Chapter 4
Nathan didn’t know what to think. How was it possible? He even wondered if he was in a dream, or still suffering the residual effects from last night’s alcohol consumption. Looking at the girl’s suspicious expression, Nathan knew it was impossible to explain anything at the moment.
“Sorry, I think I made a mistake and came to the wrong address.” Nathan quickly walked away but could still hear the girl’s voice as if she was talking to herself. “He’d be lucky to still remember his own name.”
Nathan almost ran the whole way to where he had stayed last night. Walking into the patch of bush, among the thin group of trees, he saw there was no hut; in fact there was nothing except a picnic table with two benches attached to it.
Did he hallucinate last night under the influence of alcohol? Did his mind trick him by inventing the Taoist character? Nathan sat on the bench for a while, thinking really hard; of course nobody would believe his story.
After careful consideration, he decided it would be better to tell people that he’d had an accident and lost all of his memories about where he was during the last fifteen years. And it was almost close to the truth. With some more thought, Nathan decided to go home first. After being missing for so long, his parents must be worried about him.
Nathan took the buses back home. His SmartRider didn’t work, naturally, so he paid for the bus ticket with cash. It was lucky the bus routes hadn’t changed that much, but again it surprised him that there were so few people around. He couldn’t wait to find out why, however he didn’t ask the bus driver or any of his fellow passengers at the back of the bus, because he was still unsure about what had happened to him.
Looking through the bus windows, Nathan noticed another fact about the city: the streets looked much cleaner than he remembered. It may be related to there being so few people around, thought Nathan. The city landscape hadn’t changed much; the old buildings he knew were still there and there wasn’t really anything noticeably new. It was much the same as fifteen years ago.
Nathan pushed the doorbell and waited but got no response, so he walked past the side fence and went into the backyard through the side gate. The overgrown backyard, however, was different from his memory. His mother always kept the garden tidy. Walking through the overgrown weeds, Nathan saw his mother sitting at a table under the pergola, staring at the backyard motionlessly.
Her hair was totally white. She was an old mother and had given birth to Nathan when she was forty, so adding the missing fifteen years to her age, she should be in her mid–seventies by now, Nathan calculated. Looking at her fragile body and aged face, Nathan felt sorry for not visiting her more often before.
“Mom, how have you been?” Nathan spoke softly as he walked towards his mother.
As if she had been hit by lightning, his mother’s body shook, and turned. “Nathan, is it really you? My Nathan has finally come home.”
“Yes, it’s me, Nathan.” Nathan bent down and hugged his mother’s thin and fragile body.
“Oh, it really is my Nathan.” Tears filled her eyes as she clung onto Nathan tightly, as if he would disappear if she let him go. “Where have you been for so many years, Nathan?”
“Mom, it’s hard to explain. I will tell you later. Where is Dad?”
“Nathan, we all believed you were dead; your father died five years ago…” his mother sobbed.
“What? Dad died?” Nathan couldn’t believe his ears. He hadn’t really had a good relationship with his father then; he thought he was a total idiot and said the most stupid things all the time, but now he was gone, Nathan felt like he really didn’t know much about him at all.
“Nathan, have you had lunch yet? Would you like me to make you a sandwich?” His mother walked to the house.
“Yes, please, I am really hungry.” Nathan sat on the high stool next to the kitchen bench, watching his mother making him a lettuce, tomato, cheese and ham sandwich, a super large one.
“Nathan, where have you been all these years? Why didn’t you contact us at all?” His mother passed Nathan a large glass of milk.
“To be honest, I don’t know myself,” Nathan said in between bites of his sandwich. “I literally woke up this morning and found fifteen years has passed. I have no memory at all about where I was or what I did during all of that time.” Nathan was telling the truth, but he would not mention the Taoist, because nobody would believe his story.
His mother looked concerned but at the same time so happy to see her son home. “Nathan, you could have had an accident and it may have caused your memory loss, but I am so glad you’re now home safely.”
“Me too, Mom, I am so glad I came home. I should have visited you more often before.”
