Two Sketches of Disjointed Happiness

by Simon Kinch

  TWO SKETCHES OF DISJOINTED HAPPINESS

  by

  SIMON KINCH

  A young man sits on a bench looking out at the harbour of a ­French-Spanish border town. Ahead of him, either a ­cash-strapped existence strolling the sun-baked avenues of Seville, where deep shadows conceal a sense of uncanny potential, or the cooler embrace of the daily grind back in the US. Granville, cut adrift in Europe by circumstance, has a choice to make.

  His solution is not to.

  This daring, experimental novel addresses the existential dilemma of location, how the regret of a choice not made may overpower the satisfaction of one taken. In his debut, Simon Kinch explores the nature of longing and unfulfilment, romance and rejection, freedom and opposition.

  PRAISE FOR THIS BOOK

  ‘An assured and pleasingly melancholy debut – in part a love letter to Europe, in part a meditation on millennial dilemmas.’ —JOE STRETCH

  Two Sketches of Disjointed Happiness

  Simon Kinch is a writer, teacher, and graphic designer based in Seville. He studied double bass and composition in the UK, before going on to work in finance, then moving abroad.

  Published by Salt Publishing Ltd

  International House, 24 Holborn Viaduct, London EC1A 2BN United Kingdom

  All rights reserved

  Copyright © Simon Kinch, 2017

  The right of Simon Kinch to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Salt Publishing.

  Salt Publishing 2017

  Created by Salt Publishing Ltd

  This book is sold subject to the conditions that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  ISBN 978-1-78463-111-6 electronic

  For Bob Dorrill (1924–2009): your love for Europe passed through the generations.

  ONE

  I can’t remember the whole message. I don’t even think I read until the end. Somewhere in there it said:

  ‘You’ve been gone so long . . . we need to talk.’ Or something like that.

  I’d paused for a moment, but couldn’t concentrate. I could only think to throw the phone into the sea.

  The cold steel of the bench was beginning to show, the paint flaking off the arms. The harbour was empty, not a boat in sight. Turning the phone on was just meant to pass a bit of time. A couple of hours to kill before the night train to Paris. I got up and headed back towards the town.

  It felt like a long trudge back across the harbour’s small, pebbly beach. I clung to the straps of my backpack to take some of the strain, but still the weight dug into my shoulders. The waiter of the harbour’s fish restaurant watched me all the way across the beach. He should stop being so bitter, I thought. I’d only asked how much the sea bass cost. And then I’d said that fifteen euros was too much for a plate of fish when we were so close to the sea. Most people would baulk politely at that price and continue walking. But he kept on looking at me like it was my fault, and my fault alone, that the restaurant was empty. I continued walking with my head down. It began to well up inside me that it was his over-priced fish that had driven me to that moment of boredom, driven me to checking my messages, and his fault I’d got so angry and thrown my phone into the sea. But that was just as outlandish as his assumption. I kept walking.

  There really isn’t that much to do in Portbou. The concave harbour is enclosed by steep juts of coastline. A single path that leads away from the beach out to sea, towards the bench I’d been sat at. A mile further north and you hit the French border. A small row of restaurants line the village beach, before narrow streets criss-cross upward towards the steps to the train station. You can either make the cheap border crossing by train en route from Barcelona to Paris, or browse information points about Walter Benjamin, who apparently died here. I read each one as I walked back through the town, but still didn’t have any idea who he was. None of the information points said what he’d done in his life, just that at the time of his death he’d been fleeing Nazi Germany, heading south, and faced deportation back to France. One information point even identified his hotel.

  By now, I’d forgotten about the text message and the waiter, but felt a little sluggish, so thought about getting a coffee. On the deserted street leading to the station, there was a small cafe, with a handful of tables outside. A couple of old Catalan men sat at one. One man leant forward, with his weight on a walking stick. The other leant backwards, his fingers rapping the tabletop. Neither of them spoke to the other, nor drank their short black coffees that resembled treacle. I decided against getting a coffee and instead thought about getting a Coke. I continued to the end of the street, then hauled myself and my backpack up the steep steps to the train station.

  I pushed a euro into a vending machine, then took my Coke to the platform. It was still nearly two hours until my train. Wearily, I took off my backpack and slumped against the platform wall. A train stood at the platform, but headed back to Barcelona. I took a swig of Coke and swilled it round my mouth.

  A young couple came past me, also clad in travellers’ backpacks, and boarded the waiting train. There was a big step up from the platform to the carriage, so they took off their backpacks, with the boyfriend hoisting them through the carriage doors. He struggled with them and almost fell, at which the girl laughed and giggled something in French. This closeness sickened me, sending my mind back to that text message for a moment, and I then started to feel that same welling-up inside as I had when the waiter had glared at me across the harbour.

  Trying not to think about the message or the waiter, I instead refocused on what the couple in front of me were doing. It struck me that they looked a whole lot happier than I did. Maybe because they had each other. Maybe it was because they were at the start of their travels, rather than three months wearier of hostel beds and the daily cheese-and-ham lunch. Maybe they hadn’t ventured down to the harbour to ask about the prices in the fish restaurant.

