And now for something completely different

Pic by tochis

I recently finished reading Atonement, which put me in the mood to do a bit of the ol’ creative writing. So I challenged myself to write a little vignette-type thing without thinking too much or going back to fix and tweak and obsess. (I recommend this, incidentally. You will surprise yourself with what you write.)

Here is aforementioned vignette-type thing, just for something different.

He sits opposite me, right ankle resting on left knee, sketchbook on his leg. We have our own quaint little cabin for 12 whole hours. Prague to Zagreb. The middle leg of our journey.

This train is a time capsule. Our leather seats are worn and faded, the luggage racks battered. An hour ago a man with a trolley delivered us two bowls of beef goulash, unbidden, on a trolley. We mopped it all up with torn rolls of bread as Hungarian fields whipped past our window.

He keeps drawing me in his sketchbook.  Trying to define me with exploratory strokes from a stubby pencil. It’s hard, he says. Especially the eyes. There are three portraits so far — in the first two my eyes are closed, and in the third my gaze is unfocused, distant, directed toward the blurred fields of sunflowers that stretch to the horizon.  I tried to look at him while he sketched me but it was too much. I had to smile and give a self-effacing laugh and turn away.

As he draws I’ve been reading a book: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer.  There’s a character in it who loses the ability to speak, so he gets “YES” and “NO” tattooed on his palms and holds up the appropriate hand to answer questions.  Sometimes I wish I could do that.  I wish that when I was burdened with a terrible secret, people close to me would somehow know exactly what questions to ask, and all I would have to do is raise a hand silently.

What will happen when we arrive? Too much has gone unsaid. All this beauty and art and pastoral calmness around me and I’m still unsettled. I feel things only in short, sharp bursts.  The rest is muted by worry.  Maddening, intangible worry.  I try to push the thoughts away but more crowd in — the same ones, really, just phrased in different ways. A growing uncertainty spurred on by a thousand self-denigrations seizes my throat and keeps me silent. Soon I will have to speak. To talk about the messiness and the fears and the failings and explain why I feel broken. In my head I sift through language, trying to pick the perfect words; to assemble them into the sentence that will do the least damage.  

It’s so beautiful outside.  A cloudless sky; golden light. Two hours ago we threw open the windows and a breeze streamed into the stifled cabin. It felt like purification. I rested my head on the window frame and closed my eyes as the wind blew my unbrushed hair wildly about my face. He stood behind me, chin resting on my head. I couldn’t see his face, but I could tell he was smiling.

I have a fantasy where I tell him all of my worries.  I confess the ways in which I feel unworthy of his love. Piece by piece I lift away every gram of guilt and shame and fear that pushes me toward the ground. When I’m finished, I stand taller. I breathe slower. There is a pause that holds a million possibilities, and then he moves toward me and touches my face and looks into my eyes and says “Hey. I’m not going anywhere. Come here.” I sink into his arms, exhausted, grateful, and he holds me tightly as the cacophony of voices in my head lowers to a whisper.  

For now, though, we play games. We draw faces on our fingers and make our hands talk to one another. We sing made-up songs and recite monologues from Hamlet and talk about what we’ll do when we reach the sea. We’re so close now. I want to feel the salt water on my skin.