New one. This is a re-work of an old piece I did. I hope you'll enjoy its change.

What I have learned about Thom Babel through talking to him and by an old man who claims to be his friend

How it ends:

“He lived like he wanted to make amends for his life.”

He said.

“He was a very reclusive man, was he not?”

He asked.

I nodded and reached for my cup of coffee.

“I thought so. He never did seem like the person who would open himself to anyone.”

He said and reached for his cup of coffee.

The conversation was all his, and somehow he was not comfortable being the one taking the stage. He wanted me to take the stage, or at least come into the light and join the conversation, but I was more interested in listening to him than interjecting what I knew about him.

“After the war he was in a complete daze, and no one  would dare blame him for that. Until the war ended, we all lived like animals, stealing, mugging, selling anything we could get our hands into, god we even sold our closest friend so we could live. And all the sudden we hear that the war is over. And some days later food started pouring in. It was almost a surreal nightmare the amount of food we were receiving. One of us ate and regurgitated until he choked on his vomit in sleep. One of us even stuffed himself with bread that his airway was stuffed up. We couldn’t believe for one second that more food was coming, so we ate ourselves to death thinking that we will never see these food again.”

After that, he took a sip of his coffee and closed his jacket up a bit. The weather was turning a bit chilly. The sun was out, but the wind was taking away the heat.  

“Anyways, it was hard adjusting to the way things went after the war. Understand, we all stole when we wanted to eat, and now we had to work to earn our living? And that if we worked we would have a place to live, not just a burnt barrack or an abandoned building, but an actual place to live? It was so weird seeing our first proper pay, that wad of cash. It was so long we saw any money in our hands, for a second that cash looked like pieces of paper that everyone was passing for money.”

“But we adjusted, hard as it was we came to terms with the fact that war was over, and that we are to live like a civilized man, not an animal. And as we worked, our reasons came back, and as our reasons came back we started to grasp what we have done, and with that nightmares came.”

“I think he took it harder than anyone. I remember days when he was lying in bed eyes shut tight clutching himself and mumbling I’m sorry over and over. We all went through that days of our conscience eating itself out. Somewhere in our minds we knew that we could not and should not have done everything we did, but what could we have done? How could have we survived among the adults who were just as desperate as us and wanted to live even if it meant taking from the children? We convinced ourselves that we had to do this, or we will die.”

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How it starts:

Thom Babel was an elderly member of our community, reaching about to his 70’s. He was a quiet person, a reserved person, someone who would slightly bow to you instead of saying hi when you pass by him. He was never seen smoking a fag, never seen in a pub enjoying a pint, never seen outside in the park sitting on a bench enjoying the weather.

He was someone who locked himself in his room, doing something no one knows, and rarely talked to anyone when he went outside.

I met Thom Babel as a part of this community reach out program. We were assigned an elderly person that we would help out with grocery shopping, house cleaning, making meals and keeping them company and all. I was freshly out of job then and was looking to find a way of finding some ways to pay rent. This didn’t interfere with my sporadic work of tutoring English to immigrant children.

Thom Babel looked just like any dignified men in his latter years would look. He was clean shaven, he ironed his own clothing, he brushed his teeth in the morning and before he went to bed.

I met Thom Babel, around March, third months after I jointed the program. The air was clean, a bit crisp with chill but promised that Spring was coming soon. Thom Babel’s apartment was an ancient brick thing stained old with exhaust and bird feces. He lived on the third floor, the last one on the left at the end of a long hallway. When we first met, he was in white shirt and brown corduroy trousers.

“Hi, my name is Gary,”

“That’s enough, you’re only here because of the community program, nothing more is asked.”  

That was our first exchange.

Thom Babel was the kind that knew what he liked and how he liked it, and he didn’t appreciate anyone mucking about with the way his things are. He winced slightly when I placed the coffee cup the wrong way, he didn’t look quite happy when I got the wrong brand of bread, he didn’t like it when I would place flower vase on a wrong surface. He didn’t really raise any explicit objection, but you could see in his face that you were messing about in the world he created for himself.

But he never raised any objection. All he did was just sigh and make a face that said “What could I do? I am old, I can not move about like I used to.”

Naturally, we didn’t talk much. He had his way, and he was not about to change anything. And I was nothing more than an intruder into his life. He wanted to see me go as soon as possible, and all I wanted was just a way to find extra income to support myself..

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Our lives would have stayed in that incongruent way, but if it did, I wouldn’t have been here in this cafe with this packet in front of me. It’s been said that things happen the way they are meant to, but if that is true then all the children beaten to death by their parents, all the animals born and raised so they can be slaughtered and line the butcher shop window, all the wild lives in the rain forest that are probably dying by the seconds because the rainforest is vanishing like dew drops before the sun light, all those things dying are meant to happen?

