Everything Beautiful Began After

by Simon Van Booy

  You were very thin, almost skeletal—but you were too tired to drag yourself out to the balcony.

  When you were half outside, you think that you passed out again.

  When you awoke, there was a strange taste in your mouth, a lead taste. Your shirtfront was also wet.

  Then a cool wind blew against your face. It felt lovely and you opened your mouth to swallow.

  There was light traffic on the street. You imagined smoking men at the edges of their balconies in undershirts, enjoying the cool evening. And farther down the boulevard, a knot of tired prostitutes dwindling at the curb, dazzled by the glare of a few passing cars.

  You began trembling violently and felt suddenly that your lips were very sore and wet. When you found the energy to raise a hand to your face, you withdrew it quickly to find blood. You realized that your shirtfront was not soaked with sweat but covered in blood. Your lips were shredded and you didn’t know why. Your nose was numb, and you felt the tickle of blood inside.

  You had fallen without falling.

  You were discovered unconscious on your balcony by the boy from downstairs. The broken washing machine in your bathroom was not broken after all. The water valve in the basement was simply turned off. When workmen checking the foundation turned a lever to see what it was, the washing machine in your bathroom gushed to life.

  When the ceiling buckled in the apartment below your bathroom, Mr. Papafilippou and his son raced upstairs. He banged on your door. When he heard no answer, father and son pounded on it together. Two large hairy fists, and two small ones.

  Mrs. Papafilippou watched from the bottom of the stairs in an apron with her hand over her mouth. When the first few drops fell onto the Papafilippou living room rug, Mrs. Papafilippou shouted at her husband to break the door down.

  As Mr. Papafilippou rushed into your bathroom and searched frantically for the shut-off valves, his son calmly explored the apartment. Stepping into the bedroom, he saw a motionless foot on the balcony. Curious, he approached it, wondering who it belonged to. He touched it, but nothing happened.

  Mr. Papafilippou and his son carried you to their Fiat van and took you to hospital.

  As they sped through central Athens, the boy reached back and put his hand on your forehead. You vaguely remember this, because you wondered who they were. His father nodded and said in Greek: “Good thinking, son.”

  Then you came back to life and remembered being lifted from the van.

  The desk clerk at the hospital wasn’t really a desk clerk—he was an Alzheimer’s patient who had simply chosen what he thought was a comfortable seat in a safe place. The real clerk was outside arguing with her boyfriend on a cell phone.

  “We found him on his balcony,” Mr. Papafillipou said breathlessly as he carried your body through the foyer.

  “How kind of you to bring me flowers on such a pretty day,” the fake receptionist said, getting up to kiss Mr. Papafillipou on the cheek.

  Mr. Papafillipou drew back. “We didn’t bring flowers.”

  His son looked on the ground. “No, we must have dropped them.”

  When the pretend desk clerk asked about the spinach pie, Mr. Papafillipou just carried you into a ward and put you into the first empty bed he saw.

  The other patients sat up and wanted to know what was going on.

  It took George three days to find out where you were.

  Then he visited you every day.

  At first you both just sat in silence, as if waiting for news to arrive. Then he brought a book and read it aloud. When he finished that book, he brought another, and then another. It went on for weeks and weeks. The last book he read to you was The Wind in the Willows.

  You were also on heavy drugs. One day George showed up with a small suitcase. He wore a suit and was freshly shaven.

  “You smell good, George.”

  He sat on the bed.

  “I’m thinking of leaving Athens,” he said.

  “When?”

  “This afternoon.”

  “Today?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve accepted a job with an American university in Sicily.”

  “I see.”

  “Will you be okay, Henry?”

  “Yes. Are you still not drinking?”

  George nodded.

  “How long now?”

  “Forty-nine days tomorrow.”

  “I’m proud of you, George.”

  “I’m proud of you too,” he said.

  “You’ve been a real friend to me,” you said.

  George looked away. You could tell he wanted to cry. The echo of his footsteps was steady and pure.

  A week later, you were told you had to leave hospital.

  The doctor insisted.

  “You’re better, Henry—go home.”

  “I’m not better,” you said. “And I don’t think I should leave.”

  The doctor was quite young. He generally joked around with you, but this time he folded his arms.

  “I can’t leave,” you insisted. “I like it here.”

  “It’s not a hotel.”

  “I’m still not well.”

  The doctor kneeled at your bedside. “I know what happened to your girlfriend was tough, and that you are depressed, and all those other things which led to you coming here—I know all this, Henry—but now you’re making progress—the broken nose from falling out of bed, the malnutrition, the virus, we’ve cured you of everything—all you need now is a shave and a haircut, and maybe something to look forward to.”

  “I’m not ready.”

  “You’re still a young man,” the doctor said standing up. “I know you don’t feel like it, but maybe one day you’ll realize you’ve got more ahead of you than behind you.”

  An old man in the next bed with an oxygen mask over his face turned slowly to face you both—then he carefully removed the mask to say something.

