the stairs were gone on V. Airport
Two hours after I had touched ground in V. I was drunk. I had lied my way to this place, and there I was. It was dark already, drizzling and cool. Summer, so it seemed, was gone for good, and so was something else.
I didn’t expect Esme to be there. But I expected the stairs to be there, the stairs we held and touched and kissed on each other for the first time, only nine weeks ago. Already nine weeks ago. But gone they were, hidden behind a wooden construction site fence, darkened by the rain. What a start.
Sitting in bus no. 1 now which will hopefully take me to the station just north of the old town, I am wondering what I am doing here. Esme was pretty clear. “Don’t come”, she had written. And today she had added her reasons why she did not want to see me.
It is not that I don’t understand her. It is not that I don’t know she is right, she is so right it hurts. But I can’t help it. I feel like a moth who has to fly to the light, no matter what. I texted her back from a stop-over in R., and I told her that I am on my way, and that I would like to see her after all, and that I would step by the café with the cow on the wall with wings where we had spent some hours together during my final day in V. when we had met, talking and talking and secretly falling in love with each other.
We should stop it, she wrote. Maybe we should. Maybe the us is over already without me knowing it. But I did not come here to guess. I came here to know. We started face to face, if we should end I want this to be face to face as well. But I don’t want us to end.
a clean, well-lighted place
I get off the bus at the station. I remember the place. Again. It’s the same stop like when I first came to V. I walk down S. Street on the broken sidewalk. It’s pretty dark and lonesome. I pass a group of youths on the other side of the road. They are gathered underneath a flickering streetlamp, talking and laughing. I hear shrieks, but they seem to be joyful. When they see me they give me a good look-over, then they go back to their business of spending the evening.
Above a gate I detect the sign for my hotel, so I enter the dark yard. The door of the hotel is located in a corner to the right. The bulb above it is naked and dim, fighting a lost fight against the darkness that surrounds it. I ring the bell.
It takes only seconds before I hear the buzzer. I push the wooden, worn door open. I enter a narrow staircase that smells of age and something I think I know but can’t remember. I climb up one floor to stand in front of a girl with long, dark hair, student age, who is sitting behind a small desk which serves as the reception, reading something I can’t see at first. As I step closer I can see it’s an apparently medical book.
“Good evening“, I say. “I have a reservation“.
I give her my name and watch her while she is typing something on the keyboard in front of her.
“Do you have a map?“, she asks.
“A map? Is your hotel that big?” What is she talking about?
“No“, she says.
She has a beautiful laugh and big blue eyes behind dark-rimmed glasses.
“You stay in the other hotel“, she says. “Do you have a map now?“
“Well, yes” I say. “But actually I have a reservation for this hotel. I didn’t even know there is another one.”
“We’re booked“, she says, “but you are lucky. The other hotel is newer. And it’s close.”
So I give her my map. She has long fingers with short fingernails, dark red polish. The color reminds me of Esme’s painted toes.
“We’re here, you just walk this street up, then turn right and you will see it“, she says.
She draws some arrows and a circle on the map and hands it back to me.
“Five minutes“, she says and smiles.
“Five minutes is fine“, I say, and smile back. “Bye.”
“Bye“, she says.
Her eyes are in her book again. And I leave.
day 1
the third leg
retracing the past, part 1
don’t stop spinning
