Absence

Today, I followed a man for twenty minutes. All the way from
Maroussi train station, through the busy streets of the market, past
the new shopping centre, into a quiet street, both sides lined with
orange trees. I watched as he took a large bunch of keys out of his
jacket pocket, choose one, stuck it in the lock on the grey gate, and
opened it. The keys jingled, and their familiar sound told me I was
justified. And then he turned to shut the gate behind him, and my heart
was broken all over again.

I met the man on one of my walks and followed him because, from the
back, he looked like you: His hair, and those shoulders, and the way he
moved. Not in any sort of spooky, identical way, just a mild
resemblance, but for me, it was enough. And though I knew it wasn't you
all along, I had made allowances. For my poor sight, my even poorer
state of mind. I had made room for doubt. But when he turned, I saw no
trace of you on his face. Nothing. And the realisation came, late and
still unwelcome: You aren't here. Not in Maroussi, not holding the keys
to a grey gate, not in the whole of Athens. Not in Greece. I could walk
the streets day and night, looking for you in every bar and every
station, I could knock on every single door, apologetic and
inquisitive, and I wouldn't find you. You're not here. Here is where I
came to be away from you. And you are still in the place I left you,
crying your goodbyes on the bed that is no longer mine.

Your absence hangs above me like dread. Like the certainty that I lost
when I decided to leave. I walk around looking for a ghost. Not yours,
but mine. The ghost of a person I used to be before it all started. Or
during. Dozens of people you made me into, with your love, your
tenderness, your cruelty, your indifference. All of them still in
evidence, here, in London, in all the places we ever went to. And me,
the latest version, created by your absence, trying to find them all,
different episodes of the same story, and put them back together.

I've met some of them in the few months that I've been back.
I found August '98 sitting in my old room, writing you a letter. It had
only been a couple of months since you got together, and though she
told everyone she was in love with you, she seemed a bit reluctant to
mention it in your correspondence.
December '98 was on the phone to you, whispering words I wasn't allowed
to hear. She looked up at me and waved me out of the room.
May '99 was crying, chain-smoking, and constantly pressing the redial
button. From what I understood, you had refused to speak to her for
days.
I bumped into a tanned July '99 in the park.
'I miss him,' she said, and then, with a sheepish smile, confessed: 'We
made love here, you know. Under the stars.'
November '99 was a mess. She didn't want to talk about it.

I suggested a reunion, a meeting to discuss our situation. They all
dismissed it as a very bad idea, and have avoided me ever since. I
suspect that, each in their own way, blame me for what has happened.
For not holding on to the good times, for letting things get this bad,
for not believing in love enough, or believing it in too much. They
don't want to be reunited because we don't belong in the same place. We
all exist in different times, different dimensions. And besides not
seeing that they have anything in common with each other, they consider
me a completely alien being. An outsider. If they are stations, I'm the
end of the line. If they are chapters of our story, I am the epilogue.
I'm the conclusion, one they wouldn't have come to themselves. I am an
abstract term, impossible to define: Absence. I am inferior.

Your absence is stronger than your presence. There were times when we
sat next to each other, and I had never been more alone. But your
absence is with me all the time. It has ways of making itself known.
Just like the jingling of keys, hanging from your jeans, announced your
presence when you came upstairs from work. At night, I sleep on the
right side of the bed. Though I've tried my hardest to move towards the
middle, make the most of all the unexpected space, I still lie on my
allocated side, careful not to disturb your absence, sound asleep next
to me.

And in the daytime, I walk around the streets of Athens and talk to
myself. Together, we try to figure it out. So far, we haven't been
successful. The issues we concern ourselves with are difficult ones:
Could this be, as you said, our destiny? And in that case, can destiny
be bad for you? Could one choose happiness over fate, or would that be
considered blasphemy?

Your absence follows us down paths none of us have been before. Every
now and again, it smiles a smile that implies superiority, that seems
to confirm the pointlessness of these walks. Sometimes, when everything
goes quiet for a few seconds, and in a city like this one, it doesn't
happen too often, I can hear it talking to me.
'What are you doing?' it asks. 'Why are you pretending to be looking
for yourself, when we both know who you're really trying to
find?'
It suggests I turn around, book my seat on the next flight to London,
and do what I really want to do. And stop fighting what I know is a
lost battle. And for a few, crazy ticks of the clock, I consider this,
my determination to resist weakening as I think how much easier it
would be to just give in. But something always saves me, at the very
last minute. A car drives past, a stubborn kid demands ice cream, a
siren signals an emergency at the nearby hospital. The silence that
enables it to speak is disturbed, and absence loses another round. I
keep walking, dealing with thoughts and questions as they come, and
with those moments of weakness by establishing inside me the fact that
love is important, but happiness, however distant, is crucial.

And in another dimension, a future version of me, formed by loneliness,
or self-respect, or maybe some other guy that I have met by then,
notices April 2000 walking on the opposite side of the pavement. She
crosses the road to say hello, and asks her if she's found what she was
looking for. April 2000 thinks about it for a while and then replies
'Not yet.' But she says it with a smile. And then she opens her mouth
to add something, and her voice is drowned by the noise of passing
cars.