SWIRLING
The last train bound for elsewhere had already left. He stood there, facing the painted tracks and the full moon. The smell of night was strong, the smell of night that fell upon his senses and consumed them; that overpowered that of fresh paint glittering on the tracks in front, of the twisted aroma of the biscuits a child near him was eating, of the orange scent of the station – an invention made to garner hope, somehow, in one who stayed for hours before a train track, refusing to budge until the barracks emptied and iron could meet foolhardiness, and dispel illusion, that of which is induced by cheap and rancid beer and lost affection, of fresh cologne which persisted hours after the bearer had returned home, showered, consumed, and lay in bed dreaming, or dead, of fresh tea leaves in the mind's eye which vanished when it sealed, of trains and tracks… the smell of night was strong.
He walked back to the bench. The station would close in thirty minutes.
The paper was still where he had left it. The bench lay and remained empty, and so he sat himself down upon its sorry figure, nearly totally transformed from its predecessor sixty-three years past, the sides remodelled, the cracking and fragrant wood replaced with shiny, opulent plastic, the layers of paint added so crudely upon its once honourable shape and backbone. He looked up, and the moon turned a little green, its curved surface suddenly dilating into a malformed structure, something so alien from our world, so malicious, so unfathomable, a conjecture of infinite resolutions, each so abstract, so indescribable, yet so benign in nature and in touch, – if one attempts to, that is – and stared at him, snarled at him… then it was over, and a yellow dim light filled the night once more.
His lips were parched; the drinks were nearby. The booth on the left sold orange juice, which when perceived together with the scent of the station, already saturated into a sickening point, would turn him over and make him sick; to the right, a quarter of a mile away, a pub with decent beverages and that encompassed an air of illusion and pretence which would isolate him from absurdity into absurdity resided amidst a vigorous suburb. Yet he refused his body solace; they came in all about, invading his aboriginal senses and depriving him of rest and thought, forcing him to choke, to wheeze. He sighed, and took his paper.
A new decade was emerging. It was as if someone had captured Time, regained it, and deliberately pushed it forward so that it encapsulated Space quicker, curving inconsistency inward and progressing, like technology, by leaps and bounds; yet that same someone, almost paradoxically, had stopped it, halted it, slowed it to pass like a current of honey flowing across jagged rock, the tide that never ebbs away but persists like cologne sticking to a shirt of unwelcome environment, of hostile contradiction, tormenting him. The paper showed him that, with the glorious and undeniable portrait of Saturn, the glorious spectacle of planets, its magnificent rings; its artist the very pinnacle of spaceflight and technology. Yet, just days before, a tropical cyclone from the Atlantic that killed and victimised, just like the shadows of his childhood, a vicious letdown of life itself, a proof of the vast incompetencies of man and man's spirit, featured beside the Pioneer, where it itself had been a recurring issue since man walked upon earth.
But this decade was not to pass until three months later, slightly less than that. He was never to know of its passing, or experience it, for he was in his own time. A time which ran linearly alongside an individual, his unique life, free in its will to change, to morph, to stop, that ran till it was lost. It was still early, they had three months to go, it was just September the 16th.
This day, sixty-three years earlier… he put down his paper and looked at the large clock on the wall of the station – it had changed over the years, but its shape and its structure remained – as was his habit for sixty-three years… and light reigned darkness and the very colour of sepia flashed before him.
The clock was his madeleine, and he found himself staring at it still, though in a different time. The hands of the clock were arranged another way too, and the clock showed a Gothic influence. Nine-seventeen, bordering on nine-eighteen, the precise time a whistle would be heard and the very figure of life would flash as swift as it lived, transporting its livers elsewhere, to the once empty fields that soon would breed poppies. He found himself anxious, impatient, eager to stay here forever until the very bones of his body dissolved into mist.
Hey – he turned. She was there, her rosy cheeks illumined by the glinting sunlight squeezed onto the human population gently like juice – but, once looked at and studied seriously, would border on self-harm and a distrust of sight, along with its destruction.
