AIRPORT

AIRPORT

Neil Morrison checked his wristwatch for the second time. The plane was due to arrive in ten minutes. He walked through one of the automatic opening and closing doors of Leonardo da Vinci airport, and felt immediately the cool touch of air conditioning on his perspiring skin.

        Throngs of people were moving in different directions. They stood with infinite patience in long snake-queues at check-in desks, sat around on hard cushioned seats, reading, conversing, or looking absent-mindedly into space.

It was an all too familiar scene to Morrison who was used to airports all over the world. He was a correspondent for the Associated Press in Rome, and he was often out of Italy covering international stories. He was one of a small branch of journalists working in a cramped four-roomed apartment in the centre of the city, just off Piazza Venezia.

        It was midday in July and Morrison had driven to the airport when all of Italy was enduring a three-week heat wave and drought. His car had no air conditioning, and so he drove along the straight dual carriageway to the airport with the car windows wide open. He drove fast, exceeding the speed limit, but quite conscious he was not the only transgressive driver. And as the wind streamed into his car, blowing his hair in disarray, his mind was not on his driving but on his wife, Michelle, who he was going to pick up.

        A smile played on his face when he thought of holding her again in his arms. After six months in the United States, helping their only 18-year-old daughter settle down to University life, his wife was returning to him. They had been in constant contact with each other, but nothing could now replace the physical comfort, the touchable, all-embracing flesh and blood of his wife in his arms.

        He checked his watch again and scanned one of the monitors aligned on a suspended steel rod in the arrivals foyer of the airport. The plane from New York was perfectly on time and a flashing symbol next to the flight number indicated it had landed. It would take Michelle at least thirty minutes to get through customs and passport control, and so Morrison sauntered across to the bar and ordered a coffee.

        He was almost oblivious to all the hustle and bustle of people around him. He caught snippets of conversation in different languages, but his mind was on meeting Michelle. How would she look? What would she be wearing? He had already planned the afternoon.  The table was booked at Bruno’s – their favourite Trattoria in Trastevere –, and then home where they would rest, lying in each other’s arms, gazing up at the overhead fan, spinning monotonously, talking in soft voices about all those delightful, nonsensical things a man and a woman say to each other after they have made love and communication is exquisitely spontaneous and facile.

Morrison drank his short black coffee in one mouthful, placed the little brown Lavazza cup on its thick-rimmed saucer and left the bar.

Still with time to spare, he stopped off at the men’s toilets. A strong smell of disinfectant immediately assaulted his nostrils, as he ran his eye around the spacious, singular room with its set of linear cubicles and line of washbasins. He peered at his reflected image in one of the tarnished mirrors. Morrison was 38 years old, and his healthy, tanned complexion exalted the light blue of his eyes. He had short thick black hair with a long fringe that covered his forehead in such a way that he had to brush it back continuously with the palm of his hand. His stature was tall, and his broad shoulders were strong and masculine in the short-sleeved T-shirt he was wearing.

 While washing his hands, Morrison saw in the reflection of the mirror a young man enter, agitated and in a hasty manner. He was dressed in black jeans and a coarse, stained, bomber jacket, zipped up to the neck – something Morrison immediately noticed as being odd.

Placing a dark green canvas bag on the floor next to one of the washbasins, the man began to wash vigorously his face, making deep, guttural noises, gargling and spitting out the water he cupped into his hands.

Morrison moved across the room to the automatic hand-drier. He pushed in the protruding red starter button that noisily set the fan in motion. Rubbing his hands together in the stream of warm air, he was conscious the man had stopped washing his hands and face and was now looking intently into the mirror that reflected a face with no expression. Morrison had a sudden sense of foreboding as he watched the stranger pick up his bag and leave the toilets. For a brief moment, their eyes met fleetingly like wafted feathers in the neon light.

 Now Morrison was at the arrival gate. He knew Michelle would appear very soon. There was a large gathering of people, conversation was boisterous and good humored, as everyone fixed their stare on passengers who were already coming out, in dribs and drabs, many pushing trolleys loaded with suitcases.

Then he caught sight of Michelle. He instantly recognized that self-composed gait that made her stand out from everyone else. She was wearing a light yellow dress that fell down to the knees and outlined delicately and sensuously her figure. Her blond hair was tied back, emphasizing the soft pale structure of her face. She had an expectant smile on her lips as her eyes scanned the awaiting crowd.

        Morrison stepped forward to meet her.

“Michelle”, he called out, and he waved his hand to get his wife’s attention. Michelle glimpsed her husband in the crowd and she waved back smiling happily.

Suddenly there was a deafening blast that resonated throughout the airport. Windows shattered into smithereens. Women screamed and male voices yelled. A succession of gunshots and the rattle of machine guns rang out, as men, women and children frantically ran in different directions, seeking what little cover could be found.

And then a ripple of bullets splattered the marble floor where Morrison was still standing, and he heard his wife cry out “God, what’s happening?”

In transfixed horror, Morrison saw Michelle fall to the ground, red blotches of blood already beginning to seep through the light fabric of her dress. He threw himself down onto the floor next to her as a second spray of bullets hit the check-in desks and conveyor belts, the deadly ricochet spitting out in all directions.

