Stories – Granada |
Stories – Granada |
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Histoires pour enfants Divers Regain (journal de la Confédération Paysanne) |
GranadaThey met every Monday evening at a yoga class. He was looking for self-control, to help him mend a broken heart. Her too, judging from the veiled references. So elusive, the stillness, with so many thoughts racing round her head. Her too then. It felt good for him just walking beside her down to the dojo for that first session, early autumn, and he knew it felt good for her too. She suggested they meet in town and drive there together. Car-sharing, good for the planet. She was the one who controlled the talk, but he didn’t mind. When he started a conversation she’d rarely engage, and the thing would fizzle out. This puzzled him. She said she read poetry and philosophy but she’d only really talk about stuff like the cost of living. And the weather. Every Monday evening through the long fine autumn he’d wait for her in the carpark in town and they’d take one or the other car to drive the five miles down to the village where the dojo was. Then they’d walk down the lane together. That was the best bit. Chattering or silent. Didn’t matter. Sometimes she missed a class, and the teacher would ask where his friend was. He liked being asked this. Sometimes while he was waiting in the carpark he’d see the girl who’d broken his heart drive by. Monday evening activities for everybody. Those times the conversations were quieter. Once she played him a Melody Gardot song. He liked the voice and the sad love song, but not the lush instrumentation. He tried to play her Ben Harper and Radiohead, but she was noncommittal. The autumn crispened into winter and she’d joke about the over-the-top Christmas illuminations of the houses along the way. Apart from that, it didn’t feel like Christmas this year. No it didn’t. Was it because they were getting older? Her children growing up fast? There was a little tower on the hill above the village, and it was all lit up, fairy-like among the stars, below the moon. All very quiet that particular evening. Very Christmassy indeed, actually. They walked into the dojo, warmed themselves at the log stove and greeted the others. As they were all lying quietly at the end of the session, the teacher told them to focus on their breathing. But he couldn’t help tuning in to hers. One dark rainy night, lost in his thoughts he nearly missed the right-turn off the main road. She warned him just in time “otherwise we’d end up in Andorra”. People who don’t know Andorra thinks it’s probably cute and quaint, but Birmingham is by far the more romantic destination. “Hang Andorra: I’d have carried on to Granada.” “Granada?” “Ever been to Andalucía?” “No.” He chose Granada because years before he’d seen a film in which a policeman falls for a pretty young terrorist. He drives her overnight from Madrid to Granada and they make epic love in the morning. Well, it’s epic for him. She’s not that impressed, because, well, as a terrorist she probably has enough of a cause already. It finishes badly: she gets blown up and he walks away unscathed. Unscathed? Often enough they’d talk about food. She was sure he didn’t eat properly. Once they bumped into each other in town. She called him from across the road, her very smart, from work, and him in his dirty farm clothes munching from a bag of tortilla chips. “They are organic. Got some nuts too, which are very healthy. Want some? Err, have you had lunch yet.” “No, I’m just going home to have some.” “See you Monday then.” January brought heavy snow, and she missed a couple of classes. Him waiting in the carpark, listening to Nguyên Lê, noticing a big grey car flashing its warning lights to say goodbye to the car behind. February came, she came back, and they talked about the Chinese New Year. The Year of the Ox hadn’t been kind to horses, but the Year of the Tiger would be okay, because tigers get on very well with horses. “Really?” In Chinese astrology, she was a horse and so was he. Highly emotional, and rather fickle. Creative too. “Do you write poetry then?” “Only when I’m in love.” They’d already arrived so he didn’t have the time to ask her how often this happened. He wouldn’t have asked her anyway, because she’d said it with a big full stop at the end. Some people are so good at punctuation. The last time they met it was another rainy night. “Climate change: winter is getting longer and summer shorter.” She laughed. He almost missed the turn again, but on purpose this time. “Granada, you said, right?” “Right. We’ll do it one day, hey?” “Sure!” Sure: why do words so often say the opposite of what they mean? Because language is biological: slippery and mischievous. She was fidgety, nervous, electric. “Let’s run down to the dojo.” That was great. Running together is even better than walking. They were giggly like puppies playing as they charged in to warm themselves at the fire. She knocked things over as she was hanging up her coat. “Feeling rather funny tonight.” “Do I have that effect on you?” At the end of the session she stayed lying down long after the teacher had told them to get up. He thought she must have fallen asleep. “No. I just wasn’t listening.” “Happens to me too. Often”. She spent most of the journey back jabbing at her phone. Everything went oppressively quiet. In tensing up, the cells in her muscles seemed to pull in the molecules of the air around her. The nearby molecules tried to pull in the far-away molecules, stretching the fabric of the atmosphere like a drumskin. Speech would be difficult because however quietly you spoke you’d be frightened the words would reverberate tinnily, bouncing around on their own for ever and making no sense at all. Only once she’d opened the door did he dare open his mouth to wish her goodnight. “Sleep well.” “You too.” But it was the answering machine. One Sunday in March he fell off a ladder changing a fluorescent tube, hit his head on the barn floor and died. The last thought in his mind was a squalid one: a friend had once said that the husband of the girl who’d broken his heart was so useless he couldn’t even change a lightbulb. (Dear reader, henceforth banish all unkind thoughts lest death seize you in the grip of one. Much worse than being taken to hospital with dirty underclothes.) In his life he’d fallen off high scaffolding and walked away unscathed. He’d fallen off horses at frenzied gallop, striking his head against jagged rocks. He’d fallen asleep driving along a busy road, and woken to find the car neatly parked on the opposite verge. He’d fallen in love. So, so much in love. Seven days of falling. Such a deep well. So much falling. So many more than nine lives. It was always he who waited for her in the carpark, watching the carlights and listening to EST. (He never minded.) But that Monday she waited for him. Quite a while before taking the road south. At the turning she carried straight on. She drove through Andorra without noticing. Dawn had long risen when she stumbled exhausted from the car into the orange-blossom fragrance of Granada in the springtime. |
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