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The bar was decrepit just like it’s patrons, I don’t know why he still comes here, it’s a dump. It reeked of old men and even older poverty. There was something crusty about this place; it made your skin feel instantly dirty and your eyes search for clear light. The air in the room felt heavy like a cloud of discarded skin. The memories of the old men had years ago discarded or deserted still lingered here. The men were sleazy, sunken eyes followed your every move, at least they followed mine, it must not be common for a young one like me to enter a hovel like this.
I saw him in the back of the room, crouched behind his tepid beer, he had seen me but was now too drunk to react. I sighed, well at least that hadn’t changed, he could always be relied upon to be in the worst possible state whenever I visited.
“Hello John” I said pulling up a chair across from his table. “I see not much has changed with you”
“What would you know Alex, I knew you’d turn up eventually”
“Alex, isn’t coming today. I’m taking his place.” He grunted.
“Did you bring The Book?”
“Of course”
“Good. Read” I nod and begin. He seemed uninterested and distant, but I couldn’t expect anything else, it was me who wanted to be here not him.
“She didn’t mind reading to him, she had done it all her life and it became habitual. Much like the passing of the hours, if she were to miss one, her day would feel unfinished.
She made them both tea and sat down next to his bed. She kissed his head and settled her back against the headboard. She’d read this story a million times before but she knew he wouldn’t remember it; she had changed the names of the characters and the towns and creatures. He would never realise it was the same story.”
“No! That’s the wrong part!!!”
“Oh I’m sorry where should I start?”
“You know where, you always start there.”
“I’m not…” I sigh, he’ll never remember. I open the book to a worn page, assuming it was the normal page and started again.
“The forest had taken the city years ago. Now all that was left was a haunted place, a place animals roamed wildly, a palace to the power of nature. She had reclaimed this place and called back her chosen ones. The rightful owners of the land. No human had entered this city for millennia.
But the memory still haunted it; signs still clung to the edges of the ruined highway like spectres. They try desperately to reveal what had once been and never would be again. The glorious city first claimed by the desert, then the rains that followed, eventually a new coastline formed and then finally the forest had come to welcome the new inhabitants.
Vines had climbed the buildings, entering where none had for so long; explorers with patience and strength. They were all that held many of the old buildings up now. Only one remained almost pristine, from a distance, the shattered glass and rusted binding can be concealed and the proud building looks like it once did. It is the one remaining place of human power not yet conquered; he stands tall proclaiming human domination over nature. He is a tall, pillar of arrogance and believed supremacy.
But she is patient, his time will come and she will redeem him with her vines, trees and animals, he will become shelter for her followers. Even now she is climbing up his base, constricting him from the base upwards, soon his will fall.”
“Skip that bit, go to the next bit,” he growls
I nod.
“I don’t know where I want to go but it’s not with him. He is a coward and a lout. I wish he had never asked to wed me. I find him vile and putrid. He should leave me alone or I’ll run away!”
What do you mean… you can’t be serious?
I am, I
“I fucked him.
“We didn’t make love. We fucked. All you prudes out there just breathe, this is the only shock you’ll probably get today so enjoy it. Now where was I, oh yes fucking. Well, you see it all has to do with the intent.
“If I wanted to make love I’d date first, then ask him home nicely and then slowly and seductively entice him. But if I wanted to fuck him I’d do a very different thing. I’d come on strong and if he got with it we’d fuck easy as that, none of the stupidness in the middle.
“Now you probably have been married for at least a decade and believe fucking to be below you. Well, imagine this. He is a body and you are a body. He is there to fulfil you and you him. You are and he is and that is all. Afterwards don’t worry about the morning after. You just met anyway, why should there be any intimacy. Mutual, no victims and no heartache.
“Oh Sarah! How can you speak like that!”
“Ah, you are useless! What do you expect from me, reading this? You want to bring it all back! Get it right or get out of here!” I nod again, not wanting to anger him more and begin again. I shouldn’t have brought that back up, I just wanted a reaction.
“The days were long here, sunlight seemed to last longer and the days were warmer, happier. Shannon Caliwer didn’t need to think hard to remember what is was like back home. Cold like that stays in the bones for years, the short summers not enough to thaw them, merely hold off the ice a bit. He could feel himself warming slowly however, the days in the sunlight slowly eking out the cold.
He rides up next to his fellow.
“Do you think this will be the end of our travels?”