  The couple disappeared into the carriage. I glanced at the platform departure board, which read Barcelona Sants – 7 mins. Behind the departure board, there was a large poster, advertising holidays amongst beaches and palm trees. Most of the Spanish was lost on me, but I did recognise a few words. I looked away from the advert and instead at the side of the train carriage. My teeth felt fuzzy from not brushing them, so I took another swig of Coke and swilled it round my mouth.

  TWO

  I thought about a lot in those seven minutes, sat looking at the side of the carriage. Maybe because there wasn’t much to look at; maybe because I had a lot to think about. I thought about my flight back to Wisconsin from London in a week. I thought about my Schengen visa, which would expire in ten days. I thought about what might happen if I didn’t get back to London, and the risk of being deported. I tried to imagine what I’d do when I got back home to Madison. Seeing my family. My internship that summer. I’d maybe call Alyson. That is, if she’d speak to me. Anyway, I didn’t know her number by heart and I’d thrown the only record I had of it into the sea. I thought again about Paris and London. There wasn’t any reason I was heading there, except to get back t
o Madison. I then thought back to the night before, to the hostel in Barcelona. After a few beers, I’d got talking to a group of Australians. I’d asked them if they were heading north as well in the morning. They’d said no, they were heading in the opposite direction. ‘Chasing the sun south!’ one of them had laughed. They’d asked me to come with them. I thought about how adamant I must have seemed then to be heading north, to Paris, to London, back to what I had in Madison, and how I really didn’t feel that adamant any more. And how now it didn’t really matter which direction I headed in at all.

  And at the end of those seven minutes, I found myself standing inside the carriage, looking at the spot on the platform where I’d just been sitting. As the beeping carriage doors closed, I felt something between a tingle and a shudder.

  The platform began to move away from me as the train rolled forward. A cleaner slowly shuffled along the platform, sweeping up rubbish with a dustpan and brush. Any moment now, she’d get to the spot where I had been sat. I tried to keep her in sight as the train picked up speed. I wanted to see her sweep up my Coke can, the last evidence of me being in Portbou. She’ll sweep up my Coke can and it’ll be like I wasn’t even there, I thought. Like I’d never been to Portbou and never sat on that harbour bench. I’d wandered through the town once, declined to eat the fish, passed on the coffee and then taken a train back to where I’d come from. If I never mentioned I’d been there, there would be nobody to testify that I had.

  The return train journey to Barcelona was just as slow as the one there, seemingly stopping at every village en route. The ticket conductor was the same one as on my journey to Portbou. He looked at me a little sceptically as he stamped my ticket for the second time that day.

  The train was a lot emptier than on the way to Portbou. In the carriage it was only myself, the French couple and a North African family. The father of the family kept asking me if each stop was Barcelona. I replied ‘no’ each time. I tried to explain Barcelona was the last stop and to wait until then, but he took this the wrong way and instead began asking the French couple. I turned to watch the sunset through the window. My original plans – Paris, London, Madison – dissolved further, becoming tenuous and weightless. My head span a bit. And in that void where all those plans had once been, my thoughts instead darted between elation and distress.

  THREE

  I had this feeling that I should have felt like a new man, but the actual emotion itself was almost impossible to summon. Maybe it wasn’t so much a feeling, but a deduction. A deduction that I should be a new man, calculated on circumstance. There was nothing to keep going with Alyson any more. My invisible string of contact to the US was now cut, resting on the seabed of the Mediterranean. I was no longer bound to that imaginary dotted line along my map from Barcelona to London.

  My connection with the world around me should have been different – lighter maybe, invigorated. But in fact, everything seemed just as unremarkable as before, if not more so.

  An escalator linked the platform to the station hall. The glare of the fluorescent lights made my eyes squint, while my mind tried to suppress the station’s gongs and monotone announcements, as well as an incipient migraine, simultaneously. I craved a splash of water on my face, to clean my teeth, and, most of all, to drop the heavy backpack.

  I hadn’t considered how late it would be on arriving in Barcelona. I looked at the departures board, searching for city names I recognised, but they all appeared to be late-evening trains to local towns and villages I’d never heard of.

  The station was already emptying, a different place to the swarming hub it had been earlier that day. From across the station hall, I could hear baristas whacking portafilters against bins and releasing steam from espresso machines as they closed shop. Some of the staff behind the ticket desks had also begun to leave, collecting their coats and saying their goodbyes.

  I wandered over whilst I still had the chance. The girl at one window was remonstrating with a young father, but I couldn’t make out what they were arguing about. The father used big hand gestures, frequently pointing at his young daughter with a flat, outstretched palm, to emphasise his points.

  I made my way to the other available window. A plump, old man sat behind the glass, expressionlessly looking at his screen over thick glasses, monotonously closing down computer windows. I propped my backpack against the wall and stood in front of his window. It took a moment for him to realise I was there and then another to acknowledge me.