If the war didn’t happen, Thom Babel wouldn’t have to suffer everything he did, his mother wouldn’t have went through everything he said she did, and his friend wouldn’t have to suffer like he does, and I wouldn’t be sitting down in this cafe with this packet in front of me.

It sometimes makes me wonder that people who say things happen only in the way they are supposed to are just someone who’s been beaten down so horribly that they have to tell themselves things so they wouldn’t have their already bruised souls break down into pieces.

But I digress.  

So we spent the first month not really talking to each other. I stayed out of his way and he corrected everything that I have misplaced or put it down at wrong angle.

He did grow a little soft on me after a few months, for instance he started calling me by my name, but still he maintained that what could I do face and corrected any mistakes I made.

Some more months passed and I was cleaning the bedroom when I noticed a rosary lying on a table by the bed. It was a simple wooden rosary, made smooth after years of being rubbed on by surface of flesh. All the details on it have been rounded out after years of being worn.

Then I heard Mr.Babel call to me from behind.

“Gary, put that rosary down.”   

He said to me in a tone that was a little harder than he always used.

“I’m sorry Mr.Babel”

“Whether you are sorry or not is not the matter. Just put that rosary down and all will be well.”

So I put the rosary down, and he picked it up tenderly like it was something that could break at anytime, and he was trying to ask for its forgiveness about me touching it. After that, he made the what could I do face.

“Really, I’m sorry Mr.Babel”

“I told you, whether you are sorry or not is not important. Now, will you leave please.”

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Our lives after that was not just an incongruent lines, I was a stranger who intruded into his life and violated his privacy. He watched over everything I did whenever I visited him. He told me where I could move to and where I shouldn’t even dare step into.

“Gary, please move to the bathroom and clean up the sink and bathtub”, he would ask in his soft voice without any hint of care.

“Gary, you are coming too close to my bedroom. Please stay away.” He would say.

“Gary, please, you did not clean the window sills properly. Can you kindly do them over again.”

I would time and time again apologize to him about touching the rosary, and each time he accepted the apology like a friend would forgive a friend who battered him to a bloody rug.

We grew distant. He grew colder, though he never shouted. I couldn’t do anything lest I lose my extra paycheck. One thing that I still feel grateful to this day is that he never raised any complaints to the chair of the community program. I consider that as a show of his appreciation towards me.

After some times, Mr.Babel started to become visibly ill. He grew thinner by the day, and when December came, he looked like he was going to give up his ghost, and I was the only one left that could attend to him (He wasn’t admitted to a hospice because he refused to leave his apartment room).

It was an especially cold night when he called to me. I cooked him stew, cleaned his body and laid him under blanket. By this time his health needed me to stay some extra time so I could call the emergency service when something went wrong.

He called out to me, told me to sit by the bed (by this time he had to let me into his bedroom so he could be carried around in his room).

“Gary, can you reach into the box by the bed and retrieve my rosary please?”

I took the rosary out as gently as I could and laid it on his open left palm.

“Well, Gary, I am dying.”

“Mr.Babel please. You are not dying.”

“You are a poor liar. I am dying. It is what I’ve decided and it will be so. But first give me a glass of spirit. There should be a bottle in the pantry that I saved for the holidays.”

“I don’t know if you should be drinking.”

“Just do as I tell you.”

So I brought a bottle of spirit and two glasses to bedside, poured him some fingers of whiskey, and handed him the glass. He kindled the glass in his hands and took a sip. He coughed a bit, his face turned red. After the coughing, he slowly closed his eyes.

“Gary, I am afraid of dying. I feel like I haven’t paid back what I owe to the society.”

“I’m sure you’ve done enough for all of us Mr Babel.”

“I envy your ignorance Gary. You can say anything you want because you have no idea what I’ve done in my life. I thank you for it.”

“You’re welcome Mr Babel.”

“Now, Gary, it is getting late. Can you leave me please. I do not think I need anymore help tonight.”

“Okay. Good night Mr Babel”

He limply wave at me.

He passed away two months after that. No one came to his funeral except for one aging man. He didn’t cry when he saw Mr Babel in his casket. He paid his respect and out his way.

And with that my community program was over.

Luckily I was able to find another job as a desk clerk at a solicitor’s office. And so Thom Babel died and no one will ever remember him.

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Afterwards to come before how it ends:

After the whole community service thing and some years later, I was greeted by someone who claimed to be his friend called.

It was a day in the beginning of December. The days were starting to get cold, leaves that turned red and yellow were starting to fall, and I was seeing some who I thought I could stay together until one of us dies.

His call came when I was cleaning the house.

