From Russia with Love

From Russia with love Getting stuck in traffic is not always hopeless if you manage to look up. The winter sky was a mixture of light blue and gray. That is, all shades of light blue plus all shades of gray is what I saw there in complete harmony, with no patches, and no borders. Nature is not radical. It includes possibilities. Nature is not idiotic, nor does it have moral purposes. 

 

There were also tall buildings whose terraces had huge amounts of smoke billowed from the hand of the wind. And abundant constructions with their cranes sometimes give Toronto a post-apocalyptic aspect of those in which the machines have won that war that filmmakers love. Over there a sign proclaiming the rental of space (surely at an exorbitant value) shared space in the view with an airplane crossing the sky in a northeasterly direction.

 

It took me months to learn to orient myself using the cardinal points. I had always found other ways to find my way. The plane faded into the distance, but the smoke from the terraces was still there until I escaped through a crosswalk and after a while, my phone beeped a notification.

 

Ironic that I was listening to the Beatles when a passenger named "Y" got into my car. I waited with no luck for some comment from her about the song that took a couple of minutes to finish, but nothing. Something along the lines of "My friends always tease me about this" or "I definitely sing much better than she does".

 

I got frustrated. For me, sitting on this ship that doesn't take off with the slogan of breaking the ice and talking to someone else in this town, the situation seemed like a gift from the goddess of probabilities. I expected a lively conversation, as Japanese or their descendants, who are friendly, polite and interesting, usually are. But it didn't happen.

 

"Y" did not open his mouth except to say hello, and to say thank you and goodbye. However, the void was filled with thoughts, for, fortunately, the journey to his destination included Munro Street. 

 

I heard "Munro" on the app, after a while read "Munro" on the blue, white-lettered sign, and remembered a group of working boys at a bank I picked up on Front Street across from Union Station. One of them was a little late in arriving and took the passenger seat as the group was large. 

 

I think his name was Mike. They left their work for a golf club about an hour and so much to the north. Everyone was enthusiastic to get away for the day.  The long drive was conducive to chatting with Mike. We talked about books, he told me that his mother was Argentinean and that he had published a short novel in the United States a couple of years ago.  We didn't talk about soccer. I assume this trip happened before the World Cup.  I mentioned the great Yann Martell and he recommended reading Alice Munro. 

 

I left "Y" and looked up Alice Munro to read on my cell phone. Someday I'll do it on paper, that's all I need. But I was overcome by the desire not to leave that evocation. Within seconds I found a text entitled The Bear Came Over the Mountain. 

 

Writers, good writers, throw thunderbolts from Olympus but they never know where the fire will start. I had just started the tale when I read the sentence "The father was an important cardiologist, revered around the hospital but happily subservient at home...", I opened my mouth looking sideways with no one to share my surprise with and passed on reading Alice as I was surprised to discover that I had forgotten about a wonderful passenger I had the privilege of driving a few weeks before watching the greys and celestials in the sky.  

 

I picked her up at Queen, around Leslie. Her name began with P and she still had trouble moving. Justifying herself for her slow movements she explained to me that she had had heart surgery. I looked for her in the rearview mirror, and even though night had already come, I could notice her almost white mane of very fine, brittle hair. In a sweet, slow voice she described her heart doctor to me as a gifted man beyond human measure. "In the hospital, they call him god," he told me three times. 

 

-And he believed me when I told him why my heart was broken," she told me as if adding another divine quality to her saviour. 

 

-What do you mean by knowing why your heart was broken," I asked him.

 

-Cruelty, I have endured many years of cruelty," she said.

 

I shut my mouth because I realized that I was not up to the situation. Especially because in English I am not as eloquent nor do I achieve the idiomatic levels that I do in Spanish. 

 

I continued driving through the poisonous darkness of the premature January nights. We talked about the last autumn like someone talking about a trip to the sea. 

 

-I'm going to read you a poem I wrote about myself in the hospital," she said.  Then she took a notebook out of her purse, searched for a few moments among the leaves, cleared her throat, and then said, "I'll read you a poem I wrote about myself in the hospital," she said.  Then she took a notebook out of her purse, searched through the pages for a few moments, cleared her throat and read short, profound sentences in which she recognized herself as a sensitive being, as an artist, as a flower unable to continue blooming because of cruelty. 

 

-I loved that you recognize yourself with all those qualities, I admire people who love themselves and admit their gifts," I said.

 

-I can't help being so sensitive," he mused.

 

-Are you going to leave him," I asked.

 

-I don't have time to rebuild my life anymore," she moaned. 

 

Her cell phone rang and the ringtone was a tango. 

 

Argentina is chasing me, I thought. 

 

-Do you like tango, I'm surprised, being so far away from those lands.

 

-Very much, since I was a child. My mother made my two brothers and me study music. I play the piano, and I know La Cumparsita and other tangos by heart. 

 

I think I mentioned Polaco Goyeneche, but she kept talking without hearing me and I let her fill my journey with her voice of petals and autumn.

 

We came to a street of large houses sheltered behind larger but bare trees. She took her wallet and I heard her move bills, she gave me a fifty. I thanked him touched. I think there was more than generosity in that act, there was a bit of love for a stranger perhaps more fragile than she. 

 

-My father came from Russia escaping the persecution of the Jews and we know what it is to migrate and how difficult it is to start in a new country," she said before wishing me good luck and thanking me for the smooth ride. 

 

Shadows filled the place. It was night and, I don't know if it was because of the habit brought from my past, or because I didn't want to say goodbye to her, I waited for her to come in safe and sound.

 

Again I think it is very strange that I have not had her in my mind all this time. I don't usually hide in the cellar of my brain experiences and people like P. I feel a little guilty and also sad because I will certainly never see her again. Maybe that's why I "forgot" her, as a form of self-protection, because in this life now, and at my age, there is no more room for new loves.

 

On the other hand, I am also thinking with some emotion that I have started to make memories in my current life. Independent memories and connections that begin and end in Toronto.  It's not much yet, but they already suffice for an incipient "new past".   

 

See you next time