Grey grey grey, the sky sits heavy on my chest. Heavy on my house, up in the clouds, skyscrapers to the south disappearing in the fog. One night it snowed, fat flakes settling on the roofs and trees and terraces below my windows but by the morning it had rained off, dissolved back into the air and the earth and the sky. Every day I take a walk without an umbrella and every day I am soaked through when I return, mist-rain, damp-rain, spittle on your face. It’s enough to make you miss the cold.
One night I am awoken by banging at my door. Someone has set fire to the café under my building and we collect in the street in nightclothes and coats, watching the awning go up in flames. It occurs to me suddenly that the entire thing might burn down, up, explode, spread along the cramped medieval street where the upper floors lean towards each other, trying to touch, but this thought is more curious than anything else. Three fire trucks appear and douse the awning with thick jets of water and after a while we all go back to bed and the next day I leave for a pre-planned trip and it begins to rain and I’m glad of it, then, keeping my home damp and safe while I am away. Ofcourse, I didn’t know at the time that someone had set fire to it, thought it was an electrical fault or some kind of freak accident and I only read about the arson when I’m already in another country. Something about a dispute with the café owner. He came back in the night and set fire to the place. Once again, endlessly, repeatedly I think Perhaps you could have just dealt with your feelings instead of trying to burn the world down.
The night of the fire it had been ten years since the attacks. I thought about it day and night although when it appeared in conversation I refused to talk about it, changed the subject, because there are some things it is important to block out entirely in order to live your life without the constant paralysing shadow of fear. I had only been here a few weeks at the time and we had spent the day at the photo fair and we were supposed to meet in the neighbourhood that night but his family dinner ran on and so we did not. I was safe at home. Two nights later I was at Republique with the mourning crowds and there was a noise like gunshots and we screamed and ran, scattering up the boulevards, hiding behind cars, banging on the closed doors of restaurants and bars and apartment buildings, thinking it was beginning again. I ran to his house because he was the only safety I knew in the city and perhaps he was kind but all I remember is that as I sat at his small table and unwrapped the charcuterie from his fridge he told me off for cutting the saucisson wrong. And here I am talking about it, said I wouldn’t talk about it, memories creep forward, crawling out from the dark.
Life goes on but its mostly in my head. My body becomes something separate, the flesh frame where I store my brain; I am surprised to notice my nails growing, that time is passing in the real world while I live in the imaginary. The people in the book are real, become real, I see their silvery forms in the city. I mourn their deaths, they all keep dying, I can’t bear all the dying. I fantasise that one day I will go to the archive and all the documents will have disappeared, because I imagined it all, because none of them died or at least not in those ways but rather at the end of a quiet and peaceful and ordinary life, retired to the countryside, quilt over knees by a fire. Instead they keep dying and I keep stepping into the room a moment too late, over and over, and I can’t unwind time can’t push it back, can’t get there anything but too late too late too late, trapped in the endless infinite aftermath.
The orbit loops, swooping close, claws in my shoulders, pressing me to the ground and then its gone again, spinning off into the distance so far gone I can’t see it but I know it’s always a return journey. Temporary reprieve.
Ah, but what is there to do. Only small things left. Flowers on the table. Glass of wine in the bath like a sad woman in a film. Butcher for chicken thighs, watch him carve out the bone. Feed myself. Write late into the night, writing the past to make a future. Walks, walks, endless walks, scuffing leaves beneath my feet, watching the seasons change suddenly then slowly, as if they remembered they have months to shed, that it need not come all at once.