“Hello, this is Roland Flint.” The voice said over the phone. “You do not know me, and that is probably for the better. All that needs to be understood is that I was a friend of Thom Babel.”

“I was wondering if I could meet you over a coffee.”

“I do not know you. I do not have any reason to believe you sir.”

“Please, I have something for you from Thom. You need to see me.”

I decided to meet him at the cafe around the corner. I thought if anything I could run and tell myself that it was just an old pervert.

Roland Flint limped into the cafe, and at first glance I realized that he was that only aging man who attended Mr Babel’s funeral. He looked like a mouse that lived way too long on fiber and nothing else. He looked beaten, weathered, tired, and he had the air of someone who has accepted that he is about to die. Looking at him, I couldn’t help but think, how could this generation, this generation that lived through a war, look so downtrodden that they all looked like they couldn’t wait to die?

We didn’t talk at all. All that Mr.Flint did was sip his coffee slowly and mentioned that he was a friend of Mr Babel. That he met Mr Babel after the war, that they used to live together, and grew up together.

“We did everything together, we survived together.”

And he went quiet again.

After some more silence, he said to me

“I’m here because Babel wanted to hand over his diary to you. God knows what’s inside. He never showed it to anyone. All I could tell was that he was he was trying to write down something that he couldn’t keep in himself. I think he was writing because he believed it will exorcise whatever was killing him from the inside.”

“You know, Babel used to tell me ‘One day I will pass away, and I can not wait for that day when my breathing stops and I no longer have to be terrified of what my memories bring upon me. I truly can not wait for the day when I die. It’s oh so terrible, I wake up thinking that I have to live another day, and when night closes in, I weep because all that I have done come back to me through the cracks on the wall’ He also told me ‘I do not think that there is any happiness left for me in this world.’”

After that, he handed me a package no bigger than a notebook, and before I could say thank you or let me pay for the coffee, he got up, grabbed me by the hand and said

“Young man, I will be the last of the generation to remember the war. No one will remember what exactly happened after I die. You do not know the relief I get knowing that, do you?”

After that he fished out some changes from his pocket,threw them on the table and walked out. I looked at the package that contained his diary and thought what should I do.  

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In the last two months of his life, Mr Babel really let himself go and went into delirium a lot. He mistook me for someone I never knew, and sometimes he insisted that I was his long lost friend.

When he was not delirious, he talked to me about his life. He was a horrible story teller and I couldn’t string things together, but from what I gathered so far his life story was like this:

Mr Thom Babel was born on May 21st some 70 years ago. He was born in this town, and back then it was not such a big town. It was some wayward stopping point where people exchanged goods and some men stayed for some rest. God knows how it rebuilt itself after the war. It all looked different then. Every houses were made of bricks, none of this steel beam high rise existed at all. People used to drive their carts by the means of their horses leading them. Electric light was finally made, and people were surprised how bright things looked even after dark.

Mr Babel was a quiet child, spending his days in his mother’s arms reading whatever he could find. Whether he could read it or not did not matter. All that mattered was that he was spending time in his mother’s arms.

As he grew the city started to shine bright, some of the carts were replaced by motor vehicles, goods were starting to be stored in a box that kept them cold and fresh. But the box did not last long, so people still needed to replace the box at the exchange so the goods could stay cold.

The war started when Mr Babel was about eight. He remembers that some men were talking in a heated manner about the war. Of course no one believed that anyone would even dare to attack a town as small as this, so all that took place was talking. And the government, the government must have thought the same, that no one would even think to attack a landmass this small. And it worked for a while. At least until the government was winning the war. It was not like the government was winning on its own. The surrounding countries were gaining on the enemy and they were just losing their footholds, that was all. And they saw us, this small land.      

In the last days of the war, when he was about 10 years old, the enemy came to attack the city. Mr Babel, in his child mind thought that the city walls would protect him and his family. And protect the city walls did. They stood against the pounding and the crumbling the enemies lashed out. The raid went on for days, and the city wall stood brave, but on the fourth day the wall cracked and they poured in like locusts. The sound that the wall made when it crumbled, the site of them pouring in like one single giant living organism, their loud yelling like a last dying scream of women and men and children mixed together, they haunted his dreams.

They destroyed everything, light poles, vehicles, just about everything they could get their hands on. Men and Woman died like flies, they were torn to shreds, heads smashed in like over ripe apples. His mother barely escaped with Mr Babel in her arms. He remembers seeing blood everywhere, bodies scattered around and the remains of the city in ruins. His mother ran to the nearest train station, where she thought to ride away from the enemies. Against the thousand others who thought the same and fought for a spot, she somehow managed to get herself in the train to the farthest city possible. When she got off the train, Mr Babel’s mother finally realized that she wasn’t even thinking about what she has just done.  

