Where Blue Is, Where Green Goes​​

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Tomorrow, I’ll take a boat far out to sea to fetch water to put out the fire in that burning barn.

 

I’ll be there by the day after tomorrow. I hoped it would keep burning until then.

 

By the time I noticed, I’d been in this city for years.

 

I was sick of the sailors’ voices and meant to leave the town where I grew up. I was sure of that then. But it wasn’t the whole reason. Maybe I hadn’t decided anything at all. Maybe I only wanted to go somewhere far away. And it was their burnt voices that carried me.

 

“Maybe I should’ve taken the train. But then I couldn’t have left the island. Still, on a train, that view could’ve followed me all the way”

 

By then, I missed only the hills and the sheep. The cold wind moving through the morning green, and the white, like tufts of down, huddled together as if to keep one another safe. I used to watch them, always worried they might be blown away. Now even that view was far behind me, a faint green trembling just above the water.

 

“Aren’t you cold?”

“Aye”

“You been at sea before?”

“Used to go all the time”

 

I answered his weathered voice rather crossly. He carried on as if he hadn’t noticed.

 

“You liked travelling, did you?”

“My dad was a sailor. Used to make me help him all the time”

“That sounds rough. Put you off boats, did it?”

“I don’t hate boats”

“That’s good.”

 

I’d said it without thinking, and the answer surprised me a little. I could have followed it with but. I didn’t.

 

“How far you going once we get to port?”

“The biggest city near the port”

“Anyone over there?”

“No one. Just wanted to get out of that place and try living somewhere far away. Thought maybe I’d see something different over there”

 

Words I thought about before saying always came back to me later. This time they didn’t.

 

“What do you do?”

“Carve stone. Paint”

“Then that city should suit you. Got somewhere to live over there?”

“It’ll sort itself out when I get there”

“You’ve got some guts. But that city’s crowded, all the roads are laid out proper, and there’s no beautiful sea. You’ll feel boxed in there. Everyone who goes over says the same.”

“Maybe. Bit cold now. I’m going inside”

 

I suppose I was taking it lightly. I’d been there before, but I was going alone with nowhere waiting for me. I knew I was about to become just someone, somewhere. That didn’t frighten me. Or maybe that isn’t quite true. Whatever bothered me, they didn’t care enough about strangers to read it in the crease between my eyes, the one that never quite went away. Still, it wasn’t enough to stop the waves carrying the boat.

 

I looked out of the window. In all this blue, with nowhere out of it, there wasn’t a trace of green.

 

Only what remained behind my eyelids had followed me all this way.

 

When I opened my eyes, for a moment I didn’t know where I was. Before I knew where I was, the only thing I knew was that I wasn’t in a peaceful meadow or a comfortable rocking chair. I went outside.

 

A harbour I didn’t know was swaying beside the boat.

 

“Here we are. That all your luggage? Take care. Have a good journey.”

“Thanks”

 

I looped thick hemp rope around the back and legs of a wicker chair that looked light enough to carry in one hand. I piled my things on the seat, tied the whole lot together, put it on my back, and walked towards the city.

 

“Countryside’s the same everywhere”

 

The landscape passing by wasn’t much different, even on the other side of a wide sea.

 

Burnt voices fading behind me.

 

The smell of tar left on my body.

 

Cigarette smoke moving in the sea wind.

 

The pale-blue packet in my pocket.

 

Even the way people looked at me was much the same.

 

“Wonder if there are hills and barns here too”

 

An attic room at the top of a spiral staircase. A wooden floor marked with plaster and paint. A window I could climb through onto the roof. A withered white rose in a bottle on a small round table. The wicker chair beside it. Books and a coat piled on a two-seater settee. A cafe a short walk away.

 

It was small, but I liked it that way. Just right for making things.

 

“Maybe I won’t understand anything just going back and forth between the studio and the cafe. Still, there was a lot I didn’t know before I came here”

 

Walking on the pavement. Sleeping at night and waking in the morning. Eating breakfast in the morning. Smoking only where you were allowed. Doing bad things where no one could see.