  He pushed his glasses up his nose. I shaped my mouth to say something, but then thought to check if he spoke English first. He just nodded in response.

  ‘Are there any trains south tonight?’ I asked.

  ‘Where to?’ he managed to pronounce.

  ‘I don’t know. As far as I can get.’

  ‘Tonight, nothing. Tomorrow . . .’ He began scrolling down his computer screen. ‘Sevilla . . . eight thirty . . . Málaga . . . ten twenty . . . Córdoba, ten twenty . . .’

  ‘Eight thirty, Sevilla, then.’ I fished out my credit card from my satchel and thrust it under his window. ‘Can I buy the supplement now?’

  The plump man huffed and looked at the clock in the corner of his screen. He really wanted to get home, but I wasn’t going to let him just yet. A ticket south in my hand, right there, right then, would be the only piece of impetus I’d have left, the rest having faded in between that impulsiveness on the turnaround in Portbou on the French border and the emptiness of this vacated station. I paid for the ticket, folded it around my bank card and tucked them into my shirt pocket. I thought about saying goodnight to the plump old man, but when I looked up, he was again occupied with shutting down his computer.

  FOUR

  Slumped in a small waiting room seat, I drifted in and out of half-sleeps, neither being fully aware of what was going on around me, nor in any way recharging my weary body. My dreams were short and unremarkable. Each dream started from the chair of the waiting room (as if, at that moment, my life held no other possibilities – not even in my imagination). In one dream, I left the chair and wandered out of the station, into an unfamiliar school playground. In another that I was able to recall, the station’s vending machine stocked Hershey’s chocolate, the Cookies ‘n’ Creme bar I loved when I was a child, and I stuffed all the spare quarters and nickels I could through the coin slot.

  The waiting room started to get busy at about 5am, and by 6am it was impossible to fall back to sleep. Although wide-eyed, I still didn’t feel sharp, and it was only when a large gentleman in a suit sat down beside me, where my satchel had been, that I realised it was missing.

  I sprang up sharply, but it was another few moments before I felt at all in touch with reality, the lifting myself out of my chair feeling like a déjà vu of every dream I’d had that night. I glanced under the legs of the man in the suit, but he ruffled his newspaper and returned an irritated look. I circled the waiting room twice and, in doing so, confirmed what I already suspected, what I already knew: my satchel had been stolen.

  As I left the waiting room and crossed the station hall, the venture I’d embarked on truly seeped from dream to reality. No satchel, no wallet, no laptop, no passport. Not even a can of deodorant.

  I asked at the information desk if they had a Lost and Found, but the girl just looked at me blankly. I briskly checked every bin I could find, to see if my passport or anything else had been dumped there, but each had little more than paper coffee cups and ticket stubs.

  Despite getting some sleep that night and being relieved of the weight of my satchel, my backpack seemed heavier than ever. I went into the station toilets, propped the backpack up next to the basins and took the longest piss I could remember ever taking.

  I washed my hands, then splashed water on my face repeatedly. I was alone in the bathroom and, holding the edges of the basin, stared at my reflection in the mirror. It caught even me by surprise, the amount of angst
that then suddenly came out. In one scream from behind clenched teeth, my fist smashed into the hand drier next to me. I puffed my cheeks out and ran through the situation again in my mind.

  No satchel, no laptop, no wallet. I wanted to call Mom in Madison, but now had no phone either. And besides, there’d be nothing she could do.

  It suddenly occurred to me that I might have left my card in my shirt pocket. I patted my chest – it was still there, and the tickets: my money and my impetus. I looked back at myself in the mirror and sighed with relief, then drenched my face with water. I needed coffee. I left the bathroom, took twenty euros out of the cashpoint and headed straight to the station cafe.

  The barista was in a far chirpier mood than me. She smiled sweetly at me as she handed over the espresso I ordered. I tried to smile back, but felt my face wrinkle awkwardly. I thought about maybe explaining to her everything that had happened to me, so she would know why my smile had come out so awkwardly, but my head felt sluggish and I didn’t know where to start. She probably didn’t really care either. I took my coffee, pulled up a chair and stared into the crema of the espresso.

  I looked over at the barista again and thought of Stefani. Stefani had also been a station cafe barista, but her station cafe in Bari had been small and charming, not big and commercial. As she handed me my espresso, she had asked where I was going; I said I’d just arrived. I’d thought nothing of it, until later that day, wandering into a bar near the main plaza to ask for directions, I found her sat reading and instead of going up to the waiter, I took my map over to her. I can’t remember who suggested that I take a seat, but the directions were forgotten about and a coffee placed in front of me. I didn’t have too much chance to speak. She told me how much she liked practising her English – with tourists, with customers, with anyone who’d give her the time. Her family owned a boathouse on a lake in Lombardy and, every summer, she spent a month or two there. The neighbours were English, she told me, and they’d often dine together outside on the warmer evenings. When we finished our coffees, we kissed on each cheek and said goodbye.