by Tyler Keevil
Behind the desk, your boss smiles kindly, sympathetically. He has a mole in the centre of his forehead, and receding, thinning hair that he keeps short, dyes blonde to hide it. He asks you how you’re doing, how you’re ‘getting on’. This is a phrase people use, have been using with you, lately. He says he knows how difficult it must be for you.
While he talks, he twirls a pen between his thumb and forefinger, the motion constant, endless, dizzying.
You look away, out the window. See an aeroplane scudding across the sky, which is grey as slate, a monotone colour, no definition at all. The plane scraping a chalk mark of jet stream. When you turn back your boss is talking about receiving complaints. Appointments that have been scheduled incorrectly, clients who have shown up at the wrong time, or have been given misinformation. You know this is true, don’t bother to explain, deny, or justify it. Only nod, affirming.
‘Do you need more time?’ he asks you.
When you don’t answer, he hurries on, explaining that he’s happy to give you as much time as you need. The phrase strikes you as absurd, ridiculous. How can you give somebody time? As if time is an object, a little package, or parcel. You imagine a black-and-white cartoon like the ones they run in newspapers: one character handing a bag to another, labelled ‘time’. Here, have some more of this. Your boss is in earnest though, means well. You have used up your bereavement leave, and all your holidays for the year. But he would be happy to give you unpaid leave, save your position for you.
‘Until you’re ready to come back,’ he says, and smiles again.
The spheres in the Newton’s cradle continue to bash uselessly against each other. Your boss checks his watch, discreetly. Just a twist of the wrist, a flick of the eyes. Well-practiced. It is nine-forty-five, and he has an appointment at ten. One of the meetings you haven’t got wrong or mixed up through carelessness. You know that’s the real problem: carelessness. Lack of care. It’s not that you’re distracted, or scatter-brained from shock. You simply don’t care enough any more to do your job thoroughly. All these people who seem to come and go. Talking of Michelangelo. You can’t recall where the quote is from. Just that it’s meant to signify meaninglessness.
You tell your boss that it’s probably best if you just give notice, and not come back. He sits up straighter, reaches for a pile of papers and shuffles them together, like a giant deck of cards, before laying them flat. ‘I didn’t mean that,’ he says. ‘I’m not trying to get rid of you. It’s just, there are things that need doing. Maybe you could go down to part-time, do a few days a week for a while?’ He scratches his mole, looks at you hopefully.
You shake your head, as if it’s already decided. And it is. You ask him if he has ever lost somebody. Not in an accusatory way, but merely a curious one. He deals so much in the aftermath of death – who gets how much money, or what part of the estate – and you haven’t had cause to truly consider it before. It was simply part of the everyday duties you were given, which you undertook on behalf of other people.
Your boss has to think about it. He scratches at his mole. ‘Well, my parents are both dead,’ he says. Then, as if realising that sounds trite, he adds, ‘Though that’s different, of course. They lived full lives, passed on in old age.’ He checks his watch again. ‘You shouldn’t act hastily,’ he says. ‘Take some time, think it over. I can hold a place for you. I can contact the agency.’
You wonder if he has already done this, asked about the possibility of another temp. Probably. He is kind, but also efficient. You don’t feel hard done by at the thought he is already planning your replacement. You don’t feel anything about it, one way or the other.
‘No,’ you say, ‘it’s fine. I’m all done here.’
The finality of it rings true to you. You don’t just mean this job, but this city, this country, this life. It was never really yours, anyway. You yawn – you can’t help it – and arch your back. The chairs in his office are hard-backed and your tailbone is sore from sitting there. You’re weary of the situation and, you know, he is too. But there is etiquette. There are social graces.
‘What will you do?’ he asks.
A good question. And a good way of drawing the conversation to a close, of leading you out the door.
‘I’m going away,’ you say. You are looking at where the plane was. It’s gone now, but the jet stream still lingers against the sky, melting into the cloud layer. ‘To Prague.’
