Call

  A man and a woman stood in the middle of the room.
  The woman's heart was seething with rage and her eyes were lightning with hatred.
  She screamed at her husband and humiliated him with her last words. When she got tired of yelling, she would take a cup or a plate and smash it on the floor.
After breaking all the dishes, the woman would start yelling again.
  The man was silent. Pictures of their first date and the first happy years of their life together floated before his eyes.
- I loved her once,” a thought flashed through the man's mind. - Is it really that modest girl in whose eyes I sank like in the ocean, and was enchanted by the melody of her voice? How had I gotten to the point where I was willing to do anything to avoid hearing her scream?
  Without answering the insult, he stepped out onto the porch and looked up at the evening sky. One by one the stars were lighting up.
  His wife followed him out and continued:
- Inattentive, rude, heartless,” these words came to him like a judge's sentence.
- Maybe I am the same? - he thought, continuing to look at the sky. One of the stars shone brighter, filling him with new strength.
- The stars haven't stopped loving me,” he smiled and felt lighter.
  He had always felt an inexplicable connection with them, and they had always supported him with their light.
- So it is my destiny to live with such a wife. I guess I didn't appreciate women in my past lives, so I got what I deserved.
  Suddenly he noticed how quiet it became. His wife stopped talking and looked at him attentively.
  The man realized that he was talking to himself and, embarrassed, returned to the house.
- I have a bad husband, a weak man, a sissy. Even I, a weak woman, can offend and humiliate him, and he will not say a word in his defense.
  The image of a fearless warrior flashed before her eyes.
  She looked enviously at the stars that loved him.
- The time will come and we will turn our home into a beautiful star,” she remembered his words when he confessed his love to her and sighed bitterly.....

                ***
  The man entered the house. The floor was strewn with broken dishes.
  He picked one up and a vision of his wife's past life flashed before his eyes. He picked up another and saw a second life.
   Still not trusting what he saw, he continued to pick up the shards and put them together.
  His wife's lives floated before his eyes one by one.
  He was not interested in who she was, but he felt and experienced all that she had gone through in her many incarnations.
  Misunderstanding, loneliness, deception, and abuse had passed through the man's heart, leaving deep cracks through which rays of light began to break through.
  - She didn't yell at me,” the man realized. - All her life she had been crying out for help. At first she had called softly, then louder, and now she was calling at the top of her voice.      
  With trembling hands he picked up the last shard lying on the floor and attached it to the bowl.
  The last crack passed through his earthly heart and it shattered into hundreds of shards, burning in the light of Love released.
  He had no heart now. Love burned in its place. Its flames flowed down his arms and filled the bowl with fire.
               
                ***
  Immersed in her sad thoughts, the wife did not immediately notice the gentle hands that lifted her and carried her into the house. They gently sat her down beside the flaming bowl and wrapped her in a soft blanket.
  As she warmed herself, the woman saw in the fire glimmers of pictures from the distant past. At first there were only a few. Then more and more, and now her husband's life floated before her eyes in a single stream.
  She saw him tortured in a dungeon and then executed for defending his people from their enemies. How he had been whipped in hard labor and begged for alms as a hungry boy.
 He was betrayed and slandered, beaten and humiliated, and in the most difficult moments he smiled at the stars and talked to them about something.
  With each life, the man's call for help grew quieter and quieter until it was silent.
  - Now I understand why my husband is silent when I shout,” the wife guessed. No one but the stars paid attention to his moans of pain and pleas for mercy. To them, his silence sounded stronger than any scream.
 - I scolded him and he carried me in his arms. I humiliated him and he admired my eyes. I broke all the dishes and he made a bowl out of them, the flames of love warming me.
- Forgive me, - my wife whispered and looked into his eyes and drowned in the ocean of love. - Only now I realized that love comes into our hearts not for us. It comes through us to the one next to us.
  The man smiled and plunged his palms into the fire.
  The unquenchable flame grew stronger and stronger, and soon their house became a star rising into the sky.