After spending eight years of his youth in and out of jail, Edward Teller decided he needed to find a purpose in his life beyond thieving bread and meat from bazaar stands. That was how he ended up hopping from island to island and how he came to take long walks on the uninhabited portions while pondering what job or hobby he would try next. Three years after leaving his home island and his single mother to provide for herself, Edward found himself hiking up the rolling hills of the fifth island he'd lived on, trying his damndest to think of something he had yet to do. He had trailed up and down these hills many times in the seven months he's lived on the island, but today was the first he saw someone painting a small statue meters from the dirt trail that snaked through the island's grassy fields.
Edward stood at the zenith of the hills—the highest point on the island, save for the peaks of the mountains dotting the far corners—trying to decode the identity of the male painter using one flat-top rock as a chair and another as a table. He looked young, no older than sixteen years of age, but Edward thought he knew him. When he couldn't solve the mystery because of the distance, he walked farther down the dirt path. It didn't carry him around the painter, but it did close the distance. It seemed to do the trick, because as Edward walked closer to the painter, he recognized him: Albert James.
Three months back, Edward tried his hand at sculpting clay. He enrolled in a class and learned the basics of sculpting and modeling clay. Albert was part of that class, but Edward didn't understand why. The boy, in spite of his age, had the talent and concentration of a master craftsman, and Edward heard the word prodigy thrown around no fewer than two dozen times while he was in the class. One student asked Albert why he bothered attending a class if he was already a master, and Albert's response was so that he could learn to scale his sculptures up.
Edward quit the class before his third full month as a student approached, because he came to dread going. Whenever he happened to run into someone from the class after that, they asked him why he left. The usual suspicion was that he didn't think he was good enough to continue, and they understood that reasoning, because learning beside Albert didn't boost one's confidence. The real reason, however, had nothing to do with Edward's talent as an artist. He thought he was decent enough and could improve with time, but he wasn't motivated to devote said time. He only enjoyed modeling with clay when he started, because it was fresh, it was new. After nearly three months, the same thing had happened with clay modeling as did with every other hobby and job Edward dabbled his feet in: he grew to dislike the work and in some cases hate it. Crossed off from the list was one more item that wasn't Edward's reason for living, so he moved on to find another.
Attempting to summon a new idea from his shortening list of possibilities brought Edward to the hills where he encountered Albert. After he realized it was Albert isolating himself from the remainder of the island, even from the huts on the outskirts of the port town, he lost the trail in his bewildered curiosity regarding the statue Albert was painting.
The knee-high grass was so thick that Edward had to step over the huge tufts, because they wouldn't with ease bow to his frame. He felt as though he were walking in a pond whose bottom sentiments included mud and thicker mud. Meanwhile, Albert's eyes remained zeroed in on his statue, and it was apparent to Edward that he hadn't noticed his presence yet. Edward began to contemplate if Albert would acknowledge his presence in any sort of way once he drew closer. Whenever Albert was absorbed in an opus of his during classes, the other students couldn't snap him out of his trance unless they shook him. Even then, he would give them a confused look and ask what was the matter only to learn that class ended ten minutes ago. Edward wondered if he would have to do the same.
For his previous contemplation, Edward got his first piece of evidence pointing to no when he tripped. He caught himself with one hand on a bundle of grass and fixed his stance. His first instinct was to check on Albert and see if he noticed, but Albert was as absorbed in his work as he was during the classes. Edward finished his detour to Albert and his statue, and it wasn't until he was about two meters from the statue when Albert lifted his brush and looked him in the eye. The gesture was so sudden, like a resting animal that detected movement nearby, that Edward flinched.
Albert shot Edward a strange look—the kind a person made when they saw someone who looked familiar but whom they haven't named yet. After a few seconds, he groaned a frustrated sound and said, “I know you from somewhere.”
Edward pointed at himself and said, “Edward. From the clay modeling class.”
Albert rubbed his bottom lip with his incisors while mumbling, “Edward, Edward.”
Edward considered giving Albert more clues, but he didn't think they would help. He was probably just another background character in Albert's eyes, and a forgettable one at that.
After a long awkward moment, Albert's face shone as if a beam of light was thrown on it. “Ah! I remember now,” he exclaimed while pointing a finger at Edward. “Edward, from the clay sculpting class.”
Isn't that what I already told you? Edward thought. “Yes, and you're Albert, correct?”
