The Deal With Death

There once was a young man, named Rozerto who was in love with a woman named Vivia and longed so much to have her love that he said to himself, I would happily give up the rest of my life if I could spend just one year of it with her.

And going to a place in the forest, a dark cave where, it was said, in the darkness one could meet death, the young man made a deal with him.

Death appeared to him in his gristly, skeletal form; wrapped in a cloak of rags and spoke to him with a voice like the cold northern wind.

“Do you really want to give up the rest of your life?”, death asked, “For once you have made such a deal there is no going back”.

“Loving her, even for one year, would be worth more to me than a whole life without her, for life without her seems empty and purposeless and longing for her; an unbearable pain”, said the man.

And so death agreed to make Vivia fall in love with the man and it was the most wonderful joy that the man had ever experienced; everything in the world glowed brighter and life seemed more beautiful than it have ever been.

Unfortunately, the man could not tell the woman about his deal with death.

“Now that death has made her fall in love with me, how can I tell her that I am going to die and that she is going to lose me?”, he thought.

And so he determined that he must try and make their life together as happy for her as it was for him and, so that he could spend every moment with her, he gave up his job working at a mill.

But this only worried the woman.

“If you don’t work, how will we survive”, asked Vivia, “What about our future and how will we support our children?”.

“But work takes me away from you”, he said, “And I do not want to be apart from you, not for one second”.

Yet because he couldn’t tell her the truth he couldn’t explain to her that he had no future and so he went back to work to make her happy but all the while felt that every moment spent apart from her was wasted time.

But it was made up for by every moment that he spent in her company and, holding her close to him, he felt certain that he had made the right decision and they had so many happy times together.

Only then the man started to feel terrible pangs of guilt, especially as he would listen to the woman talking about their imagined future life together and he wondered how her life would be as a lonely widow, living without him.

“How can I do the right thing for her?”, he wondered, “I don’t even have much of an inheritance to leave her”.

Everything was going wrong, he thought. He had given up his life because he loved her, but without his life, he couldn’t do all the things for her that someone should for the person they loved.

And the year started to pass far too quickly, at least to the man. When he had first made the deal with death it had been February and the flowers had not begun to bloom but suddenly it was September and he could see the trees starting to change colour.

He went back to the cave where he had met death and pleaded with him,

“Please, make her forget me. Make her not love me anymore”, he said, “I made a terrible mistake. I only thought about my own happiness but it never even occurred to me how unhappy I would be making her if I die”.

“But she has known love for a short time. Is that not good enough”, asked death, “Besides which. The seed of a child is beginning to grow within her. After you die, she will have a baby boy. Would you rather that it was the child of a man she no longer loved?”.

“It will be a fatherless child”, thought the man, starting to grieve and feel guilty, “I won’t be there to help her raise it or provide for it or love it. I’ll have hurt not only her but the child aswell”.

“When we link our hearts to another person there is no greater happiness and no greater sorrow; what seems, at first, carefree bliss soon becomes great responsibility; for those we love, we must fear for, must strive for day and night but then, on the other hand, people are no happier being alone with no one to love. My friend, you cannot have everything and, if you did, you would probably still be miserable”, said death.

“Then there’s nothing to be done?”, said the man.

“If you truly love this woman”,  said death, “Why not tell her the truth and, if she loves you, she may forgive you; she may understand but even if she does not, if you truly love her you would not wish to lie to her”.

And so the man went home to Vivia and he told her everything about the deal he had made with death and why he had made it.

But the woman didn’t believe him and so he brought her to the cave and there she saw death for herself.

“Then it’s true”, she said to death, “You made me fall in love with this man and, at the end of this year, he is going to die”.

“Yes”, said death.

The woman did not know how to feel.

Part of her felt used or violated because she had been made to fall in love with Rozerto and yet she was in love and there was nothing that she could do about it; she still loved him and another part of her felt hurt because he had made her need him and so had condemned her to a life of grief and loss and that seemed cruel but she knew he was not really a cruel man.

Just then however, a thought occurred to the woman and hope lit up her eyes.

“You told him that I am going to have his child, isn’t that true?”, she asked.

“Yes”, said death.

“And can you see into me, can you see…is it a human being yet…with a soul. Is it a child?”, asked the woman.

“Not yet”, said death, “Not for some months”.

“Then could you not take its life instead of that of the man I love”, said the woman, “A life is a life, after all”.

“But would not feel as much grief, losing a child?”, asked death.

“It is not a child yet”, said the woman, “It has not known life and will not feel sadness at losing it and, as long as the man who I love lives, I will have the chance to have other children”.

“Very well”, said death, “As you said, a life is a life”.

Then death put his hand upon the belly of the woman and the spark of life within her that would have grown into an infant, ceased to glow.

Then, happy; no, even more than that, ecstatic the woman ran into the man’s arms.

“But do you forgive me?”, asked the man.

“You have the chance to make it up to me now”, she said.

The man put his arms around the woman and held her tightly,

“And I will, I will”, he said, “I swear”.

Then, not long afterwards, the man and woman were married and, just as the woman had hoped they did have other children and, together, lived a very long and happy life.