Xmas Tale

So here I am once more, sitting in that same small attic room. And
I'm thinking a single thought: I must get up, go to the door, and leave
the house; I must go on a rare visit. Suddenly I'm alive with familiar
sensations. Yes, that's it. I remember. For I must get out of this
house, I feel so stifled. It's the air, something in the air. I can't
seem to fill my lungs. I'll get out into the fresh, cold outside and my
dry, stiff body will sing with glory and freedom, and I shall be happy,
so happy, and I shall live forever.


I stagger to the door, and struggle with it. It won't give,
it's jammed; what's stupid is I can't seem to get a good grip on the
handle. I try and try. This is ridiculous, how can I be foiled so
easily? And now there's a pain in my head, wrenching at me. All the
frustrations and resentment of my life are resurfacing and tainting my
momentary joy.
Finally the door gives up its resistance, and I rush out into the
night. I was right, the air is cool, and the darkness is alive with
freshness, vigour; it's sparkling with life, in the streets, in the
stars, and it quenches me.


I breathe in deeply and persuade myself I'm alive again. But
how can I fool myself that I'm escaping? This must be a phantom cure, a
temporary lapse into sanity, an Indian summer of the spirit. I don't
care; there are other forces driving me on. I rush huddled, blindly,
through the night, the wind flowing through my damp eyes, clearing my
brain. The streets are vibrant. And there, up ahead! A funfair! Always
the surprise, the unexpected joy.


In I slip through the gates: the air is warmer here. My coat
is tightly wrapped about me, but in spite of it I can feel the night
air seeping through the folds and slits, reaching in to touch me,
comforting me. And the smell of the fairground, rich, old-fashioned,
aromatic, good. Burnt sugar, my lost childhood.


I remember the funfair from long ago. The people all around
me, my friends. My attentive friends. We were happy then. We had each
other. We had no need of anyone or anything else. We ran in circles
around each other, eager for fun. We were like a family to each other.
We were wrapped up in ourselves, in our private world. I believe the
youthful eagerness almost comes back to me now. I can see their smiling
faces, hovering around me, calling to me through the mists of memory.
But they fade so quickly, and the present once again shifts into
view.


And now there's a new apprehensiveness mingling with the
pleasure. This warmth, this loudness, bustle, faces, lights, round and
round, could so easily turn into nightmare, madness, hideous
distortions. Because I'm alone here.


For a moment it all swirls around me, and I'm riding the
carousel, the painted horses, mine's named Neddy, whirling round and
round, up and down. I'm immersed in it all - the colours, the lights,
the movement - for a while, until my legs pull me out through the gate
and I'm on the street once more.


This is the street I hate, and the beginning of the journey I
dread.


The night changes into a dark tunnel, into which I'm
inexorably drawn. As I travel along it, I know that, behind my back,
the world caves in, ceases to exist.


I'm following a road I know well, a road that reaches
upwards, out of the town, through the trees into the hills, back in
time, back to a simpler time. Back to my past. One significant moment
in my past. Yet I know no fear as I stumble through the shadows, my
eyes half-closed. I let it all pass me by, I try not to think. The
unhappy memories cease to exist as the moment approaches, so each time
I make this journey I experience it for the first time.


I pause beneath the trees. A brief flurry of snow seems to
have frozen the landscape in a fixed tableau of perfection. A permanent
memento of that time. That time. Just as I always remember it. Just as
I always experience it. Every year, on this day. It's always the same.
But the mist is coming; it's getting late, and I'm alone up here. Up
above them all. I can still see the fairground, through the trees, down
below me.
I look down and the whole world is down there, and it seems to recede,
into a different tunnel, where I can't follow, and there's a terrible
ache in my heart for the past, for something I've lost; and I know I
shall never come to terms with the loss. The pain will never diminish.



And I can only watch it all once more slipping away from
me.


I feel the cold wind of death blowing through the grass
nearby, rustling the leaves around my head, calling me, calling me
back.


I look down. There it is, the fair, the lights, the warmth,
companionship, going on without me.


Then, suddenly, it changes. The fairground is empty,
deserted, asleep for the night, dead, the rides all locked up, everyone
gone home, the dust settling; and I wonder, will it awaken in the
morning? Will there be another morning? The question always goes
unanswered. There's no one to answer me.


And there's a sense of distance growing within me, a
separation from everything outside of me; I feel myself shrinking
inside myself. Straining to stay conscious, I'm seeking sensations,
arbitrary, momentary fulfilment to eke out my life, before it's too
late. Groping at the gravel pathway beneath my feet. Grasping at the
bark of a tree.


But I feel nothing. I scream, Give me life, give it to me.
And though the sound is deafening in my ears, the silence remains
unbroken. There is no one there for me.


I'm on my knees, begging. I don't want to lose everything,
not again. But it's too late: the light dims, the sun is slipping down
behind the trees once more.


I look through the gloom. There's the house up ahead, a
large, grand house, with lights blazing. It's always Christmas in that
house. Warmth, light, life. A brightly lit tree in the window. Dark
figures moving around it. The lights reflect off their smiling faces. A
family. They know contentment, their life engrosses them; they are
cocooned within their warm sphere of light. What's more, they know
peace. They don't seem to care that outside, in the cold, dark night,
there's a feeble, starving creature, dreaming of them.


He's howling, howling inside himself, howling on their very
threshold, with only a distant moon to witness his silent cries. The
sorrow he feels takes him over; and he is nothing but misery. All he
wants is a little mercy, a return to how it once was.


But he won't be let in. They won't ever let him in. And
somehow he's forgotten that other earlier life, when he was a part of
that company, but instead only remembers one time, an age ago, when
they didn't let him in. However hard he might rattle at the door, his
feeble efforts were ignored. He lives the anguish, over and over again;
because he knows they won't ever hear him. And yet always the hope, the
desperate hope to somehow bridge the gap across the eternity, endlessly
calling him forth, forcing him to return, year after
year.


And now I look down. He claws at the ground, a rattle in his
throat. Around his tiny form I see the world spinning, and millions
upon millions of tiny people going about, oblivious to him. A woman
walking a dog; children playing in a tree; a pair of lovers arguing in
a doorway. I see nations at war; populations starving. Vast movements
of people. People going away from each other; some coming together. The
world spinning faster and faster. Until it blurs into a rushing blue
speck in the darkness of space. And he, and many like him, who never
acknowledged anything greater, is at the centre of it
all.


At last he drops to the ground beneath him. And all those
dreams he had, all those expectations, all those possible futures, once
more they all come to nothing. For once upon a time he died alone, and
nobody knew.
And, meanwhile, I hear, through the immensity of time, familiar faint
echoes from a gramophone drifting out through the window and across a
deserted lawn and, as a curtain is drawn back briefly, a stream of
yellow light falls across the prone form of the visitor.