“I prefer Al, but yes,” Albert said. “What happened to you? You one day upped and left the class without any sort of notice. ”
Edward couldn't answer Albert's question, because his immediate reaction was an astonished thought at how Albert, the boy who didn't notice when class had ended, was aware of when a mediocre sculptor quit. He had to subdue that shock, however, and collect a coherent answer to Albert's question. But when he verbalized his answer, it dribbled from his lips as he stuttered too many times before giving Albert a clear answer: “I quit because I didn't enjoy modeling with clay.”
“Oh, I understand. Not for you?”
Edward shook his head. “No, it isn't.”
Albert returned to painting his statue and asked, “What made you join in the first place, anyway?”
“I was trying something new. I've been trying to discover what I should do with myself, find my reason for living—have been for the past three years.”
“Your raison d'être.”
“Pardon?” Edward asked with a cocked brow.
“Your raison d'être, your reason for existence. It's French. My dad taught it to me.”
It sounded strange to Edward to hear his goal phrased in another language. “I guess so,” he said with some reluctance.
“I don't mean to be nosy, but have you found it yet?” Albert asked.
“My...raison d'être? No, not yet.”
“Do you have any idea of what it'll be? What you're looking for?”
“I've worked all sorts of jobs and tried every hobby I've come across, but I didn't enjoy any of them too much,” Edward said uncomfortably. Somehow, despite being five years older than Albert, he was on the receiving end for life advice. It wasn't the sort of situation Edward thought possible, and he wasn't sure what to make of it now that it was occurring.
“What about hiking?” Albert asked. “I live in the hills”—he pointed his brush past the wooden cart resting behind the flat-top rock with the statue and towards the zenith of the hills—“so I sometimes see you walk by. You seem to do it a lot, so I thought maybe it was something you enjoyed enough that it could be your raison d'être. You know, you wake up and go on a hike and think about the joy you get from the simple things in life.”
“It is something I enjoy, but I feel empty if I hike just to hike. I don't feel satisfied from it, if that makes any sense.”
“Makes sense to me,” Albert said. “All I can tell you is to keep trying. I'm sure you'll find your raison d'être someday.”
Edward felt obligated to thank him for his encouragement, but Albert didn't give him any real advice, so he didn't bother with a proper response.
His eyes fell onto Albert's brush and then the statue as he stood with nothing to say and nothing to hear from Albert. He hadn't until now the opportunity to study the statue in detail. Its shape was somewhat peculiar from afar, but up close, Edward saw how the bizarre nature of the statue magnetized him to it.
Its almond-shaped head sat atop shoulders broadened as if the being was demonstrating its assertiveness, like someone picked a fight with it and it spread its shoulders and huffed out its chest.; its short, fat arms hung at the same stiff angles that would be used in such a stance. But because of the statue's size, no larger than a one-year-old, the stance was comical on such an abstract-looking being who propped itself on stubby, meaty legs with tiny shoes. The wide being wore what appeared to be a coat, and a royal one at that. Its outfit was decorated with a maddening yet detailed arrangement of swirls and beads and scales. Edward was positive there was some order to the chaos of the design of the coat, but he was confident he could discover that order and not whatever the object sitting atop the being's head was. He guessed it was a crown, but its form better resembled a piece of steel melted down in fire and left to cool into whatever configuration it shaped itself to be. Edward walked around to face the front of the being to see if he could make heads or tails of the shape of the crown, but his discovery of the being's face horrified him to a degree: two large ovals consumed the majority of its face, and it didn't have a nose or mouth, or at least what was how Edward came to identity a nose and a mouth. Yet its face wasn't as uncanny as Edward initially thought, and he concluded it was because two horizontal lines were etched into the eyes, creating eyelids.
“What is this supposed to be?” Edward asked. “And why are you painting it way out here?”
“I do my best work when I'm out here, but since hauling my sculptures and supplies up the hills is a pain, I don't make much out here,” Albert said. “As for this little guy, I'm not quite sure.”
Edward furrowed his brow at the boy. “How do you not know?”
“I saw a similar statue in a book, or rather, my little sister did. I swear it was love at first sight when she saw the statue, because she that's all she talks about and all she draws. When she showed me its picture, I decided I would try my hand at making one for her.”
No image of how Albert's little sister might look came to Edward's mind, because he wasn't sure what sort of person, let alone a girl, might like a statue that better resembled a visiting alien than a human being. Albert wasn't even painting it colors that might fuel a child's imagination; instead, he used dull shades of red, green, and purple to splash color onto a statue that was otherwise the pale tan of fired clay. Fishing for clues, Edward asked, “How old's your sister?”
“She's ten, but she was eight when she found the picture.”
Understandable but still eccentric to Edward. “And this statue is for her, you said?”
“It is, but I should let you know that it's not the first one like this I've made for her.”
