in other places, which resembled nothing like his small world. It was easy for him to accept the filthy sewers for what they were. They encompassed his whole existence. This was his normality and would continue to be until he rose to acknowledge the darkness. Therefore, he preferred to read books that were easier for him to grasp. At his young age, mathematics, physics, engineering, electronics, computer science proved to be much more logically attractive than the chaos and unpredictability of life and feelings.
His mother had gifted him with intelligence, and Case, ever since he learned how to read, had taken advantage of it as much as possible. Novak, seeing how interested he was in the exact sciences, got him up-to-date digital books with animated holographic 3D models to replace the obsolete paper books and two-dimensional technical drawings.
There were some things in his father’s novels that stuck with him despite their silliness. One of them was the intriguing moral conduct of certain characters. Another, the existence of a mysterious tubeless realm. It seemed to have no ceiling. The increasing passion for exploration pushed Case to delve into astronautics. The boy started to dream about flying. He wasn’t exactly sure where this flying should take place, but he wanted to do it. His world was becoming too cramped, and his dreams were expanding beyond it.
Novak admired his son’s bold dreams and determination, although he did not believe in them. But it was enough to see Case’s face light up every time he would make some tiny progress or speak about his future endeavors. Novak had a way of reliving his wasted life through his son’s courage. He enjoyed riding on his wings.
Novak had no idea what kind of books he was feeding his son. All science and technology fell into one singular subject as far as he was concerned. He was unknowingly setting and encouraging Case on a perilous path. With all the maturity earned through his suffering, Novak’s eyes could not pierce into such future. He could not see that giving him too much to dream for was just as dangerous as not giving him enough.
