It’s a Wonderful Life
Late afternoon.
The cafe is neither beautiful nor ugly.
It is the kind of place that has survived too many renovations by refusing all of them.
A small table near the window.
Two cups.
An ashtray.
A coat thrown over the back of a chair.
The coat was too good for someone who seemed not to have chosen it. Until a moment ago, she had worn it as if it were only weather.
The silence had been there before them.
Henry looked out of the window.
“Where are those who were before us?”
Iris did not follow his gaze.
“Don’t know. The sea or something”
He looked at the coat.
“Nice coat.”
She turned her head slightly, as if remembering it was there.
“Thanks. It was just lying on the settee of my studio. I picked it up”
Henry took a fag packet from his old leather jacket, shook one cigarette loose, and put it between his lips. He lit it, slipped the lighter back into the packet, and returned the packet to the pocket of his jacket.
“Ah. That’s why.”
“What?”
“It’s got plaster dust on it.”
“Same shite with yours”
“No. Mine’s different.”
“How?”
He tapped ash into the tray. He answered too seriously for the question.
“It’s belief. In the density that remains only in matter that’s passed through time.”
Iris looked at him. Then at the jacket. Then back at him.
“So, same shite”
With his fingers resting on the camera hanging from his neck, he almost smiled.
“Aye. Maybe.”
A waiter passed behind them. Neither of them ordered anything else.
“Anyway,” Henry said, “what have you been making lately?”
“Something that won’t hold a shape”
“Same shit as before?”
“Less shape than before. Something that leaves almost nothing behind”
“Like photographs?”
“No”
She waited for a while, as if the wrong word might become useful if left alone long enough.
“To find something you can’t see, but somehow you know it’s there. Like Saturn’s rings”
The cigarette burned between his fingers.
Iris looked at the coat again.
“That’s why I leave fag packets with two or three left in my coat pockets before spring comes. I won’t wear the coat again until autumn. By then I’ve forgotten them”
“Does that make you happy?”
“A little”
She looked at the table. Then the ashtray. Then somewhere neither of them had placed anything.
“I feel it is… it’s a wonderful life”
Henry repeated the word almost without sound.
“Wonderful.”
He leaned back slightly, not mocking her, not believing her either.
“Not the clean little kind, I hope. Good health, good taste, a coat from some famous maison… or H. N. Summat?”
“Ember”
“Right. Ember.”
A small silence.
Iris looked again at his leather jacket. Not admiring it exactly. Measuring it, perhaps.
“I like your jacket anyway. Maybe we should swap”
“You want the jacket?”
“Maybe”
Henry looked at her. Then at the jacket he was wearing.
“Alright. Sure.”
They stood.
The movement was awkward at first, as if neither of them had expected the joke to become real.
Iris took the coat from the back of the chair and handed it to him.
Henry took off his leather jacket.
For a second, without it, he looked less certain of himself.
They exchanged them.
Iris put on his jacket.
It was slightly too large. The shoulders did not belong to her, but they did not reject her either.
She moved once inside it, testing the weight, the lining, the smell of smoke, the depth of the pockets.
Henry watched her.
“Heavy?”
“No. Just later than me”
He did not answer.
Henry put on her coat.
It did not suit him. Or perhaps it suited him too late.
They had no time to look at one another.
Only the sound of coins being placed on the saucer remained.
Outside, the light was beginning to fall.
They left the cafe separately.
Once outside, the jacket she was wearing was too heavy to be taken straight back to the studio.
Underneath it, she wore a pale blue silk dress, soft as morning light, almost without saturation. In the evening sun, it caught and lost the light like water.
“It’s too cold for the early spring sea”
She had no time to smoke.
She walked quickly towards the station.
There was no other way from here. She had to go by train.
“Good evening”
Before the station clerk could return the greeting, she continued.
“One ticket to the farthest sea from here”
The clerk looked at her.
For an instant, nothing happened. To Iris, the instant lasted almost forever.
“That would be this one,” he said. “But it’s the last train. And you won’t be able to come back today.”
He paused.
“Do you have somewhere to stay there?”
Iris said nothing.
She looked at him.
“That will be thirteen.”
She bought the cheapest seat left and boarded the train before the word could become unreasonable.
She found her seat.
The cheap seat stood almost vertically, like a pew in a church.
Her back obeyed before she did.
Strictness.
Correctness.
Salvation.
“I hate my father”
Only then did she remember.
The fag packet was in her own coat.
The small happiness meant for autumn.
But the coat was no longer with her.
…A wonderful life.
The dress she usually slept in was far too beautiful to let her sleep.
The train moved.
No one spoke to her.
At the terminus, she stood up.
Her body had stiffened into the shape of the seat.
She stretched it once, badly, then stepped down from the train and left the station.
Outside, the air had already become night.
The gas lamps stood in the dark and took turns with her shadow. They stretched it, shortened it, stretched it again, and finally threw it out where the light could no longer follow.
She walked until the pavement ended.
On the dark beach, even the line between the sand and the sea had disappeared.
“So cold after all”
She put her hand into the pocket of the old, oddly clean leather jacket.
Something let itself be held.
She closed her fingers around it and pulled it out.
A crushed fag packet.
Inside it, the lighter.
And two cigarettes, bent like small, hunchbacked things.
She looked at them for a while.
“Where are those who were before us?” she whispered.
No one knew.
She put one of the cigarettes between her lips.
The lighter hesitated once.
Then it lit.
She smoked facing the sea.
When it was finished, she put the burnt end into the empty packet.
Then she lit the second one.
The wind moved through the jacket, the silk, the smoke, her body.
She smoked it to the end too.
Then she placed the second burnt end beside the first.
Inside the crushed packet, there were no cigarettes left.
Only the lighter.
And the two remains.
She put the crushed packet back into the jacket pocket.
She spoke so softly the words almost disappeared into the wind.
“Where, then. No one could find anyone in this kind of dark. Only the smoke went ahead”
The last smoke left her mouth and moved towards the sea.
For a while, the sea had no edge.
Neither did she.
Late afternoon.
The cafe is still neither beautiful nor ugly.
A small table near the window.
A cup.
And another.
An ashtray.
A coat thrown over the back of a chair.
“Where are those who were before us?”
“Don’t know”