Mr.Babel’s mother stayed a couple of months in this unknown city among the confusion of shouting about what was happening. When she came back to her hometown she found everything in ruins. Her home was razed to the ground. All her belongings were ripped apart. Nothing of her past life remained intact.

She had tried to reconstruct her life, but with everybody else trying to do the same, she found that she was running out of choices of work. Then one day Mr Babel found his mother bringing in a man that she brought to her bed. At first he thought it was a new person in her life. But as the man left he paid her some cash, and soon after his mother was bringing in numerous men.

Mr Babel didn’t feel any humiliation or contempt towards his mother for choosing to live like this. But he did feel from time to time jealous towards the men who slept with her. He thought “But that’s my mother. Why are you touching her.”

I understand that it’s a disgusting thing to even consider. Men sleeping with your mother when your child is only a breath away. But when you consider Mr Babel was the only thing his mother has left, then you might feel like you’d want to keep that child close to you so he won’t disappear.

Mr Babel never said why he ran away from his home, nor how he became what he is, but he did say that, probably in order to explain himself, he didn’t want to smell men on the money his mother spent for him. He didn’t want to be reminded what his mother had done for living.

.

Mr Babel, he never told me what exactly he had done, but he did say he was sorry. And that as the town was rebuilt, and as everything was getting rebuilt and as the town grew bigger, he felt like nothing felt real.    

“I saw houses and apartments get rebuilt, and they would stand there unharmed with nothing to demolish it to rubbles. But they were starting to grow back little by little, and people too, they started laughing and play music and sometimes they would even go out to eat. Unimaginable! One moment the town was in ruins and people were eating out of garbage pails, and now they were enjoying themselves!”

”It was very surreal, those years. I could not believe that what was standing in front of me was real. Everything that I held in my hand felt light like air, nothing I ate tasted real, nothing I gazed looked like they were rooted in this world. I lived my life in haze, it was just impossible to think that those dreadful days were over and that we could all go out and be marry again.”

He said to me as he lay on his bed, usually after sipping a drop of whiskey. He cradled his glass in his hands, letting the existence of the glass and the taste of whiskey be the agents that brought back his memory.

“Many years after I thought about what my mother had to endure to raise me. Her beauty placed her as the favorite pet of those men, and that earned her meager living for both of us. And when they, those men, were bored with her, their perversity forced her into the lowest that a woman or a man should bear. They made her perform all sorts of horrible things. They did everything they can to break her. It was like watching a cat playing with its food until it was dead. I didn’t exactly watch them do things to her. All I could hear was her muffled voice saying no, please, don’t. She said they are breaking her. Men just laughed at her, and they carried on.”

“What I’ve done, what I endured, they were all horrible. One should not be exposed to such things. Yes, when you look back at that time, you could say that I was simply a victim of the situation, and what I have done after I left home was simply a means to survival. But no matter how much excuses you could say what is inside your head and heart will stay with you and torment you until the day you die. All I could say is, what could I do? How else could I have survived?”

He said to me half asleep and went to sleep with his whiskey still in his hands. I lifted the glass from his hands and turned the lights off until I he was sound asleep.

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He didn’t talk at all in his last days. He just spent the rest of his days staring out the window like he has finally let go of that final piece of his soul and he was now just waiting for his body to expire. I would implore him to go on with his story, but he would refuse by saying

”It has taken aging to this old flesh to come to start forgiving myself. I think it will take my death bed to confess anything. It’s all still too early.”

He died two months after. In his deathbed he took my hands and said

“It was all unbearable. All those memories. I will never forgive what I’ve done. I was not a man, I was a horrible beast. No one should ever forgive my action.”

”Gary, Gray please listen, time does not heal all wounds. Wounds will stay open. They will turn sour, they will blacken, they will eat into flesh, they will ooze pus until your breathing stops. All that time does for you is to give you enough space to forget that you are feeling pain. And people mistake this forgetting of pain as forgiving themselves.”

And he took his last breath, and my community service was over like that.

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I stayed in my seat and looked at the package. Inside of it was probably the diary that Mr.Babel has left for me. If I open it, I will probably see what he has seen, and with it I will join the ranks of them that remembers what he did. But they are all going to die, and they all said in unison that they can’t wait for the day they will die and that no one will ever remember what they did and point their fingers at them. These people, they all did something they regret to this day, and they are all looking forward to death so they can all forget what they did. What right do I have in keeping their memories alive? How could I remember this and not disappoint them? I mean, what could I do?

I can't believe I let this thing go on this long without anything new. This is my first post of the year. Please enjoy.

