Glimpses of Eternity -Part 1

Author: Divya Saksena

Glimpses of Eternity

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“Stop! Look out!” he shouted as he suddenly yanked me off the cobbled street to the uneven, raised walkway with a heavy and purposeful hand. Startled, struggling to recover my balance, I wriggled round in his grasp to gape at a complete stranger. Well...not quite. I’d observed him earlier, waffling along at a sedate pace, seemingly absorbed in his scrutiny of the ruined splendor all around us. He’d been gazing with rapt attention at the friezes on the remnants of the overhanging arch of the Forum in a hideously academic manner that had made me nearly ashamed of my vulgar touristy curiosity about this place. I had felt almost like an intruder, desecrating the still venerable sanctity of Jupiter’s fallen Temple. Now he was staring at me wild-eyed, his hand tightening its grip on my shoulder. The concern writ large on his face was too obvious, too palpably genuine to be a fraud...or was it?

“Are you all right?” he queried anxiously. “Hurt anywhere? That was a narrow squeak, you know!”

“Er...no, I mean I’m fine, er...”I mumbled awkwardly, hopping from one foot to another on the cobblestones, now trying to recover more than one kind of balance and maintain some poise at the same time. I noticed a slight, not unpleasant accent in the clearly educated modulations of his voice. A couple of hand-holding, largely self-occupied tourists tossed us a mildly curious glance before perambulating on along the street. I looked back at my companion, craning my neck a little because of my lack of inches, a medley of thoughts running haywire in my head. “Thanks...er...Mister, um...?” my voice trailed away.

A shadow of doubt mingled with some considerable embarrassment had begun to creep over the aquiline features of his face and into his eyes. I watched with a peculiar fascination as one finely-shaped hand stole up to ruffle the streaky-dark hair already tousled by the early morning breeze. “Julien.. Dr. Julien Alastaire,”he supplied the name absently, as he turned to gaze in an abstracted manner up the street behind us. The Via Dell’abbondanza, stretching all the way back to the Forum. Then, rather lamely, he apologized, “I’m awfully sorry I gave you such a shock. I could have sworn...”Leaving what he could have sworn hanging unsaid between us in the soft air as yet untouched by the heat of the sun, he swung away from me, evidently wrestling with his own thoughts.


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