  “I wish I was you,” he said, smiling.

  “No, you don’t.”

  “I do,” he insisted.

  “Put that mask back on,” the doctor ordered. “You’re supposed to be resting.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  You left the hospital in a taxi still wearing pajamas and a hospital gown. The driver smoked and said in Greek:

  “You sure you’re better?”

  Your apartment had been taken over by someone else. You didn’t even have to go in—the curtains had changed and the balcony was overrun with tall, thin plants.

  You imagined your few things in a box in the basement. Your Vespa would be locked up at the university or stolen. The professor had visited you in the hospital too. He was planning on closing up the excavation and heading back to North Africa—you forgot where exactly because the doctor had you on some new kind of drug that week.

  You took one final look at your apartment from the back of the taxi and then asked the driver to take you to the airport.

  You had drachmas in your pocket from wages the professor had brought in a brown envelope.

  You entered the terminal in George’s pajamas. They were light blue cotton with white piping. He also brought you a pair of black Church’s slippers, which you were wearing. He’d sewn his new address in Sicily into the fabric of the left slipper. The dressing gown was the property of the hospital, but you’d grown quite fond of it and so decided to take it with you.

  You half expected the airline staff to look at your plastic wristband and call the police. But they just glanced at your passport and counted the money you gave them.

  You boarded the aircraft.

  Deep down you knew it was time to leave Athens—even though you had nowhere to go and the people on the plane just stared at you.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Asleep on the short flight to London. A flight attendant woke you after landing. She was pretty, but there was something sinister in how she barked at you to get up. You imagined Rebecca in her uniform. Her eyes, the way she stared at you. Y
ou wish now you’d confessed everything about your brother. She would have understood. She would have helped you let him go.

  You found out that you were actually in a place called Luton—which was close to London, but not in London.

  “Why are we in Luton?” you asked another passenger who had also slept through the landing and was now collecting his belongings.

  “I ask myself that every day,” he said.

  You continued sleeping at the airport. It was much colder than Greece.

  In the early hours of the morning a Jamaican cleaner woke you up and asked if you were okay. He wanted to know where you got your pajamas. He gave you some ginger beer from a plastic bottle. The ginger beer was very sweet and stung your throat. The man insisted that the burn of the ginger keeps away colds and spirits. Then he went back to work, swishing past you from time to time with a mop and a chuckle.

  When the airport began to fill, you went outside and asked a taxi driver to take you to the nearest branch of your bank. You also asked the driver if he had a bag. He looked around on the floor under the passenger seat and shook his lunchbox from a plastic shopping bag that read tesco supermarket.

  “Here you go, mate,” he said. Then with his eyes still in the mirror, he said: “What are you doin’ wearing bloody pajamas in this weather? You all right?”

  You told him it was a long story.

  Inside the bank, you asked to withdraw your life savings—the money from unspent student loans, plus the inheritance from your grandmother, which was meant for you to buy a flat when you got married.

  The teller asked you to take a seat somewhere more private. Then a tall Sikh came out and introduced himself as the manager. He asked if you were feeling okay. You told him you were, but that you just wanted your money.

  “But our policy is to—”

  “Just give me my goddamn money,” you snapped.

  The manager nodded reluctantly and said, “I can tell that these are strange and original circumstances.”

  Only about a quarter of the bills would fit in the Tesco bag. The teller and the manager watched with a mixture of curiosity and horror.

  “Please, please, Mr. Bliss,” the manager implored you. “At least take the rest in travelers checks—if only for safety.”

  You returned to Luton Airport in the same taxi with approximately £48,000 in a shopping bag, and £160,000 in American Express travelers checks.

  When you got back into the taxi with a bag of money, the driver was amazed. “Did you just rob that bloody bank?”

  On the way back to the airport, you noticed an air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror. It was shaped like a child and said baby on board.

  You asked the driver to stop the taxi. He wouldn’t. You screamed and he did. You got out with your shopping bag. He was reluctant to just leave you. It was windy and gray. The grass at the side of the road was very green. Birds flew against the wind. In some places the grass was soggy and you felt the cold soak into your slippers. At the side of the road were many things: a pink teddy bear, a pair of workman’s goggles, empty cigarette packets, broken bottles, pieces of bumper and shards of headlight from a late night of flashing lights.

  And there you were—walking in your pajamas at the side of the road. Children looked out and wondered who you were, where you were going. People you will never meet, and who knew nothing about your life, carried you for a few miles as a silent flush of compassion.

  The cold didn’t bother you, but it was hard sometimes to cross roundabouts because nobody wanted to slow down.

  You were the Oedipus of legend, the doomed soul, left to wander blindly in the wilderness.

  In the distance burned the lights of the airport.

  You stopped midway and bought coffee from a van selling hot dogs. The lights of the planes were beautiful in the gray light.

  You followed the path of planes coming into land. It was very cold by the time you arrived, and you felt like you might fall down. The world behind you had fallen into darkness.

