An Unfinished Story

The first night in an unknown city. A young man traverses a dark and lonely street. The buildings are taller here than he expected, and a little older. An avenue sprawls out into the lifeless distance and shivers under the oppression of cold – real, unrelenting cold. This is not the city he had dreamt of. Those dreams are now just hazy images resting on the horizon of his memory. Images of light blue glass catching sunlight and refracting it randomly – acute this way, oblique the other – and busy city streets crowded with window shoppers and suited silhouettes of importance. A city trapped in mid-July, hot and teaming with tourists, smelling like hotdogs and cool lake breezes. Images that appear cruel now, standing here, immersed in this frozen city-scape. This is the true city. A city where light is conspicuous not by its refraction but by its absence. Where ominous saffron clouds have mounted their defence of the darkness. The atmosphere quivering under a force unseen, a force unknown. A city where, beneath the cover of this brooding blanket, the cold wind blows.

He has never been to a city this big, this cold. Snow covers the ground, crunching and squeaking beneath his blistered feet, a feeling so coarse – so unfamiliar – it hurts. His breath is stunted by the chill; he can smell nothing. It feels as though every part of him is retracting, defending itself against the cold, but how much is left? How much did he leave behind in those other cities? How much did they take from him? Here it is the cold – there it was the people, or the rain, or the utter bankruptcy of it all. He feels a new appreciation for the exiled; like them, he has come to a unknown kingdom, devoid of warmth or comfort. Like them, he is following the only instinct he has left, to keep moving, to keep moving forward.

He comes to a bridge mid-thought. The bridge is small but strong, and bulges with twisted, rusty steel that seems to defy the cold, and time, and the footsteps of a million. A million and one. The bridge conquers a narrow river. Tired, he begins to cross, confidently at first, before he notices the short and narrow railings holding on to the bridge. Slowly, as he walks, he veers away from the railing. His stomach collapses as he looks again at the glossy, sleet-covered railing. Drawn to the edge, he leans over the narrow lip to look down at the river's unforgiving depths. His mind slips and he can feel the rush of the icy water attacking his unprotected skin and seeping inwards towards his vital organs. The squeezing cold. The panic and the fear. Fight and resignation. Peace. He steps away from the murky, half-frozen water, knowing he won't fall, but fearing he may jump.

Cigarette. By the time he takes his glove off and places a smoke neatly in the corner of his mouth, his hand is numb. Watching the ashen tip transform to a blazing orange and retreat back into blacks and greys, he is struck by a sense of loneliness. This is not an abstract, existential loneliness, but a palpable one. Where are all the people? This sense of aloneness he feels more acutely because of where he is, and the questions that had been floating aimlessly around his mind are forming into a solid mass of doubt. Why did I come here? What am I looking for? How long is it going to be just me? Slow snow begins to fall as if consummating his doubts. He finishes his smoke and crosses the road to a covered footpath, whose inner wall and short ceiling are covered by fading graffiti and tattered posters. From the end of the street the faint echo of a lonely flute can be heard. The sporadic sound bounces around the tiring traveller, becoming more and more pronounced as he approaches.

The source of the music is a phantasmal figure. He is big, unusually big, and plays the flute with every muscle in his body. He is black and probably homeless, wearing worn clothes and a hopeful yet wary expression. He puts the sadnesses of his situations into every note, every pause, and though the effect is not melodic, there is beauty hidden in every vibration. The traveller surveys the man quickly, trying to establish if he is real. Abruptly, the flautist finishes his song and, putting down his weathered instrument, he looks up at the stranger.

'Spare a smoke, man?'

'Sure. I, ah, like your song.'

'Thanks man. I just play to stay warm, you know?'

The young man lifts his eyebrows briefly in recognition of the cold. He looks at the aging musician as they both light their smokes.

'What you doing here, man?' asks the homeless man, breaking the silence.

'I don't know,' is the only honest reply the traveller can conjure.

'Yeah, me neither, man.'

They exchange a knowing glance and with that part ways. The flautist resumes his song; the lonely traveller resumes his journey.

Walking away, he begins to think about walking away. The traveller had learnt quickly how difficult it can be. Every step towards the unknown is a step away from comfort and safety. He remembers standing at the airport the day he left and being overcome with a sense of anxiety and dread. Not knowing what might happen, but fearing, always fearing, it would be the worst. There and then, he realised it was a feeling that would stay with him as he moved. But there was another feeling to walking away that he learnt more slowly. Over time, over roads and railways, he had learnt the fatigue that comes with walking away. Finding a new home, new friends, new comfort, and then leaving it behind. The unknown was slowly taking from him the feeling of being connected to something. And he was getting tired. Walking away from the homeless man and the rhythm of his flute, he was getting tired.

