Upon This Day That I Thought Would Never Come

She decided that she would buy flowers that day. Or just one, rather, a red one perhaps, one of the long stemmed zinnias that would compliment the white vase that sat on her desk. And a red ribbon, yes, that would go nicely.

But first there were things to do, places to see, errands to run. The clock struck eleven when she left, each tone falling on her ears like a leaden circle. Eleven, said the clock, and she walked more quickly.

The market street was crowded, she noticed, for a Saturday morning, but she paused in front of a stand at the market that she had never seen before. A man had set up a radio on a table littered with books and various useless objects that would eventually find their ways onto dusty shelves and into forgotten cabinets. And though she could not understand the Arabic words that were coming through the radio with a rhythm like the clatter of a broken machine, they had the air of a Muslim televangelist. A paperback Koran with characterized figures on the front was set up next to the radio. Is this what they have come to? she thought, unable to tell if she should laugh or be sad. Have they too stooped to this level of metallic spiritual conversion that leaves nothing but the taste of bitter minerals in one’s newly holy mouth? But the clock ringed her neck with the leaden circle of half past eleven, and she moved on.

The man who sold the honey was kind, and he patiently explained the types of honey, and the types of flowers, and how the field and the climate and the bees all change the subtle flavors of the sweet natural nectar. She imagined this man, jolly under his hat, golden under the Provençal afternoon sun, softly guiding those tiny creatures that could so harm him had he not been so kind and gentle with his movements. And it was this image of him, almost childish, alone in a field of lavender, or of daisies, in his hat, that convinced her to buy a little jar, one with his name printed on the front, as if people would acknowledge it before dipping their greedy spoons into the liquid gold of his afternoon labors.

She imagined the way the sun reflected in the gold of the honey as she thanked him and walked away. Behind her, she heard his voice, calling out to the next customer, asking them if they would like to hear about his honey, about his fields, about his bees. His quiet voice that dripped his product in its smoothness was replaced by the soft ivory sounds of a piano, their source invisible. All she saw was the bleached sides of building that had seen too much sun, and the empty streets of a quiet Saturday morning.

A little boy was playing soccer by himself in the next street over. The melancholy chimes of the clock were replaced by the steady beat of the ball as it hit the wall, and fell back, then met his foot again. She wondered what he dreamt of becoming, what he dreamt of living his life as. Perhaps as a soccer player, appropriately, as all little boys do.

She was suddenly jealous of him, that little boy alone in the alley, with his soccer ball and his dreams. He still had so much time. As she walked farther away, she could hear the clock chiming again instead of the rhythm of his future career goals. From what church was this melancholy toll coming, in this city of so many churches? Perhaps the one by the university, whose steeple was topped with an odd formation of rusty metal, a contrast to the worn stone of its walls. She had sat there once, in the park where few people go, beneath the church with the steeple so out of place. And she had felt like that twisted formation of unidentifiable metal, so different, so distinguishable, so banal, compared to the violet flowers peaking their shy Spring faces from the soil. Was she, like the metal atop the steeple, blessed to be close to a place so holy, or simply a disgrace to its beauty? She was not sure.

Or perhaps the toll was coming from the chapel near the 12th century gothic palace that so marked the little town. She always found herself there, in that empty square that opened onto the palace like a wide mouth, when the bells were ringing. She imagined herself, a pope, eight centuries prior, yawning out a barred window at the crowds below who came each Saturday for the scraps of the Church’s breakfast. The present day population liked to forget about said hypocrisy. The palace was certainly a source of income for the little town, and the park that overlooked its majesty had a fountain, and ducks. And there, people that didn’t belong in the little town could look out over the red roofs of houses they’d never stepped foot in and over the gently flowing water of the river they’d never touched. And there, the people could read books in languages in which they were not originally written, and talk in all the tongues of the world.

The leaden circles fell, and she walked on, past the boy with his soccer ball, and the church with Indian faces carved into its three hundred old door, and wall whose graffiti accumulation she noted each time she passed. The line at the post office was longer than normal, so she patiently stood, with her paper, and her intended destination, and thought of the places the others’ packages would go. She loved that feeling, that feeling of opening a box and knowing that the air inside was a little taste of that home an ocean away. Perhaps if she heightened her sense of smell, she could catch a waft of that scent that she had nearly forgotten. She closed her eyes and opened her nose, but smelled nothing but recently bronzed skin and salt. Perhaps the receiver of her own letter, when he opened it, would smell that scent, that distinguishing odor of the south of France in the middle of summer.

She smelled herself, her skin, her hair, and wondered if she too smelled of it. Did she look it? When she kept her jaw straight, her her hair dark, and her back taunt, could she pass as one of them? Or would she always be different, distinguishable, a foreigner in the place she had grown to call her home.

Yes, she thought, this is my home. When she walked by the cafe that sold tartines, on white square plates, the man with the apron always nodded and said hello, and exchanged pleasantries, and sometimes even joked with her. And ice cream shop man, the one with the tattoos on his arms and a big jolly mustache that contrasted his skin streaked in blue lines of forgotten memories, he knew her too. He gave her the biggest scoops when she came in with a smile. And the man who sold her sandwiches at noon, he knew that she liked the orange sauce best, although sometimes the white sauce was just as good, if not better. And the man at her favorite bar, why, he gave her two doses of nerve-easing (or nerve-tensing, depending) tequila for the price of one. They all knew her, knew her name, knew little bits and pieces of her story, but did they only know her as the foreigner? She would never know.

