Fulghum’s Synthitar

A short story
by Kevin V. Kvas

It was Uncle Vanya’s sincerest conviction that all the particles in the universe had conspired to make his life miserable, he having been born into the poorest family in the smallest, most worthless colony any harvest moon had ever seen. The inhabitants were mostly old, dying people who refused to die. This meant poor business for Uncle Vanya.

In his cluttered one-room compartment, Vanya was applying the finishing touches to a solid but unadorned, child-sized burial-pod when Moisey Etolraf, the livestock farmer, leaned in and said, “Uncle Vanya, Raggett is working later tonight. Will you replace him at tonight’s mass?”

Though the request immediately lifted Vanya’s spirits—he loved playing synthitar in the Researchers’ Orchestra—he only grunted in vague affirmation and did not look up from his crafting. Vanya despised his work (financially insufficient as it was), but the burial-pods he made from grounded space junk still always came to possess an admirable, almost aesthetic quality. Not that a corpse’s family had any choice: Uncle Vanya was the only carpenter of corpse-pods in the colony. And all families of the dead had to use his services, for there was only one tradition concerning the deceased, the tradition that everyone followed: One should invest money into launching beloved corpses into outer space so as to facilitate their spiritual reunion with the entity of their origin, the Grand Spirit of the Universe.

The plump, scruffy face of Moisey Etolraf nodded its approval, then furrowed its brow at the small burial-pod that Vanya was crafting. “Who is that for? Has a child died without my knowing? Oh, dear, it wasn’t Fulghum, was it? I’d be down two players. . . .”

Vanya felt feverish at the mention of the boy’s name. Fulghum was the Head Researcher’s son. The name not only conjured Vanya’s heated hatred for the wealthy Researcher families, but also infected him with the lucid image of playing in the smelly, sweaty orchestra, Fulghum’s flute wailing flawlessly into his left ear, throwing off the holographic projections of Vanya’s synthitar. No, Vanya thought, the accursed red-haired Researcher boy is not dead. It was a burial-pod he would not have minded crafting.

Shaking his head and not bothering to keep his voice steady, Vanya said, “The coffin is for Mr. and Mrs. Gleick.”

Moisey scratched his large cheeks. “It is the Gleick child who has died?”

“No. This is just a pre-order.”

Moisey laughed. “A pre-order on a child’s coffin? Their children are getting big now!”

Vanya shrugged. “I don’t ask when it comes to this thankless business. I do it, I get it over with.”

“You’re a hard-worker, Uncle Vanya,” Moisey agreed, smiling broadly, and then he was off.

It was the sound of his own nickname that now angered Vanya. Nobody could have said where it came from. He was not an uncle; he had no nephews or nieces; he was not even a father. He was no longer even a husband. And he was sure as hell not heart-warming.

Just a week ago, his wife had called for him:

“Vanya, I am dying.”

Vanya recalled the image that had been replaying in his mind ever since: going to her bed and seeing her face bright with fever—but with also fever of another brand. At first, Vanya could not recognize what it was; indeed, at first he could not even recognize her: she looked happy. She was not smiling, but there was an aura about her, a glow of tranquility as she slowly faded from awareness and existence. So happy was she to get away from the depressing one-room compartment, the piles of uncompleted space-pods, and the product of social necessity that was her husband.

In the last minutes before her death, Vanya’s wife had said, “I once was pregnant, you know. It was a miscarriage.”

Vanya had thought it was delusion speaking: he remembered no such thing.

He made no profit from the pod he was obligated to build for her.

For no apparent reason, Uncle Vanya’s hatred for the boy Fulghum increased with every sight or mention of him. Vanya would contradict him on principle and insult him at every opportunity. Others thought the quarrels childish. Others thought Vanya had chosen a cheap, indirect way to insult the Research Director. But that night, after the orchestra’s performance, immediately forgetting the beauty of the music, Vanya was so angry (with himself) that he tried to punch Fulghum.

The red-haired boy stepped back in time, however, knocking over a music stand as he did so.

“I respect your talent,” the boy said, “but. . .” And then he turned away, weeping.

It was these incidents that significantly reduced Vanya’s invitations to play in the orchestra—reduced the invitations to do the thing he loved best.

That night, Vanya sat alone in his compartment, unable to sleep but lacking energy to do anything else (and also lacking things to do). He was overcome by a depression so severe that its effects were thoroughly physical. He felt the pains in his knees and joints, the heaviness of his reluctant breaths. He felt hungry and thirsty, yet desired neither food nor drink. He felt tired, so tired that he couldn’t sleep, and yet sleep would have done him no good. It would have only made him more tired, because slowly everything was coming to an end.

