Chapter 4: We Meet
I know what you want me to say.
You want me to say that the moment I looked at the man who sat down next to me, I recognized the man of my dreams, maybe even of yours.
I can’t!
First of all, given the dark, almost all I could see was someone trying to fold his long lean self up into the five parts needed to fit into an Economy seat, his knees finally ending up somewhere under his chin. One felt for him, I’ll give you that. Just not much.
Once sorted, he started talking. He apologized for the note. A daft thing to do. It’s just that it had been a long flight, noticed my light still on, hoped I wouldn’t mind. Maybe I remembered himω I had asked him the time back in the airport.
No, I didn’t remember him.
Nor did I know, wouldn’t have believed anyway, that for him it had been love at first sight. Yes! Just like that! Straight out of a dime novel, if you must.
In the future, he would claim it was the topee I had been wearing that first caught his eye – a light-weight version of all those pith helmets you see in war movies starring the British Army, only this one with large hand-painted pastel-coloured flowers splashed all over the brim and bought for a song in Greenwich Village. (That same topee, by the way, is near me even now as I type, sitting up there on top of a bookshelf waiting for tiffin.)
I looked at him.
The Z formation apart, this is what I saw: scruffy hair, scruffy beard, and dressed in the fashion of men who put on the first thing they see in their closet, that’ll do.
We exchanged casual information, the way strangers do, where we had just been (New York, him; Memphis, me), where we were going (back to some place in England, him; back to Oxford, me). Only he did it all in broad A’s and funny expressions, anyway, funny to an American, however long I had lived in England (not that long). While I did it in an accent that, by now, would have confounded Henry Higgins - a bit of this, a bit of that, monkey see, monkey do, anything to fit in.
He reached up and turned on his light.
Scruffy, yes. But oddly distinguished, too, why is thatω (It’s the voice, I think, and a profile that wouldn’t go badly on a coin.)
And then he began telling me about his trip to America. How it was his first international flight ever, indeed, the trip out had been his first flight ever. And how he had been bowled over by America, he had had no idea, its size alone! All this to the extent that, his first two days, he almost forgot why he had come. (He had a little model-manufacturing business he was trying to get off the ground, find stockists for, that’s why).
But then he made a bargain with himself: if he got up early, really early, and knocked on this many doors, no less than, he would let himself off for the rest of the day, drink it all in, everything - the Empire State building, the Staten Island ferry, Grand Central Station, the subway (the subwayω).
I held my book close. I hadn`t let myself in for a travelogue, had Iω O gawd! Still, I had raised my hand, after all. Fair’s fair.
Still, after awhile, I became the one actually drinking it in, this man enthusing about my country. As he talked, memories of the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War, all those assassinations, the drugs, the guns, all of it, fading to give way to that other America, the one the headlines leave out but just as true.
So that I even followed him (happily enough, too) on the one real indulgence he had allowed himself on his trip, had saved up for – a train ride all across America. A ride that took us under just those same beautiful for spacious skies (both of us craning our necks looking up at them through the observation car`s glass dome) that I was leaving behind.
Still, by the time we got to the Pacific, I was ready to step off the train, turn to my travelling companion, thank him so much, so enjoyable!, have a good trip home! All the more as there in the dark, the shadowy figures of the Prince, Don Calogero, Tancredi, and Angelica were once again beckoning. (If I have left out Concetta, so, alas, did they.)
And so I arranged my face in apologetic mode, made a rather great display of opening my book, turned to him, “Thank you so much, so ….”
I stopped. Something was wrong. His whole expression had changed; all that ebullience, where was itω Was he illω He suddenly looked terrible, stricken. Perhaps instead of the Buoef (sic) de Luxe he had chosen the Chicken a la King and mistaken (all too easy to do) the plastic wrapping for the chicken. That would explain it, that would explain anything. But then, when he began to talk again, so low at first I could barely hear him, I noticed a slight stutter.
“That train trip ... I left out something ... a d-decision."
Inside me, alarm bells.
“An ... important decision.”
The alarm bells changed to a loud clanging, whole fire engines rushing about. Oh gawd, he wasn`t going to do this to me, was heω Please, please, go back to America! Go back to your seat! Please, let me just read my book!
But did I actually say thatω Of course not. Instead, I would soon hear myself punctuating the story of his empty, empty empty empty, marriage with the same faux Agony Aunt sounds I always came up with, WHYω
He had been married twelve years. (Ummm). It had been a mistake from the start. He had been desperately unhappy. (Tsk.) He had made her desperately unhappy. (Oooo.) He had promised till death do them part. He didn’t break promises. (Ooooooo.) Or he thought he didn’t. Now he knew himself to be the kind of person who would. (Awww.) Because there on that train, time to think, he had decided that that was just what he was going to do. (Ooh ah.)
I looked surreptitiously at his watch. I reckoned I had, say, another hour to go. Time to take in the mother-in-law (hers, unspeakable). The other man (a real ladies` man, he had tried to warn her, wouldn`t listen). Or even, maybe, the other woman (just an old friend, really). The extravagance (hers). The broken promises, his (oops! I mean, hers).
Then, once he finished, I would tell him (this wouldn`t take long, say, five minutes) how we all make mistakes, how there are two sides to every story, how one door shuts and another one opens.
And then, just maybe, I could get back to a Prince who would rather die than say any of those things. (In fact, the man I was sitting next to would rather die than say any of those things. In fact, the man I was sitting next to had meant every word he had said. But how could I have known thatω I mean, you know, grey shoes, I ask you.)
And so I sat back and waited for the rest.
But there was no ‘rest’.
He had finished. That was it.
“Thank you”, he said. “And, well, that`s it, that`s all.”
All whatω
I unfolded my arms. He wasn’t going to leave it at that, was heω
“That’s itω”
"Yes."
After his ‘confession’, he had looked mortified. Now he looked confused: “Whyω”
What I didn’t understand was that this man had come from a culture whose inhabitants still resisted (even in these enlightened times) blabbing everything. So much so that he thought (still does, would you believe) that that was what he had just done.
I felt miffed, cheated. I can`t explain that.
I took up my book. Again.
“Look", he said, "apologies! I had no right to go on like that. Just couldn`t help it. Please, apologies! Change of subject!"
He looked quickly around, as if the subject he could change to would suddenly hang down from the ceiling on a piece of string.
Then he stopped short, got there!
"England! " he blurted out, "You know what I think about America. What do you think about Englandω Living in England!"
An entreating look followed. (Nice eyes, actually. Oh gawd!)
My heart sank. It was more than just the book, of course it was. It had been savouring1 that chance to feel, way up there miles away from everything and everyone, as I so rarely felt - unassailable. And this man, someone I had nothing in common with, would never see again, had stolen - with no malicious intent (anything but) - that chance.
Worse still, stolen it as so often before, with my own complicity. For I had come from a culture in which manners were all. Between death and not saying “Thank you”, choose death.
“Tell you what I think about living in Englandω”, I replied, closing my book, yet again, on the Prince (Che passa, signoraω), "Love to!"
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1. Note to American speakers: I realize that that`u` in `savouring` is very worrying. But, believe me, I haven`t gone native. It`s just that I live over here, my computer has an English spellcheck, and it makes a lot of words look funny. (Funny to us.) But what can I doω If I use an American spellcheck, it will look funny over here. And, heck, I live here. So can I assume that, from now on, when you see a perfectly normal word spelled somehow backwards (savoUr, centRE), you`ll just accept it and move onω Please. Thanks.