 Within seconds it was all over: the shooting stopped as abruptly as it had started. Stunned and unbelieving, Morrison took in the scene around him and saw people sobbing in pain, blood splattered on the floor, and a mingled disorder of injured and dead bodies.

“Neil, I can’t breathe…” he heard his wife’s voice tremble, amidst the chaos.

“Michelle…” he said cradling his wife’s head in his lap. He looked into her blanched face, and his fingers ran over her dried lips and up to her closed eyes.  

 “Michelle…” he repeated stunned, and his voice was subdued and his body was shivering.

 “ What the fuck’s happening?” he heard himself yell, but his voice was lost in the cacophony and commotion of death around him.

“Michelle…” now he said her name barely as a whisper. He gently rocked her limp body, dying quietly in his arms.

 “Help me…someone help me for God’s sake,” and his words rose into the air like a lost prayer dissolving into the discordant orchestration of anguished implorations from the voices of the survivors, the injured, and the dying, all indiscernible, all equally irrational.

 Then Morrison saw his wife open her eyes. Momentarily their soft blueness irradiated his face with love until the glow faded with the slow closing of her eyelids. He saw her lips quiver, and he leaned close to her mouth to hear her whisper “I love you.”

And when the words had been spoken, so softly, softly, too, ran the first tears haphazardly over his cheeks, tracing an irregular downward pattern along the length of his neck.

No words came from his mouth.

In this embrace with death, words lose their meaningfulness, but the tears that sting the skin are the tears that leave an indelible stain of sorrow on the face forever.

Morrison gazed at his hands covered in his wife’s drying blood.

Two-armed policemen spoke rapidly to him in Italian. The words sounded strange and incoherent, weighed down with fear. Assistance had arrived. Paramedics were rushing to and fro with stretches, giving out orders, gesticulating.

Everyone was yelling at the same time, each a fraught character playing a role in a horrific tragedy with its bloodstained backdrop of utter pandemonium, and slowly, as if biding time, Death strolled across the floor collecting one by one the first handful of souls.

Spiral Down

SPIRAL DOWN

Spiral down, my love,

Spiral down,

Spiral down, my love,

And rest your head awhile.

Sunlight through the window pane,

Dirt in your nails.

Slogging your guts out all day,

To earn your family a meal.

Spiral down, my love,

Spiral down,

Spiral down, my love,

And rest your head awhile.

On the dole for too long,

Days gone into years.

Your husband can't think what went wrong

Seein' his wife in a pool of tears.

Spiral down, my love,

Spiral down,

Spiral down, my love,

And rest your head awhile.

Gone the midnight hour,

The kids are asleep.

Your husband lies at your side,

He's too drunk to stand on his feet.

Spiral down, my love,

Spiral down,

Spiral down, my love,

And rest your head awhile.

Breathe your breath into the cold,

The dawn is severe.

You walk a suburban road,

With your collar pulled around your ears.

Spiral down, my love,

Spiral down,

Spiral down, my love,

And rest your head awhile.

TIME IN TIME OUT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSPLtITUjWc

Time In Time Out

I can look at you,

For hours on end,

Say the same old things

Again and again,

The things you know.

And I guess I like the way you walk,

I like all your movements

And the way you walk,

Across the room.

Time in, Time out,

Time out, Time in,

In and out,

Your destiny.        

Shafts of sunlight

Through the blind,

Summer heat and lazy minds,

In this room.

I fail to see your point of view,

I cannot predict

The things you do,

Or will not do.

Time in, Time out,

Time out, Time in,

In and out,

Your destiny.

Moments lost

In deepest thought,

Sometimes I know you,

Sometimes not...lost in thought.

And all the world

Is in me and you,

Love is a danger,

When dreams fall through...don't you know?

Don't you know?

Time in, Time out,

Time out, Time in,

In and out,

Your destiny.

THE VISITOR

                                                                THE VISITOR

In the late afternoon, golden sunbeams flickered hither and thither across the Roman Castelli hills, between cracks in a low grey belt of sluggish cloud. The sunbeams sneaked across lush fields and verdant vineyards, and rose to drench the city of Rome in a celestial glow. Domes and rooftops radiated magnificently in the setting sun, and windows in high-rise suburban apartments reflected the golden light like so many twinkling mirrors.

And the sunbeams found their way into the kitchen window of one small apartment in the centre of the city, and illuminated the face of Rebecca Martini gazing down on the street below. The lambent light made a halo around her inclined head of long, heavy brown hair, and it outlined the contours of her body.

Rebecca could not remember how long she had been standing at the window. Immersed in thought, she had lost track of time. She hardly noticed the rumbling traffic and the pedestrians walking the narrow pavements; she hardly noticed the sun setting in the distance until the dusk had surreptitiously slipped into the panorama of her thoughts, and she heard the voice of Cecilia, her fourteen-year old-daughter.

“Mama, I bought this for Papa.”

Rebecca turned around, now a silhouette against the bright windowpane. She looked carefully at her daughter in the semi darkness of the kitchen. Cecilia was tall for her age, and she had her same color hair. Her wide brown eyes contrasted with the paleness of her complexion; she was very pretty, Rebecca thought, dressed in jeans and a light blue pull-over, she was now a young lady.

