Zeon Vale.

In January 2014, I had returned to work after years of convalescence, regret, and failed attempts to put my life back together.

I no longer wanted much. Back then, a simple life seemed almost like deliverance. I lived with small desires, with a silent repentance for the curse I had once cast over my own life, and with the feeling that if I could no longer repair everything, I could at least try not to break anything else.

Life had begun to taste sweet again, but it still carried a sourness left over from the past.

The few friends I still had were pillars.

They did not heal me, but they kept me close to ordinary life whenever my mind turned too often toward the lost years.

I was working from an office offered to me by Câinele P., my oldest companion. He had given me a room of my own, with a kind of respect that was not asked for, but offered naturally.

We were bound by a solid trust, beyond words, threaded with jokes, teasing, and evenings in which any cloud would dissolve over a glass of white wine.

With him, I shared not only memories of fishing, but an entire professional history. We had been colleagues since the days of the “real estate kindergarten” — as we self-mockingly called our beginnings in the trade, when we were learning the first steps of negotiation and celebrating every commission like a victory.

He was the orderly one among us: his planner up to date, his mind clear, his plans well laid out. I was the chaotic one. I forgot fishing rods on the bank, bottles in the boat, tangled the lines, and most of the time brought more disorder than organization. But I also brought humor. And an appetite for life.

I had become the only “disaster” accepted so easily by two sticklers like him and Nenicul.

I called Câinele P. “Ham-Ham” — “woof-woof” — so he would not take himself too seriously. He barked at me whenever he felt I was getting too comfortable. That was how we functioned: two grown children, shaped by a real estate market we had learned as we went, held together by friendship, irony, and years in which we had seen each other both high and low.

Nenicul was the master of organization. He kept his planner with fierce precision and had a plan for everything. But beneath that meticulous shell, there was a big heart: volcanic, generous, present.

With him, I had some of my best adventures on the Danube. But the story that stayed in all our minds happened in winter, while ice fishing. Nenicul slipped, the ice broke, and suddenly he was in the water at minus seven degrees. He came out stark naked, running along the embankment toward the guard post, his teeth chattering, shouting in a way we would retell for months.

It was one of those scenes where you no longer know whether to be frightened or to laugh.

From then on, Nenicul became the favorite subject of my daughter’s bedtime stories.

“Daddy, tell me another Nenicul story,” she would ask.

And I would.

I turned his mishaps into stories, so she would not feel my absence from home so sharply in the years when I was chasing business and believed absence could be redeemed later.

On the morning of April 15, at 6:00, I woke up crying.

It was not loud weeping. It was deep, silent, as if something old had broken inside me.

I had dreamed that I was lying in a coffin, in a completely empty room.

Nothing on the walls.

No object.

No shadow.

Only me and my death.

I felt no fear. There was a grave stillness, almost clean, as if the dream had stripped the world of everything false and left only the final truth.

And in the dream, I was singing.

I was singing my own funeral chant.

The words flowed by themselves, from a deep place, without my calling them:

“I looked again into the grave and saw bare bones, and I said: Who then is the emperor or the soldier, the rich man or the poor man, the righteous or the sinner?”

The chant belonged to the Orthodox funeral rite. I knew it deeply, like a chant that enters your flesh after you have carried it for years in your voice. But in the dream, it did not come as memory. It came as silent judgment, as if death were placing my own truth before me.

When I woke, I was wet with tears.

And yet, something new had settled inside me. A stillness. A clarity. A peace I could not explain.

On Sunday morning, I set out for that church.

The way there seemed to lead through a park. To my surprise, the green space was actually a cemetery.

It was a place of noble quiet, carefully tended, with flowers on the graves and wide paths. I walked slowly, taking in the surroundings, when a man came toward me on the path.

He had a friendly, sincere expression. We greeted each other and naturally fell into conversation.

He asked me if I knew a tradesman. He needed a retaining wall built from concrete blocks and a plot of land to be landscaped with grass.

Without hesitation, I told him:

“I am the tradesman you’re looking for.”

He smiled broadly.

I felt as if I was no longer walking, but floating. I was on cloud nine.

After so many days in which I had been searching for a thread, that man was placing before me exactly the chance I needed.

In reality, I was not a professional builder.

As a teenager, during summer vacations, I had worked with a team of tile setters and mosaic workers and had learned the basics of the trade. Later, around ’92, I had helped my best friend build his house. Apart from those episodes, my life had had no real contact with physical labor and construction work.

