I have a confession to make: I am easy to deceive. I lower my guards under influence of solemn assurances. I forget to be suspicious in light of implausible claims. I have no prank detector. In short, I have a very high threshold of suspension of disbelief.
I don't find it to be a flaw at all. When I think of people who tend to go through life fostering perpetual mistrust, expecting conniving forces to hide beneath facades of pleasantries, I feel my life is much simpler. It's easier to just take people at face value. I don't fear being deceived either. If someone lies to me, how is it a problem of mine if I am not the one doing the lying? So if you're looking for your next year's April Fool's Day victim, I am your best bet. It's not accidential why I am writing it when April is being safely left behind.
It was only recently when I reminded my sister of the time when I fell victim to her deception skills. One of those sweet, innocent deceptions, the 'somethings beautiful' instead of a truth. She burst out laughing as she had long forgotten about it. But I remember it very well.
Back then, my family and I used to spend holidays at my aunt's place. She lived in a different city in a other region and it took us a long train ride, usually at night, to get there. It was a block of identical, split-level flats with a neat row of balconies on one side. My aunt had lived her almost her entire life and as such she knew all the neighbours. Soon, we knew them too, catching glimpses of their name plates at the door as we passed through the staircase. The family next door had several children and a type of surname that was unheard of in our part of the country. The whole family seemed to be smoking and we saw them frequently taking turns on the balcony. Amongst them was a boy called Adrian, who was close to my sister's age. For me, that holiday was mostly about watching TV while snacking on raisins and jump at tectonic movements, very frequent in that city at the time, which made my aunt's glasses in Soviet-style cabinet tremble. But for my sister other things mattered. She was at a fall-in-love age.
I didn't learn of the story until much, much later. It was spring, and our latest holiday in our aunt's apartment was long over. My sister seeked me out in the living room, which should have alerted me straight away. She rarely seeked my company when we were at that age. Almost tearfully, she said she had a secret to tell. In a hushed tone, she revealed that over the duration of our last holiday, Adrian and her embarked on a romantic adventure via secret letters. They would leave each other small notes attached to the balcony railings, in their own secret spot to make sure no one else would find them. She recalled his beautiful letters, filled with love and magic, and it all appeared in front of my eyes in a dream-like sequence. I tried to remember what Adrian looked like, that next door boy I saw so many time yet knew nothing about. And now I was finding out he had a true talent, a literary gift so rare it could move hearts through a balcony railing. Then she sighed and told me of his last letter, the longest of them all. It was the day when we were due to leave, and the distressed note contained a heartfelt farewell. He wrote that days will now be longer and darker, and the soon will be hiding behind the clouds much more than before. That a mist will cover all his mornings in grey colours of mourning.
I was touched. In my imagination, I saw it all: the balcony after dusk, the gentle moonlight, a distant sound of chatter on TV. A hand reaching over the balcony railing. It was then when she joyfully exclaimed 'April Fool's Day!' and threw herself laughing onto the sofa. I stared at her stunned. By that time, I had fallen so hard I had trouble to understand what she meant.
That was all a long time ago, but I still remember the name of my aunt's neighbour and his touching, romantic letters of a lovestruck teenager even if he never actually wrote them. Meanwhile, my sister forgot all about it, until this April. She said she couldn't believe she was had gone such length just to fool me. And yet, people do go to elaborate lenghts just to fool others. To construct whole narratives and plot layered deceptions. Isn't that what writing fiction is all about? And there's such beauty to imaginary stories, that my favourite lies are always those that serve no purpose at all. Ibsen might have a few things to say about that.
