Perspectives

Her Old Friend

The train arrives at the District 12 station in the early morning, but it will take me hours – a whole day actually - of aimless rambling around the town before I make my way to the Victor's Village. I am amazed at how well and thriving the District looks in the light of the rising sun. Even after all these years, nearly twenty since the end of the war, buildings still look new, and I'm proud to see that there are many familiar faces from the Seam who now own their own businesses, working and trading in harmony alongside the few merchant families that had survived the bombing.

The bakery is clearly visible in the Square, and so is the blonde baker who owns it, but I steer away from both. I am not quite ready yet to face that part of my visit so early in the day. As I walk towards the meadow, I also notice that the Seam seems to exist no more, and neither does the clear, physical divide between the two classes that existed when I used to live here. To be sure, there are many more olive skinned children than blonde ones, but their features are not as distinct anymore. Also, the freedom of movement between districts is slowly eliminating the immediately discernible physical features that used to mark you to the place where you were born and destined to live in. I guess it seems strange to people of my generation, but the joyful, playing children in the streets obviously don't care. My heart fills with a sort of painful happiness when I see young teenagers laughing and walking around the Town without a care in the world. We had missed out on that sort of freedom, but I'm really glad that their parents' sacrifice during the war has secured it for them.

Technically, I'm in District 12 for Government business, to speak with the Mayor on the District's security requirements in case of natural disasters. However, that particular meeting is scheduled for tomorrow, and I am well prepared for it, allowing me time to rediscover my district. The Mayor happens to be my old friend Thom, the man who almost singlehandedly reorganised the reconstruction of the District and who's been re-elected in this position for the past three tenures. He married Delly a few years after the end of war and has fathered four children, the last one a little more than three years ago. From what he tells me, settling down with the late cobbler's daughter seems to have the best decision he ever took in his life.

The meeting that I am actually really dreading is the one that might possibly take place now, in the warm looking house in front of which I am standing, if I ever find muster enough courage to knock on the door. Thom sometimes mentions them, the Mellarks, when we talk on the phone, and I know that they are both well, and that they have a child. Johanna and Mellark have also kept in touch sporadically during the years even though I'm not sure whether I am meant to know, especially since my wife never thought fit to tell me about it. They have shared so much during their captivity that I do not even consider denying her the time to speak with someone as scarred by the Capitol as she still is. It is a part of her life, of her pain, that I can never expect to understand, even though it hurts that she cannot share those particularscars with me. Sometimes I tell myself that maybe one day she will. Probably she won't.

Johanna and I have a lot of ... passion in our marriage, which we use to show our love and to scream at each other during arguments, but I never deny my wife anything, not even if I wanted to. She has a very strong opinion on the extent of my interference in her wishes; it is basically one opinion that states that there such interference should be nonexistent. She is truly the only person who has managed to make me toe the line and control my impulsiveness in the past years. But she is also the one to have provided me with happiness that I still don't think I deserve and for which I have consciously decided to continue to worship the air that she breathes until I die.

I try to get my wife out of my mind and focus on the task at hand before I lose my nerve and end up rushing back to the station. I take a deep breath, brace myself, and knock on the door. A high pitched little squeal can be heard immediately from inside.