But now this was my chance to prove what I could do.

Inwardly, I was thanking God.

After so many days of uncertainty, at the last possible moment, a concrete solution appeared: not a spectacular miracle, but a man, a wall, a job. Behind it, however, stood a new hope for my family.

The man’s name was Doru.

After the church service ended, he suggested I spend the night in his van — a Volkswagen Vito ingeniously turned into a bedroom.

We went together to the hostel to collect my luggage. It was a bright afternoon, and for the first time in many days, I felt I was no longer suspended over emptiness.

On Monday morning, we were to go see the job and discuss the terms with the contractor.

One morning that summer, after a night spent sleeping in the van, I asked Doru how he had slept.

He sighed shortly, with the seriousness of a man tested by unseen things, and said:

“Brother, the temptations tormented me terribly all night…”

I looked at him and smiled.

“What temptations?”

“Two Norwegian blondes gave me no peace in my dream. I kept refusing them, but they kept coming at me insistently.”

We both burst out laughing.

“Doru, if they come again tonight, send them to me. I’ll take care of them for you.”

In the morning, a heavy silence settled inside me. The night before and the verse I had read had remained in my flesh:

“I will not dwell with the proud…”

I decided to lower my pride. Not because I wanted to, but because I felt that there, deep down, something had remained closed between me and life.

It was December 17, 2014.

I was on my knees.

Not before God, but before people.

Pressed against the corner of the Norwegian Parliament building, with an empty coffee cup in front of me. I could feel my heart beating so hard that I had the impression every passerby could hear it.

I did not dare lift my eyes. I did not want to meet anyone’s gaze.

In the first minutes, I wanted to run. I would have preferred death to this shame of being on my knees.

My thoughts were tearing me apart.

How did I get here?

Who am I now?

I was no longer begging for money. I was begging not to exist.

I clenched my teeth. My ego, once armor, had become a stone tied around my neck.

Every second was a condemnation. Every footstep of those passing by me was a sentence.

And yet I remained.

Because somewhere deep down, I knew that if I stood up then, I would lose something I could no longer name.

I think I stayed like that for more than an hour and a half.

I lifted my eyes only once, when a teenage girl approached and placed a hot coffee and a pastry in my hand.

I thanked her in a whisper:

“Tusen takk.”

When I saw that one hundred kroner had gathered in the cup, I stood up and left.

I felt something strange inside me. Not joy. Not relief.

But a bitter taste, an inner filth I did not know whether to be ashamed of or grateful for.

After Christmas, a thought began to gnaw at me.

I felt I had not done everything for my daughter. I had left her without the gift that, perhaps, might have brought her a drop of joy in those days.

In my silent begging, I had always stopped at what was strictly necessary for myself. Enough to survive. Nothing more.

But now I regretted it.

I thought that if I had stayed longer, if I had lowered myself more deeply onto my knees, perhaps I could have sent more home.

For me, asking for more than I needed meant crossing a threshold of dignity. But longing for my child and the pain of helplessness broke the silence of that principle.

I told myself that over the weekend, I would beg at night, so I could send her a gift. So my child could welcome the new year with joy.

I had heard from the “professionals” of the street that at night, on weekends, one could earn more than during the day.

That thought made me look at things differently.

It is not the same thing to stretch out your hand for yourself and to stretch it out for someone you love. Sometimes, lowering yourself for love is not shameful. You can be on your knees and still not have fallen.

The following night, I chose to hold out my palms.

Not for myself.

For my child.

And, in a way, for peace with myself.

The long-awaited night came.

I started a little early. At half past eight, I was already on Karl Johan, a little below my usual spot.

I was serene, with a simple prayer inside me:

“Lord, let it be a good evening.”

I no longer lowered my head or my gaze. I was crouched down, but open.

The hours passed slowly, and the cup gathered coins.

It did not seem to be a very generous evening. Around two in the morning, I had about three hundred kroner.

I smiled to myself:

“Poor evening, Lord… poor… Maybe I don’t have the face of a professional beggar…”

Just then, from my right, I saw two teenagers approaching.

I sensed the intention of one of them: he wanted to kick my cup.

Instinctively, I tried to shield the coins with my foot, but he feinted and got around me.

He struck.

The cup tipped over, and the coins scattered across the pavement.

