A Life In A Moment

  I never adored her more than when she was sprawled out over a map, poring over it minutely. Trying to plan the best hop on hop off cruise on the Greek islands, she drew lines among them, tucking a stray hair behind her ear.

  Our life at this time raced from one joy to another, so that it felt as though we were being chased by bliss. That is why I now recall these months only as rapidly rotating View-Master photographs: Emilia’s arrival, the christening celebration, our upcoming island-hopping adventure, my very spontaneous proposal of marriage…

  I was waiting for her to come back from work, seated on the floor, with an atlas spread in front of me. When she opened the door, she laughed. «Have you changed your mind? I thought we’d already decided on where we’re going on holiday!»

  «I’ve been hunting for hours for this one particular place, but it seems to have disappeared into thin air», I told her so she’d move closer to help me find it.

  «What’s it called?»

  «The-Place-Where-We’re-Getting-Married.»

  Astounded, staggered and silenced. Eyes wider than the moon. And then, the smile I had first seen in Strasbourg found its way back from her heart to her mouth. She shone with amazement, joy and that depthless desire of hers I loved perhaps more than anything. Her desire for life and love.

  She anointed my lips with a kiss that may have been the sweetest and most exquisite of all we had exchanged in these seven years.

  55

  «Please don’t be cross... but I have to go in to work tomorrow», Angelique confessed as we lay in the dark the night before our Greek holiday.

  «You’re kidding, right?»

  «No, sorry... I was meant to have prepared a document, which I forgot amongst all the excitement. It’ll only be for a couple of hours. And our flight’s only in the afternoon.» She promised to be back by eleven, giving us more than enough time for our flight at three.

  By the time I woke up at ten o’ clock, she was long gone. Her suitcase stood ready at the door. I packed my own after a lightning fast breakfast and much needed coffee.

  Time raced with me, and by eleven thirty, Angelique was still not home. When I called her office, they said she had left at a quarter to eleven. Adding to this her usual twenty minutes on the Tube, she should have already arrived. Perhaps she had made a sudden, little side trip — to make a last minute buy or something — and lost track of time.

  I paced up and down our small apartment, watching the inevitable circling of the hands on my watch, where they met at 12. And then, the phone shrieked. Knowing it could only be her, I answered curtly.

  «For the love of God, where are you?»

  A man’s voice answered, a punch in the solar plexus. It was the police, he told me in words that swam confusingly into each other. Something about a junction. That she’d jumped the red lights. And then something about a car and a hospital... I couldn’t make sense of it at all. The red of my irritation at Angelique’s lateness blazed into yellow of terror, before I shattered into a thousand colours.

  Miraculously, I managed to somehow find my way to Pavlos’ house. My memory captured only random fragments: getting into the car, then a hospital entrance, Samantha wailing, Pavlos holding her.

  In the hospital washroom, I tried to wash the tears from the face looking back at me in the mirror. The pale face was crumpled and lined, glazed eyes bloodshot, and hair shocked white that very hour.

  Like a man gone mad, I invented crazy rationalisations to explain it away. We had once promised to live together to a ripe old age. That must be it! I grew old before I was supposed to, so our promise has been fulfilled. There’s simply no other explanation for her going away without me! I thought.

  Back in the waiting room, my eye caught the date on the wall calendar. July 21st. Laughter careened out from my chest, tearing and ripping through the middle of my grief. Samantha and Pavlos looked on in horror at what they could only see as derangement and brokenness. They would never have understood. Only Angelique would have laughed with me at the sick, sad satire that fate had played on us again...

  56

  She loved fire, because it redeems the soul and sets the spirit free. I knew this was how she would wish to go. How could Angelique, so much larger than life, be contained inside such a small, small box?

  Though perhaps I was fated to live out many more days, my life had now come to its end. I lost track of time. My memory leaked. My throat ached constantly, and my right hand was perplexingly numb.

  Someone had once told me that every human being has two hearts. One beats inside his chest, and the other somewhere else. No matter which one stops first, the man dies. That’s how I died. And when I tied this up with what Angelique’s father had told me, I understood anew. Your lives are bound up in a metaphysical knot. You two will never separate.

  Somehow, I found myself in Greece, at the house by the sea. It was summer, but whether it was the same summer or the next one, I never knew. I was back again. In the same house, with the same furniture, the same view, the same solitude. It was as though fifteen years had never passed. There was no betrayal, no wondrous new life in London.

  I leaned over the veranda railing to breathe in the sea below. Just as she had done five years ago, spellbound. I closed my eyes and found her standing wordlessly beside me, eyes shut tight against the wind. I had always wanted to believe she was fragile. Porcelain. The wind caught her hair in its hands, tousling and trailing it out behind her, teasing loose a flutter of feathers. When I tore my eyes open to see her, she flew away. I didn’t know that when you open your eyes, souls fly away, like birds glimpsing captivity.

  My life journey started here, in this house, and ends here. And since I’m going away again, I am contemplating taking it with me — a gift for Angelique, wrapped in fire. I’ll give her the most magnificent fire she’s ever seen. I don’t want to arrive in Paradise empty-handed.

  Everything smells of petrol — another anointing. Everything is ready. I strike the match, and let it fall to the ground, petrol-soaked. Immediately, fire sets off on a psychedelic, meandering route through the house, the oil seducing the flames in an unearthly dance.

  With the fire raging and shouting behind me, I tuck the fragile porcelain urn under my arm, and climb up onto the balustrade. Opening it, I throw the ashes into the wind, dusting the ends of the world in a blessing. I turn my back to the fire and close my eyes. I hear the sea crashing and roaring beneath me. Infinitely, deliberately slowly, I allow gravity to pull me down, towards the tumult of sea and rock below.

  My love, I am coming to find you...

  57

  Time rushes to stop my fall. Suspended a metre above the rocks, I feel salt burning my eyes and my nostrils.

  No matter how long this narration lasted, in reality it is only a moment. This moment. My life just flashed before my eyes in a fragmented film of spliced-together memories. A whole life in a moment.

  Once time drops me, only the rocks will catch me. This will be the end. The end of me. The end of my story. Devoured by fire, the house will crumble and crash into the sea. The waves will wash my blood far away. My eyes will close forever. My soul, set free, will spread its wings. It will fly the only route that had ever been charted for her. To Angelique.

  And as my beloved French girl is now waiting in horizon’s embrace, where we arranged to meet, where years and dreams reconcile, where kisses and words die abreast, then that is to where my soul will run...

  THE END

  A message from the writer:

  Thank you very much for buying and reading this book. I hope you enjoyed it!

  Please, feel free to connect with me online and send me your message on my personal website.

  I would also like to express my special thanks to Roger, Julia, Anne and Richard for their great help in the adaptation of the English version.

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