Nathan cleaned up after lunch and made a cup of tea for each of them. Sitting in the living room, Nathan asked, “Mom, how did Dad die?”
“Lung cancer, smoking too much for too long,” Nathan’s mother said.
“Did he suffer in the end?” asked Nathan.
“No, he didn’t.” His mother sipped her tea. “Five years ago, he went to see the doctor for something else and they discovered the cancer by chance. Nathan, he was so sad at losing you that he lost his will to live. He refused to have any treatments, and died a few months later…”
Nathan felt a heaviness in his chest; he hadn’t got on well with his father since high school, and it had gotten worse in university, because his father wanted him to study medicine, but he had chosen to study philosophy, a subject that his father regarded as a useless degree. Nathan moved out soon after graduating from high school, and had rarely visited his parents during the two years he had been in university, before his ‘disappearance’.
Nathan’s father was from one of the original settlements in Australia; despite working as a manual labourer his whole life, Nathan’s father hadn’t spoken a single swear word in front of Nathan and had also taught him to be gentle and respectful to women, because he and his mother (Nathan’s grandmother) were badly abused by Nathan’s alcoholic grandfather. Nathan’s father really wanted Nathan to become a medical doctor; he spent his life savings putting Nathan through private school. Now for the first time, Nathan actually started to understand his father’s feeling of disappointment when Nathan told his father that he didn’t want to study medicine at university. Before today, Nathan only thought of him as an uneducated, unsophisticated, know-nothing idiot.
Nathan felt tears fill his eyes; he sobbed quietly. “I am so sorry for disappointing Dad…I should have studied medicine as he wished…”
His mother said, “Nathan, before your father died, he said to me that, if he could see you again, he would want to tell you that he was very proud of you for studying at one of the best universities in Australia; he wanted to tell you that he was happy whatever your choice was. So Nathan, please stop blaming yourself; your father had forgiven you. He loved you very much.”
Nathan cooked dinner and also washed the dishes afterwards. His mother stared at him, full of happiness. Nathan did all of this because he still felt guilty.
“Nathan, will you stay with me for a while before you move out again?” his mother asked hopefully.
“Mom, yes, I will stay home for a while. I need to figure things out for myself before I can leave; are you sure it’s all right to stay with you?”
“Nathan, this is your home and I am your mother; of course you can stay home as long as you wish.”
Someone knocked on the front door. Nathan went and opened the door. Standing there were Dave and Gary.
“It really is you, Nathan,” Dave shouted. He hugged Nathan. “We heard the news about someone turning up at the bakery, claiming to be Nathan, so I told Gary we needed to check it out.”
“Hi, mate, where have you been all these years?” Gary patted Nathan’s back.
Nathan didn’t smell alcohol fumes on Gary’s breath and that was new to him. Nathan told them the same story as he had told his mother about his lost memory.
“Man, that sucks.” Dave thought for a moment. “Nathan, you haven’t changed one bit, you’ve still got the look of a twenty-year-old second-year university student. How did you manage that?”
“It may have something to do with your lost memory.” Gary offered his opinion.
Nathan looked at them both, and said, “You both look pretty good for thirty-five years old.”
Dave patted his stomach. “Well, we are looking more and more like potatoes each day.”
“Nathan, why don’t you come and stay with us?” Gary asked.
“You guys are still sharing the same old house? I thought you must have got good jobs and be married by now,” Nathan said.
“Oh, no. Who would bother to get married nowadays?” Dave glanced at Nathan’s mother, and then spoke in a quieter voice. “Nathan, you have no idea what has happened in the last fifteen years. Come with us, and we will educate you about the new world.”
“Thanks, mate, but I think Iwill stay home for a while before figuring out what to do with myself,” Nathan said.
“All right, that’s fine with us, but you should at least go out with us to celebrate your arrival home,” Dave said.
“All right.” Nathan turned to his mother. “Mom, I’m going to go out with Dave and Gary tonight; please don’t wait up for me.”
“Nathan, don’t worry about me. Go and talk to your mates,” his mother said happily.
Out of Body Universe - Part One Page 5