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.
******************
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.
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