The lostpostcard I found itinside his favourite book, I ...
The lostpostcard
I found itinside his favourite book, I promised him I’d read but never finished because Ididn’t have time. It was sitting on page five hundred and eight. We’ve beenusing museum tickets, plane tickets, postcards, receipts and all sorts ofthings as bookmarks and then forget them there. The next time we rediscoveredthem, they summoned memories to mind, also forgotten.
I picked upthe postcard. The thick paper felt dry against my fingertips, and the colourshad begun to turn a faint sepia shade". The weathered marble statue of adying Achilles, pulling an arrow from his heel, filled the front of thepostcard, and at the bottom, golden letters proclaimed "AchilleionPalace" in an archaic-looking font.
It was thepostcard from the trip to Corfu island, our last holiday. We booked the ticketsfor September because it was cheaper, but it still felt like the heart ofsummer. We caught the bus in Corfu town to Achilleion, where we made our way onfoot to the palace. The cicadas around us drowned out all other sounds,attacking our ears with white noise, while the crisp, resinous aroma of theMediterranean cypress trees filled our lungs.
On our wayout, we visited the souvenir shop, where tourists were browsing a variety ofitems, from keychains and statuettes to handmade soaps made from lavender andherbs, and jewellery fashioned after Empress Sissi of Austria, who hadcommissioned the palace. To commemorate our visit, we got the postcard and anoval pin with Achilles engraved on it to add on the wall.
I placedInfinite Jest on the coffee table. I moved across the study, postcard in hand,towards the northern wall, where, almost two decades ago, I had drawn anoutline of a political world map that covered the surface from top to bottom,with clear borders defining each country using black acrylic paint. Every timewe visited a country, we filled in the corresponding space with colour andsmall memorabilia. Iceland was painted ivory-blue for its glacial ice, and alight red chunk of lava rock we picked up from Kerið Crater was protruding inits midst. Italy was painted light green with a magnet of the Colosseum at itscapital and a miniature Vesuvius right next to Naples. It was a crazy idea ofmine that gave us an excuse to visit the world and become collectors of coloursand culture, a puzzle we craved to piece together.
The pin ofAchilles stood attached on the island of Corfu, in the north-west of Greece,which was painted in the light blue colours of the sea and the sky. Delphi wasrepresented by a wooden sphynx, and a marble fridge magnet of the Acropolistowered over Athens. The magnet was so heavy it had fallen countless timesuntil it broke in half; we had to superglue it back together and then to thewall to secure it.
The medleyof textures and hues produced a vivid visual mosaic, which contrasted with theemptiness of the unexplored countries. Our love for manga, bonsai, picturesquecherry blossoms, and the dramatic waves of Katsushika Hokusai drew us to Japanas our next destination. But before our excursion we needed to save because thetrip was going to be long and costly. That didn’t dishearten him, however;instead, he said it was all for the best because we would get the chance tolearn some Japanese before we left. And then our plans got interrupted, and thefour islands of the Japanese Archipelago remained blank.
It's funnyhow things sometimes turn out, realising how out of our control our lives trulyare, even when we pretend we’re on top of things and schedule entries in ourcalendars of obligations and things to come. I was at work when I received thecall. It was as if the world had lost its cadence and the earth retreatedbeneath my feet. What was the man on the phone saying? He was offering someformulaic kind words, the sort one hears in a news statement after a planecrash or a catastrophic bridge collapse.
“What?” Iasked.
Themonotonous voice of the caller spoke more words, words that didn’t seem to makesense at first because the stillness inside my chest drowned them out.
“I see. Yes,I understand. Which hospital? Yes, yes, thank you”. I ended the call.
Fiveidentical walnut desks around the office screamed with laughter and bustlingcolleagues going about their business, but an invisible barrier grounded myears in a consuming tinnitus buzz. The days after the accident are stillundefined in my mind as if waking up from a deep sleep, blurred-eyed,stumbling, disorientated flashbacks of images behind wet window frames. I spentthem sitting on the sofa, staring at the incomplete wall map, the missingcountries that would never earn their mementoes and distinctive colours, andremain empty.
Time passed.His scent slowly faded from his pillow, the bonsai tree we had grown from theseed of the great oak tree in Campbell Park, withered, and I needed to feel himagain. He was my Infinite Jest. I fished his favourite book and came across thepostcard, which now rested in my arms.
I reachedfor a pushpin from the desk drawer and attached the postcard in the centre ofthe map.