He says ‘ah’ as if he understands, though he is frowning, now, uncertain. He says, hesitantly, that he’s heard it’s beautiful. Hoping for an explanation. You tell him Prague is where Tod proposed to you, which is true. But that’s not the reason you’ve had the impulse, just now, to go back. The sky, the plane. The flat greyness. You remember Prague in monochrome, a charcoal sketch. Cold and colourless. The way you feel.
‘That could be good,’ he says. ‘To go away, get away. I can’t imagine…’ He stops, trails off. He is looking at the photo of his wife. Perhaps trying to picture it – the swift and sudden loss, being the one left behind. You stare at the Newton’s cradle. Each collision of the steel spheres seems to grow louder, filling up the room, deafening as cannons. Boom. Boom. Boom. Pounding in your skull, making it resonate. You lean forward, touch the last sphere with a finger, stopping it. Your boss looks at you, startled, and down at the Newton’s cradle. The spheres hanging vacantly in stasis. Motionless. Silent.
‘I always hated that thing,’ you say.
transit
The proposed trip provides purpose, things to do: handing in formal notice at the law firm, booking a flight, finding your passport, terminating the rental agreement on the flat, packing, deciding what to keep (books, trinkets, a few photographs) and what to leave or throw away (everything else). This is what they call ‘putting your affairs in order’. And soon it is done, and you are travelling, in transit, en route.
And then this: on the plane to Prague, the woman next to you has an episode in the middle of the flight. It seems serious, maybe even a stroke, or heart attack.
Later, you’ll wonder if this is now to be your curse, after allowing Tod to die – if you are to be surrounded by death wherever you go. Delirious, skittish thoughts. Fate and curses are for fairy tales, not real life, right?
Before it happens, there is the usual safety video, flight attendant demonstration, take-off, and small-talk – the woman asking you questions at a time when you don’t want to be asked anything: Where are you going? How long will you be staying? You reply vaguely, evasively, while holding up the earbuds of your MP3 player, implying the desire for peace, for privacy – a hint she fails to take. Eventually, to avoid further chit-chat, when she pauses for breath you simply put in your earbuds, smile insincerely by way of apology.
She folds her arms, looks ahead, clearly affronted.
The MP3 player is still laden with Tod’s music; his tastes were tyrannically alternative, and you couldn’t be bothered to open a personal account, download tracks and albums of your own. It would have meant enduring his sarcasm and ridicule, so you yielded instead. These small parts of ourselves we forfeit, these concessions we make when we’re in a relationship, when we purport to love somebody.
You did love him. You’re sure of that. As sure as you are of anything, these days.
Every so often, the woman stirs, restless. She has the window seat, but is not content to gaze out into the dark, and has no book, no magazine, no distractions. She’s old, but not ancient. Maybe sixty, or so. The age of your mother, who seems to you very far from any signs of ill health – always walking, hiking, running half-marathons. Joining new clubs and groups, all of them fitness orientated. Shortly after the funeral, she recommended Tai-Chi, her latest passion. She said it would help you cope, deal with it. Referring to your grief as ‘it’ seemed to turn ‘it’ into a thing, a creature, an incubus. You tried to imagine yourself performing slow karate chops to defend yourself against ‘it’ and ward ‘it’ off. That was hard to imagine.
When you phoned your mother to tell her about Prague, she sighed loudly, flapping her lips like a horse, and said, ‘You always had a tendency to wallow in your miseries.’
Her own husband – your father – died ten years ago. By that time, they had already split up. Your mother didn’t take a day off work, organised a university scholarship in his name for youths from underprivileged backgrounds, got drunk on gin gimlets and admitted privately to you that she thought your father might have been abused as a child. His uncle, she said. The one with the goatee, and delicate hands. Never trust a man with delicate hands, she’d declared grandly – an odd, and oddly affecting, piece of maternal advice.