Upon leaving the post office she had intended to buy Gaston Leroux’s Phantom of the Opera in its original language, but she was distracted by Charles Baudelaire’s Fleurs du Mal in pocket edition. She bought it from a quiet smiling man who calmly asked if she could place her two coins closer to him. And as he searched for change in his little box, which had been previously buried under something Zola, or perhaps Balzac had written a century and a half before, she noted that she had just purchased Baudelaire’s Fleurs du Mal from a smiling cripple, alone in his dusty shop full of memories of the past. She gently thanked him, and walked into the sunshine of the present.

She regretted her next errand, only because it stole her from the quaint little town that secretly was still functioning in a time period from centuries before, and cast her into the bright silver street that actively remembered the present date and year. She noted that there had been an increase of somewhat dirty young anarchists in the recent weeks. She wondered what they did there all day with their dogs, and how they fed the dogs, and how they fed themselves. There was a man who painted himself silver each and every day, and his hat too, and his shoes, and his pants and shirt. She never saw him posing, pretending, acting. She simply saw him sitting with a particular young man who often wore a beige, billowing shirt beneath his dreadlocks. She was at once saddened by what their young lives had become, and overwhelmed with the sudden realization that she had never seen either of the young men frown.

The night before, she had ridden her bike through the streets to the Opera. She sat in her red velvet seat in the balcony, fanning herself, immersing herself in the mind of a long deceased genius, listening to his thoughts as projected in black and white on a score that would be so many times reproduced and interpreted. Yes, she thought at the time, this is culture. This is happiness. This is pure emotion as my ears understand it. The applause was sensational after the conductor violently turned the last page of the heavy score, and after he sharply sliced the air in front of him with his baton to signal the end of one of the greatest musical masterpieces ever written. The clapping went on for minutes on end, punctuated by tasteful cheers. The soloists bowed five times, perhaps even six. She was delighted, she cheered and clapped along with the grinning crowd. And then she looked at the faces of the performers and noted that they themselves were not smiling, except the four soloists in front. But their lips were trembling as lips do when they hold a smile for too long without emotion. And suddenly she realized that although they had all played their parts, they had perfected their notes and rhythms and articulation and dynamics and trills and subtle nuances of a musical masterpiece, their faces displayed only the emotion of one who had spent the last hour in a somewhat uncomfortable chair, smothered by an instrument that had become like a heavy extra limb, reading black notes on a white page.

But these two here, these young anarchists, as she called them, these two with their dreadlocks and their billowy shirts and their mangy dogs and their rancid breath, she had never seen them frown. Suddenly, she was embarrassed of herself, of being ravished at the Opera, of carrying her shopping bags through the streets of the little town, of complaining when her shoes didn’t match her new outfit. She had no right to be dissatisfied.

The sole leaden ring that fell from the blue sky at one o’clock in the afternoon nearly strangled her as she realized that, once again, she had forgotten to stop time before losing herself in her thoughts. And though she had accumulated Baudelaire’s Fleurs du Mal, and mused over the emotional and mental state of those who spend their days immersed in the work of someone who would never hear them play it, she had not accomplished her designated task for the day. She would buy flowers that day, or one, rather. A long stemmed zinnia, with red petals and a red ribbon that matched.

As she walked back to her house, she couldn’t help but thing how much more beautiful a beautiful woman looked when carrying a flower. There was a certain loveliness about it, something about her stature, something about the mystery those delicate petals contained. For whom had she bought the flower? Whose lips would grace her own in thanks for such an unexpected but lovely gift? And she thought of this as she passed for the last time the cafe with the man who always stood outside, his hands on his hips, and his apron blowing gently in the wind.

But he was not there to see her pass by, and nor would she be there to watch the petals slowly fall off of the flower that was still so new and fresh and young. The red would look like drips of blood on the desk where she had so often sat, so often mused, so often wrote. But in a few more hours, no more leaden circles would fit about her neck, and she would have to yield to their weight, she would have to leave that desk chair, that room, that house, that little town, that somehow had become her home, whether or not she had wanted it to be. And nothing would be left but the glowing face of a flower that would too one day realize that too many hours had passed, too many days, and would fade, as if it were ashamed of its age.

But until then, it could remain solitary, alive, beautiful, in the room that had seen her lust, and had buried her sorrow, and smelled her home country when she opened packages sent from that land so far away. It would bathe in the golden light that streamed through her curtains on clear mornings, and it would hear the music from the invisible piano downstairs, and it would feel the breeze from the open windows on refreshing evenings. And though the leaden circles would one day weigh down the delicate neck of the flower, and make it bow to the incontestable power of Time, at least she could prolong her own presence in that room and in that country that she couldn’t bear the thought of leaving.

The sky had become blue in the hours that had passed, and the trees had taken on a new shade of green that she had never seen before. It was with this natural palette that she painted her sentiments, and colored her heart, and remarked suddenly as she saw the product of her inner most creativity that nothing in the world could equal this happiness that she felt in this moment, with a red flower in her hand and her feet on the path that she had walked so many times. And with this realization she opened the gate to her house that squeaked, led by the leaden circles, and in doing so she had come home for the very first time.