It Rains When Seasons Change
The room lay in a state of shabby repose. Quiet. Unresponsive. Only the dust motes disturbed the stillness in the room. They where dancing everywhere – on the small table propped up with upturned books, on the shelves, on the drawing board, on the notepads, on the scattered papers and rumpled sheets. Some kept moving while one or two would settle and stay on the surface of things. They went around, making rounds, marking everything in place, in places, in all places. Like skin, concealing everything, nerves, blood, even pain – until pain was only a memory of blood.
I was on the floor, by the side of the bed, facing the heat of the fireplace. From where I was, I could see the single window in the room from the corner of my eyes. Closed, panes sealed tighter than a coffin's lid, I remember the last time I went outside. It was a week ago. Snow was already melting, a blessing of spring. I just finished ridding the driveway of it when an urge to stretch my legs touched me. Although the stance of my body already admitted the tiredness in my limbs, I decided to go since winter was already leaving. There was a chill in the air, despite the close arrival of spring. The trees looked worn, with drooping, scraggly branches, even the sun looked sick. The melting snow looked more grey than white. Snow is never quite whiter than the first time it falls. After that, dirt and other things come into it and the white is lost forever, at least until the next time it snows.
I turned into to catch the sight of doves, fighting too fiercely over a crumbled piece of bread. How could I have known the place would feel so much like a stranger?
I walked from the park unhurriedly – because he used to say I walked too fast. I saw a young man sitting on the bench by the sidewalk. He didn't look familiar. Thinking then, I was sure I had never seen him before in the neighbourhood. A stranger. I looked him in the eyes, trying to walk past him a little faster. He smiled.
I stumbled. His smile was fluid unbroken by any hesitation or reservation he might have felt for a fellow stranger. Envy came into my blood, for the ease with which he displayed. The mind usually keeps with it memories of what it no longer has, and the opposite of it, this absence of ease was mine.
I hurried home then, no longer caring if I walked too fast or not. After stepping over the threshold and into the house, I stopped. What was I hurrying about when there was only nothing to come back to? But there were things that needed my attention. I've wasted a week already. There were letters to send, bills to pay, chequebook to balance.
But when I sat down, motionless on my seat, I tried to imagine, to remember. But whenever an image slid into my head, it assumed the shape of my beloved's face. I closed my eyes tighter, concentrating on the image of that young man and his smile, trying to see myself with my mind's eye wearing the same smile. But my face would become his, and the smile on it was pure …
I met him on a rainy day just before autumn in some bus stop on my way to meet some friends for coffee. I had a slight hung over from last night's meeting with a client and I was yet again late for my scheduled appointment. How could I forget to wear a watch? I saw him, loitering at the edge of clustered people, outside their circle. A fellow stranger. We ended up talking to each other. Sharing conversation while we both stared at the people on the other side of a thick glass window, trying to avoid unnecessary eye contact as possible. We continued looking at the strangers that pass us by, exchanging thoughts, cards. Conflicting schedules, friends we didn't want to see – all these we had to take into consideration. We settled for what we could only have – rare phone calls and emails. As days pass, the letters became obscure, filled with various inscriptions. When confronted every time. I tried looking for an escape, any other topic to fill the sudden silence that consumed me. I was unprepared for his invitation. For this. Absurdly, I thought, somewhere in those inscriptions – if I could just understand it – was my answer. Like the whole world was reduced to an inscription that someone had denied me the meaning. It could have helped me decide about the side of the world that I was then entering into.
As loony as it was, I knew I was kidding myself, no signs lay there. Nothing to return to. His eyes asked me to take it. Maybe, if there were signs, I could say I wasn't entirely at fault. That there were signs that told me, that seemed to make it right, at that time. Or it could be, there were signs, but they weren't exactly that obvious and they were badly lit. Now, as I think back, I don't think I would have blamed anyone after all. But that was only me then, me, him and the glass.
"Have you told anyone?"
"Yes"
"Why?"
"Why not?"
The pattern was repeated. While we go live in our normal lives, we somehow managed to slide into our clandestine world. I stole time like sand from an hourglass. And each time we're together- we were lost. I always felt the sand sift through my fingers like water, falling onto the ground, unheeded. It would slip under the slide of my toes, the sides of it. When time would come and make me remember. And I, unmoved, would pretend ignorance of its passing.
"I have to leave soon. I need to be up early for work.'
"Stay a little longer."
Time was an enemy. It would always come between us, always there with us. Time and circumstance. I remember that night; we were probably both drunk- least I know for sure I was, whilst trying to take the piss at each other.
"My friends asked me about you?"
"What did you tell them?"
"Well, what do you want me to tell them?"
"The same thing I often tell you. This is only a fantasy."
I turned my face away to hide the pain that flashed into my eyes. Something that keen, that potent had to show, somehow. When I was sure my eyes were clear once more, I tried thinking of something cheeky to say. But he wouldn't let me get away this time.
The word fantasy seemed to incite in me a sense of panic and at the same time relief. Back then, I know that was the appropriate term to use. And I persisted. I insisted. Until we got nearer to the end.
"What are you trying to tell me?"
"We have to end this. It is futile and we both know that."
"I don't know how!"
"You will learn."
"Is that what you want?"
"No, but it is for the best."
"Trying to convince yourself?'
That night I started packing. Gathering everything, stuffing everything that I own and throwing things that would remind me of him. I kept on talking and talking to myself, convincing the creature in me to stop holding onto the longing and memories.
"I've always told him not let me get under his skin."
"It's easy to take it back. I could just apologise. People do it all the time."
"I'm not most people. This is not me. It's not real."
"Why can't you just accept it's probably real? He's probably real?"
I left. This was how defeat met me. Once again I sat with him- staring at the glass mirror.
"Look for me."
"Where?"
And I left the answer to him.
I am sitting here still, on the floor by the bed. I've been sitting here for weeks, searching for something that I might have that would remind me of him. I've gone through the park, endlessly looked in every bench, bus stop and seaside. This mad hope sustains me. But I find nothing more, only dust motes in play.
Three years have passed. I never forget, though I wish that every time seasons change and the sky would often cry before it changes, it will wash away every hope that I keep inside my heart.
"To wish back for something already lost," Amy Tan says, that is despair. To write about an experience that means so much but is gone, is insanity. But perhaps one needs to be insane to write, especially on dark night like this when remembering opens up a wound. And I have to face countless of such night. I write anyhow. Because now I remember in a haze. And although it is painful and fearsome to remember, it is by far more painful and fearsome to forget. When it rains, I am reminded of him. Wonder what he was doing every time seasons change.
March, 2009
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