I said nothing.

I smiled.

And I asked in silence:

“Why, Lord?”

I began gathering my coins, one by one.

The next day, I went to an internet café on Hausmanns gate. I only wanted to check what was new in my email inbox. The place was probably run by a man of Arab origin.

When I entered, I saw him in the corner, praying.

His body bowed toward the ground, with solemn movements that seemed taken from another world.

Time had stopped there.

I no longer felt I was in an internet café. It seemed like a hidden room, where someone was speaking with God.

I remained still.

It was a gesture of respect, but more than that: an inner impulse, something that told me:

“Stay here too.”

I turned in the same direction and, with my eyes closed, began to whisper the prayer I had carried inside me since childhood:

“Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name…”

I felt Him beside me.

Not the man, but God.

I had never been more present in a prayer.

Two bodies, two traditions, two men, each walking his own path.

And yet, in that moment, we were as one.

He touched the ground with his forehead, with gestures of holy humility, as if kissing the earth, while I — in prayer — was embracing and kissing heaven.

In that moment, we were no longer two men from different religions.

We were two sons of the same God.

On the third day, the idyll of Bergen began to show its other face.

Cold and rain settled over the city with a heavy, almost hostile stubbornness. Still, that day I found work.

A contractor was looking for someone to help on a roof where tiles were being laid.

I accepted without hesitation.

There was no time for whims, nor for choices. Either you worked, or you watched your stomach tighten with emptiness.

I climbed onto the scaffold, the cold tiles in my hands, and felt the fine, merciless rain soaking through to my skin.

Before long, my clothes had turned into a wet rag clinging to my body.

I asked, almost with a childlike hope, whether he had a raincoat.

He gave me a short, cutting look and said:

“You should have come properly equipped.”

That was all.

Nothing more.

His tone was harsh, as if the rain were my fault.

I said nothing. I went back to work, my palms slipping on the wet tiles, my feet heavy as lead.

Water seeped under my collar, ran down my back, and gathered in my boots. I could feel the cold biting into my bones, but there was no room for complaints.

Inside me, however, another rain was being born — a rain of thoughts.

I did not rebel. Rather, I felt pity. Not pity from above, but a strange, bitter pity for the man who could organize a job, but could not see another man in front of him, soaked to the skin.

Beyond the trade, beyond money, the true work of a man remains in the way he touches another human being.

I prayed for him in silence.

That evening, when I came down from the roof, I was soaked to the skin. My fingers were wrinkled, my body heavy, but in my palm I felt the weight of a few banknotes — the fruit of a day’s work.

I looked at them as if they were a miracle.

Not for their value, but because they tied me to life for one more day.

The contractor told me I could come the next day too.

But that night, my body gave in.

The fever came quietly, like a smoldering fire that suddenly catches. I trembled under the blanket, and the cold from the day had become a burning inside me.

I had caught a serious cold.

In the morning, with a broken voice, I called him to say I could not come.

He did not seem impressed.

I hung up and surrendered to the bed. For an entire day, I lay there, wrapped in vapors of fever and thought.

But, as if by a miracle, that night the fever broke.

As if even it had understood that I could not afford the luxury of staying down.

In the morning, I woke lighter, my body clear as after a storm.

I sent the contractor a message:

“I’m able to work again. Do you still need me?”

I received no answer.

I waited for hours, but the phone remained silent.

It was a cold February evening, and the streets of Bergen were slowly emptying.

The wind carried a damp smell of asphalt and sea. I entered McDonald’s, not out of appetite, but out of need — a temporary shelter, a place where I could let time pass until the hour when the shelter doors opened.

Upstairs, the tables were empty. I chose one near the door and sank into the chair, my backpack beside me. Beyond the window, the lights of the city floated in a milky fog.

I felt the need to pray. It was not a decision, but an inner calling.

I rested my elbows on my knees, covered my face with my palms, and began to speak with God. Not aloud, but with thoughts spoken from the depths.

Usually, my prayer was simple — for myself, for someone dear, for an immediate trouble.

But that evening, something broke in me, and something else opened.

I began to name them all.

The good. The bad.

Those who had passed through my life and left marks.

The new ones and the ones from long ago.

Those who had looked at me as they passed me on the street, without seeing me.

Those who had passed by me when I was begging, and whom I had not thanked because I could not lift my eyes. I saw only shoes, not faces.