This woman doesn’t look anything like your mother, but doesn’t look unwell at all either. Her limbs are lean, her movements vigorous. You can faintly smell her perfume and moisturiser. She abstains from the single complimentary alcoholic beverage, opts for tomato juice. There are no meals on the flight – it’s only a couple of hours – but when the in-flight snacks are delivered, she receives one in advance of everyone else: the vegetarian or gluten-free option. She makes a big event of opening it – a salad pot – and drizzling the sachet of dressing. Before taking a bite she smiles politely, unable to help appearing a touch triumphant.
The window behind the woman is glowing with daylight, bright and hazy as a screen of diffusion, like you might see in a photographer’s studio. Against it the woman’s profile is dark, shaded, a partial silhouette. You don’t watch her eat, but from the corner of your eye you are aware of this shadow, nibbling bites off her fork, pursing her lips around the tines.
When your own snack arrives – a ham and cheese panini – it feels awkward to keep your earbuds in, to continue to shut her out. So you remove them, carefully wind them up, and take a few bites, which is all you can manage. It’s not only that the bread is hard and stale, the cheese oily-cool – you haven’t had much of an appetite for days, weeks, months. Since it happened.
Soon, predictably, the woman is talking to you, buzzing away on your right. It’s apparent, very quickly, that your answers don’t matter. She is simply one of those people who needs to talk. Buzz, buzz, buzz. She is going to visit her son, who is in the electrical supply industry. He is doing well, has made a success of himself – Prague is a good place to be, for businesses.
‘And you?’ she asks. ‘Do you have any family in the Czech Republic?’
No, you say, which is true. Though it’s also true (and you neglect to tell her this) that your grandfather was born there, that he immigrated to Wales when he was one year old, a fact that you and your mother tend to forget, since he was not the kind to speak of his past, or of anything at all, really. So, though you have no family that you know of, you have ancestral roots. You have some shared past with the country.
The woman is saying something else. She is talking of the mother of cities, the golden city, and the city of a hundred spires. You’re baffled, trying to picture all these fairy-tale places, until you understand she is listing all the alternate names for Prague. The tourist names. Then she stops, checks herself, glances at you shrewdly.
She asks, ‘Where are you staying?’
You explain that you’ve rented a little bedsit, not a hotel. Something inexpensive, practical. Out of the tourist districts, over in Praha Two. You found it online. It’s a mistake, the way you go on – she notes the confidence, your familiarity with the city’s layout, and asks if you’ve been there before. Only twice, you tell her, and leave it at that. But she is peering at you expectantly. Waiting. You are half-turned in your seat, your spine all twisted. Squinting at her against the glare of the window hurts your eyes, makes them physically sting – as if you’re going snow-blind. So eventually you give in. She has won.
‘It’s where my husband proposed.’
You leave out that it was also the place you and Tod first travelled together, back when you were students. Your hope being that the curt declaration will staunch her curiosity.
‘Oh,’ she says, leaning backwards and forwards, craning her neck, checking the nearby rows. ‘Where is he sitting? Would he like to switch seats with me?’
And so you have to explain, he’s not with you. He’s dead. And – since you feel she deserves it, feel she’s somehow wheedled this information out of you – you add, casually and cuttingly, ‘He was stabbed in the heart.’
The woman makes a small, strange sound and puts her hand to her mouth, as if she’s burped and wants to politely cover it up, take it back. Only she can’t. She is very still for a time, and (this must be a trick of the light) you have the impression that the glare of the window is shining right through her head, out the front of her eye sockets. As if her face is a mask, and behind it there is nothing.
She reaches for her glass of juice, which is empty, and raises it to her lips, mimes the act of drinking. Puts it down. Then she begins to fan herself, quite frantically, seemingly forgetting your conversation entirely. ‘These planes. The air-conditioning. They get so hot.’ Even though it isn’t hot at all: it’s chilly, frigid. Stuffy, yes, but not hot. She asks if she can borrow your water and then – without waiting for an answer – reaches for it, gulps and gulps, spilling it all down her chin, on her blouse.