Hey – he smiled. She was holding a rose, its sanguine beauty diminished and almost completely removed from its close juxtaposition with her body, her beauty. He turned – it was really easier then – and his bag skidded along the cracked wood of the bench, inducing yet another crack. He smiled.
Stay safe, alright? – She placed the rose in his breast pocket, planting it within, embedding it within a permanent, compulsory memory he was devoted to for the rest of his life. It seemed to melt with his heart; within him a touch so soft stirred, weaving memory with sensation, both he was never to forget. Her eyes sparkled, glinting like the soft morning sun a pale fire, orange, gold, radiant. Perhaps they were wet with tears at their parting, perhaps it was an exclamation of hubristic patriotism, a fierce joy at his servileness to an entity bigger, more profound, more powerful. He would never see her eyes like that ever again.
I promise – He held her hand. It felt soft, softer than usual, and equally smooth, smoothened with a light cream of nonchalance blended with loyalty and the capacity of never getting bored of life… he wondered whether she was as scared as he was.
Without warning, she entered his embrace. The tears were now permitted a release of immense willpower and strength, and they flowed unashamedly onto his shoulder, with that badge of pride and of a right to display and brag; she shuddered, he too, as he clasped her tighter.
Come back safe, please? – She pleaded. Her mouth, moist with tears, quivered.
I promise – He said once again, and smiled.
The whistle had sounded, the train had arrived. It was a steam one, one that ran on coal of the most primitive sort, made to sound professional by jargon-experts, businessmen and politicians. The station waved momentarily; a wave of uniforms swept past the grand and solid wooden tiles, and he had to go.
I love you – He had said.
I love you – She had said.
Then a kiss, a flurry of unreal emotion. Then the train was gone.
He returned, two years later, to that very same place, but to no one. He was crippled and had a bullet in his head, which the doctors at the infirmary did not remove, out of fear of losing his cognition and even his life. Yet he survived the war; seen nightmares and visions of unimaginable horror that would continue to haunt his sleep, his waking hours, his private moments, still, with a smile on his face. He remained open to life, and on board the train back with the veterans of the war began to talk about his goals, his plans, his conception of a happy life with her. The men had seen it all – at least they thought so. There was chatter everywhere, as opposed to the poppy fields where they once died, as well as the makeshift hospitals where the dying were worse than the dead, often, with an unspoken vestige of hope to live and continue life, to start anew amidst the violence of war. The comrades smiled, and talked, and laughed; two lovers behind were caressing, under the golden sunlight.
But how will you get married? – He had asked, aware of the unjustified and somewhat immoral homophobia surrounding the region.
Oh, we won't – One of them had replied. We'll just live together as we see fit, no one can stop us.
The train had dropped them off into a new start of life, back from the depths of inferno and resignation. He had eagerly picked his bag up and leapt off the train.
He scanned the crowd; families welcoming their soldiers back, others waiting behind, unsure of their sons' status. His own family, his mother and father, were dead. His grandmother wouldn't know where he would come from. He was looking not for his family; he was looking for her.
But, as with thousands of such situations, he could not find her. He scanned the maelstrom of chaos around him. Screams, shouts, exclamations, ejaculations, yet without the slightest trace of her.
Baby, where are you? – He had cried. Baby, where are you?
Soon he came to his senses and went home. Perhaps it was just due to the development of logical reason in him, that his calling would not summon her if she was not there to begin with. He found his grandmother and embraced her. They talked for a long time; he asked about the state of town, to which his grandmother answered positively, that she was happy, that everyone was happy.
He could not rest. The next day he went to her house, and found no one.
Then he started looking around town, searching for her, enquiring about her. The response was minimal, but what he got terrified him. Word was that she had heard about his condition, that he was crippled and possibly reduced to a state of retardation due to that bullet, which, if shot half a centimetre to its left, would puncture the critical point of his brain, the nucleus of his mind, the epitome of his rationality and thought, which would then really turn him into a vegetable, and possibly, given some time, a mere corpse.