 

None of it was anything I’d tried to know. By the time I noticed, I no longer wanted to know how things had been before.

 

But it wasn’t only something between me and other people. It had always been there in my own days too.

 

Not using straws. Eating breakfast after midday. Smoking only cigarettes from pale-blue packets.

 

They were small things that meant nothing to anyone else, but they had always kept the inside of my body safe.

 

The fag packet I took from my pocket was already crushed.

 

“Right, suppose I’ll go to the cafe”

 

The nearest cafe didn’t sell cigarettes, so I walked on. A few dozen steps farther than I’d already had to walk.

 

When I got to the cafe, I bought cigarettes and went to sit down, but my usual table by the window wasn’t free. Normally I’d have given up and left, but I didn’t want to go straight home. So I sat at one of the tables in the middle. Everyone always left an empty seat between them. I did the same. I ordered a coffee, counted the coins in my pocket and pulled the ashtray closer, trying to look busy.

 

I hoped no one would speak to me. The old man sitting opposite did.

 

“Good afternoon.”

 

Of course, he said it in their language.

 

“Good afternoon”

 

I answered awkwardly. Then the old man spoke in mine.

 

“Where are you from?”

“Across the sea. Been living in this city a few years though”

 

I thought I’d answered fine, but I still wasn’t in this city. Even if I lived here another few years, they’d probably still speak to me in my language. A little annoyed, I lit a cigarette.

 

“Don’t often see young people smoking those.”

 

He took a packet just like mine from his pocket.

 

“We used to get these on ration during the war. Tried a few others after I came back here, but these are still the best.”

“Don’t they bring back bad things?”

 

This time, I knew those words would come back to me one day.

 

“They do. But I’m smoking these in this cafe too. Nothing bad about now.”

 

When I finished, I crushed the stub into the ashtray a little harder than usual. It left a burn mark.

 

“Have you ever been to that port town across the sea?”

“I have. Only ever saw it from a distance though.”

“Right. Was the green of the hills beautiful from there too?”

“Aye. It was.”

 

After a silence, the old man left a burn mark in the ashtray too, then began talking to the man beside him.

 

I watched the light from the window catch the dust drifting through the room, while the cigarette smoke moved purple through it.

 

The coffee that had arrived without me noticing was still a little warm.

 

Everyone here spoke to me in the language we had in common. But even at the same table, when they spoke to each other, they spoke in theirs. I somehow liked watching that.

 

A long table with six seats.

 

Even on this little island, I was someone who had come from somewhere else, someone from another world.

 

There was still an empty chair between each of us.

 

I suddenly remembered the round table in the house where I used to live with my grandmother. Probably no one uses it now. The old wooden table was far too big for the three of us—my grandmother, my mother and me—but I loved the chair made specially to go around it in one unbroken circle.

 

When my mother was little, she somehow found out about Saturn’s rings. No one knew where she’d heard about them. She kept saying she was going there and wouldn’t hear otherwise. My grandmother finally had the furniture maker in town make the chair for her.

 

When I was little and found out that chair was Saturn’s rings, I did the same. I said I was going there and wouldn’t hear otherwise. I didn’t even know where it was. I just wanted to go. At first, I might even have thought it was somewhere in town, not even as far as the next country.

 

When I came to this city, I bought a round table and put it in the studio.

 

The little Saturn still had no rings.

 

By the time I noticed, I was already standing in a furniture shop. I couldn’t even remember whether I’d paid for my coffee. Even if I hadn’t, I thought I could just pay next time.

 

“Hello. Could you make a wooden chair here? It’s a strange shape”

 

The shopkeeper answered without much interest.

 

“Got too many orders on at the moment. Would be difficult.”

 

Before I could say anything else, he went on.

 

“The chairs over there are all I’ve got.”

 

Annoyed, I was about to leave when I saw some familiar wicker chairs lined up.

 

“How many of these have you got?”

“The ones there, and I think there’s another out the back.”

“Then three. I’ll take all of them”

 

After I paid, I said, “They’re light. I’ll carry them back like this” and left the shop for the studio.