In memory of a house long gone and now under water

(or,a memorial to The Abandoned City)

I see him diving to the bottom of the lake to his home. When he first dives in the water is visible and clear. As he descends couple feet in, and as the sunlight starts to grow slim, the water turns grey. Few feet more the water turns dark. At this point he starts to notice his breathing. Slow rhythmical breathing of lungs inflating and deflating. The pattern never changes even when he reaches the bottom of the lake. He feels neither anxiety nor fear of darkness around him. He feels nothing, even he reaches to the bottom where no sunlight reaches and the only source of light comes from the bottom dwelling algae and organisms that emit light themselves. This light is dim, too dim to see anything at first, but his eyes adjust to the situation eventually.

Fishes swim all around him. The floor of the lake bottom is littered with the dead remains of plankton, non-vertebrate jelly like things wane softly in the water. Crustaceans of different sizes scutter around, some hide themselves in the jelly like things, some dig themselves into the lake floor. Luminescent micro-organisms float around him in neon color green. Some of them chose to stick to the trees that have managed to stand upright underwater. Now the trees that once sported green leaves are covered in algaes that drape down like cypress leaves illuminated by the micro-organisms. This is the brightest thing he sees, and he knows that his house is near by.  

The house stands perfectly preserved in memory. He crosses the front lawn now covered in algae which dances around in gentle wave as he walks up to the large window at the front of the house and clears it of sediment. As he peers in, he sees everything as it was, sofas and TV set and grandfather clock and all. He looks on everything and remembers everything. He remembers how his father would cook meals on Sundays, how his mother would cradle him in her arms as they watched christmas specials in Winter, how he used to play on the swing in the front yard, though the swing looks nothing like how it used to look (it’s covered in calcium sediments excreted by shellfish). As fishes nibble at the suit’s outer skin and crabs crawl up his boots, he stands still and looks into the house, as if he has planted himself as a fixture in the yard.

He peers into the house as long as he needs to. He is standing upright, as solid as a statute and as expressionless as a portrait. If one were to happen upon him, they will think he’s insane to just stand in front of the house, and that if he does not move soon he would become a fixture to the house. But he stands there peering into his house.  

******************

Jack called me as I was getting off work. Not having anything else to do, I sat down and took off my shoes.   

“Amanda is telling me that she wants to leave me.” He started out. Sound of his voice came out plain, like he was reporting the fact that his fingernail is growing long.

“She’s telling me that she wants to move on with her life and go out to Europe. She’s telling me that she wants to study art and learn how to draw pictures.”

“That’s a bold move on her part. Did you say anything to stop or encourage her?”

“She said she was going to do it, and it sounded like it was final. So, I said nothing and she left.”

“Well, good thing you two didn’t live together then. Packing up and moving to Europe sounds like some heavy work.”

“I suppose so.”

“Listen, I don’t mean to be rude here, but don’t you get that that’s what exactly repels you from a permanent relationship?”

“What do you mean?”

“You mean to tell me that you forgot about what we talked about last time already?”

“What did we talk about last time?”

“You know what, call me back in a couple of days. I’m sorry but this is not the conversation I’d want to have right now.”

And I hang up the phone.

Jack K. was always like that. He sounded as if he had a sheet around him that prevented him from knowing what is going on around him. No one could tell what he was thinking, and people were attracted to his aura of mystery, like it was something that needed to get cracked open and explored

“He has this aura of mystery around him.” One said to me before.

“His silence tells me that he has some deep thoughts that we should appreciate.” Another said to me before.

“His deep gaze, that piercing deep gaze.” Another said to me as he attended a gallery opening.

And yes, because of his aura of deep mystery everyone wanted to see him. He was always with someone. And they left him after a couple of months. They had their reasons, but at the bottom they had one same reason; he wasn’t mysterious or silent for a reason, he just didn’t care what was going on around him.

One woman he was with actually asked him;”are you even aware of what you had for breakfast this morning?”

His answer was a deep contemplation followed by “bagel with cream cheese and salmon. I think.”

This woman left him couple of weeks after saying “Please write to me when you decide to come back to the Earth.”

The other woman he was seeing didn’t even say anything when she left him. But Jack did tell me once before that she used to cry next to him after they had sex. He told me that he didn’t do anything violent, but I think I can guess what happened. He didn’t do anything and she had to move.

Then why, you may ask me, do I not only know him but not go far away from him? Am I his perfect soul mate? Have I found him so attractive that him staying touch out of reality is not a problem? Is he something that I just can not live without?

No to all. I don’t care about him at all. I can’t care less if he gets hooked on cocaine, becomes aware of what he is around him and starts caring about what is around him.

We are connected by a painting. That is all.