“I doubt it. We’ll move on when the days become shorter.”
“Follow the sunlight then hey?”
The other man seems to loose concentration. Watching the waters as they pass along the shoreline, it’s new to both of them. With their backs to their desert and their fronts to the sea, it seemed a perfect place
“Something like that… Have you finished that book you picked up in the last city?”
“Not yet, it has some interesting poems and short reflections. Hanor always said what’s the point in reading if your not going to get anything from it. So I’m spending my time reading it. Trying to get each word right, translating it is a challenge I wish I had more time for.”
“Well, you’ll have plenty of time when we cross the desert. You’ll be thankful to get out of the sunlight after that.”
“I’m sure I will be”
“Do you think I could read your translation, I still can’t read this godforsaken language.”
“I haven’t finished, they’re still just notes.”
“That’s fine, I’m sure I’ll be able to make them out.”
“Chapter 16”
“No, that’s a wrong, it’s chapter 15, they must have counted the prologue.”
“I’ll tell them. Okay Chapter 15”
“No, don’t worry about that… it’s crap anyway. Written only to get money”
“It was a best seller”
“It was a cop out, read something else.”
“Sarah worries she will be forgotten.
It’s an irrational fear, but she is an irrational person. She want’s to leave something behind her, or rather someone, someone to tell her story. She writes many notes, small things she asks him to preserve and silently hopes he will publish them. He will to one day. After she’s gone, he’ll go through them, one by one and marvel at them, their warmth and depth and he’ll publish them. He’ll wonder that he never noticed before.”
He’s sitting there quietly listening so I continue. It’ll do him good I decide.
“She often told him.
“It doesn’t matter what’s happened before. This in the now and that is what is important. You can never rely on the past and the future is pure fiction.
“The hours wind on and on and we’ll loose them if we don’t use them. No matter how cliché that sounds John, it’s the truth. Lets leave here, don’t go out tonight, lets pack up this house and leave this place.
“But he wasn’t listening; he was too busy planning tomorrow.
“But when she’s gone, he’ll be left with those fragments, with those pieces of his own history, his own unfailing neglect.”
“Ok I know, you want me to listen to that. Fine I’ll listen but you must promise me that it will end here. No more of this, what happened, happened and there is shit all I can do about it!”
“I’m Sorry.”
“Yeah right!”
“No I am I can understand your fears and anger over this, but it was years ago and now we must all move on and get this done. It was important to you before, why not now?”
“Now I am old and too much time and too many words have passed through my fingers and out my mouth. I am tired of all of it. I wouldn’t even do this if I thought it would do any good”
“I understand”
“You understand shit.”
“I understand that you have decided that you have given up and that you are now only waiting to die”
“So what, death will be sweet after the life I’ve had”
“No, Death for you will be a cop out. You don’t want to die; you only want to believe you do. It’s easier for you to claim a wish to die than it is for you to face a future or remember your past”
“I remember it all right! I remember that you have no right in commenting on anything I say or do! You have proven that yourself years ago!”
“ As I said before, I’m not Alex”
“No your not, your just some useless… oh get on with it” He’s looking so old now. He’s so sad and withered, it almost makes me pity him.
“There haven’t been many choices to change in my life. My life has been full of dreary yesterdays and even drearier tomorrows. I almost wish I could reject it all and just leave but human responsibilities deny me that privilege. To phrase it simply, I have no options left to me. I may write and I may record but after that there is little else.
“I have little liberty, as a writer I must sell what I write or starve. So even my best works are written to please the publisher or the public. What is left of me after I finish I do not know, maybe just a shadow hidden behind all that pulp fiction romance.”
“Damn right, that’s probably the only worthy piece in the whole damn book.”
“Indeed”
“What do you know about it! You come here and read this, presumptuous bastard, you know nothing of it at all. You’re probably some piddling author, trying to gain some notoriety on the coat tails of others great works.”
I couldn’t deny that, I was here more for myself than I was for his benefit. Though I knew, this book would never be finished without my interference. I was more valuable to him than he was to me. He obviously didn’t remember me, or refused to more like it.
I read on.
“He’ll still do nothing for her, his memory still too clear to perfect her memory. Old letters lie scattered around the house. Old conversations, sadly fragmented drift through the air, hanging of the furniture and resting lightly on the kitchen table.
