The Drought

The Drought

They called this August the month of drought.

Every morning the city woke up to the sun glaring over the roofs. Her plants needed to be watered daily. The wrought-iron railings burned her palms. The copper watering tin reflected her distorted morning likeness.

Rising at dawn, she contemplated a walk along the bank of the canal, gazing at the bushes flanking the footpath, ripened with sour blackberries.

The ball hit the wall graffiti, girls skipped the rope. Children came together for the red rover or hide-and-seek. Kids scattered around the courtyard, the drops of ice-cream stained the cobblestones. They bought ice-cream in the corner shop, the shack of corrugated steel and dusty glass. The store was lodged between the neighborhood and the canal, the last remnant of the civilization before the jungle around the ancient waterway.

Kids kept the crudely built rafts, made from the fallen trees. Some claimed they have reached even the distant point where the canal flowed into a river, so glorious in the center of the city.

The tourists did not come to this old industrial district where the former factories stood in disrepair. The thick carpet of undergrowth covered empty plant yards. Green patches of creeper climbed along the ochre bricks. Moss hid the rusty machinery. Broken windows let the birds into the vast expanses of former depots.

Children climbed the tram skeletons, scouted the wastelands for the souvenirs of the lost empire. The enameled tram sign still hanged on the wall of her apartment. The trams now came from the new depot, clanking along the nearby street.

Inside the carriage it was boiling hot in summer and freezingly desolate in winter. In December the sun did not appear on the low northern skyline.

She took the tram six days a week, disembarking at the school stop, before the tracks crossed the narrow canal where the carriage climbed the shabby stone bridge.

She went to school along the low wall of the cemetery, listening to the remote voices of the factory locomotives. The deserted graveyard bore the imperceptible remains of the old memorials.

Here the western wind dispersed an aroma of seaweed. Sometimes it carried to the neighborhood the fine sand from the flat shore, reachable by the raft. Paddling along the cobweb of canals, navigating the city river, one ended up on a beach, next to the flocks of gulls.

The smell was penetrative. For a week after the shore trip the clothing held the pungent whiff of the darkish green mass, littered with shells.

Usually, she walked in the more civilized park but today was different.

The neighborhood has changed. The dilapidated depots and shipyards were now gentrified. The ugly pavilion was torn down and rebuilt in the vintage style. The rainbow of the glass cones, filled with fruit juices, occupied the prominent place on the counter. The steel blender churned, spitting the frothy foam of the milkshake.

When she was a girl the shake cost the lowest possible silver coin. Only the matches were sold for coppers. The shake, the purple blackcurrant ice-cream in the waffle cone, or the jam-filled glazed pastry required silver. During the week kids collected coppers for the higher goal, the cold vanilla shake on the humid Sunday morning. The drink always ended quickly, leaving behind the sweet promise of the next glass, the fleeting kiss of an endless summer vacation.

Nowadays the pavilion served mango and black chocolate shakes, goji berries and seaweed ice-cream, almond flour pastries with chia seed filling. The tram line became the heritage route, equipped with carriages of days bygone, with cracked red leatherette seats and wooden interior. She remembered those from her childhood when the ticket lady accompanied the tram, touting a canvas bag full of paper rolls of tickets and loose change.

How she yearned to have one of those coins in the shop when her coppers did not add to the requisite sum of money! The glasses of cloudy apple juice or even the sharp tomato with a sprinkling of gray salt were a pale comparison to the sumptuous shake foam.

The current tram ran along the heritage track as it was called in the guidebooks, stopping at the cemetery with the memorial to the war victims, continuing to the metro station. The former workers’ dwellings received new coat of paint and railings on the balconies.

The canal glistened in the morning sun beyond the red brick of former factories.

She hoped that the canal would succumb next to the inexorable step of the gentrification. She heard about planned granite embankment, bike paths, boat trips and the future park. The banks were overgrown with nettles and brambles. The blackberry bushes yielded a good crop, although she had never seen anyone collecting them.

Back then her fingers were stained red, the flies buzzed over the brown waters of the canal. The banks were more humid than the rest of the neighborhood, jammed between the expanse of the city and the sea.

When she was a girl, mosquitoes were relentless, attacking at night, getting to the rooms even through the nets. Her parents considered nets a frivolity. She tries not to scratch the mosquito bites, waiting for the itch to subdue.

If you wait, any pain will subdue. Anything in life will either subdue or disappear entirely, leaving only the barely perceptible traces. The drought could unearth them and that had to be taken care of.

The visit to the canal required an accessory. Picking up a short spade from the balcony, she put it in the wicker basket. Her string shopper of the old variety sported the cracked leather handles.

At the weekend the farmers market gathered at the square. She intended to pick up cherry plums on her way to the canal.