I think the day was April of last year, my work, a small art gallery, was holding an exhibition. Nothing to speak of, just a showcase of local artists, and Jack was just another art lover. He was watching everything in his detached air, taking in everything and forgetting everything at the same time. His steps were steady and he didn’t lower or raise his gaze until he came to a small painting. It was a painting of a town square painted in black and white. Water was slowly seeping in from the right of the town square and was gradually going to swallow the whole town up. He stood in front of that picture for about 20 minutes, not lowering or raising his eyes just looking at that painting. The painting was a landscape of my home town. It went underwater some years ago to create a reservoir for a dam.

“Excuse me,” he said to me after staring at that painting, “I’m sorry to bother you but do you know who drew that painting?”

“Sorry, no idea sir.” I replied

“Anonymous donation from a local artist sir.”

“All right. Sorry to bother you.”

“Nice day sir.”   

After that, Jack started visiting the gallery regularly, always heading straight for the painting. He stood in front of the painting until one thought he was also an art installation. On the last day of the exhibition I asked him what drew to this painting, and he told me

“It reminds me of my home town.” After that, somehow he managed to get himself into my apartment room, where we had dinner and watched the replica of the painting together.

And that is how we met.

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In my dream I saw him again diving down to his home. He is standing in front of the large front window. He stands still, his helmet stuck to the window. His breathing is deep and steady. He is expressionless save his eyes. His eyes dart around taking in everything that is in the house.

He sees the large TV that he used to watch Sesame Street on, he sees the large chair his father used to sit smoking his pipe and reading a book. He sees the sofa his mother used to sit on, all draped with broidery and reading news paper. He remembers the weekends his family used to spend; him watching sunday morning cartoons, his father is sitting lazily on the sofa reading books on history, his mother sitting next to his father doing the same. There weren’t too much words said around. His mother always asked him if he wanted anything, and all he would answer is Hmmmmm, or No, nothing right now. And child Jack sits in front of the TV, watching Sesame Street.

Jack, watching the whole thing through the diving suit helmet, his eyes well up with tears of remembrance and wishes again to come back to that time, at least walk through the front door and walk around the house just once again.

But past has died and no matter how much he cries and yearns it will never come back. So he watches on until that mirage of family past walk out of the front door and start a barbeque.

******************

“I’m worried about Jack” says Diana, Jack’s newest love.

We’re in a cafe near the gallery. On lunch time they have a special where you can get a ham and cheese on white toasted to brown with a soup for cheap. Diana is treating me to that, saying that she’s the one dragging me out to this, she has the responsibility to pay for the lunch. But when I think about the over cooked pasta covered with vomit green pea soup that I cooked for lunch, I have to say that she’s saving me from a nightmare and thus becoming a spiritual mother to me. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for her now.

“What did he do to you?” I ask her and bite a chunk out of the sandwich.

“Nothing, and that’s what worries me.”

“He accepts me for who I am, and he doesn’t fight back to anything I say,” Diana continues. “I know that he’s more mature on the inside than he looks outside, but it’s just that he’s so reserved in what he says.”

Diana is dressed in a very chic looking green dress. She has a thin silver necklace and wears a very faint pink makeup. She’s dressed for the weather and everything she does fits her like a well worn slippers. She knows how to dress herself to look her best. It makes me want to weep for a second how these nice looking women fall for Jack.

“He can be really closed off sometimes” I say and keep eating my sandwich.

“I suppose it’s in the way he’s so self sufficient I guess. It just sometimes frightens me, like he doesn’t exist in this world. He’s just so closed off and completed on his own.”

You have no idea how bad I wanted to roll my eyes at this. You have no idea how many times I’ve heard this. God, he is just, so, complete on his own. I want to be there for him, but you know, he is just so comfortable standing on his own. He has his own place in the world, and I respect that, it’s just that sometimes I want him to act like he needs me. They may say it differently, but they all mean the same; I don’t think I matter to him.

And the answer is clear; you are right, you mean nothing to him. He doesn’t care if you say anything to him, he doesn’t care if you say you love him, he doesn’t care if you shout at him for being so distant. He can’t care less if you plead to him to trust you more.

He happened to walk in your path and he happened to stay in your mind. Sorry but that’s as far as it goes. You’ll leave him thinking it’s your fault, but the truth is it’s him who has all the fault. He’s incapable of feeling, much less feeling loved. All he cares about is how he can one day go back to his home that he loves so much.

“He’s a reserved person, and I have to warn you he could be a tough shell to open.”

“That’s what I love about him. He’s a treasure trove of mystery and I’m just waiting for that day when he lets his heart out to me.” Diana says and finally takes a thin bite out of her tuna sandwich. I’m already done with mine and now going through my new england chowder. I’d give this one about four months more before she comes to me with frustration about how he is a clam not wishing anyone to be let in.

After lunch we go back to the gallery to finish our shift.