“His fingers grasping for her though she is no longer there. What is left is only a sad reminder of her graceful nature. She left her cloak loosely tied to the bathroom hanger, ivory against the white.
He wonders what should happen, where he should go now. How many times has it passed through his mind? Wrestling with his decision not to mourn”
“Many, many times. It’s passed through my mind many times”
“I’m sure it did. Did you ever do something about it?”
“Shut up and move on…”
“At what price are you willing to see this take place? What are you willing to risk and loose, having this transformation take place? That is the question, for surely it will be taken from you as sunlight is taken from the eyes of the dead. You shall as a person lifeless, given all to that one final thing that you seek and all else will be sacrificed to this dream.Are you content to walk alone through this place again as you once did?
“For that is what this dream is. It is a two sided blade, one side cuts your bonds while the other slits your wrists.
“You wish to be without that pain. Well you may be, but pain has away of injuring not just yourself but also your loved ones. Think carefully, you choice is not easy.”
“Hmm, that’s fine. I remember that conversation. I’ve never had such good council from a boy so young. Do you remember him?”
“He was before I was born”
“Ah yes, I forget your youth. So many are gone now. I feel I am the only one left. The only one who remembers those passionate years.”
“Were they hard?”
“Yes, no. They were life. We knew we were dieing slowly, all of us. We were rotting and so was the world around us. It was all corroding and we were just passively playing along with it, ‘a ride to damnation’ the papers would term it years later after most were dead or gone. But to us it was loving in it’s obvious decline, we adored the descent as much as the rise.”
“I cannot imagine.”
“No, I imagine you can’t. Forget that time, it’s captured here anyway.” He was opening up to me finally. I could feel his mind becoming lucid again. I wanted to speak of it further but he was waiting for me to start again.
“I told her so many times, stop talking of dreams, what did they bring anyone? Dreams only breed illusion. What you need to breed is reality. If people see reality, then they will realise what a fragile thing it is. It needs protecting and imprisoning. Like a precious animal we must keep it away from people, they will injure and dirty it. That is why we breed dreams, so we can protect reality from those who would ravish it.
“But she never listened, she say them as lovers not pets. She would grow fond of one, asking it home to stay with her and comfort her. She would grow attached to it and instead of amusing herself by petting it she would loose herself in its embraces. When it finally died or became tyred of her ministrations, she would be heartbroken. Again she had lost that most dear to her, but no matter how many times I told her, dreams die, reality lasts long after you have even died, she preferred the more colourful and exotic dreams, even if they all eventually did die.”
“Why did you break her down so?”
“I needed to, for my sake, not hers. The earlier years didn’t break her as it did me. I needed her to understand.”
“Did she ever understand?”
“She understood, but refused to believe”
“I see.”
“It is enough.”
“I write to show my understanding, my own inadequacy, my judgement, my anger. I write because it seems that putting it on paper makes it real, makes my sentiment real though it may not be and will never be. It’s an illusion that I continue to produce. It’s an idea of mine, not a belief or a reality. There is very little left for me to believe, it all seems so illogical and sentimental. After all this I feel do dispassionate”
“Ah I always hated this. I hate everything I every did like this.”
“Because you told the truth of your writing?”
“Because it told the truth of me.”
“Truth and you don’t seem to function together well, you seem to have a certain ability to deny truth and create another world entirely. All this that I have read has proven that, these fragments are all that will be left behind. Can you say they truth are truthful”
“Nothing beautiful I write is truthful. Through its delusion comes its beauty.”
“And that is how you will be remembered, a beautiful liar”
“No, I will be remembered as the old man who ended his life in a bar with a youth reading to me of things forgotten and fantastical”
I closed the book.
“That’s the end you know. What did you think?”
“I don’t care.”
“I’m sure. Thank you for your time.”
He grunted
I place a copy of the book on the table and turned to leave but I felt I had to say something.
“Goodbye John. Oh and remember it was Sarah’s birthday on Friday, we missed you.” He looked at me finally, the years falling away and my face became once again familiar. He sighed and looked at his hands. Old decisions pre-empted his choices but I allowed myself a momentary hope. Maybe he’ll decide to remember me now or maybe he won’t but in a few days, it won’t matter anymore.
“Get out. I’ve done all you asked me to. Now leave me alone.” He snarled.
I need not respond, he is no longer a part of anything meaningful for me. I have served my purpose and now I leave. I clench my fists and leave this old man to this old bar and his old memories.