The fruit was in season, dark red or greenish yellow, tart and juicy. She stoned the plums and simmered them on the gas stove, in the copper pot of her grandmother. She added salt and spices, making the chutney the color of Bordeaux wine or Venetian gold.

She did not bring home berries from the bushes along the canal. She preferred to eat them straight from the palm of her hand, feeling the hot August sun on her sweaty face. There never was enough of blackberries. She had never taken anything home from the canal. She only left things there which had to be revisited sometimes. 

The street was deserted. The farmers market just unraveled. Her spade was safely hidden under the string bag.

The heritage tram rolled along the tracks. The grid was altered but the terminus remained in the place where she has spent many frozen and windy minutes waiting for the marginally warmer uterine darkness of the morning carriage. The dawn passengers filled the tram with the mixture of tobacco residue and yesterday sweat of the unwashed clothing.

 In winter she felt safe, cocooned in the heavy coat, the long woolen school skirt, cashmere leggings, and boots the weight of the prison leg irons. All this was superfluous, but she could not imagine anyone wanting to peel off her even the single layer.

The winter was a hibernating time. By midday, the sun barely skimmed the horizon. After two hours of weak golden glow, it disappeared, leaving behind the cranberry residue. The red shone in the city windows, painted the melted snow the subtle color of blood. By the late afternoon, the red faded, replaced by the primeval darkness.

The wet palm of the wind slapped her face. The tram rattled, inviting her into the warmth of the evening carriage. Sometimes the bench over the floor stove was empty, but more often she was greeted by the salubrious smile of her sworn enemy.

She hated him passionately, imagining the moment when in the carriage she would find only the black hole that he has been sucked into. There was no way to avoid him. She tried to take the earlier carriage from home or the later car on the way back, hanging in the library until the teacher started to lock up. On the street the rain poured, the snowstorm wheezed. She stood at the tram stop hoping not to see him inside.

He was grinning toothlessly, trailing after her whenever she went in the carriage, plonking himself on the nearest available place. He smelt of the cheap sweets and the stale sweat. In the pocket of his dirty trousers he carried a melting bar of chocolate or a waffle with the perfumery lemony aroma. He opened the rough palm, offering her a treat.

“Eat,” he laughed, splattering her with the saliva. “eat, please.” 

Those were one of the few words that he knew and could say or rather sing. He sang passionately, straining the fat neck, trying to stand up on the seat.

“Eat,” he screamed “eat, eat!”

The ticket lady would say to her,

“Is it so difficult to eat a little bit? He will then calm down.”

He really did for a while. She tried to hide the wretched piece of the waffle or chocolate, but he was watchful.

 “Eat,” the fat fingers crawled to her hand. “eat, please.”

Almost thirty years after, she still could not touch anything sweet. The sickly taste rose in her mouth, she curtly refused any offering. With him, there was no refusal. She had no idea where he existed beyond the tram carriages.

In winter he wore a gray jacket with a fake-fur collar. The hat on his balding head was of the same scraggy fur. Behind the protective shield of clothing, he was almost presentable, despite the stubble covering the fat cheeks and the wondering eyes looking somewhere beyond your face.

Summer was the worst. He put on cheap slippers made of foul-smelling rubber. The claw-like toenails yellowed with fungus, the soles of feet were cracked. He reeked of dirt and some other disgusting aroma. The stained trousers barely covered the deposits of fat on his back. Sometimes the trousers rolled down, baring the top of pimply buttocks. The ticket lady gently helped him to adjust the clothing. He always put on the same dirty wife-beater. The armpit hair was graying.

The waffle in the palm of his hand went soggy with the heat of city summer.

“Eat,” he sang insistently. “eat, eat.”

The ticket lady told her to be kind.

“The poor creature is alone in this world,” the old woman pursed her lips, “he lives in the state care home.”

The dull ochre of the state care home was visible from the tram, perched between the cemetery and the metro station.

“He is harmless,” added the lady. “they let him out for the day. He loves the trams. He is in his forties, but helpless like a baby.”

She learned that he was the war orphan who lost his parents.

“Lost his mind as well,” signed the ticket lady, “the hunger affects you such. That is why he is trying to feed you. Maybe, he had a little sister who did not survive the war.”

She nodded not saying anything. She did not mention the fingers crawling beneath her skirt, trying to get inside underwear. She clenched the thighs, attempted to leave her seat but his bulk was solid. In the crowded carriage, he rubbed himself against her, muttering softly under his breath. She was then in the first grade of the school.

Then he discovered where she lived. He did not come to the house entrance, instead waiting on the corner, huddled under the frozen wind or sweating in the summer heat. She tried walking to school but he followed after her, never getting too close.