Then was his new start of life taken from him. He could not sleep. He spent the day wandering about town, executing meaningless errands of his own nature and accord, basking in the gloomy sun, watching the crowd of humans, of automations file past the streets at dawn and at dusk, totally unaware of sadness at its metaphysical level, the pain which plagued him like the pain of a thinker, which, when he is formulating his thought, his magnum opus, and sees a problem which cannot be solved, cannot be resolved by any means other than a deus ex machina that would greatly reduce his capability and name as a thinker, comes to him as a jolt on the neck, a prick of the harshest venom ever formulated, that enters and empties his very soul, nullifying it out of existence. And he skirted life like a dreamer would. A trance, a trance… empty in all its meaning, yet rich in blend, in uncategorized symphony, a multitude of colour and emotion, raw, impure, yet to discern, unable to clearly fathom and appreciate. He skirted life with a bullet in his head, which made it all the more impossible to turn into the definition of man, all automated and hybrid, the conformist shell of a planned identity, to eat when the meal was ready, to work when the bell sounded, to copulate when the aphrodisiac had taken its course, to sleep when slumber deemed it necessary.
Two years passed and he remained the same. His leg was healing, had healed, but the bullet remained. He still could not find her. Slowly his mind was going to adjust, to conform… to a world she had no place in, where she never existed… he was growing dumb, a waste of a man crippled by the crippling of his desires. He still lived with his grandmother, who was growing frailer with each day due to the cankerous displacement of tumours within her; she was to die in a year. He was already capable of supporting himself though, when he under her advice decided to find work. He worked as a clerk, for he possessed decent literary skill, acquired from his days in elementary school.
Ah, those were the times, of wonder, of innocence, of real life! At the age of seven he was bullied for his name. The shadows of childhood that took everything from him but left behind a power for curiosity, for knowledge, the worth of life. At the age of eight they beat him for seeking protection from a teacher. At nine they nearly killed him by jabbing a pair of scissors into his waist. At ten she came into his life.
It was a day of class, as with always. He found himself in the washroom for something in his dinner; when he came out, in his rush to get back to class, he collided into her at the turn of the corridor.
Sorry! – He had said, blushing.
Sorry – She said, and then smiled at him.
That smile, and its memory, sunk into him, into his very consciousness, his very person. From that day on he would always look for her in the vicinity, in school or at town; the obstruction between him and her was her popularity within the campus. All the scoundrels, those with a nasty face (with a big scar on their chalked cheeks) and a small penis, were after her.
The years passed, but he did not know it. Finally she was his, after his many attempts, childlike, to woo her – a book for her birthday, two tickets to Much Ado on a summer evening, and his undying passion, every day, every hour, every moment. In spite of the scoundrels and their small mean brains she was his, and no one could take her from him.
When he had to leave for the war, she was melancholic. She begged him to fake an illness, but he insisted on fighting. Slowly she began to realise the nobility of his actions, and did all she could to support his actions. The day he left, she cried herself to sleep.
Two years after he returned, he had just finished work. It was his first pay raise, amidst this prospering time, and he decided to treat himself. He ventured into the area of town he once would never have dreamed of setting foot in, the noble and glamourous district.
That day, at that particular time, six thirty-one, as indicated by the pocket watch he had conjoined to his left wrist like eternal lovers, as substitute for her and her love, he ceased, for a split moment, to think of her. He was marvelling at the prospect of a good dinner.
And it was just at that moment, that particular instant that he turned towards a restaurant of disproportionate grandeur, so vast, it seemed almost crude and filthy. And through the window he saw her.
It was her, after those four years, it was her, he remembered clearly that radiant face with that radiant smile, those eyes that glittered with the radiant sun in a pale fire, filled either with hubris or with longing, the last time she had seen him. It can't be…! Where was she all these four years, absent from my side, and I absent from her mind? – He thought. He stared, willing to believe he was seeing things, but the longer he stared, the more certain he was.