“You've made others?”
“Many, actually. I've lost count, to be honest,” Albert admitted. “But they were all small—they could fit in the palm of your hand.” Albert held out an open palm, as if it held one of the statues he made previously. “It's the only size I could make for her without the sculptures breaking apart when fired.”
“Why make a larger version of the same thing?”
“Why not? Her birthday's approaching, and she asked me if I could make her a statue the same size as the one in the book.”
“I see,” Edward said. He anchored his feet in one spot and leaned to examine the details of the back again. “Do you have any idea why she likes these statues so much?”
“I'm not sure, but it doesn't matter to me, really.”
“Why not?”
“Because they make her happy, and that's all that matters to me. You see, my family doesn't have a lot of money, so we don't have too many luxuries. It's something that gets to her every now and again, how food's scarce and how our father's strict on how much water we use for bathing, so I do everything I can to see her smile. I guess you can say she's my raison d'être.”
Edward straightened his posture and digested the thought for a moment. “Not clay sculpting?”
“Mmm,” Albert hummed and sucked in his lips. “It's one of them. I love sculpting with clay, and I can do it all day. I'd like to be able to make a steady income off of it and put some decent food on the table for once. It'd be the least I can do for my parents and especially my father, who's good friends with the clay sculpting teacher. But sculpting is second to my sister and family. If I lost her or my parents, I don't think I'd be able to sculpt anymore.”
A person? Edward thought, as my raison d'être? He mumbled, “I never thought of that before.”
“Thought of what?”
“A person as my raison d'être.”
“I take it you don't talk to other people very often?”
“I have,” Edward blurted to defend himself from whatever argument he feared Albert might have. “But now that I think about it,” he said as he replayed from memory some of the conversations had with people he had worked with: jokes, drama around the business, and what they were doing after work. Edward filtered his thoughts to include the last item and remembered people who worked to buy nice things and, more relevant, people who worked to provide for others. “I have met people who worked jobs they hated in order to support their families.”
“Sounds like their raison d'être to me,” Albert commented.
At that instance, Edward felt like an idiot—a complete and utter fool. He now realized that in his journey to find his reason for living, his raison d'être, he gave himself tunnel vision in thinking he had to live for some form of work or pleasure. Throughout all of that time, he had been bombarded with stories of people who found someone to live for—people who put up with low wages or jobs they hated so that they could make the light in their life, their loved ones, happy. Maybe, Edward thought, that's the satisfaction I've been missing.
Then he remembered the person who he should have been paying attention to the most: his mother—his poor single mother whom he left back home. He thought he was doing her a favor: he left to provide for himself, so she only had to worry about feeding and clothing herself. Now that he put himself in her shoes, his gut rocked with terrible feelings of guilt. His mother wasn't the ideal candidate to become a parent: from what she told him, she became pregnant with him after a drunken night of wearing a dress with a collar cut too low. Yet she worked long hard hours to make what she could for her and her son. And Edward, once upon a time, did what he could, though illegal, to help alleviate her of the stress. He once thought he was wrong for what he used to do, but he now realized that he wasn't wrong—just misguided. And the journey he'd been on the past three years had been just that: misguided.
I wonder how Mom's doing.
Edward felt the sting of tears flooding his eyes, and he stepped backwards so that Albert couldn't see him swiping his eyes with his thumb.
I'm sorry, Mom. I'm so sorry.
He wished he could project his thoughts across the sea to his mother so that she may know of his swelling regrets.
I'm so sorry, he repeated and had to cover his eyes with his hand to contain the torrent of tears threatening to leak free. Edward wanted nothing more than to drop to his knees and release all of his thoughts and feelings, but not around Albert. He needed the privacy of his room at the island inn.
He wiped away the tears the best he could and barricaded his melancholic thoughts long enough so that he could finish his meeting with Albert. “I hope your sister likes your gift to her,” he said while walking to a spot where he was in Albert's peripheral vision.
Half of Albert's lips lifted into a small smile, and he said, “Don't worry, she will.”
Edward started away from Albert and bade to him with a wave, “It was nice seeing you again, Al.”
Albert sat up from his statue, revealing the hump molded into his shoulders from slumping before his statues, and asked, “Leaving so soon?”
“Afraid so.”
He waved back while saying, “It was nice seeing you, too, Edward. I hope you find your raison d'être.”
Edward smiled and said, “Thank you.” But there was no need for Albert's courtesy, he thought, because he had had his raison d'être, his reason for living, all along. His journey was over. It was time for Edward Teller to return home.
ns 15.158.61.16da2
