Recently one clever guy I randomly met somehow managed to convince me that publishing my stories on my blog, especially noting I would have shown them to anybody anyway, wouldn't most probably do any harm. So here you go. This story has been written at work on my lunch break a year ago and made me feeling genuinely proud. I spent months reading it and telling myself what a genius I am and what an amazing talent I keep hiding from public. At the meantime, a year goes by, I don't like it anymore. I would write it now. I can't see why would anybody ever write such a thing.
I decided not to bother to put a title on it. Anybody curious, enjoy.
There is this place in Victoria Park, where the historic borough of Tower Hamlets ends and Hackney begins. This place lies in my heart, gently filling the empty spaces with a green carpet of grass, calming down the turning corridors of memories. On that day I got up in a bit of a different manner than I used to and I found a golden ring hidden in my fist. It used to be a belonging of my grandmother, the only thing I got from her and my mother always said it didn’t matter. I had lost it years ago and I liked to believe it had a deeper meaning as we usually try to give value to the unexplainable. I was watching it for a while as it was lying there in my open hand, reflecting the light brought by a strong summer sun through the open doorway. Summer in London always comes as a surprise, but not a miracle kind, rather a magician’s trick when all of the sudden they take a harmony out of their hat instead of a rabbit. It can seem though, more golden than in the rest of the world, shimmering the air with bits of lightening treasure. You can ask this sun for your answers. It’s there for you, responding with thousands of gardens.
On that day I walked through the streets like a thought slightly floating on a verge between the wind and the pavement. I boarded the train from the same platform as usual, still holding a golden ring in my fist. There were just three more passengers in the carriage. On my left hand, with a corner of my eye I could see an elderly lady with a face alike to an exotic bird, with a red throat contrasting an ivory smoothness of her nose. Apart from her there were also two men carrying late autumns of their lives inside their tired gazes. One of them, of a tiny posture and short neck turning his head slightly towards his left shoulder, looked up in my eyes and smiled with kindness one can only be offered by a stranger. I was sitting next to the window watching the brown and sad track, the final landscape after everything has turned to dust. Then all of a sudden I heard the an automatic sound and a monotone voice announcing: ‘This train does not terminate at the next station. This train does not stop. It will continue till the final station. This train is for the end.’ I took a look around at other passengers’ faces. They looked calm and untouched, like sketches in the old animation, looking more beautiful to me than ever random strangers could if I only paid my attention to shadows. My destination had obviously changed and I felt embarrassed for travelling with such a big discount.
Slowly, I stood up and walked towards the beginning of the carriage, looking at the landscape outside of the window as it was getting closer and closer to my eyes. The train suddenly turned like a carousel keeping on turning around and making the world around all trembling in sights. Then I saw this place once again, the corner of Victoria Park near the station of Hackney Central. My mind entered the tunnel of gobelins filling me all with smells and flavours I remembered from my dreams. Victoria Park looks the best in the afternoon, these afternoons which were running through the path of my own board game. When I was a child my dad and I used to play 'Wild Geese' which was nothing but a journey on a large cardboard. It was a journey through the hell, at least that was the way I perceived it at that time, because the pond was always deep and the well was always right there, and I had an anxiety of both: highness and darkening. And it always made my dad laugh, because he was never afraid of neither traps nor tricks, neither weeping harmonies nor talking trumpets. Could this train be stopping here? Is it here- the end of the world, the end of the ends, the end of the imagination. Could it be here?
Once on this corner, where Tower Hamlets end and where Hackney begins, love came to me. I didn't recognise it at first place such a silly hat it was wearing. But I remember, the two of us escaping through marble stairs, or maybe they were only marble in my memory, only to disappear amongst the green spots of the canopies. This love didn't taste like literature. It was rather slow than fast, but still fizzy and approaching me through the tunnel of the night like a shadow from somebody else's dream, glaring at me with a spark of a hunting desire. There was no other light in the darkroom of the garden filled with photos of us which were still yet to dry.
I loved that night, leading me to survive through the fall. I kept on coming back there in my mind, to my precious night so painfully broken by the noise of birds. I remember the time of me thinking about it later, in a square piece of land surrounded by a hedge even butterflies could not fight. My feet on a grass. The grass greener than ever. I was drawing a portrait of a friend of mine which I had not seen then for a while, to recreate her face in pencil and look in her eyes. Everytime I remind it her image comes back clearer, each time closer to me. One day this picture will swallow into the labirynth of paper, imprisoning me forever.
-Look- I told you in the mist of a heavy late summer air- if she only could move her eyelashes. Her gaze would be real.
-Her eyes are real- said you gently holding the page. She was there, watching me so steady, with her eyes awaiting and wondering as usual. I couldn't say what did she feel. I never saw her happy.
- Look into her eyes, they are real. She is moving her eyelashes now, she is waiting for you, here, closer, clearer than ever- said you, I see your face covered with dust.
I put my feet back on the grass. They felt vibrant and soaked.
Then the train slowed down. We moved away from the park, my park left behind. A man made of glass came to me. His face looked confused, getting older and than younger depending on each movement of the marks on his fragile skin.
-This is not your train- said he and the mark below his eyebrow has become deeper. -You confused the train. It's not your time yet, and not yet your memories.
-My dear conductor made of glass- answered I with a shy request- Could you please then leave me here? On that corner where Tower Hamlets ends and where Hackney begins. I will walk back home through the park.
***
It was indeed not yet my train. I saw it in the eyes of other passengers when they were saying goodbye for the last time. After that the train turned back, to continue on for the end. I was watching it leaving until it disappeared in the smoke of the late summer evening. I stayed alone, on the corner of Victoria Park where I had just watched my life. It was still for me to happen. I felt a sudden sadness smothering my heart, the kind of sweet sadness which can come only in the evening. I walked along the road crossing the standing air. It was already late when I was passing the park and the pictures had faded away, probably never dried in the darkroom.
How you used to say, it might have been a banality not worth to write about, but it was all between the lines. The way you were lighting up the cigarette, and then next, always, looking in my eyes.
-Look, there is a mirror behind you!- I liked to watch my reflection, until you turned your head to meet my eyes on another side of the glass. This broken old space has captured that moment. Old mirror, old spirits.
Then the image walked away. I walked towards the street lights calling me from the distance to later pass Palm Tree bar, quiet and untouched, filled with a warm light of yellow lanterns. That used to be my friend's favourite place, a large lantern itself, yellow and red, standing sole on a green map. We spent there many Friday nights in silence, immersed in an old fashioned music, watching our empty hands. There was where the time has stopped, for my own moment which seemed to be forever. I closed my fists, just like when I was holding the ring, the park was now shadowed and yellow. Tie it to the tree, tie my shoes to the fist, tie my hands to the grass, tie my heart to the mist. It will never be capable of getting loose.
No comments:
Post a Comment