While the work is being put up, you hang around.
Because I think you expect it, I don’t ask you where your contribution is. I ask you what you think.
‘About?’
‘All this …’ I gesture around the room, filling up with paintings, sketches, sculpture.
‘I want to see what it looks like when it’s finished.’
And I find it hard to get another word out of you. But I see that you watch carefully, where everything is being placed. Right now I have no time to question why or wonder. This is my first event, it must be impressive, and it must somehow validate … something.
I leave late that evening, after all the children’s artworks have been put up. It’s looking, I think, quite lovely. What a pity you aren’t part of it. I’m tempted to place some of the paper figures you’ve gifted me in a corner, but desist. This is your choice and I must respect it. You did not feel involved enough in this class to wish to participate.
The next day, I arrive early at school and head to the exhibition hall. But someone else has been there earlier. Or that’s what the security guard tells me. ‘One of your students,’ he says. ‘Said she had your permission … special permission … to place something in the room. She had a lot of stuff with her …’
‘What do you mean?’ Panic pricks my chest. ‘Which student? What was she carrying?’
He shrugs. Clearly not comprehending why I would be worried. ‘Scissors … paper … art stuff like that …’
‘I didn’t give anyone permission to do anything.’
Finally, he seems a touch concerned. ‘You didn’t?’
I shake my head.
He fumbles with the door, unlocking it and drawing it open. We make our way briskly down the corridor.
In my head, I imagine everything in ruins. Paintings ripped out of their frames, shredded and sliced to strips. Canvas torn, sculpture thrown across the floor, smashed to pieces. I can barely conceal my anger. Who could have done this? And why? For a flickering moment I think of you, and force myself to discard the idea. I have no proof. And why would the first person I think of be you? Perhaps because of your sullenness, your plummeting moods, your aloofness. But you haven’t been that way all the time. You’ve never struck me as vindictive. Still, who knows? Children can be strange creatures. I try to shake it out of my head before we enter the hall. The security guard and I are silent.
I step in and everything is in its place, just as we left it the previous evening. Nothing seems to have been touched or broken or moved.
‘All okay?’ asks the guard.
I nod.
‘Well, that’s a relief.’
And then I see it. What you’d come in for, earlier this morning.
At the door leading outside, on the other side of the room, a curtain of white.
I can’t really tell what it is, fabric or ribbon, until I walk closer.
Paper cranes. String after string. I stir them gently, and they rustle against my hand. Pristine white. Neat and even. Made with industrious care.
They are a thousand, I am certain even without counting.
They say folding a thousand cranes will grant you a wish.
I wonder what it is you’ve wished for.
I hope so much it will come true.
I LOVE YOU. I almost hit you.
You’re lodged in a corner, screaming at me, and I raise my hand. I can still see your eyes widen, your mouth round into a silent ‘O’ as the words die in your throat from surprise. And fear.
The evening didn’t start out this way. No, we didn’t start out this way.
Years ago, I remember. I see you across a bonfire on New Year’s Eve. All soft and glowing, lit by the light of the flames. I’m rolling a joint and you catch my eye. After that, millions of sideward glances, a small smile or two, laughter. A reshuffling of places as people stand to refill their drinks, use the loo, seek cigarettes and matches. At some point, we find ourselves seated next to each other. I pass you a joint and you take delicate puffs, most of the smoke escaping your mouth. I wish I could say something witty, or smart. That I could quote a line from a book or something, so that whatever we might share after this, however extended or fleeting, would always have this beginning. Instead, when you hand the joint back, I hear myself say, ‘Good stuff, no?’
And in an instant, everything becomes forgettable.
You’re older.
I’ve just begun university and you’re in your final year.
‘Please don’t ask “what next” …’
I was about to, but protest, saying I wasn’t, and comment on the weather instead. Something truly meaningful about it being cold. You make no reply.
Fuck. It’s some terribly banal conversation I’m attempting. But you make me nervous. Even if I’ve just met you, I feel I must appear more than I am, or have ever been. A better version of myself, shinier, somehow more brilliant. Much later, I will put it down to something simple. Awe. Like you’re some rare bird visiting a garden. Stupid as it might sound, at the time it feels like a privilege, that you should choose me. I’ve never been gladder that I left home, a small town in the east of the country, and moved to the capital, the city without a river. I’ve always had a sense that everything beyond is so much larger, that it moves to crazy rhythms, and contains people like you. That night, I sit next to you, joint following joint, expanding my senses into the sky. This is what it was like, I think, for explorers, perched on the brink of an expedition. You an undiscovered continent. A land that hasn’t been charted. And in a way, for me, the world.
That night around the bonfire a discussion breaks out.
We’re an odd group. All of us having headed out for the weekend to this hill station. Cheap. Good weed. Popular with backpackers. The place we’re staying in has a terrace, and there we all congregate. Some foreigners, some locals, a large college bunch from the city. It isn’t yet midnight, but late enough for a friendly buzz rising with the fumes of cheap alcohol. Small talk has been made, travel stories swapped. Time then for drunken philosophizing.
Someone asks, ‘What would you do if it could be seen?’
‘What?’ I ask. I haven’t been paying attention.
‘Grief.’
I say I don’t understand.
Future grief in the face of someone you’ve just met.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Grief that you will cause. Someone you will be with. If you could see it, would it deter you? Or would you be willing to take the risk, test the prophecy?’
I say I would.
A clash of opinions come flooding in. It’s cruel. No, surely now that one is aware, it can be avoided. Yet, isn’t that the thing about prophecies? They are self-fulfilling. The argument continues. I lose interest. You, I notice, remain quiet.
Later, I go back to the room of a French tourist. It isn’t my first time. I’d slept with a girl in my hometown a few months before I left for the city. We had lain naked on the bed of a friend’s ground-floor bedroom, and heard abuses hurled through the darkened window, along with the clatter of stones on the roof.
‘What’s happening?’ she had asked in fright.
‘Someone saw us,’