Prophecies drawn in ripples and waves
8 AM. I rang the bell. The caretaker opened the door. He wore the same sullen scowl that he did when I first moved in, two decades ago, and when I moved out last year. “You’re back,” he said. “Are you?”
“Just wanted to see the old room. Is it…?”
“It’s to-let,” he replied, bluntly.
I held out my hand, hesitantly. “Just give me my bloody key,” I wanted to say, but didn’t. I couldn’t. Would he insist on giving me a tour of my old room? I recognized the orange keychain–my keychain, with my room’s key–hanging on the rack behind him. He shrugged and gave me the keychain.
“Heavens! Have I been wrong about him all these years? The man does have a heart.” I thought.
“You break anything, you pay for it,” he said. “And you give the key back to me. Don’t leave it in the letterbox.”
I climbed the stairs slowly, each step awakening the ghosts of my younger self. For years, I walked up these stairs, bounded up them, tiptoed up them, sat on them, staggered drunkenly up them, fallen down them. Today’s ascent felt familiar yet different–hesitant, like visiting a memory that might not remember me. I fingered the keychain for reassurance. It feels the same.
The door resisted. It always did. The bare patch at the bottom, worn from many years of kicking it open, is still there. KICK.
The room was bare. Not mine anymore, but does it remember me?”
The crow on the tree outside startled when I opened the window. I often worked late and would sometimes sit on the window-sill and watch the city wake up, one crow at a time. The bed was at the other end of the room, and I would watch her sleeping and wake up and smile shyly at me. Does the room remember her?
I sat on the window-sill, closed my eyes, and waited. Memories, like frozen ink, began to thaw and flow from the past into the present. Some triumphant, some trivial, all undeniably mine. That dawn, drunk on Coleridge and cheap rum, when I attempted to conduct a choir of crows. The morning when I watched the rain fall in slow-motion. The week I didn’t leave the room, not once. Not for food. Not even for booze. Squeezing past that deadline after five nights, when the man in the mirror applauded while I waited for the adrenaline to put away its whip–it was a Tuesday. The night she told me that she loved me. And the morning after–the last time I saw her. Does she remember me? I hope she is happy. (“She married an absolute fool. But she’s happy,” says the crow.) I hate myself.
The smells: 3 A.M. ramen, cheap pipe tobacco, the dead rat that the crows had brought for me on my birthday, fragrant fumes of rosin and the comforting stink of old-school solder–the new lead-free stuff doesn’t quite hit the nose, Earl Grey, and that thrilling perfume of sweat sizzling on her body.
The sounds: a neighbour’s child learning to sing. Poorly. (She’s now in college.) The echo of my own laughter, bouncing off the walls like a stranger’s voice. The shriek of the CPU fan when it ran that image-recognition algorithm I wrote. The noisy fight with T that ended with a whispered apology. And that silence after B said, “I think we’re all insane.”
The pitter-patter of tiny feet in the ventilation duct interrupted my reverie–I hadn’t been wrong about the caretaker. The lazy bastard hasn’t cleaned the ducts in two decades.
I waved at Sham, the sweeper on the street below, and he waved back.
“Where have you been?” he asked.
“Here and there. Hope all is well?” I replied.
He raised a hand, palm down, and let it sway gently from side to side like an eagle riding thermals. I haven’t seen this gesture used elsewhere. It means I’m still alive or Dead, but not quite yet.
Technically, Sham is employed by the City to sweep the footpaths and rake leaves and litter into neat piles. But what he does feels more like the work of a weary beautician tending to a fading grand dame–powdering over her wrinkles, brushing back the years. A daily ritual of sweeping, smoothing, pretending. The Old Girl deserves that much, surely. Pi used to say that Sham was merely topping up the formaldehyde used to embalm the Old Girl– preserving the illusion of life. Pi can be ghoulish at times.
The fauna: her butterflies died long before I was born. Her orioles no longer sing. Her dogs have starved. And her rats have killed her cats, and they now roam the streets in gangs. They are as much a part of the City as I ever was–I left. Those of us who did must wear, forever, the stain of cowardice; those who remained, like B, are consumed by their inability to resurrect her. No. Her true inheritors are not those who mourn her passing, but those who feast on her flesh: the rats and the crows.
Sham had resumed his ministrations. Quietly. Without a fuss.
I heard the caretaker on the stairs outside. My cue to leave.
I clipped the key onto a new blue keychain–the ones you can buy, by the dozen, at any stationers’–and returned the key while thanking him. He may have noticed the switch. Or not. Either way, he pocketed it without another thought. Sometimes I wish I could skip past doubt like he does, instead of chewing on it incessantly.
I met B and his wife at the […] Club, where he takes luncheon on Sundays. They arrived in that absurdly large car, which he had had upholstered in dark twilled wool and fitted with white lace curtains. It always reminded me of a hearse dressed up for a wedding. B emerged from it like minor aristocracy, which is not entirely incorrect; his wife waved excitedly, and I waved back.