The night too, is walking away. It has reached its apex – the height of its power to desolate. The moon is passing through its dusk and the sleeping sun has begun its ascent. The snow stops as the cold face of morning enlivens the city, making tired streets and buildings new.

The traveller spots a building that seems to shatter the city's homogeny. The building's outer layer of glass is so dark that it is opaque. There is also a barely discernible skeleton of steel, subordinate in visual effect but crucial to the structure; however, it is its form that lends the building its ostentation. The dark glass sheets are joined at angles that grow more acute as they climb, until finally, at its summit, the sheets lay almost horizontally. The summit is capped in snow, which melts at the edges and trickles down the dome, freezing again before it can reach the ground.

Atop a discreet doorway hangs a sign, which has the look of something old but is probably very new; the sign reads The Blue Breeze. The faint sound of music and mirth draws the traveller towards the dome; the prospect of a lounge, or a drink, or even a moment's respite from the cold, is too good an offer to refuse. He passes through the door and is eyed down by a burly bouncer who grunts a welcome, his attention wavering in the REM hours. Entering the large space, the man is struck by a wave of music. There is a central stage, lit up by light and sound, where two bald men sitting behind shiny pianos are doing their best impression of a jukebox. The crowd cheers and throws money on stage as they are asked which song to play next, and before there is time to collect the money the two pianos are bouncing their way through the next tune.

And the music lights up the night. The soul of the dome is alive because the music sustains it. The booze shortens the distance from ear to brain, brain to heart; and the crowd feels the music through one another, until a hundred ears become one.

The bar, however, pays no notice to the music; the exchange of liquid for cash goes on. The young woman behind the bar is an expert in service and tip extraction, which is one and the same thing here. She is young, early twenties, with apocalyptic green eyes that flutter when excited and black hair cut into sharp, intriguing lines.

'What can I get you, sweetie?' she asks, emphasising the you.

'Double vodka on the rocks,' the traveller replies, feeling the tension of sobriety and the intensity of her beauty equally. She pours the drink mechanically, casting a vacant stare at the ground, just for an instant, as the liquid mixes with the ice.

'Four,' she says as she returns, shattering any pretence about the nature of their interaction.

He gives her ten and tells her to keep the change; watching her eyes, he hopes to see a glint of surprise or excitement. She takes the money nonchalantly and turns to the guy next to him,

'What can I get you, sweetie?'

The bald men have finished their set meanwhile, and a voluptuous woman of forty has taken up the stage. She sits behind a narrow microphone and sings jaded songs about love. Finding a lounge on the fringes, the slightly inebriated man falls into a corner, and, closing his eyes, he listens:

'The night you broke my heart, I cried,

You said that you could never tell a lie,

But you never told me when,

The love went away, the love went away'

The song reaches him on some level; the words are cliqued, but the delivery is soft and comforting. The vodka is working too, warming his body while releasing it from the toils of the road, and freeing his mind to wander and wonder. Bliss, ephemeral bliss. He thinks.

The train station. Couldn't find that station. The last bed in the last hostel. Or was that before? Ecstasy and the car accident, wheels spinning franticly in the mud, kind bus driver saved our arses, and the Spanish girl with that smile. Hiking to the airport, sleeping under the bus shelter. The scam artists and the pick pockets and the drug dealers. Old trains through fields of snow and the night I looked out and saw a man with a torch and a hound, waist deep in it; what were they doing there? Panic in the biggest city and the rain and hills and hurling crabs and chess. The sapphire before the diamond …

'But you never told me when,

The love went away, the love went away'

He opens his eyes to find a young woman sitting, alone, at a table next to him. She has ash blonde hair, tousled by the day, and eyes that are glacial blue and forever seeking. She is at that wonderful age where she still possesses the beauty and vulnerability of youth but has seen enough, has done enough, to understand something of the world. Her clothes are formal: tailored jacket, matched skirt, cream blouse. She is, in fact, the epitome of the modern professional woman, from the way she holds herself, assured but not over-confident; to the way she speaks, articulate and without overt accent or inflection; and even her subtle, feminine make up, which is worn to say something, while saying nothing at all. But there is something unusual about her, which the traveller quickly understands. There is a certain despondency that, though well hidden, reveals itself in the most banal of actions: a sip of wine that goes on for just a little too long, an expectant look across at tables full of people, and a roll of the eyes at the end of every love song. She is looking for something. And she is tired, too.