A Grand Pursuit

I was in their house: a countryside kind of situation, with pale yellow sofas and animals in the fields and little else. “We’re minimalists,” the heavy lady explained, as if she was explaining the reason for everything in the world. Her husband, Russian probably, grumbled and grunted in agreement and she shuddered. Her sadness and everything was so transparent, though she pretended to just be tired.

            They proudly told me that everything in their home had a purpose. “What about that crippled donkey in the corner?” I challenged, pointing to the crippled donkey in the corner.

“Why, donkey tongue is a delicacy around Christmastime!” the man shouted, as if using a donkey for anything other than a gourmet appetizer would be absurd.

“We’ll sell it in the village,” she added.

The donkey was clearly offended by the couples’ malicious plans, and arose suddenly. “Don’t worry, it can’t walk,” the bored woman told me, with her heavy eyes and hair in a bun. But soon we were chasing it down the rolling hills, yellows and greens in colored pencils. I didn’t have any time to admire the artwork because the woman was sobbing and the bearded man was waving his coffee mug in the air and we were all chasing this mischievous animal to who knows where in these majestic mountains and wide, wide fields.

“Can you drive us?” the man pleaded, nicer now, and sadder too.

“Well alright,” I said. “But I’m a terrible driver.”

They didn’t hear me, so I started the car with a shrug.

There were no paved roads, and we drove up and down the hills, clutching our stomachs with nausea. The greens and yellows were suddenly washed out, no longer vivid. The couple shook their heads slowly. “The Government!” she shouted. “They’re taking erasers to our fields, our soil, our hills! It’s really so sad. It’s all slipping away, so sad.” I couldn’t help but agree wholeheartedly; the new, faded shade was morose. Depressing, even.

Finally there was a stoplight halfway down a particularly steep hill, though there still were no roads. One could easily avoid the red light by driving slightly to the right, I noted, but since this wasn’t my land, I followed their rules.

I put my foot on the brake, but the car did not stop. It lurched forward, accelerated. The woman let out a shrill scream, and I stomped my foot on the break again. It wasn’t working; both pedals were gas pedals, and I had no means of stopping. It was embarrassing, but I thought I had given them fair warning. “I told you I was a terrible driver!” I insisted, and the furrowed their brows in disapproval.

We spotted him about four minutes later. The donkey—galloping down a hill noiselessly. We wouldn’t have seen him if I didn’t have such a sharp eye.

“Alright,” said the man sternly. “You drive past him on his right, with your window open. Then you reach out pull him through the window.” His accent was heavy, so I thought I had misunderstood.

“You want me to pull him through the window? Why can’t you? There’s room in the back!”

“You,” was all he said.

So we approached him, but we were driving brake-less down a hill, gaining momentum. I reached out the window, and brushed my hand against his coarse coat, but I couldn’t get a grip. He laughed at my stupidity, and turned to gallop in the other direction.

I glanced at the rear-view mirror and saw the man’s face turned red. He smashed his coffee mug against the window, shattering it. The woman looked nervous and terrified and bored, all at the same time. I thought it a prime time to say goodbye to the couple, so I opened the door and hopped out, and watched the car roll down the hill, becoming smaller and smaller.

I walked slowly, aimlessly. There wasn’t much to do, and the yellows and greens were stinging my eyes. I trekked up a small hill to my left, and looked down at the meadow. I saw a man with some rabbits a couple hundred feet away, and ran to meet him.

Soon I could see that they weren’t rabbits—they were pigeons, rather, but blindingly white ones. The man was skinny and tall, and he was hunched over the birds, mumbling something inaudible.

“Want some help?” I offered. Startled, he glanced up at me, and blushed like a child caught feeding the dog his casserole. I looked down at the pigeons. He was carefully tying a long piece of string around each of their necks. He’d tied eleven, and tossed me the ball of string to finish off the last four. Abruptly, he grabbed each piece of string and looked up at the sky, as though he was checking for rain clouds or constellations. Together, the birds took flight and lifted the man towards the clouds.

“Wait!” I shouted, because I suddenly felt as though I had something urgent to tell him. He giggled, and I knew he could hear me, but he began to sing a soft song to himself and floated higher and higher.

I sat down and looked around me. Bits of string were hidden in the grass, and small bugs hopped from blade to blade. I looked out, over the hills, but every direction looked the same. And everything was empty. I knew the donkey must be somewhere nearby, and that car couldn’t have gone more than a couple miles, but the morning’s events seemed like the distant past. Something you might bring up in conversation with old friends.

It was cold too; the wind had picked up some speed, and even the clouds were moving at an abnormally fast pace. I was wearing shorts and a threadbare maroon sweater that kept unraveling at the sleeves. I took my arms out of the sleeves and hugged them around my body, shivering. I had this sense that something was missing. There was something I had to do, something I needed, but it was just slightly out of my reach. The donkey, the man with the birds—it was all a cruel joke, right in front of my eyes but outside of my grasp.

I started walking. Trekking, really, up and down the rolling hills and underneath the moving clouds. It seemed like I was walking in circles, but there was no way to tell, so I kept going. Eventually, the hills began to flatten out, and I could see a city in the distance—high rises and small cars and briefcases.

There were so many tiny windows, stacked liked waffle squares. I couldn’t see inside them because the lights were blinding. Hazy and orange, they were everywhere—streetlamps, neon signs, even the sun at this ungodly hour. I walked closer to a window, and cupped my hands against the glass so I could peer inside.

They were eating in a Polish café, drinking borscht out of red bowls. The lighting was bad, and I couldn’t quite tell if it was them; through the window, everyone looked the same. Hesitantly, I walked through the red door and to their table. It was indeed them, the same sad, plump woman and bearded man. I thought they might be angry with me, for losing their donkey and leaving them in the haywire car. But they looked at me with slow, knowing smiles and I pulled up a wooden chair.

“We’ve got to get you home,” the woman said, anxiously.

“I can wait a while,” I answered. “Take your time with that borscht.” They nodded a lot, and I put my head down on the table. It was exhausting—walking up hills and looking for so many things.

I had found safety and people, but I somehow still felt restless. I felt as alone in this whirring metropolis as I had in the color-penciled countryside. Utterly alone and tired from the day’s happenings. “We’ve got to get me home,” I agreed. The lights, though, they were still in my eyes, and we didn’t know which way to walk.

End

Patient

He walks into the room. Runs, rather, to highlight the sense of urgency for our more literal readers, who won’t necessarily understand that the fists he’s making or the eyes that aren’t blinking convey his general anxiety. But the running isn’t isn’t quite right either—speeds up and sensationalizes this moment, which in reality is more than a little emotionally significant. The walls are a warm white. Three men and a woman in the plastic chairs, flipping their phones open and closed, and counting ceiling tiles or mistakes.

            Let’s choose a determined but shaky pace, shall we, with which to guide him around the occupied seats and across the carpet, to a chair in the corner by the magazine rack.

            He takes one. The New Yorker, hopefully to find a scathing, pretentious review of a play he hasn’t seen or to smile—for once in his life—at a clever cartoon.

            He doesn’t take one. Sits down slowly, hands in his lap because, really, this is not the time to get lost in literature or laughs, no matter how desperate he is for distraction. Instead, he makes small talk with the fifth person, who just walked through the door with a dripping umbrella and of course sat next to him, though we took careful precautions to give him some privacy.

            No, he doesn’t speak to anyone and the group is silent.