Then she turned, presumably through an indication by the man who was sitting with her, who, upon seeing a stranger staring intently at him (or them) for a considerable span of time, would no doubt illicit from within himself a sort of curiosity, and her eyes met his. For a moment his eyes registered a shock in hers, the latter which dilated into an absurd shape through an absurd fashion; soon it was over. She turned away from his gaze, his frozen statue of astonishment, and continued her life within, unaffected by a nonentity outside.
He had tried asphyxiation, followed by toxin, followed by mutilation, finally by jumping from the twelfth floor of his lodging apartment, before being rescued on time by his wheezing grandmother who cried like the heavens rained that day. When he came through this confound state, he went to one of his acquaintances from school who skipped the war due to severe asthma. He learned that:
That…
That she had been entangled in a web of deceit and of false charm; after he had gone her father became terribly ill, so ill, in fact, that local medicinal technology was insufficient to cure. The money would only come from a rich scoundrel, an aristocrat scoundrel who once bullied him in envy of his normal-sized penis that had the resources but needed another type of medication to quell his lust. So it was settled, that she would become his, married off to such a despicable name and family, and her family would see health and prosperity in the years to come. The day she made that choice, in view of her egoistic yet utilitarian ways of thinking, she vowed, as she held back tears of bitterness, never to think of him again, to remember him, to love him. The past was over, but the future was yet to arrive.
The years passed and he began to forget about her. Five years after that fateful departure he sat on that same bench, unchanged except for its additions of weathering, caused by the weather and the carelessness of men. That day, as he stared at the clock, as was his habit, he felt, suddenly, a cold sense of dread. That day flashed before his eyes. But he quelled that, and during his trip to a nearby town (he had been appointed editor of the company he was once an underdog within, and thus commanded a great deal of admiration and respect) he only thought, as with all pragmatic thinkers, about the business he was about to conduct there. One week later he came back to realise his sense of dread as a premonition, for when he entered his apartment he found his grandmother lying sprawled on the floor, slowly decomposing, emitting the reek of eggs that are rotten and stale and the stench of life.
Nine years even later he found himself seated there, that exact spot, on a rainy afternoon. The clock read three fifty-one. The bench was in its worst state; it was to be repaired soon after. He had been removed from his position due to the economic status, the very automation upon which human automations thrived. He made a living selling newspapers and snow. That day, a dilute solution they claimed was coffee in his hands, he sat there, passive, unable to think.
A flash, an infinite tumult of flashes of sepia; and it was the dawn of the fifties. He had recovered from the greed of man, and got back his post of editor; and had his bullet finally removed. He felt un-captive, terminated from an obsessive pain in his head, his mind. That day, it was four o'clock. A train rolled past, a cleaner one, that is. The bench was partly replaced by plastic and fashion.
A year and a half later, he found himself in ownership of a child. He succumbed to his fear, his dead part of his brain. She – that hooker – looked like her. Impossible; that whore. Nevertheless, in drunkenness one can do almost anything, and so, he did what he did. The whore, after bloodying this earth with yet another living scum, died. The continuous birthing of a dozen scum children tore away her endometrium – ripped it apart completely.
Nineteen sixty – the child was eight and a half. He treated it like a son, bonded flesh and blood to him, his own body, character, his soul, his very existence too! They were linked, and in the child's eyes he could see hers. It was an unbearable memory, too painful to withstand, to close to abandon; it floated in a state of nonchalance, just as she did – he was still heartbroken; if only she'd waited! The child was in school, the very school he had once attended, and he as a routine had gone to the station to sit and observe the trains and the time. The bench had been repainted twice – it now resembled a smooth amalgation of bricks, somewhat in relation to Dali and his absurdity.
Five years later the child died. It was possibly due to the mother, who possessed nothing, absolutely nothing good in her blood. It was surprising he did not contract anything; his sadness in life could have overpowered any other desire to claim his health. He buried it personally, the body thirteen and a half years of age, so small, limbs deformed, lacking the singularity of muscle and bone that differentiates child from man. He sat there, on that bench, now grey, every single day, for he had retired and was in no need of money and other luxuries. It was a race against time, he told himself every day.
