Between Cups of Coffee

by Tajalli Keshavarz

  ‘Can we have some attention here too? The train will be here any minute.’

  He said: ‘I am serving this lady. I will deal with you when it is your turn!’

  I was furious. I thought that I had been tolerant enough and the ticket man must attend to the passengers properly. I said: ‘with this service I will be lucky if I catch the last train of the day!’ I dashed to the automatic machine which wasn’t working either. I decided to get to the train anyway. The train came only five minutes late. It was three stations later that the ticket man appeared. ‘Tickets please!’

  I asked him for a ticket and while issuing the ticket he said, ‘there will be a fine.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘You need to posses a valid ticket to the destination when you get into the train, sir.’

  ‘The ticket office was slow and I would have missed my train. The automatic machine wasn’t working.’

  ‘You can complain sir,’ he handed me an A4 pink form, ‘and I am sure they will return the fine back to you. You will need to fill in this form for that, but for the time being you will need to pay the fine, I am sorry.’

  For a moment I felt that I had lost all my resolve to fight back. I paid the man and closed my eyes to go to sleep. Every now and then I would wake up with the screams of a little girl who ran playfully along the length of the corridor. I was in a drowsy state; there were the voices of teenage students getting in and out of the train at each stop. Then the train stopped. The guard came in to say that we were going to experience some delay because someone had jumped onto the track; the driver had stopped smoothly in time. I thought how selfish some people can be. They are the kind of martyrs that think everybody should know about them, their misery; should feel sorry for them and feel guilty for their life. I told myself, why don’t they kill themselves in the privacy of their homes; in any case in a way not to interfere with other people’s lives? The train was packed with people who had all sorts of things on their minds, all sorts of things to do; the last thing they wanted was a delay. But no! Those martyrs cannot let go! They have to cause problems because everybody else is guilty but them! People are guilty for their unhappiness!

  After half an hour the train started to move. The delay was less than what I expected. The next station was very close. As the train slowly passed the platform, I saw a young girl with dishevelled blonde hair leaning against a policeman in a yellow overcoat, limping away. Three other policemen were accompanying them. The guard came in again. ‘She survived,’ he said, and then he mumbled some sort of apology for the delay. I looked out and the girl was fading away from my sight. Then there were trees under the hazy sun.

  As the train arrived at the station, I suddenly remembered Kate. I am not sure what it was that reminded me of her but it was thinking about her earlier that took me to the Gallery, drove me to go through the trouble of taking the train. As I got closer, I noticed the ads for a temporary exhibition. From across the road, I looked at the wide glass window of the Gallery. Three vertical advertising flags were moving in the wind in front of the window. It was the last day of this painter’s exhibition.

  There was a long queue for the exhibition and no chance of getting in in time. I passed it by and went into the permanent collection. I walked through the rooms as if I was a lieutenant checking his orderlies. All those painters I knew, or I didn’t care to know. Kate and I had planned to go to the Gallery together again and again, and it had never materialised. I would have told her:

  ‘How come galleries are full of women? Just look! For every man, and they are all old, there are four or five women.’

  She would have replied:

  ‘Obviously because we are more educated, more interested in culture… in all things refined.’

  ‘Do I sense discrimination here?’

  ‘So?’

  ‘And yet, these are women who always complain about being ignored, discriminated against.’

  ‘I am sure no man is going to oppose my statement.’

  ‘I do!’

  ‘Well, perhaps you are pretending!’

  ‘Look at the arrogance!’

  ‘Me? It is just enough to look at me to see how wrong you are to say that.

  ‘Oh! So you are resorting to your looks! Yet another feminine device!’

  ‘Ah, who is discriminating now?’

  I stopped by a painting, a woman on a chair next to a bed where a young girl was lying sick. How many painters have done mother and sick child? I wondered if the sadness in the eye of the mother was from feeling sorry for herself, having had to devote herself to the child.

  ‘I would have left your father years ago, if it wasn’t for you. All those years! I spent all my youth on you! What a fool I was! And look at you now! It is a miracle if I hear from you once in a blue moon.’

  ‘Do NOT touch the railing. Can’t you understand it is dirty? How many people have touched it with their dirty hands infested with microbes?’

  How many children, grown up children, men, women, have heard this? And why do we have such a loving feeling towards mothers? You say something against them and you are damned forever! You are branded persona non-grata! Great, get abused and then when you just voice your true feelings, be condemned. And if this is the holiest part of the human institution, what do you have to say about the rest of it? Humanity based on self-gratification, ever self-righteous individuals forming the ‘benevolent’ society based on sacrifice, martyrdom and phoney feelings, justifying its own existence while at war with itself, its neighbours, and peoples of the lands far away!

  I sat on a wooden bench in a small room in the gallery. A huge painting was in front of me showing an outdoor scene with a horse, some trees, grass, water, a couple of young girls holding their hats in the wind, a young boy looking at them from a ramp a little distance away. I thought, what a waste of paint!