When she’s done, she crunches the cup, makes a croaking sound, leans forward and puts her forehead against the seat in front of her. You watch all this, perplexed, without any sense yet that something is seriously wrong. She is breathing – you can hear her breathing. Ragged and thin. Then, a strange gurgle. You’ve never witnessed this kind of thing before. That’s part of it, why you’re slow to react. But also you feel removed from it, as if you’re observing dispassionately. As if your seat is empty and you have simply dropped in on this scene, to watch it, without being able to engage or partake.
It’s possible you’d continue to sit like that, except a young man across the aisle leans over, touches your shoulder, asks if the woman’s okay. You look at him, baffled, admit you don’t know. ‘We better call the attendant,’ he says. And he presses a button on his arm rest, causing a little light to come on directly above him – a glowing bulb in the shape of a person. Head and arms. When they don’t come immediately, he shouts, demands attention – ‘We’ve got a sick woman here.’ Other people are standing up, turning around, trying to get a look. Some of them have their camera phones out already, filming, snapping photos – each picture emitting that little electronic click. It reminds you of the Newtown’s cradle: click, click, click. Or the night Tod died. Click, click, click. All those eager, greedy lenses.
Then a flight attendant is there; you are asked to move, which you do. Slipping out of your seat and withdrawing, retreating. Not just a few feet away, but to the tail of the plane, into that alcove near the toilets. From there you have a view of the commotion in the aisles: a clump of people, somebody announcing they’re a doctor, in the way they often do in films. You watch this for maybe five or six minutes. They lay the woman in the aisle, kneel over her, put an oxygen mask on her face. It goes on for so long people lose interest. They sit back down, put their phones away, pick up their magazines, continue eating their snacks. She’s not dying, it seems. You assume there would be more interest if she were dying.
You are remembering the bus, the faces turned towards you. In your memory they are not sympathetic, caring, or overly concerned. Rather, they seem captivated, riveted, and even relieved. That certain pleasure people get, from seeing misfortune befall others. Like escaping a game of Russian roulette.
You slide open the door to the toilet, step in there. You splash water on your face, pad it dry with paper towel, clean and scented and very soft. A small pleasure. You are shocked, but not in shock. What you are shocked by is how utterly prosaic you found it. The kind of thing that might have shaken you considerably before. Haunted you even. You would have needed to tell people, gotten it off your chest. Did you hear what happened on my flight to Prague? Not now. Now, what seems surprising to you is that this kind of thing doesn�
�t happen more often. Our soft and flawed and yielding bodies, running on air and water and food, charged by a single organ in the centre of our chest, the fluttering rhythm as delicate as a hummingbird’s wings. Each of us so terrifyingly vulnerable as we move through space and time. Leading our bewildering lives. All it takes is a little push, a shove, a wrong turn, a bad move, a lapse in judgement. Or, in the woman’s case, a slight emotional jolt. Was it your fault? No. Not in any deliberate way. But still. You took pleasure in proclaiming it – stabbed in the heart – as if you could pass on the wound, somehow. And, apparently, you did.
When you come back out, they have moved the woman closer to you, to that area at the rear of the plane, beside the toilets and by the flight attendant’s seats. She’s strapped to a padded folding stretcher. Grey and practical. She still has the oxygen mask on her face, and now a cannula and drip in her arm as well. But she is alert, lucid. Drawn by your movement, she turns her head, fixes her eyes on you. Her mouth is hidden. Is she looking at you angrily, accusingly? You can’t tell. You consider bending over, saying something kind. Making some token gesture. Or asking the attendants about her. But you don’t. It doesn’t matter. She’ll live. For all you know this could be a frequent occurrence – perhaps she’s one of those people who have fainting spells, dizzy fits, ‘bad turns’. It may not have been anything so serious as a heart attack, after all.
Eventually, the flight attendant notices you hovering there, and asks you to take your seat. Again, you’re struck by the strangeness of language. Take your seat. Take it where? Pick it up and carry it elsewhere, or throw it from the plane. Jettison it like ballast. Jump out after it, maybe. At these cartoon-like thoughts you begin to smile to yourself, but alter it into a sympathetic grimace: the infirm woman is still staring at you with baleful eyes.