005_VERGINA

VERGINA

Vergina is a boat, a ferryboat to be more specific. It is very much like a tired animal bringing passengers, vehicles, mail and goods first from mainland to the island and then back to mainland. It is almost giving an impression that nothing ever can be forgotten or left behind.

A man and a girl sit on the deck. They look like a couple of lovers who just had a fight and now they don’t know what to do with themselves.

“When I was a little girl my most cherished desire was for you to come and visit mom and me. Why weren’t you never there?”

The question that doesn’t require an answer.

“I have written some letters he thinks for himself but only mutters:

It’s cold up here, let us go below the deck.”

They don't speak much as they dine. He has been thinking how grown up she is and she will soon leave for her studies. Who did she inherit this perseverance and confidence from?

He asked her to pay him a visit and they spent a weekend together. Now he was sorry he invited her. She is a grown up person, she is not a child anymore and it is too late for certain things. The empty space between them is too full of bad memories. Nothing happened in those three days between the two!

They would stroll along the beach, eat some ice cream, watched the sea gulls. She put some order into his flat, took care of the linen. He could live without it too. She told him she loves sea, he learned about all of her girl friends – now he doesn’t even remember what is the color of her eyes! If somebody asked… He was looking at the floor more than he took time to see her in the eye.

What was he thinking to achieve, now after all these years when everything’s gone!

After dinner they move up on the deck again for a smoke. The wind is strong and she wraps a blanket round her shoulders.

“ I wanted her to be proud of me,” he says suddenly.

“What..? She is caught by surprise.

“I wanted her to be proud of me!” repeats the sentence. “Your mother…”

He starts breathing faster. Where did that come from? Why is everything so complicated? They wasted their weekend and now…

Now the ferryboat will land and mainland will swallow her!

“I wanted to be somebody in your lives, I did all I could, tried all ways… But it didn’t work! And when there was nothing more left, not even for me I escaped. Feared of life, responsibility how the hell should I know…

He grasps the fence nervously.

“Do you think I never thought of you two? Countless of times I longed to be with you. I was trying to picture you two in my thoughts, the way you were, the way you are… I imagined me coming to your place. I’d knock on the door, defeated man, a freezing dog asking for warmth. I’d roll up in a corner and watch with hungry eyes, follow you at your everyday housework. Would just eavesdrop and listen to the sounds while stealing the warmth of the house, sucking in its smells, to have them along with me when I am alone again.

I wouldn’t disturb you while you two are ironing your linen or putting the house in order, having meaningless conversations, you know, everyday things… I would hang around till it’d work. Till you have patience with me hanging around. Till you your pity runs out. I would do exactly like I did in some other places. It is with you two I never dared.

I don’t know how to be a father, understand? I don’t recognize the pattern. It is not meant for me. I read something about it and watched others at it.. It just wasn’t meant to be. And now I have to deal with it, I have to accept it as fact.

What could I offer you two the way I am? Whatever I touch turns into dust, it just pours through my fingers. Nothing seems to be working right. I know little about anything. There is something bad in me, a sinister, destroying force, something hat hurts people. I don’t bring luck to my friends. Without me, your mother was able to arrange some kind of a normal life for her…”

She rises and steps closer to him wanting to touch him but he moves away from her hand.

He pauses for a short while and then continues:

“All these years I’ve been watching people. I admire easiness with which they desert each other, ungratefulness for what they have and what they are allowed to have and unhappiness with everything they’ve got.

And then their greediness and eagerness for having more… They’d want everything for themselves; what they own already and what belongs to others. Makes no difference to them. They want mistresses along with their spouses with their children and then they make some more. Something bites them and they swap their dears for other dears; all so simple, uncomplicated, self-understood, almost painless with no evil conscience. So damn civilized…!”

He isn’t thinking here anymore about what he is about to say. It is erupting from his inside:

“I watch for the children wherever I go. I watch them from a distance while they play, so busy with some game. That’s the way I like to watch them, in peace. They don’t see me they don’t like me, it’s how I feel. I don’t like children either as soon as I have to deal with them. I never know what they want from me and I never seem to have the right words for them. I never know what to say! I never know what they would like me to say… Watching from distance is enough for me. I try to understand them but I just scare them.”

His heart is beating faster. He catches some breath, needs air to fill his new thoughts.

“You can’t imagine my envying the man who lives with your mother! I a envy him most having you by his side when you were growing up. In my impotence to deal with this I often pictured me in his place. Like, comforting you for having fallen and hurt your knee. Or helping you with your homework.

And I can see all of my ignorance and awkwardness at it. Which just makes it all more real for me. I have this special film of mine I watch in my head. I imagine you while you are still little and I am reading you from a book before sleep. You’re in your bed and I sit next to you holding the book in one hand and your palm in my other hand. You always hold me by my hand in my dreams, you never let go of it, not even when I have to turn the page. So I always read the same page to you, from beginning to the end and then I go back from the start again. Until you fall asleep.

I’ll like the thought of you holding my hand while you sleep. I like to watch you while you sleep. I am less guilty and you don’t notice my thirst for you. Even in my dreams or thoughts I don’t dare speaking it out… And that’s where I run out of imagination!

If you told me about your first love I wouldn’t know what to what to say to you, what advice to give to you, how to help with it. How should I know anything about it? There are some things that took a turn round me, went by me, never happened to me; god almighty, what can I do about it now?

Seeing the horror of what my love is doing to those I love in their eyes is worst of all. Sooner or later we end up despising each other. Growing insensibility slowly transforms into habit. All of the sudden I am one too many.

My god, I say before I leave. Is this me? Is it all I am, just this and no more? I can’t live with hatred like that! Not like that. I prefer staying alone.

Alone with myself I can do just fine. I persist with me as if I had somebody else within me, some other being to whom I owe attention, the one I have to take care of. It is easier for me to live with that. Just for myself… I don’t know, maybe it wouldn’t be worth going on. Need sympathy to be able to survive and live and I’m afraid I don’t have any of that left for me. I have been comforting myself that I am not one too many to me.

What others reject or throw away – I save! I am used to it. I steal their moments, envy their habits. Pick up their worn out things and continue to carry them. And I am happy with it!

This is my right place, that my life! I am a garbage heap, a waste deposit for old things. I am the most and the least to myself. For everybody else I am a mess, a regular scarecrow. Unnecessary, useless, needless...”

Where did confidence come from? With words? Was it hiding under despair, looking for some understanding and a soft spot for its weariness, distress and helplessness? Well, it found it!

She embraces him round his shoulders. He seems to her a small child in need of protection. They wasted whole three days! A weekend and a lifetime…

“It’s exactly as I imagined you, its what I ever wanted and wished for!”

She rubs gently against him they embrace. He accepts her touch now!

“God, how much I love you!”

“I am here,” he says stroking her back gently, the way parents do to their little ones. "I am here!”

“Love you!” She insists with a smile.

“And I love you,” he repeats carefully after her and smiles back.

The ferryboat lands.