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It's in the air we breathe
Ten in the morning. He is still in his pyjamas, standing at the open window staring down the day. Something in the spring-scented morning reminds him of his youth.
- By Kevin Martin, Special to Gulf News
- Published: 23:20 November 7, 2008
Ten in the morning. He is still in his pyjamas, standing at the open window staring down the day. Something in the spring-scented morning reminds him of his youth.
It is amazing, he thinks, how many textures and shapes one can conjure up with just one breath of balmy air. There's a garden somewhere in that single inhalation, neatly squared beds of earth with plants, some bursting with buds, some already in a riot of colourful blooms.
Somewhere there in the garden is his mother, a hat on her head, back bent over a patch of flowers, a wicker basket slung over her left forearm, green gardening gloves up to the elbow.
There's a little brown spaniel chained to the gatepost, putting out little attention-getting whining sounds. There's his youngest sister, toddling all over the garden - the same one she inherited 25 years later and from which she brought forth the most wondrous, prize-winning roses.
Somewhere, in that very same breath of air, is the deliciously wafting aroma of a Sunday roast or, maybe not roast but toast ... toast that's beginning to burn...
And this new, pungent intrusion swiftly draws the man at the window back to the present. He flees with the speed permitted to a fifty-something to the kitchen but is too late to prevent the tragedy that's written into the destiny of an unsupervised slice of toast.
He throws open the nearest window to dispel the acrid fumes of a breakfast set in downward spiral mode. From the window he sees the black car just outside his front gate, the passenger window rolled down.
In a swift reflexive gesture - still guilty about the toast and not wanting to be pinned down as the source from where the 'burning' is emanating - he pulls the window shut and drops the blinds as well.
Five or ten seconds into this feeling of security he suddenly feels a nudge somewhere in the corner of his mind. A thought is trying to free itself and crystallise before him, despite his preoccupation with toast fumes. Whose car is that outside the gate?
That is the thought, when eventually it emerges. Quickly, like a runner-up in a photo finish at the Olympics, another thought assails him: And who is the man in the passenger seat?
Then, in a flurry come the other runners in the 'thought race'. And what was the man holding in his hands - both hands?
And was he really pointing it at the front door? Or was it the window at which he'd been standing before the toast started to burn?
Surviving the thought race
Somewhere inside him a biological reaction is taking place. Chemicals and enzymes are either ebbing and flowing in greater or lesser quantities, upsetting his natural equilibrium, turning his knees spongy.
His legs are developing an aqueous effect, threatening to flow out from under him. Summoning up courage he had no idea he possessed, he creeps along the wall until he is back at the window.
Cautiously, very cautiously, as though in a war zone, he moves his head until one eye can get a quick glance of the scene outside.
A flash erupts from the car, blinding him almost. He jerks his head back, hitting the bookshelf a severe blow. Then he shouts, 'Stop shooting!' One part of his mind is trying to ask: But where's the bullet?
He disregards this and continues pleading. Then he hears a voice over his, shouting back: 'Do you mind very much?' 'No, I don't,' he yells, not knowing what he's agreeing to. 'Okay thanks,' the voice outside shouts back. 'I'm just taking as many pictures of different buildings. It's for an assignment. I'm a student. Studying property and real estate.'
Inside, the man draws another, long breath and smells ebbing fear. It reminds him of another day altogether. Another time, when he'd had a bad dream, awoke and found his mother there in black, but smiling.
Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney.
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