The bell rang. It was time for classes to end again, and Pomona could almost see the smiles on the children's faces.
Yet in the fourteenth century, bells often meant death knells. Later, even the death knells stopped, because there was no one left to ring them. Most people had lost their fear of death and corpses, because so many bodies lay out in the streets, waiting for the corpse collectors to take them away the next day.
Not everyone could have a funeral. There were no priests left to conduct Mass, nor mourners to shed tears. More often, five or six people were buried together. Some did not even have coffins before they were covered with earth.
Such scenes played out countless times. Rather than becoming numb, people became dazed, as though the end of the world was near.
At times like that, those who wanted to live—or rather, those who wanted to leave no regrets at the end of this brief, hurried life and indulged themselves fully—seemed more normal instead.
The plague brought a sense of urgency, especially in the city. Yet eternity was infinite, and time was eternal. The difference between eternity and time was change. Without change, there was no time, like the shadow cast on the ground by a bird in flight.
Of course, a bird could not fly without flapping its wings, nor could an arrow remain still once it had been shot.
Eternity, however, was without change at all, like loving one person forever and never changing one's heart to love another.
Memories did not disappear because of death. They even became deeper and more idealized because of it.
Limited by technology, people back then could only paint the people in their memories with pigments and brushes. There were no photographs, video cameras,