The memory he had built, had accumulated inside of him, began to swirl, and within it he dwelled his entire existence. The obsession with her rekindled, he would think of her every single hour, in a jealous frenzy combined with anger for having left him so prematurely, when nothing, not to mention fate, was finalised, but rather sketched, in draft form, as an artist may do his masterpiece. Time was his other sole obsession; the shadows of his childhood were governed by it, tied to it inexplicably, intertwined, interrelated. That time should decide the formation and shape of these shadows… this would be solid enough a ground for him to worship it, to conform with Space to Time, its mystical depths he sought to uncover in his old age in which most of his physical capability was lost. The abstract, absurd thinking gave him a dim hope, a hope of reuniting with everything he wanted, a happy family with her, a happy life.
The other day, somewhere in seventy-two, during the last of the Moon landings, he met those two at the station. The two queers were hobbling, smiling, each holding one hand of a young man between them. The young man, they had said, was adopted and now was living out thirty years, the healthy prime, somewhat the beginning of his peak, his orgasm with life's whores, his height of satisfaction with what he has with and around him.
He looked around him. Everyone was happy except for him.
Later on as the seventies progressed he would sit at the same bench, but with the addition of the morning paper and a cup of tea. He had a saucer to support the teacup, and a small surface on the side of the bench to place it; there, he could read in peace. He, day after day, saw the trains flit past him, going in and out of existence, surrendering themselves to fate which decides to immerse them, not, in reality, but instead a subgroup, a subset of it, the worst scenario, a state of apathy, of inertia, which disorganizes itself with its laziness, its unwillingness to change, to inspire, to better.
The station's wood was transformed into glass; its trains fitted with the standards of modern luxury. Man's advancement had been seen, asserted, in a collective presence, but what about the individual? As an individual he was useless, hopeless, meaningless to society; and so were many. Only at the level of automations does society, together with technology, function best; the other states only ensure a collective yet tailored welfare, rather, the progress of developmental being, the presence of money, of buildings, of infrastructure, would hence be compromised.
Memory was dead, progress itself was dying, for progress carried itself in the wrong way. Progress was for the sake of automations, not humans. The Pioneer sent to Saturn merely marked a milestone; that man could achieve interplanetary travel; yet, back home, the damage hurricanes were causing to entire populations and ecosystems was increasing dangerously.
And the clock? It was the carrier of Time, carrier of his Time, the very essence that governs his actions, the actions of automations, of society. It allowed, in retrospect, a greater freedom in action, in the individual who rebels, whereas for the collective mass it organizes, it divides, it controls. Thus spent man years on war, on research, on the fight to save the world, the fight to make a change, the fight to end all fights; it was surreal, an action of cowardice as the overarching issue of utopia is neglected and shirked… ah, all the times he could've enjoyed, seated at home, with a family, with his sweetheart, with all that he once cared for…
Whether, whether she was healthy, alive, or not, that…
That…
That he did not know.
It was not in his power to do so.
The sepia cut; he was back. He had returned to the dusk of the seventies, the dawn of the eighties which almost seemingly marked a hidden dystopia in its making, its formation that could be prevented, if, and only if…
He did not know what. He got up; presently he stood here, facing the painted tracks and the full moon. It was dark, now. He was over eighty, past the darkness of his Time. He had traversed Space to find Time, and all it gave him was the unquenchable Memory of life, of all that he treasured or once treasured, a summary, a summation…
The station would close in ten minutes.
He closed his eyes. He conjured up the shadows of his childhood, his oppression due to his name, his encounters, his war he fought so gallantly, his adventures and misadventures with life and death, his brief happiness, his melancholy, his entire living, the reason for his existence. His eyes closed, he began to meditate, standing up, perched on the stand near the tracks, but so calm that falling was out of the question. He was dead calm now; no sound, no scent, not even the scent of night, the smell of night, could rouse him.
Presently he opened them. As he did so he felt his very life draining away, and he fought for those shadows to return, but they didn't, and swirling without shape and form, vanished into the night.