When I get back home, I call Jack.

“Diana is worried that you are too completed on your own” I say to him.

“Who’s Diana?” He says, and I had to imagine him getting hit by a lightning so I won’t throw my smartphone against the wall in anger.

“Really? That’s what you think of your girlfriend?”

“Oh, yes, Diana. Diana’s worried about me?”

“Yes, that Diana is worried that you are just too completed on your own when all you care about is that house.”

“That house was the happiest place I can remember July, and it was taken from me because of some government business. I can’t accept that.”

“You know what, this conversation is over. Just know that Diana is worried about you and it wouldn’t hurt you to act like you give a shit about real world.”

******************

In my dream Jack is walking around about the house. When his boots make contact with the algae covered ground, they give out weak phosphorescent glow that lights up around him. He plays around with the shellfish crusted barbecue set, tryies to lift up a tong and dropping it on the ground. He walks up to the swing set he used to enjoy as a child and find it impossible to hold on to because of diving suit’s thick groves. He knows that without the suit he’ll die within seconds, and he knows that ultimately what he is doing is pointless. Past has died and nothing or no one in this world can bring it back.

And he feels the unfairness of it. His childhood was ended at such young age. He should have had more time to play on the swing, he should have had more time riding his tricycle. He should have had more time sitting around in front of the TV and watching the Sunday morning cartoon with his mother. But they are all taken away.

So at best all he can do is watch what little of his childhood he could remember.  

(replace this with that of Jack breathing and feeling at peace. watching the fish go about in a school and a dead fish on the lake floor feeding the little new lives. he feels modern world is weird.)

******************

Hearing from all the past relationships he had, what happens when one goes out with Jack he gives off feeling of desperate search for a place to belong.

“He looks out into the distance,” one of his past romance once told me, “he never looks at what’s in front of him. They exist there to distract him. What he truly wants exists outside of his reach. He feels incomplete without whatever it is that he’s looking for so he tries to fill that gap with something else. Like us women. But we are not perfectly shaped to fill that empty space in his heart. And when I realized that I left him.”  

“I believed that his silence was a deep contemplation of what is around him” Another of them told me. “I thought that he was a philosopher of human emotion. I thought that when he was looking into the distance he was contemplating the meaning of life. Turns out he was just looking ahead. That was the biggest waste of my time.”

“I thought he was a mystery, I truly did”, another of them told me. “He was always so withdrawn, so reserved, so quiet. I thought he was a tortured soul seeking that embrace that would set him free. And I thought I was that one who could set him free. But whatever I did, he was never there. He was just someone who was happy being shrouded in the cloud of his thoughts.”

So they all left him saying things like; I need to move on, it’s not you it’s me, I can not see myself growing old with you, there has to be someone for you out there, we were just not meant for each other, you’ll find the one for you one day, or just simply saying we are done.

And all he said to it was okay. And he kept that distant gaze.

“Do you believe that everything around you is real?”   

He used to ask me back then when he used to visit me and watch the replica of the painting at my apartment room.

“I’m talking about everything, tv set, bed, window, buildings outside, everything.”

“Nothing around me feels real to me,” he went on. “I just can’t believe that they can stand where they are when everything I grew up with is under water.”

“I’m sure you remember about that. Everything we ever had went under there. And it was because a dam was built. Just imagine that. The world I cared about no longer exists and no one cares. Since then I just couldn’t feel like anything is real. It’s like there is a veil around me that prohibits me from concentrating on what is in front of me. All I can think about is the house I grew up in. I just think about what it must be like.”

All I could do in return was tell him to move on. That there is nothing to be gained from thinking about a house lost under water. Just move on and create a stable relationship with someone and settle down to a house, then you can feel the reality of your surrounding. And all he could do was just stare back at me like I was a mirage.  

******************

In my dream I see Jack walking about the house, peering in from all the windows. He looks through the kitchen, he looks through the living room, he looks through the parlor windows, he looks through the guest room window.

Everything he sees reminds him of his childhood. He used to run around the house bright eyed and smiling. Sometimes hugging his mother’s leg as he went to sleep on the sofa while his mother knitted a sweater.

He then walks out of the premise, walks over to the community cemetery and looks over a tombstone.

He shakes his head and weeps at what he can not reach out to. He quietly weeps as he looks over the tombstone.

******************

Jack met Lisa a month after Diana left him to become an art curator in Paris.

“I met someone. Her name is Lisa.” Jack told me over a coffee. We were at a cafe nearby the river. It was a tuesday with blue sky spreading over us. People in shorts and tanktops walked around with their arms twined and smiles on their faces.

“I’m glad you found someone new. Please, do everything you can to make this work. You owe it to yourself to move forward with your life.” I replied and cradled my coffee in my hands.

