Chapter One: Crossing the Meadow, by Kfir Luzzatto
Chapter I
The Fog"Friend of yours?"
George looked at the girl who had spoken, as if surprised to see her there, sitting at the table with him. Lost in a reverie, running in his head through the events that had brought him here, to this small café, he'd been sitting there for a long time now, looking through the window into the thick fog, and trying to force his eyes to see the entrance to the place that once had been his home.
Many years had passed since his father, a man of comfortable means, had moved his commercial interests to the United States of America, taking with him his wife and his adolescent son.
He could certainly not complain. At forty-five lived a comfortable life and provided handsomely for his little family--his beloved wife Jane, and Sharon, the teenage girl they both adored--with a small business that practically ran itself. He would have lived a uniformly peaceful life, but for the dream.
The dream--or rather, the nightmare--had begun many years ago. It was a short one, but no less frightening for that. In the dream, he stooped on his knees in the bathroom of his home, helping someone whose face he could not see, to fill the void beneath the bathtub with sand. The rest of the space, he knew, was taken up by the body of a woman, whom he was helping to bury. Although he never saw the woman clearly in the dream, he knew with absolute certainty that she was there. The exasperating part of it was that he always woke up, often in a sweat, just before--he knew--the reasons for his acts were to be explained to him, in a manner that would make them look perfectly rational.
He'd had many other nightmares over the years, some of them recurring at various frequencies. However, this particular one carried that quality of reality that he did not sense in all other dreams, and that had remained unblemished for decades. At last, he had come to the realization that there was no way to exorcise the spell, other than to go back to his old neighborhood. Now that he was here, he didn't know what to do.
The girl seated at the little round table near the window had attracted his attention. She was looking around with uninterested, yet deep black eyes. She was small and young--maybe twenty-two or twenty-three years old--with chestnut hair fastened into a wavy pigtail, and an evening dress unsuitable for the cold evening weather of the early fall. He had been looking at her for a while, almost hypnotized by her elegant figure. He didn't think that she had noticed him. But he could not take his eyes off her; how fragile she seemed. He wondered what she was doing there all alone.
Time passed without her giving any sign of preparing to leave. It looked as if whomever it was that she was waiting for, had stood her up. Quite a jerk, he must be, letting such a nice girl wait.
He hadn't had a real conversation with anybody for too long now, and had started to feel lonesome. He resolved to approach her and, having built up the courage to do so, got up and walked slowly to her table.
"May I join you, Signorina?" he asked.
She looked up briefly, barely taking the time to size him. "Please do," she answered, looking back at the tablecloth again, without any display of interest, or show of surprise.
"I saw you looking out of the window at that building," he started out apologetically, "and I wondered--I lived there as a child."
"You did?" she asked, without managing to show surprise, or an interest. "You sound like a foreigner, though."
"I have been abroad for over thirty years now. I guess that makes me sound a little funny. Tell me, if it is not too rude of me to ask, what are you doing out here at night? This is not a place for a nice girl like you, and may be dangerous too. It used to be crowded and festive, when I was young, but now--"
For a moment the room seemed transformed, as he recalled the way it had been. There, behind that bench, stood the pizza man, turning small dough balls into flat pizza bases. He had always admired the way the Pizzaiolo, as they used to call him, performed his magic by turning the dough in the air between the palms of his hands, until the small ball became a flat, thin plate. And the oven just behind him, now gone, from which he withdrew gorgeous pizzas dripping with mozzarella cheese, seemed to light up; the scene came alive in his mind for a moment, only to vanish immediately again.
The laughter of the once light-hearted couples that filled the room and turned it into a warm sanctuary, faded away quickly as they had arisen in his head, leaving them again in the cold atmosphere that the street window cast upon their table.
"I am sorry," he said, "I let my mind wander. You were saying?"
"I was asking if he is a friend of yours," she said, looking at the window beside them.
George turned to his right, following her amused gaze, and gaped at the window in astonishment. A man was standing outside, a few inches from him, his face pressed to the window. He looked familiar.
"He--he looks like my Uncle Henry," George said slowly. "But, of course, he can't be him. Uncle Henry died many years ago."
"A relative, perhaps?" said the girl.
"No, no. He had no relatives other than my mother," he said in a murmur, brushing the notion aside. The man was standing, motionless, staring at George, with his right hand above his eyes, apparently in an attempt to shade whatever little light came from the inside. George was staring back, unable to decide how to react.
"But what does he want? Why is he staring at me like this?"
The man now stepped back from the glass window, smiling, waved a hand at George in a saluting motion, turned around, and quickly disappeared into the fog. George was rattled. He had been very fond of his Uncle Henry, who had died shortly before they left the country, and facing what seemed to be his twin brother, suddenly like this, brought back forgotten and painful memories.
"I'm glad he's gone," George said quietly, almost to himself.
He turned back to the girl, making an effort to act his composed self again.
"I apologize for my behavior. You will think me rude. I have been sitting here without introducing myself. My name is George, and you are?"
"I'm Clara, and I didn't think you rude. A little strange, perhaps," she said, smiling reassuringly, "but clearly not rude."
"I'm glad," he said, smiling back. "So, what are you doing here all alone, at this time of night?"
