Sitting not quite still, sifting through articles in a magazine which is only mildly more disappointing than I imagined, and soaking up the first real (warm) sunshine we’ve had this year.
This afternoon’s agenda includes repairing a rotting hammock, working out how the logistics of how a travelling hammock might work in somewhere that isn’t an island full of coconut trees, watering house plants, copious rehydration of self, writing a story.
If you listen closely, you can hear it: the lullaby hum of the city. The rush of traffic speeding its familiar way home along side-streets, the deep and constant whirring of fans blowing thick, hot air from buildings overhanging the roads. Lorries reversing, high-heels clicking, dogs barking and the chatter and blur of people conversing.
Sunday evening in Paris, the last day of summer, and these moments; these were the final moments of her life. Eloisa July lay flat on her stomach, trapped under five and a half tons of rubble and debris; the steak she had been eating was still warm inside her mouth. Her eyes would not open, but she could sense the darkness that cocooned and enclosed her. She could feel it, more surely than she could perceive her own body. It was as if during the falling, her body had become absent from the rest of her. She was aware of it, but it felt distant and unfamiliar to her, as though being imagined by somebody else.
Everything slowed, and her life––like a faulty pipe––split open, while she lay motionless in a shower of moments belonging only to her:
The velvety feel of the brick-red lipstick in her grandmothers bedroom, laying bullet-shaped next to the vanity mirror. She could feel it thick on her lips and the papery sensation of blotting the excess onto two sheets of folded toilet tissue.
The view of newly cut grass shrivelling into whiskers of pale straw and the bulk of a satchel resting under her knees.
The smiling eyes of a lover.
The changing weight of her body as she swam.
The drop of her stomach and her heart on fire as two mouths felt the heat of a kiss.
She smelled the chlorinated odour of a swimming pool mixed with something foreign, musty, sweet. She was six years old again and learning to float. Her young legs kicked out behind her as she fought to keep sight of the rippling surface above her. Rubble and debris fell into the pool.
The night crackled, spluttered, and eventually stopped. The silence dropped down from out of the night like a sudden inhale, an unexpected pause. Four seconds, two breaths; her eyes blinked open, saw stillness, then eventually closed. The lullaby hum of the city returned, and as one life was left behind, a new one began. The city began again.
n.
A frivolous spending of time; the act of dallying; dawdling; an archaic word for amorous toying; a flirtation or romp.
This is a jetty. I like this jetty for a lot of reasons, here is one of the more practical: it sits lower to the water than most, which seems especially important when sitting or lying upon it’s surface. Squinting, needing glasses, or both, allows the entire landscape (as well as oneself) to appear flat and level like a pancake, whilst the sky takes on new and gigantic proportions.
It is difficult to decide whether this particular place evokes maudlin or more cheerful sentimentality for me. Today it was cheerful; I am not sure if that is because I am cheerful, or because I was eating my way through two carefully selected - and therefore faultless - tangerines.
*cycled towards at double-quick time with both coat pockets stuffed to bursting with plump and bulbous fruits.
Beds and babies. Working in a dank, dark, emotionally draining environment became too much, far too much of the time. The physical exhaustion of caring for babies at the convent; the musty, insect infested and rs150 hostel rooms - these were the places I fled to when in need of some respite.
- whilst, never while
- amidst, not amid and amongst, not among
- in lieu as opposed to instead
- forthwith, not immediately
- portly or the less extreme plump, rather than overweight
In Nepali, Mamata means affection, and if any word could sum up the character of this particular girl, affectionate would be the one to do it. From the moment I touched her arm in greeting to the moment - four weeks later - I plied her fingers from my wrist to leave the clinic for the last time, she never left my side.
“Some children here…maybe we can help.” confided S., a short-haired and newly retired Dutch woman who was to be my replacement. She nods towards Mamata, who was pulling at the grubby collar of my shirt and running her fingernails across my collar-bone whilst rocking on her feet. ”I give this one a look, and it’s in the eyes, you see it? Nothing there. Some children…we cannot help them, and it is a waste of energy to try.”
Epilepsy, autism, mutism, a plethora of health and developmental disorders; it was no surprise that Mamata was given up on years before her thirteenth birthday. Several weeks in, I spent an entire morning scouring the office for information on her, and came up with nothing but a photograph stuck to an brown Manilla envelope. Case file empty, progress chart blank, Next of Kin absent. In short, the perfect example of a girl so lost in the system she herself was non-existant.
The children were the ones who had not given up on her, and perhaps this was due to everyone giving up on them too. Every single child living in the centre adored her. They fought over her like the latest toy and when it came to the end of the day two of the older Down’s syndrome girls from the English class would run into Room C and flock around her like Mother Hen’s; smoothing her coarse, dark hair and pulling her up onto shaking legs with sing-song, clucking tones. To them, she was a doll to be fussed over. It didn’t matter that she never made a sound or responded to their chatter, both parties got something out of the bond regardless.
It was the smile that did it, I think. Wide, toothy, and a little bit dreamy, Mamata had the kind of perpetual smile which would melt the hearts of her peers in a moment. It never left her face, save for the handful of times her epilepsy caused her to withdraw.
Four weeks in, and while physically exhausted by her little body relentlessly draped upon my own as I went about my days, I found that Mamata’s smile was enough for me, too. In some ways, I understood the Dutch woman. She had of course earned her cynicism, a life-time spent working with difficult or impossible patients, and giving up before she began was the only thing left to do. I, on the other hand, felt I deserved my optimism, subsequently spending much of my time singing and clucking to this mysterious, hopeless case, all the while reminding myself not to expect too much of her.
The day before I left, we walked together slowly around and around the little garden. I sung and she rocked, her feet dragging out behind us as though in another place and time entirely. The sun glimmered through the dust of the city, and as her grin grew wider I wondered what it might be like inside her world.
Mamata clutched at my arm, and I clutched at my thoughts, and we walked.
There was a storm that night. We walked slowly and purposefully from our tents in the kind of tightly clustered grouping that only adolescents can pull off inconspicuously. This journey was made through what I see in my memory as an apple orchard - this may be a romantic interpretation on my part, it could just as easily have been somewhere else, but it was outdoors and green and soft underfoot. I suppose we must have carried our sleeping bags, or perhaps sent out a party of two or three to claim them from the sodden tarpaulins later on in the day.
We came to a building somewhere between a caravan and a shed. It was not warm inside, but it was dry and musty, a welcome change from the dampness and chill of sleeping outdoors. There was a battered wooden table where I rested my camera, dirty and yellowing windows and a carpeted surface of some description covering the floor. Kitchen cabinets too, and an out-of-action refrigerator.
In those days, regardless of the location we were placed within, we did the same number of things: card games were played, sleep was caught up on, a mishmash of conversations and laughter was heard.
Things are strange and new and surprising for me lately - my newly decorated bedroom is keeping me smiling and the ball rolling.
My favourite thing about decorating is as follows: finding unrelated Art Postcards which somehow fit more perfectly together than is rationally possible. Every time this happens it feels so miraculous - and makes me feel so precious - that I set about wondering how it might be possible to turn such a talent into any sort of part-time career.