To Vanya, the end looked bright. The end was his wife’s rosy cheeks, a hidden smile between them, glowing in the flickering fluorescent lights. It was an aura that had turned her into a different woman, a woman neither of them had ever known or been sensitive towards.

Till the end, till the end, Uncle Vanya thought, grumbling to himself, and dozed off without noticing.

The next day Fulghum came to see Uncle Vanya. Through a mouthful of synth-din, Vanya roared at the boy, “Get away, you! Get out of my sight!”

Looking frightened, the red-haired boy said timidly, “Uncle Vanya, I was looking for you. Moisey Etolraf sent me—he would like to speak with you.”

“Then why’d he send you?” Vanya growled, some gruel-like substance dripping from his lips. “I can’t stand you filthy researchers! I won’t go!”

Fulghum flinched, as though he expected Vanya would throw his bowl of synth-din at him. Vanya only threw more curses—“Filth! Scoundrel!”—and so the boy promptly left.

Vanya finished eating in angry silence. When he was done, not being able to work since it was Sunday, and anyway not having anything to work on, he wandered aimlessly through the central compound, reminiscing.

As he passed a group of scurrying boys, some called out in jeering tones, “Uncle Vanya! Hey, it’s poor Uncle Vanya!”

Everybody knew his name. The uncle of no nephews. No family at all.

He wondered who would take up the burial-pod trade when he passed on—someone would have to. But the only thing good he had ever done in his life, he reasoned, was to not have any children. To have had children, and pass onto them the same seventy years of bored, struggling, doomed imprisonment would have been hypocritical to Vanya’s sincerest convictions about life. But as he wandered now, the scenery an unimportant blur, so did his mind, and in directions he did neither expect nor particularly desire.

Why hadn’t he ever just left? Every few months, he knew well, the same ships that supplied the colony would also take away any dead colonists, locked away as they were in Vanya’s pods, to rightfully bury them in the sacred cemetery that was the universe. Perhaps he could have found a full-time job as a synthitarist aboard that ship. Or if that hadn’t been good enough—he wouldn’t have had to stay anywhere—he could have looked for work elsewhere, on a different planet or moon. A larger, richer place with more people and opportunities.

He could have just gotten up and left, without telling anyone! Not even his wife!

For a moment Vanya became excitedly transfixed in these ideas, as one does when fantasizing about winning the lottery. But then he woke from his dreams and fell from their great height back down to the dull sensations of reality he had been so painfully familiar with for seventy years. There was no point or possibility of changing his lifestyle now.

He shoved the thoughts away—he wouldn’t have wanted to, anyway. It was pointless to be regretful since nothing could be changed. He convinced himself that, if given the chance to relive his life differently, he would not. Most certainly not.

As he passed a glassy fountain in the atrium, Vanya suddenly thought of the baby his wife had spoken of a week ago. Yes! he thought, upon regarding the tree that twisted at the fountain’s centre. It seemed he had not come this way in a long while, or had simply not stopped to look here, despite the smallness of the living compound. There was one. And then we never tried again.

Then an exhaustion came over him like none he had ever felt before. His mind turned to liquid, and spots fuzzed over his eyes. He felt like collapsing and fainting and never waking up. He had to lean forward onto the fountain’s edge and wait for his mind to clear, cool wafts from the waters relaxing him.

When his vision cleared, his rippling, wrinkled reflection stared back at him. It was the droopy face of a man who had scarcely found reason to smile or laugh not out of bitterness in all his life. Vanya let a blob of drool drop from his mouth and into the reflection. Then he limped on home.

That night, he tossed and turned, and he got up several times to finger a moaning hum on his synthitar. The device conjured colorful holograms of a family of triangular birds gliding around a pulsing oak tree. The birds whistled lightly along with Vanya’s own sounds. A woodpecker kept the beat in an eerie, ever-changing time signature.

In the morning Vanya was unable to get out of bed. He did not feel like eating anything.