“Yes, I will try that. That making this relationship work thing.” He answered. He never said anything positive about any of his relationship before.

“Ah, positivity, that’s the spirit. Like I always say, stop thinking about what you lost and think about what you can gain from life. Go out there and claim something for your own. It may sound hard but trust me, it will make you stronger.”

“I will try.” He answered and took a sip of his coffee.

I later learned that he was sounding positive because Lisa was the name of his deceased mother.

From what Jack told me, his relationship with Lisa was a slow one. They didn’t talk much when they met. They sat next to each other when they went out to the park for a picnic. They barely exchanged a word when they went out to pub. But they seemed content with that. When they sat next to each other, when they held hands at the cinema, when they went to a pub for dinner, they were smiling a thin smile to each other like they were in their own world.  

“We are happy together” Jack told me once over a coffee. It was a Saturday and people were wearing sweaters. I heard a faint christmas jingle coming from a car radio.

“We are thinking about visiting each other’s birth place. I will send out a postcard to you from her town.”

“Thank you. And really, this time you are doing right. I’m glad you finally found someone.”

The postcard came three days later. In it he talked about how they went to Lisa’s parents place and enjoyed a nice dinner with her parents. Then he sent some pictures of him and Lisa. Jack was wearing a thick sweater and Lisa was wrapped up in scarf and heavy windbreaker. They were standing in front of a shore line and seagulls danced over their heads while waves broke into white foam.

When Jack took Lisa to the dam the clouds covering the country were breaking and sky was again blue. People were walking outside in shorts and lying around outside in the park. Jack had moved into an apartment room with Lisa, and the first thing they bought was a replica picture of his hometown.

It was a calm day in Monday when Jack drove off to the countryside with Lisa and were never seen again.

People, especially his past relationships talked in rumors.

“That Lisa, she probably killed him out of frustration. Wouldn’t blame her.” One of them said.

“They just broke up, like he always does. Kind of out of character for him to drive out to the countryside though. He always just lets them slide out of his hands. Maybe she meant something more than us.” Another of them said and felt bit jealous that someone could move him.

Newspaper ran a small article about a man who went missing on a trip. No comments were made and investigation was underway. People from the city library, Jack’s workplace, talked in worried tones where Jack might be, but after two months they stopped talking about him all together.

I stopped thinking about one month after he disappeared. It was surprisingly easy. It was probably because I no longer saw him in front of me. Strange how people get erased from memory once they cease to exist. A great invention of mind so we don’t dwell on what had passed, but still makes you wonder how something that you knew can go away so easily.

All I do now is just dream about him before I go to sleep. I think about what had happened in a pre-sleep daze.    

What I think happened is that they went to the middle of the lake and made love. I see him rowing a boat to the middle of the lake with her in company, and when they reached the middle, she reached her left hand to his face and kissed him quietly.

They did not move as they kissed, but after some moments they shifted themselves to the bottom of the boat and slowly removed their clothings. Their lips were in contact as they moved about. when they were finished, their breathing was calm. They did not make any rigorous love. They moaned quietly in pleasure, they held each other dearly, but their act was quiet and therefore sensual. They made love like they were exploring each other. Mist rising from the lake surrounded them like a blanket.  

After the act, as she held him in her arms and called him my dear and stroked his head like he is a child in her arms, he produced a pair of diving suits. One for himself and another, a diving suit with large stomach area, for her. She inspected her suit, touched the fabric and smiled that thin smile of hers. He strapped on his suit, and she put on hers.

They held hands and dove into the lake. When they reached the bottom the algae flew up around them giving out faint glow. Everything was illuminated in faint green glow. He took her around the town. To the grocery shop his mother used to go on the weekend, the park he used to play around in, the movie cinema where his parents used to enjoy a show once in a while. He took her to his old school where he learned to read and write, and to the school playground where he made friends. All his friends are now living their own lives with their wives and husbands. Then he took her to the cemetery where his mother sleeps. They stand in front of the tombstone in silence holding each other’s hands.

They walked to his house and let themselves in. He opened the door quietly so the old air in the house and the water don’t mix violently. He showed her around the house. They sat by each other on the sofa and smiled to each other.

I imagine that in the future he’ll be sitting in his father’s chair, she in his mother’s sofa. She is knitting a child sized sweater for the winter, and sometimes rubs her swollen stomach. He gets up from his father’s chair and walk to her. He places his hand gently on her stomach, and through the thick helmet goggle smile to her, and she smiles back to him.

I imagine them emerging out of the water and giving birth on the dryland, then return to their home in the lake. The child will grow up in Jack’s old room. The child will be loved and will play with the fishes that peck at his diving suit. They are happy and will live happily ever after. And I go to sleep.