  Then I thought, what is wrong with me? Why should I condemn the painting? Perhaps the painter was full of passion painting that scene. Perhaps he was commissioned to do it! So what? I am tired; I have nothing else to do so I start criticising the painting! But what makes the difference between two paintings of the same object, the same scene? The shades of light, the depth of colours, the strength of the brush? All these are of course important. But I am talking beyond the techniques. Is there a difference between paintings because of the suffering of one painter and happy life style of another? And is that enough? Can you see the blood poured deep inside the canvas?

  I needed fresh air. I went out, fast.

  31

  Carol says, ‘we are so similar, I don’t know why I am going, I don’t know why I should go thousands of miles away, distance myself from you; I don’t know why you don’t insist that I should stay, that I should not leave you.’

  In fact, I had thought about it myself but I think she is living in a dreamland. We might appear similar in our daily routines but deep inside we are miles away. I look at her as we sit under the rays of the afternoon sun with the newspaper on my lap. I have flicked through all those fat pages from gardening to cooking to the movies of the week, I have tried to ignore the headlines, forget about yet another set of changes to education, yet another proposal for the running of hospitals and directives for the conduct of government at war. Carol is touching her naked feet, massaging her toes and I hate this. I don’t know what is so attractive in this for some people.

  ‘I might come and visit you,’ I said.

  I thought the way I said it was as if she was going to be admitted to a mental hospital or condemned to internment.

  ‘Would you?’ she said. There was a sense of disbelief in that.

  ‘Yes, if there is a conference, I would like to see Brazil.’

  ‘So it’s not to see me.’

  ‘You too.’

  ‘You didn’t go to see that librarian dying in the hospital in the same town so close to you and you say you’ll come to see me in another continent? ...And she meant something to you, didn’t she? I don�
�t understand you.’

  I remained silent. I was reading the achievements of someone climbing a dangerous mountain somewhere. What do people get out of these sorts of activities? I fail to understand. The media is full of these things. The woman who went around the world on a bicycle in record time, a man who designed the largest balloon to go around the world but the wind was such and such. I would say what boring, desperate people. Isn’t there something less boring? I was so happy I didn’t have children to need to teach them on Sundays how to ride a bicycle or how to do homework! Let alone making myself busy with problems of getting a special-design balloon! I was happy to sit there reading rubbish but not being on that mountain range, not to try to repair the lamp shade! I was happy about all the things that I didn’t have and didn’t want to have! And Carol was thinking that we were so similar because those were the things she was craving for!

  32

  I worked late Sunday night in the flat. I knew that the next day I would be hassled by a gang of students wanting to discuss their marks. Carol had long gone to bed. I could hear her breathing and now that I had finished the work, I wasn’t sleepy. I had in my mind the picture of the girl being carried away on the platform after her suicide attempt. She was looking at a point beyond the people gathered on the platform, at an empty space. I had thought she was selfish, using such a method to kill herself, affecting so many people. But now I was thinking differently. I had her picture in my mind and I was sad as if I knew her, as if I had lived with her. Why did she try to kill herself? Maybe she didn’t have someone to talk to, even the sort of talk I have with Carol, mundane but perhaps vital to her. I have seen, repeatedly, two women having dinner together with a bottle of wine between them, talking and talking and getting into moments of laughter, stupor. What would they do when they go home? Is there someone waiting? They make sure they drink so much they would go to sleep, fast. It wouldn’t matter if anyone was there when they entered their flat. It wouldn’t matter what “he” would do, what they would do. And the next day? Hopefully there is a job to go to, lose yourself in the daily gossip and usual annoyances and... one day you might not be lonely, until the next event. But why did the girl on the platform affect me so much, to think about her while Carol with her warm skin and intimate breathing was sleeping in my bed? I had no answer for it; but it was disturbing to see myself with two different, in a way opposing, views in a short period of time. What about my integrity? How could I believe in my own arguments? How could I convince anyone if I am vacillating so readily, so dramatically? Oh, I needed Kate to argue with to feel better. Had I grown dependent on her? Perhaps Carol’s comments about me and Kate were not that far away from the truth. I always belittle Carol’s views; after all, she is the one who doesn’t know what she wants. I don’t believe at all that she has understood or thought through her desire to go to Rio. So, do I think she is a fake? Yes! And what about myself and my views? I change them so quickly. So she was right in saying we were similar, but we are similar in our phoniness!

