This Is the Beginning
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You
are in a foreign city, seated at
a round metal table outside a café, pushing the flakes of a pastry
around a
thick saucer rimmed in green and fantasizing about the lives of people
around
you. For instance: the tall, gaunt waiter with graceful hands (does he
spend
his evenings at the piano, in a cramped apartment he shares with his
mother).
And the elegant woman two tables away, who has a little brown dog
tucked into
her jacket (is she wearing a silk blouse of the same fine quality as
her tweed,
or does she hold the beast against her bare skin, a secret pleasure she
enjoys
in public). There’s a young man (of course there is) at the extreme of
your
periphery, who’s reading the book of poetry you read last week, the one
you
loved, the one you felt was written just for you. He must speak English
if he's
reading that book. He might welcome a casual comment or even invite you
to join
him (this is the fantasy) because he is not looking for a beauty but a
soul
mate, someone with astute insights into rhythm and tone. You turn
slightly in
your seat (in case the young man should wish to engage you in
conversation) and
gaze across the boulevard. There is an apartment for rent on the
opposite
corner; a sign hangs from a balcony in front of shuttered windows.
Below, a
tall wooden door stands slightly ajar, offering the slim view of a
courtyard
garden. You imagine yourself a resident of this city, the inhabitant of
a
third-floor apartment with windows facing the park, a habitué of this
café (the
waiter would greet you daily with a friendly jut of the chin, would
have your
usual order at the ready). It
is not
until the bookish young man stands up, drawing your eyes away from the
shuttered windows, and greets a long-haired fellow in a tomato-red
scarf—they
do not speak, but kiss on the cheek once, twice, three times—that you
recollect the story (prosaic, inevitable) awaiting you in another city
on the
other side of the ocean. Getting to your feet, you hoist your leather
bag onto
a shoulder, and stride off, head down, toward the river. You forget the
cotton
sweater slung over the back of your seat, and though the waiter (whose
mother
is long dead) calls after you, holding the sweater aloft, you do not
hear him
(there’s a musician drumming on upturned buckets at the street corner),
nor do
you see the young man (who is mute; he cannot shout, but he can run)
pluck your
sweater from the waiter's grasp and sprint after you, much to the
amusement of
the elegant woman (who is fully dressed, but not quite sober), so you
don’t
turn around until he taps your shoulder, breathing hard, his face aglow
and his
eyes telling you what he cannot say. |
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| Copyright © Lili Flanders |