From the Balcony

Only the exhaustive is truly interesting- who wrote that? And the other border of this divide I straddle – thirty seconds? But I want it now! Attaching my daypack to its big brother in a hot sweat, the sweat of passport control, the sweat of customs, and the pointless race to the baggage carousel, I know that she is just beyond the ‘Sortie’ sign. And I have exhausted myself in anticipation but would almost prefer it if she were already here and there was no ‘big meeting’ at all. Withdrawing from sight, meting out comparisons between incomparables – why am I the last to leave the terminal? Are you going to tell me; tell me about those first moments! Hers is the first face I notice. All the other faces are imprecise as background characters in a movie. The doors open and she sights me and stands. The weight of the backpack topples me into her; we embrace, stare at one another with unidentifiable emotions, walk.

At the back of the shuttle bus I do not touch her, I can hardly look at her- when I do I always seem to lapse into a rude stare that confuses some young Quebecois backpackers on their way home. What is this beautiful French Canadian whose fringe is straight and nearly covers her eyes doing conversing entirely in English with him, wild haired and bespectacled, too awkward to sit flush on his seat? Perfunctory questions about the flight and the weather and a small road accident flash dimly through our stalemate, charged with joy but overlaid by a feeling I can’t pin down. After every answer we share a glance, smile innocently and shake our heads, as if in disbelief, then look away again. It is a common condition among people to have their mind’s eye fixed on something but their gaze trained on something else; never have I felt that more acutely than in these dark caricatures of neighbourhoods seen but unseen, this city I have never visited and should be clamouring to study but am closed off from by a solid wall of other thoughts.

We come at last to a stairwell. Too narrow for two, I go in first but must let her push uncomfortably past my massive backpack in order to unlock the door. My legs are weightless at this point and I suffer from short interludes of terror. And the floorboards creak more than any I’ve heard and they seem to heave beneath us, and that nostalgic perfume trickles back to me in the air her body cuts through. The bedroom I know so intimately from Skype is now here, a cartoon illustration come to life. I cast my stuff down exhaustedly and shower. The shower is difficult to work and I burn and I freeze. When I creak back to her the door is ajar, held so by a stone pig smirking at me. It smells of incense. Will I put things away before bed, she asks – empty hangers dangle in waiting on my side of the close. My side? Unbelief never took so trivial a form. Police sirens sound strangely over my no and fully clothed I lower myself onto her frameless mattress, taking care not to step on her legs. Still I struggle to look at her.

The walls are poorly painted in off-pink, white base layer showing underneath. They are adorned with posters and photographs and incomprehensible French scrawled in black marker. A picture of her, then 16, with her girlfriend of the time takes my attention; her hair is short and her eye makeup dark green. I ask her about it and before long we are looking through her few remaining baby photographs, in front of televisions with Play School-style women holding colourful placards aloft – CINQ, SIX, SEPT – by lakes with her father and on couches between cousins both kissing her forehead, face practically unchanged, eyes no more or less spectacular; in her teenage brother’s arms, with her mother whose hair colour changes in every shot, a tiny carefree mind destined to live out hardships both undeserved and self-engineered, anchors on her dress and glittery cheeks, and by the time the first picture comes around again her chin is on my shoulder, her arms threaded under mine to reach the top of my back. And I am holding a body which is bigger than I remember it as if I were holding a family member I had taken for dead. Below the last line of Romain Gary’s suicide note suspended in huge letters from the ceiling like the Happy Birthday at a child’s party I recognise and drink her. My heartbeat returns to normal; the ineffable feeling was love. Sunlit Australian beaches encroach briefly on my dreams. Then hours and hours of nothing. When I wake, half the day is gone.