  You sat still for a few hours, and then ate minced-beef pie and mashed potatoes in a café. A bit later you found a British Airways sales desk and asked to buy a ticket.

  It was getting late. Only a few flights left. The woman leaned forward and smiled.

  “Where is your destination, sir?”

  “When’s the next flight?” you mumbled.

  “To where, sir?”

  “Anywhere?”

  “In Europe?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, there’s a flight to Dublin leaving, but they’re closing the gate. There’s a very early flight to Milan if that’s helpful—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” you said. “Everywhere’s the same to me now.”

  Chapter Forty

  When you arrived in Milan, the airport was packed with handsome businessmen smoking and touching their hair. There was a place to buy fresh orange juice, and so you bought some and then drank it quickly on the spot.

  You decided to see the city, and after visiting the Bureau de Change, you took a taxi into the center of town. You walked around with a shopping bag full of money. Your pajamas were getting dirty, and you wondered if you should buy some real clothes.

  It was very busy.

  People talked loudly on phones as they walked. Vespas threaded their way through traffic. Taxi drivers talked in groups with sweaters tied around their shoulders. It was almost like Athens, but beautiful and organized.

  When you were hungry, you found a bustling restaurant close to a courthouse. The counters were long rivers of brushed steel.

  The ceiling fans were slow and clean. Each blade was slightly angled. The tables, the chairs, and the floor were all cut from the same dull steel—or perhaps after decades of use, the shine had worn off.

  Everyone chewed in silence and looked at one another.

  You pointed to a plate of something in a glass case on the counter. The young waiter nodded.

  “Signor,” the waiter said, pointing to an empty seat.

  A few minutes later your meal arrived. You noticed several other people at nearby tables eating the same thing. And then you noticed that all the meals in the glass case were exactly the same.

  There were no children in the restaurant, and you wondered why.

  The restaurant was part of a tobacconist’s shop, and after lunch, you picked up your shopping bag and wandered over to it. Everything in the shop was streamlined. Even the white hair of the tobacconist was brushed back and glistened under the shop light.

  Although you had stopped smoking in hospital, you bought a few packets of cigarettes because the boxes were beautiful. You received your change in a chrome ashtray, not in your hand.

  As you went to leave a man blocked your path.

  The man stood between you and the door.

  “Signor,” he said.

  You looked at him and gripped your shopping bag.

  The man held up some lottery tickets and a small pencil.

  When you finished marking one line, the man pointed to the next. When you finished all the lines, the man held the card at a distance from his eyes.

  “Foreigners are sometimes good luck,” he said.

  You walked around for an hour and then went into a shop that sold crucifixes, hoping to use the bathroom. There were hundreds of crosses in the shop, in all different colors, but with Jesus wearing the same expression in most of them.

  The manager said, “If you want to use the bathroom, buy a crucifix.”

  “But I have nowhere to hang it,” you said.

  The owner shrugged.

  “I’d really like to use the toilet, without purchasing an action figure nailed to a piece of wood.”

  “Please leave the shop,” the man said. Other staff drifted over.

  “I can pay you,” you said.

  “Just buy something with Jesus on it,” the owner said. “The toilet is over there behind those shelves.”

  “Actually, I think I’ll go.”
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  You left the shop and peed against some recycling bins nearby. In the alley beyond the bins, sitting atop a black garbage bag, was a typewriter. You went over and pushed a few keys. Then you put it under your arm and walked away.

  You ambled back toward the center of town, studying the design on a packet of the cigarettes you’d bought.

  Then you noticed a gang of teenagers watching from a park across the street. You had seen them before outside the lunch place. You looked down at your money. How could they know? But then you thought that maybe it had something to do with the typewriter. You considered putting it down and walking away.

  You strolled a few blocks to see if the teenagers would follow. They didn’t seem to be behind you, but when you thought you’d lost them, they suddenly appeared ahead of you—a tight group of boys in whitewashed jeans, like a scene from West Side Story.

  Instead of waiting for them to come upon you, you turned and sprinted down a narrow street. At the end was an opening that led on to a very wide and beautiful street—a street far too handsome to get robbed on.

  You looked back and saw two of the boys enter the alley running, and so ducked quickly into the nearest shop. The bell rang violently.

  The shop was empty, but smelled delicious—as if someone had been smashing grapefruits. Mannequins in metallic dresses glowed under the lights.

  A woman approached you. A mole on her lip made her mouth look exotic.

  “I need clothes.” You opened the shopping bag by letting go of one of the handles. “And do you take pounds because I’ve run out of your currency?”

  The woman peered into the bag.

  “I think we probably could,” she said.

  Then she asked if you’d like to put down your typewriter and try a few things on.

  Three hours later—after a local tailor was called in to make adjustments—you left the shop in a double-breasted navy suit and a sky blue polo shirt.

  The tailor had told you off for carrying money around in a plastic bag and helped you pick out a black alligator briefcase that smelled faintly of mints.