Momentary Insanity | Zbiór Opowiadań

An old man with his walking cane [ENG]

The train stops. The station is rather small in itself, but it is built into a larger complex of buildings, all tidy, their white walls covered with murals - real murals, not at all your regular vandal scribbles, but no less than paintings in the open air. There's hardly anyone to admire them, though. It is long past the tourist season, and the late evening has scared away even the more unusual visitors. More people come into the train than out of it. When the machine whistles its final warning and rattles off, there's only a handful of people down on the platform. None of them stand out - not unless you know what to look for.

Among them is an old man with a walking cane. His thin, white hair and the many wrinkles on his face betray his age, but his slender body, tall and all straightened up, makes him look younger than his years. Wrapped in a coat of a dark colour, grey, or maybe brown, though it might well have been black once, he stops for a moment to look around. He tries to figure out his way in the faint light of the single lamp there is on the platform - no more are to be seen. Finally, he makes a decision. With slow steps, accompanied by his cane tapping at the pavement, he limps towards the town behind the station.

I said he's straightened up? My bad. His years may not have given his back a hunch, but when he walks, his head is hung down, his chin nearly touching his chest. The white hair falls down on both sides of his face, shielding him from the eyes around, but if any eye managed to pierce through that barrier, it would see a frown on his brow. Many old people walk with a frown, be it because of the ever-too-loud youth, or because of their sore joints, but his face is twisted because of something else completely - shame.

As he passes the few people, his fellow passengers, walking down the path to the town, he shoots glances at them, curious glances indeed. This old man, so filled with shame, doesn't seem to be able to get enough of the world around him. He catches a glimpse of a child, a kid who can't have finished their primary school yet, kneeling by a wall just around the corner, spraying the final details on their new piece of art. From them, he turns his gaze away. He looks at a group of young people, kids as well, in his eyes at least, two of them welcoming another one with hugs and laughs. He takes notice of an old lady, much older than him, walking in a crooked fashion, with a small purse swinging at her side. His eyes are wide open, catching everything they can before they've really entered the town, though the frown above them never disappears. He absorbs this world, the world of a train station and its one lamp's light.

And then he passes the station and the tall, boxy buildings right behind it, and soon he finds himself in the town square. He doesn't look around any more, even despite the sight surrounding him, a sight so astonishing for most eyes. The old man finds himself in a multitude of people, people of pale skin and white hair, though they're not old for the most part, people who are creating. Here, there are people painting and people sculpting, people dancing, people singing and people playing music, people writing and people speaking to each other, acting out what they've just written. There's a noise in the air, but it's not at all unpleasant, it's a noise of melodious voices, of a faint tune from strings and pipes, of soft barefoot steps. No one pays any attention to the autumn chillness, quite the contrary, children as well as adults laugh at the steam out of their mouths, playing with it as they play with their paints and their instruments. The darkness in this place is dispelled only by bonfires and torches. They make everything flicker and prance in the light of their restless flames, and the shadows they create become a hundred new dancers, joining in on the magical atmosphere of the evening. Only a few long, pointy pairs of ears perk up when they hear the old man with his cane walking by. He keeps his gaze fixed on the ground, paying no mind at all to the astounding picture around him, his breath heavy with memories. If someone manages to have a look at his face right now, they may notice his lip shivering, only ever so slightly.

Some of the white-haired folk speak to him. Not expecting a visitor at this time, they inquire about why he's there, where he's going. He's polite. He even allows a faint smile to crawl its way onto his face - only because he's sorry. He tells them he's no one - because, in fact, he is. They don't know him, and he doesn't know them. He's sorry anyway.

Passing the square, he enters the maze - well, it would have been a maze, had it only been any larger - of small, old houses. If the light of the fires reached this place, he would see that each of them is covered with layers and layers of paint, as here, each generation lives only in a house that looks exactly as they want it to. But he knows all that, and so he wouldn't need any lights, even if he wanted to see it - which he doesn't. Unlike the station, this is a world he does not want to see.

Reaching a crossing, he chooses carefully, thankful for his sharp memory. Only to avoid that house. That house, he wouldn't dare to pass.

Eventually he finds himself in the open again. He stops for a moment, the town behind him, and a meadow, cut short by a cliff's edge, in front. Finally, he manages to take a deep breath again. Though he can still hear the town's noises, they make no difference to him any more. He straightens up, he even lifts his head. It is time.

Dragging his bad leg behind him, he walks onto a path, beaten within the grass by hundreds of traversers. The soft ground here swallows the tapping of his cane. Eventually, even the sounds of the town die out, and the old man finds himself surrounded by silence, hardly ever broken by the flap of a bird's wings or the buzz of a single lost bug. He has not been here before, not this far out by the cliff, but he imagines he must have nearly reached his destination.

He's right. At last, when he stops for a moment of rest, he realises he's already stepped into the graveyard.

He feels his throat clutch. Resting his body weight on the cane, he looks around. Lost in his thoughts, he hasn't been paying much attention to his surroundings. Or, well, he paid attention to them, but he barely realised his own presence inside them, feeling like he was but a spectator from another world, within the depths of his mind. Only now does he become acutely aware of the moment, of his old, sore body among the stones, the neatly cut stones of granite and slate and marble. He has to find one, only one. But he has to look for it. He feels his eyes stinging, not sure if he has the strength. Slowly, he forces himself to start walking. Looking around, he isn't even sure what he's looking for, but he has hope, he has the hope that he'll...

He did. He knew. He knew right away. A small, tidy stone of white marble, with purple veins and a plain text. His eyes went blurry the second he saw the name, but he had known who it was for already. The body isn't there, he knows that, it was burnt in a ceremony and the ashes were thrown into the winds and the water tides, in hope that they'll find their soul somewhere and reunite with it, another place, another time. But even without the body, the man of this stone... He is there. He can be felt.

In the darkness of the autumn evening, the old man with a walking cane is weeping.