The gloved maître d’ ushered us to B’s usual table. Campari-and-soda was served immediately after we were seated. I chatted with his wife while B scowled over and through his spectacles, alternately, at the waiter and the wine list held out reverentially in front of him.
“May I tell you our specials, sir? Today we have…”
The maître d’ sprinted to our table and shooed the waiter away.
“The usual, Sir?” he gasped.
B’s scowl hardened.
“But of course, sir. My apologies. He’s ummm–he’s new.”
“Chicken salad, with dressing on the side,” I said.
“Oooh. Dressing on the side. You’ve changed, Mer,” said B’s wife as she flicked idly through the menu, which she knew by heart–it hadn’t changed in a hundred years.
B harrumphed. He disliked moments where his routine was torn, and the void peeked through. Change is for bloody caterpillars.
“Change is good…” She paused, looking playfully at her husband, and said, “It makes me hopeful.”
B harrumphed even louder. “Where is D’Souza? He always serves us,” he asked.
The maître d’ cleared his throat. “I am sorry to inform Sir that Mr. D’Souza left us on Monday.”
B’s wife was confused. “Why?”
“Peacefully, ma’am. In his sleep, without a fuss. Sound man,” he replied.
I raised my glass. “To Mr. D’Souza. And to old pleasures.”
“To what remains,” B replied, gruffly. He was upset by the news but wouldn’t express it publicly, of course. I can’t say I knew Mr. D’Souza; I don’t think B knew him either. He must have been ninety years old. When he first began working at the club, they used to write the menu in cursive calligraphy.
Another life had quietly folded into the City. The news of D’Souza’s passing swirled into the cloud of melancholia above me. We chatted about this and that till four in the afternoon. I promised to call on B before I left.
Then, I took a bus to the old watering hole—not to drink, just to see if it still existed. The bartender is new, as are the waiters. Has everyone left? The upright piano in the corner had rotted away but remained more or less upright. The smells were familiar: stale beer, a whiff of vomit surfing on a disinfectant aerosol, and something vaguely musky below, at face-level–heavy and insistent like regret. I sat at the corner table where I once wrote a poem on a napkin and left it behind. I don’t remember the poem. But the table does, I hope.
“I used to drink here,” I said, mostly to myself.
“Welcome back,” replied the waiter, his sardonic monotone barely disguised. I respect that attitude. Cheerful waiters and sales clerks annoy me. Why pretend that my arrival is the best thing that’s happened to them? If I were waiting tables in a working-class bar for minimum wage in a dying city, I’d be bored out of my wits–and wouldn’t bother with pleasantries, especially if a customer wanted to reminisce about his pathetic existence without first ordering a drink.
“A large rum. Whatever is cheapest. Make that two. Wait…” I settled the bill immediately, with a generous tip. That brought a wan smile to his face. My good deed for the day was done; already, my melancholia was beginning to thin.
I walked to the old riverfront. The river was lower than I remembered, but it still flowed—darkly, lazily—towards the sea beyond the horizon. The line of benches was just ahead. In the evenings, each would host a young couple sheltered from prudish scrutiny under an umbrella: fingers entwined, thighs shyly pressed together, cheek to cheek, watching the river’s fleeting prophecies being drawn in ripples and waves. I once stole a kiss on that bench—just a peck on the cheek. A kiss is a kiss. I suspect women have a different perspective… Perhaps I left the city because I was afraid. Perhaps I stayed away because I couldn’t bear to see her unhappy. Or unchanged. I tell myself it was cowardice, and that feels honest enough. But honesty is not the same as truth.
Further down the cobbled path stood the last stretch of railing—splintered, spalted, consumed by time. I had once sat there, composing a resignation letter in my head while watching a dog chase its own tail. Now I leaned on the wood, cautiously at first. It held, barely. Across the river, the harbour lights twinkled like distant promises.
“The Old City hasn’t changed,” I thought. “She’s dying,” the river replied, “and you’re still trying to love her.”
The riverfront was quiet now. The couples had gone. The benches stood empty. I sat down, buzzed just enough for sentiment. The old keychain was still in my pocket—it was mine, not the caretaker’s. A rat darted across the path, paused beneath a bench, then vanished into the undergrowth. Another followed. Then another. A small procession, silent and purposeful. They’ve taken over the waterfront too—not with fanfare, but with patience. We fled the sinking ship; they stayed. They wait until the lovers leave, then reclaim the benches, the shadows, the cracks in the stone. They inherit what we abandon. They remember what we want to forget.
I threw the keychain as far as I could. It arced like a tossed coin and vanished into the dark waters. The river accepted my offering quietly. Without a fuss.
Sham’s gesture returned to me—palm down, swaying gently. Not an eagle: a river! It moves yet remains; it vanishes into the sea, yet never leaves its bed. Like the City herself—dead, but not quite yet.
Editor’s Notes
- Meursault truly didn’t tell anyone he was visiting the Old City. I wish he had because I would have joined him.