He decided he should go to the hospital, but did not. It was the feeling of death that was overwhelming him now. He would die very soon, and there was nothing a doctor could do about it. He decided he would simply lie there, fading away, waiting to join his wife and all his business clients. Death, he had many times decided, did not bother him. In death, one did not have to work or pay taxes any longer, for there were no pressing concerns of survival; no food, no drink, no sleep, no nothing—only eternity. Yes, he would be a body in a vessel soaring for eternity through the great void of space, visiting places no one had ever seen. He would finally be out of this colony, off of this moon, all his dreams fulfilled. If he had wanted to leave, he might have sold his synthitar, the only good thing his father had left him; it would have provided him with—

He managed to shift positions at thought of the synthitar. With sudden urgency, as though afraid it was already gone, he turned to look at the instrument, finding it propped as he had left it, against the far wall. He felt more emptiness at the thought of the synthitar’s fate: it would lie there to be pillaged and pawned after he died. He had not written a will. Everything he had done, what little he had to show for all his contribution to society, would all be given back: He saw the synthitar collecting dust in a government warehouse.

With great effort, he got to his feet and willed his aching joints over to the instrument. He brought it back to play sitting on the bed. Thinking of the life he had wasted, he sobbed as he urged plaintive sighs and whines from the instrument he had known so well. The playing was beautiful, but the emotional hardship it expressed would have been too unbearable for any casual listener. An array of dancing lights filled the room, each light seeming to contain a memory from Vanya’s life. At some points, one of these bubbles would magnify itself beyond all the others, and small scenes or flashes would play out, the synthitar’s odes to its master. Most of the memories were painful ones—these were the ones which preoccupied Vanya—but he only stopped playing at a knock on the door. His immediate reaction was to become furious and scream at whoever had been so thoughtless as to interrupt an old man in his final, lamenting hours before death. But instead, Vanya sighed and answered in a timid voice which required much less effort:

“Come in.”

The door opened and it was the boy named Fulghum who stood behind it. The boy looked clearly spooked; his already fair-skinned face was as stark as winter’s wasteland, root-like networks of soft blue veins glowing through. He was trying his best not to make eye contact with the old synthitarist who hated him. Since the fearful Fulghum looked like he might turn and run away at any second, Vanya said quickly, “Fulghum, I am dying. Stay here. . . speak to me. I have treated you poorly, but now. . .now I see you are the only one I will have to talk to in my last moments.”

Fulghum, looking bewildered and afraid, turned slowly back to Vanya and said, spluttering, apparently not having realized what Vanya had just said, “Please, don’t. . . . Moisey sent me again. The Vincent wedding is on Thursday. He needs you to play. He said they can’t do without you.”

“I am dying,” Vanya said. “I won’t play. I will not be here tomorrow, let alone Thursday.”

And he began to sob, desperately picking up the synthitar again, his only consolation. This time its mournful cries conjured a frighteningly accurate projection of Fulghum. The real Fulghum watched in fear. The Fulghum projection took out its own instrument, though not a flute, but another synthitar, and began playing a more upbeat counter-melody to Vanya’s melancholic one. The two melodies sounded dissonant at first, but then began to come together as one gained understanding of the music.

Fulghum left the compartment, then, afraid and not knowing what to do. But he had only walked several steps when he heard Vanya’s resonating tune stop with a suddenness that gripped him with fear. He ran back to Vanya’s compartment and burst through the door to see the poor man lying down on his bed, clutching his heart with one hand, the synthitar with the other, all its magical projections dispersed.

“Take my synthitar,” Vanya told the boy, and died.

Sobbing, the boy brought his hand to Vanya’s sweaty forehead and gazed at him for awhile. Then, as he turned to go inform his father or Moisey, he noticed the many parts for burial-pods scattered about the compartment. Realizing there was now no one else to make Vanya’s pod, the boy set himself to the task.

Of all Fulghum’s inheritances (as the son of the wealthy Research Director), there were no gifts that outdid old Vanya’s synthitar. When Fulghum plays the synthitar most sweetly, when he plays it to console others or himself, its projector often conjures images of its previous master, as he was at his happiest moments: the times he was playing his synthitar. And so Fulghum and Vanya play together.

And whenever Fulghum tries to repeat what Uncle Vanya played in his final moments—that convoluted but heart-wrenching lament—the audience is always brought to tears; for at these moments the synthitar conjures different images for everyone, and they are all reminded of what they love and why they live. At the end of such performances, someone usually asks, “Where did you get such a fine instrument, Fulghum? It is a synthitar, right?” And as Fulghum packs away the instrument, he shrugs and says, “I have owned it all my life. For it was one of my fathers who passed it to me.”

Copyright © 2008 by Kevin V. Kvas