A Meeting

The sun was rolling towards the west when I finally reached the station. I was tired and hungry, and the green-gold shadows cast by the stunted trees of the city I was about to leave forever reminded me of the cool, grey cloister of my childhood home. I am not given to nostalgia. I thought of that distant time as a convenience lost. Children are never tired or hungry for long. 

I checked the announcements and noticed, with a relieved sigh, that my train had already arrived at the platform. Dragging my dead-weight suitcase with renewed vigour, I cut through the bustle quickly. Crowds repel me, The customary checklist switched on in my brain: find seat, ensure suitcase is safe, slump. I was fast asleep long before the train started moving.

...

It had always seemed natural for me to associate sound with colour. A short sharp whistle was a burst of white, dizzy humming a swirly van Gogh blue, the wind a smudge of green. I was eight years old, indomitable and invincible, carrying the bruises like the war wounds of a hero. The house had a dark, eerie character to it and when the rain splattered on the glass windows, I imagined it to be drops of red. It was a bloody day. The rain was whispering secrets that I wanted to know and I was sitting with my ear stuck to the big, glass window, listening, The colours were blurred by my breath and someone was approaching the house. A red shadow, dripping, grinning and SCREEEEEEEEEEEECH..

I woke with a start. The train had come to a halt at a small station. Embarrassed for no particular reason, I was glad that my co-passengers had decided to go for a walk. I scrutinized their luggage-- large, flowery bags, baby food, a briefcase. A family of three, then. Suddenly, I felt strangely cramped. Stretching out my arms and legs, I decided to go out, itching for a smoke. 

The station was small but important. It had all the tiny shops that major stations boast of. I made a beeline for the store selling cigarettes, bought a packet and some matches. Looking for a quiet place I could smoke alone in, my eyes caught sight of a little bench at the edge of the platform. It lay just beyond the penumbra of the arc of station lights and I barely noticed the other person in the shadows when I lit a cigarette.

The smoke curled upwards in slow circles, burning each turn of the paper hanging from my mouth.

"Do you mind?" 

I looked up, through the smoke, at an outstretched hand directed at one of mine that held the matches.

"Not at all", I said, hurriedly, offering the matches to the hand.

"Thank you".

The flame illuminated a pair of bright, eager eyes for a moment and then the hand returned the matches to me. We smoked in silence for a while, two dots of red. The sky was a purplish black save for three lines of golden at the western edge of the world. The sun had set.

"The end of a day is unforgivably depressing", said my fellow red dot, almost as if he was quoting a poet. I looked up, startled to find my thoughts mirrored. 

"Yes", I said pensively.

"Except for my son. Night brings aliens to Earth", said the dot, a smile in his voice.

I thought of my own son, living with his mother in a different country.His shoulder barely came to my knees.

"Hmmm", I replied, "Are you travelling on the same train?"

"Yes", was the answer, "I'm travelling to the station two stops before the last."

"I'm going all the way to the end."

"I used to live there when I was very young."

"So did I".

Strange, I thought, to meet someone from the same place so far away.

"I'm going there on business, to sell the old house", I said, offering information.

"I left when I was young and I haven't gone back since".

"There isn't much left of the old place".

"What about the jackfruit tree?"

"What?"

"The jackfruit tree in the backyard of the big house. All the boys went there in the summers when the fruits ripened."

"That is our house, the one I'm going to sell. The tree's gone."

"Oh", said the dot, quivering ever so slightly.

"What is your name? If you knew our house, you'd probably have known me too."

"I don't know about that, I was very young when I left and I didn't have a lot of friends."

"Neither did I."

The dot grew silent. One went out, then another. The train whistled impatiently and my companion and I made our way back to the platform. As we reached the arc of station lights, I turned around to look at his face. Our eyes met and I smiled.

It was a bloody day. The rain was whispering secrets that I wanted to know and I was sitting with my ear stuck to the big, glass window, listening, The colours were blurred by my breath and someone was approaching the house. A red shadow, dripping, grinning. The shadow grew sharper until it was the figure of a young boy. He looked at me through the glass and I looked at him, my reflection. I was listening at the window and he was leaving. Our choices had diverged and we had separated. He was leaving because he had to do everything that I did not: the opposite of my decisions, the mirror of my world. He left with a look of his bright, eager eyes that said our worlds, rightside-up, upside-down, inside out and outside in, would collide again. He left through the rain and I was left, listening.

I smiled at my old friend, at myself. We shook hands and parted once more.

"I see you've done well", he said.

"So have you."