  33

  I saw Elizabeth the next day as I was passing through the lazy corridors with most offices empty, answer phones ringing in measured intervals. We didn’t stop, just exchanged greetings in passing. I hadn’t seen her for some time now. She was paler and had lost some weight. Not that she was chubby at all but she was even skinnier now. What surprised me was that I felt she had aged over this period. I wondered what she would think about me. Had I aged too? What a silly question! As if I was different! But OK, people age differently. Some age much later. What about that singer? He looks like plastic vegetation. He doesn’t seem to perish but what do you do about the dust sitting on the plastic leaves? I suppose you can always dust it, use shining creams! I am among those who prefer perishing flowers. They give you a sense of living, companionship. They smell differently, not only at different times of the day, but also on different occasions, they behave like a dog. They seem to feel your feelings. I know I am entering into the realm of the esoteric but this is what I think. Yes, people age differently and I hope to age late, but at the same time, I am not interested in growing old like plastic vegetation! So, do I expect a lot from my physiology?

  This is only on growing old; but what about death? Of course people believe in death, in its inevitability, but only for others. They even find it difficult sometimes to accept it when it happens to a friend or to someone they know. But what about its inevitability when it comes to themselves? Never! Have you ever seen someone with an incurable fatal illness? How do they continue? What makes them tolerate the pain, what makes them accept all sorts of humiliation, indignity? It could only be possible if they believed an amazing cure existed somewhere, and that they would come across it sometime. Why do we insist so much on keeping a terminal patient on a series of machines just to help them breathe? This is the sanctity of life for you! As for me, of course I’d say I believe I’ll die one day but that day is too hypothetical, far away. And what is all this? I see an older colleague passing by and I start thinking about ageing and death! How do I concentrate on my work? What percentage of our daily work do we devote to our work really? I am now not talking about times when we have coffee with others, or gossiping away in the labs and offices. I am talking about the times that our minds fly away somewhere while sitting by the desk. We don’t even remember where our minds had gone, a little later as we are sitting in a bus going home. Had we thought about our death?

  34

  ‘I am not convinced by myself. I am not convinced about anything when it comes to myself.’ This is, I think, what I said to Kate at our last meeting. I remember her now. She looked frail. Yes, I know, I didn’t mention it to her; I didn’t even mention it to myself. So how is it that I remember it now? I should have registered it somehow; I should have found it of some importance, at least to keep it deep somewhere in my mind. Keep it to remember one day! And now it is the time. Was it because I was so interested in expressing myself to her, to talk about myself, that I could ignore her look? What would I have done if I knew then that she was dying? Would I have continued to talk about the mundane, myself? Perhaps I had guessed it and didn’t acknowledge it because I couldn’t face her not being there any more, I couldn’t face the coffee shop without her. I can hypothesise until tomorrow! I can talk! That is my escape from it all.

  35

  She said, ‘I think I’ll go on that trip anyway.’

  ‘What trip?’ I had totally forgotten about it.

  She didn’t say anything. She laughed.

  ‘Really, what trip?’

  ‘You know I am a dreamy person. Sometimes I exaggerate.’

  I ignored her statement. I said, ‘I am not convinced, for example, that I am wholeheartedly devoted to research.’

  ‘You must be joking. You breathe research; you sleep with a proposal in your arm!’

  ‘That’s kinky!’ I said.

  ‘Don’t evade my comment. You are devoted to your research, but I think you are confused and that is your problem; there is no question of not being convinced. Yes, you might be unhappy about some aspects of your life but knowing you, even as little as I do, one would say you are pretty well in line with your passions.’

  ‘That’s a great statement! I’m not sure…I’m not sure at all,’ I said.

  Even now, sitting in my office, I am not convinced, but Kate is not around to argue with me. If anything, I am less convinced. I didn’t notice Kate and her frailty walking to death and all I was concerned about was me, talking about me while she had this statement in her mind, ‘Sorry, I am afraid this doesn’t look good, you have only so long to live.’ Surely I would have been concerned about her. But was I? Clearly I wasn’t, as my behaviour showed. Now I can be concerned… now that it’s over. I can be sanctimonious about it. So which one of these people am I? I know one thing, that I finish work, go home, pour a glass of whisky, read a bit, perhaps listen to some music, and go to bed; something on those lines. Perhaps have dinner with Carol. Even the lure of skin,
the intrigue of touch is becoming a question mark and here, I am afraid: you question something and that is the beginning of the end for it; things should be left alone, why destroy things by questioning them? …But is this true? You start a project with a question, you design experiments, it might take years to find an answer, a partial answer that leads you to another one and yet another. If you are interested in something though, in Kate’s words if you have a passion for it, then you don’t question it, you go for it! You act!

  Oh! I don’t know. These thoughts make me exhausted. Have no answer. You might say age is creeping on you. Yes, you are right but I suppose I still have time, I still have the interest! I know, I know, I am contradicting myself. I cannot accept that I have totally lost the appetite for certain manoeuvres, strategies, actions. But I have to say, I am bored with people’s minds. I don’t see much excitement there; always mundane things. But again, what about myself? No, I resist, I am not mundane. Never!

  36

  I sit at the table in the bistro. Hanna comes over. ‘Hello Hanna, how is the new school?’

  She smiles. She has braces on her teeth. ‘Yes I like it.’ She looks happier than before. ‘And where is your mother?’