"Well, this is my zone."
"I'm not sure that I understand," he said, "what do you mean by 'my zone'?"
A light of amusement passed through her eyes--she had beautiful, lively eyes. His own gaze was riveted to her graceful round face, and he could not bring himself to look away. I am only having an innocent conversation to while away the time a bit. Nothing to be ashamed of, he reassured himself.
"I mean that this is where I meet my clients," she said, still amused, "old and new. Here is where I sit, always. Men can come to me, just as you did, and become acquainted. Then, if it so pleases me, we become friends." She evidently saw no light of comprehension in his eyes and added, quite simply, "I am a prostitute. This is where I pick up men. Then we go elsewhere and, if the price is right, I spend the night with them."
George got up quickly, almost instinctively.
"Sit down!" she ordered him, as he hurriedly started to move away from her. "I didn't plan for you to be a client. And I didn't think you were planning it either."
"I--I apologize for my reaction," he said, sitting down again. "I didn't mean to be rude. It's just that I never--I didn't--"
"I understand. You never met a puttana. Well, look, I don't bite. I'm clean and I'm kind," she said, counting with her fingers. "I believe you may find me to be a suitable partner for conversation." The irony in her voice was stinging, particularly since the amused look would not leave her eyes.
"Can we start this all over again, please?" he asked, mortified. Then, encouraged by her silence he continued, "Tell me about yourself."
"There isn't much to tell. And I am not in the mood," she said curtly. "You tell me about yourself."
"Oh, I'm a very boring person. I own a small business back in the USA, which is doing quite well on its own, and this is how I can afford to get away. I've come back to revisit my childhood neighborhood. You know, I was born just a few kilometers from here, and I lived in the house in front, on the fifth floor, until I left."
"Family?"
"I'm married with one daughter--Sharon. She is seventeen now, and beautiful."
"I noticed the wedding band. Are you happily married?"
"Yes, I am."
"Do you think she is missing you now?"
What a strange question, he thought. "I would be surprised if Jane didn't miss me," he said. "We've never been apart for long before. Why shouldn't she?"
"Oh, I thought maybe--"
"What?"
"Nothing. Forget it. So why are you here?"
He suppressed an urge to tell her about his dream and the real reason why he was here. After all, she was a total stranger who should be justified in thinking him mad to undertake such a trip on account of a nightmare.
"I have come to revisit the streets of my youth, you could say," he said guardedly.
"And how do you find it?"
"The neighborhood, you mean?" She nodded slightly (she had a way of cocking her head to one side that invoked intimacy), and he continued, "Well, I don't know. It's kind of strange. On the one hand, I know every stone around here, and very little has changed since those days; but on the other, I don't seem to recognize anybody.
"I walked near my old school one morning, and I found my name scratched on the fence, just where I used to stand waiting for the gates to open in the morning, when I was seven or eight years old. Nobody has bothered to paint or plaster it. I saw the names of many other boys from those days, written around the neighborhood. I think I recall the faces of some of them, but then, my memory could be playing tricks on me. I've been walking around, trying to match those childish faces to people around here, as they are now. I think I may have spotted one or two of my old classmates, but I wasn't sure enough to walk up to them and introduce myself. And then even if I did, what would I say next?"
He didn't tell her of his one attempt to do so. It was while he stood at the entrance of a department store he used to visit as a child, debating whether to go inside and see how it had changed, that he had spotted someone he knew well from his school days, coming out of the shop.
"Hi, old boy!" he had called to him, putting out a hand for him to shake, but his old friend had gone straight ahead, as if not seeing him, and would have trampled over him, had he not moved aside quickly enough. It had made him feel pretty silly.
"So what are your plans?" she asked.
"To tell you the truth," he said, "I'm not sure what I want to do next."
"It seems to me that you are making a very poor job of your visit," she said, looking at him with mocking eyes. "Didn't you make any plans at all before you came here?"
"Actually, I acted on an impulse. It felt right that I should visit here, and so I came, without planning ahead." The truth of this fact had only just dawned on him. He actually had no plan at all, except for the very general idea of getting to the roots of his nightmare.
"For one thing, I just feel like walking around to make my peace with the streets of my childhood." He had never before thought of his drive to return to his birthplace in those terms. He now felt as if he owed these streets an apology--for leaving them so suddenly, for not having said goodbye in a proper way, and perhaps for not having given a thought to them for so long.
"Then why are you wasting your time sitting here, staring at this old building?" she asked. "Shouldn't you be out there instead?"
"You know, I wish I could visit my old apartment. I would like to stay for a while and let my mind go back to when I was a child. But I don't think that its present occupants would agree."
"I'll tell you what I'll do for you," she said. "I'll take you around to see the streets and what's in them. I can show you things. I know my way around here."
Her hand was in his, and she was on her feet. He didn't know why, but he knew he could trust her.
"Thank you. I'd like that," he said, gratefully. "I do feel a little lost."
"Okay. Now, just hold my hand and don't let go. I don't want to lose you in the fog."
He left with her through the main door, and they were outside, blending in the milky white mist. Suddenly he realized that he had not paid his bill. Then, he recalled, he had not ordered anything, and neither had she. Moreover, the waitress had not asked for their orders either.
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