She decided to wake up an hour earlier rather than endure the tram torture again. He was not displeased by that, still grinning when he saw her getting out of the house or leaving the school gates. He missed barely a couple of days during the school year.

She thought he was content with following her everywhere she went, planting himself on the street corners. She never told her friends about him neither she has acknowledged his existence by a word of gesture. She avoided his nomadic gaze. His eyes were reddish and swollen as if he cried somewhere; in the place she could not and did not care to reach.

In the summer of her thirteenth year, he appeared on the banks of the canal.

She took the same path they used as children. After leaving the once-abandoned factories, she turned left, disappearing in the thorny mass of brambles and bushes, ending on the narrow sidewalk along the muddy water. She walked faster, not caring about the sharp stones getting into her sandals. The heat became balmy, she felt the pungent smell of decaying fish and drying seaweed.

That summer he remained the silent figure, standing in the bushes, with unzipped trousers, moving his palm, widely grinning. They did not care about him. The older kids warned the younger ones not to come closer but judged him to be harmless.

He was not a first such visitor to the canal. They never did anything except moving their hand, listening to the voices of the kids. She did not share with others her tram memories.

That summer he did not approach her, but she was aware of his stare, the wandering eyes searching for her in the bushes.

Stepping onto the clearance she involuntarily pulled down her linen skirt. That summer she wore the kitschy white frock with the cornucopia of brightly colored flowers on the tight bodice. It was not a good choice for the canal expeditions, but she loved it so much she could not bear to be separated with it.

Here she rose a hand to drive away an irksome mosquito. Here he, leaving the bushes, still widely grinning, caught her by the wrist.

The day was hot and humid, empty of children’s voices. The kids did not come to the canal so early, but she was a dawn riser. Now the banks were also devoid of the human presence. The new inhabitants of the area did not permit their kids to wander around unsupervised, to devour the wild blackberries, build the rafts and fight with other children.

She leaned over the likeness of the shrine, set onto the top of the hill. The soil lost the moisture, becoming crumbly under her fingers. She set up a circle of stones in the wet March of the next year, eight months after that long summer morning.

Nobody suspected anything, nobody guessed about her state, nobody questioned her desire to lie in bed with a feigned spring cold. She waited until her parents left the house. Collecting the spade from the wintry balcony, she went into the bushes.

Stones she brought later when the spade went back to her school bag. The stained towel she threw into the dark depth of the canal. The ice thawed but the low sky remained gray, without even a hint of the timid bluishness of the inevitable spring.

She knew that the heat will come, berries will flourish, seagulls will soar into the azure sky. The life will overcome death and the latter will remain covered with reeds and stones.

She blew away the warm ashes of the drought. Her secret lay under the clear glass of the broken bottle. She knew other places with such secrets. Girls made them out of beads and buttons, fake pearls of the old necklaces, dried flowers and other precious trinkets. They were safely hidden in the soil, intended to be searched for and discovered. The lucky girl, stumbling upon somebody else’s secret, had a right to claim its contents.

Nobody claimed this one. She did not raise the piece of glass. The dried immortelles surrounded the tiny skull, the fake pearls shone on the almost disintegrated bones.

That March morning it did not live, emerging cold in the scarce trickle of blood. Were it to live, she intended to kill and dismember it with a spade. It was a chunk of flesh with only the head resembling something human.

Carefully covering the secret with soil, she took an old lemonade bottle. Somebody picnicking here a while ago did not clear the trash, leaving the debris of human indulgence. The sweet taste rose in her throat. In the long summer morning thirty years ago, she had to endure a lot of it.

The water from the canal also smelt of sweetness. Nearby stood the confectionary plant, producing waffles and biscuits, marshmallows and candies. The industrial waste from the factory polluted the canal, albeit the smell was now lighter.

Thirty years ago, she swam to the other shore, unable to face the people. She hid in the abandoned building, waiting for pain to subside, for the dress to dry, for the life to come back. Eventually, it did.

Some of those cheap sweets she carried today in her wicker basket. Generously moistening the soil, arranging the stones in the circle again, she went back to the land of living, picking blackberries on her way.

She ate them walking along the tracks of the heritage tram, coming to the dull wall of the state home for the mentally disabled. She heard that with the death of last occupants the facility will be closed. The elderly guard nodded in his wooden booth.

He sat on the bench in the corner, the mass of decaying flesh. Festooning sores covered the misshapen feet. His eyes were milky white, rimmed with red circles of crying. Mushroom-like growth was feeding on the cheek. He moved his bulbous nose, smiling toothlessly. He must have been in his late seventies by now.

She sat on the other side of the bench, taking care not to come close. The paper wrapper rustled, the cheap waffle went into his outstretched palm.

“Eat,” sang she sweetly, serenely, “eat, eat, eat.”