 

Every time one of the chair legs struck my shin, my blinking slowed a little. But until I reached the front of the building, the chairs had no weight.

 

Then suddenly, the whole ten-odd minutes hit me at once.

 

I climbed the stairs regretting it a little, stopped to catch my breath, went inside, and arranged the chairs around the round table.

 

“Not much of a ring like this”

 

I said it like a complaint, though I was a little pleased.

 

I sat in Saturn’s ring, still with gaps in it, leaving one seat empty. There was no one opposite me.

 

What the old man had said bothered me, so I walked back to the cafe.

 

He wasn’t there any more.

 

So I walked.

 

My town had been almost completely destroyed in the war.

 

Once, I went to the burnt barn on the hill and picked up a book. It was charred, its fragments gathered and bound together so it still held the shape of a book. I took it home and put it carefully away in some drawer.

 

“Don’t remember what it said, but it must’ve been something important”

 

I hurried home and threw my coat onto the settee without thinking. It fell to the floor and sent plaster dust up into the evening light. I didn’t care about getting the coat dirty—it was already covered in plaster—but the pile of books beside it collapsed. They hadn’t been stacked without rules or order. That didn’t mean the heavier books were at the bottom, or that they were in the order I’d read them.

 

“Would’ve ended up like this anyway. Easier to look through now”

 

I piled the fallen books back onto the settee as I looked for that one, but I couldn’t find it.

 

“Must’ve left it at home”

 

A book I’d only just remembered. Of course I hadn’t brought it with me. I didn’t even know where I’d put it. Still, I felt that if I read it, I might remember something important.

 

The port town with the hills had begun to burn again.

 

“Maybe that beautiful green on the hills wasn’t there back then”

 

I took one of the wicker chairs and threaded rope through its back and legs. I always did that when I went somewhere far away. I piled the painting I’d decided to work on tomorrow, my things, and a few books onto the seat, then tied them down. The book I treasured most, worn from reading, had to stay behind. So instead, I took off its spine and pulled it apart.

 

The plaster dust still hanging in the air suddenly became too much. I opened the window. I looked out and saw the old man from the cafe walking off somewhere, smoking.

 

“That barn where we used to put things we didn’t use any more. That’s where the fire’s coming from”

 

I took a cigarette from the pale-blue packet, lit it, took a few drags, then threw it into the room. I put the loaded chair on my back and left the studio before I could feel the heat beginning to rise.

 

When I stepped outside and closed my eyes, only the green remained, barely there. I had to go and put out that fire.

 

I walked towards the harbour faster than usual, watching the grooves between the cobbles so I wouldn’t trip. I met no one on the way. I could tell I was getting closer to the harbour without looking up. I didn’t want to know. That burnt voice, the same as my dad’s. The farther I got from the eyes that watched me, the closer it felt.

 

I suddenly remembered I’d left the studio window open and stopped for a moment. I knew it was already too late. It just bothered me a little. I didn’t want it to. Then I walked faster than before.

 

When I reached the harbour, I asked the sailors there.

 

“I want to go to that port town across the sea. The one with the big bridge”

“You’re in luck. That’s exactly where we’re heading. Only there’s nothing left there now.”

“Aye. But first I want to go somewhere and fetch some water”

“Water? No need to fetch it. There’s as much as you like right there.”

 

I said nothing.

 

“Never mind. We’re getting ready to leave. Get aboard.”

“Thanks, but I’ll help”

 

I’d rather get covered in oil than sit on a boat that wasn’t moving, rocking with the waves.

 

I put my things aboard first. We covered them and the other luggage with a cloth and tied everything to a post with rope. One of the sailors cast off the mooring line. The two of us hauled the fenders up and coiled the old blackened rope.

 

“Here. Have one.”

 

The pale-blue packet.

 

The smell of tar on my hands.

 

Purple moving with every breath.

 

A burnt voice.

 

“Aren’t you cold?”

 

From here, I pointed to Saturn’s rings and made sure.