“What have you bought for Papa?” she asked in a voice that she knew feigned interest.

“A tie!” said Cecilia. “Look, it’s a genuine silk tie! Do you think he’ll like it?”

“Do I think he’ll like it?” she echoed. Taking the striped tie in her hands, she felt the silky texture as she stretched it out to its full length. “It’s beautiful, Cecilia. Your papa’s going to love this!”

“I thought he would like the red stripes, and he looks so handsome when he wears a tie and a suit.”

Cecilia’s words resonated in her head. He was handsome when they first met. She back tracked in time and remembered when he was dating her; she remembered the summer evening walks to the light-house that commanded a sweeping view of the sea. She could still hear his seductive voice and the warm embrace and the excitement of first kissing. Everything seemed so enchanted at the time: the starry night sky, the blanched moon, the balmy sea breeze. She had given herself up entirely to this man who she believed would be her life-long companion.

“When’s he arriving?”

Cecilia’s question brought her back to reality.

“What’s that?” she said, fumbling to regain a sense of what was about to happen. “He’ll be here soon. I heard he would be here by eight o’clock.”

“I can’t wait!” Cecilia sang out happily. “Ten years and it’s Papa’s first time with us on Christmas Eve!”

Rebecca felt she needed to remind Cecilia that her father could only stay for one day. She wanted to explain that he was under house arrest.

He had been released from prison on condition he remained at home.

But she refrained from speaking her thoughts; she could not bring herself to spoil her daughter’s excitement. It would not be fair. She had suffered enough, never seeing her father for over ten years except for sporadic visits to the prison.

“Have you set the table, darling?” she asked.

Cecilia switched on the overhead dining room light. The table was set impeccably: three knives and forks, three plates and glasses.

“All done, Mama,” she replied laughing. She moved to the table, “you sit here, I’m next to you, and Papa will sit at the head of the table!”

Rebecca moved over to the gas stove where a large saucepan of water was already boiling. From the shelf, she took a packet of salt and poured two teaspoonfuls into the bubbling water. He would be here soon, she thought to herself, a man found guilty for numerous connections with the mafia; his life long prison sentence was on the murder of a magistrate who he killed for financial recompense. He had nothing against the magistrate he shot in the chest three times. He did not know him; he did not know why he was paid to kill him. It was simply a contract - an order he obeyed; an order that came to him in the dead of night – always in the dead of night – and he was a killer, a professional one.

He was well paid for his work, but the assassination of the magistrate ended abruptly when his Alfa Romeo, speeding away from the murder scene, careened out of control and crashed into one of the many cypress trees aligning the narrow Via Appia Antica. The mist was thick, and the damp of the night had already set in while he was driving, headlights piercing the darkness, wheels squealing on the asphalt, until the trunk of the tree reared up like a towering phantom in the blackness, and it was too late to avoid collision. The next thing he knew, he was in hospital, with multiple injuries, alive, but in handcuffs.

And all of this was ten years ago and today her husband, a silver-haired, fifty year old man, short in stature, with a corpulent body that told a story of time wasted in over-eating and lack of exercise, was coming home.

*        *        *        *

Roberto Martino arrived at the block of flats where his wife and daughter lived and scanned the names on the dimly lit panel of bell buttons. He had forgotten so many families lived in this condominium. With his forefinger he pressed the button marked Martino, tarnished and barely decipherable, and waited for an answer. With a heavy, discordant noise, the metallic lock on the front gate was automatically released. He pushed open the gate and walked down the narrow corridor that led to the elevator and staircase. He chose to walk up the two flights of stairs to the second floor instead of risking the claustrophobia he invariably suffered when he took an elevator. Wearily he climbed the stairs, one by one, stopping from time to time to catch his breath, realising that he smoked far too much.

In his own mind, he was not sure how this was going to work out. He could never find the right words to say either to his wife or daughter. He loved them dearly and he was repentant, truly and profoundly repentant for his infamous past.

Now he was serving a life sentence and these visits home filled him with a mixture of joy and anguish.

Now he was standing outside the door. He waited, aware of his heartbeat fluttering with a strained, emotional uneasiness, and he found himself unable to push the stained yellow button that would ring the bell. Behind the door he could hear movement: the clatter of plates from the kitchen, the muted television, and the sound of his daughter’s voice, although he was unable to discern what she was saying.

And then tears came to his eyes. Soft, slow tears of a dead man. He hastily brushed them aside with the palms of his hand, and his body began to shake in quick convulsions, and his breathing grew faster and faster. What was this hidden emotion welling up from the bottom of his unconsciousness? He understood, then, this was love; the love he felt for his wife and the love for his daughter. He also understood this was regret: life had led him along tortuous paths of aberration, straight into a cell.

The tears ceased; his body had become calm. He was suddenly self-composed and in control of his feelings.

Behind the door the television had been turned up. The voice of a young pop star sang a melody, beautiful and heart wrenching. He listened to the crescendo of emotion as the song unfolded a story of sorrowful, unrequited love.

Driven by an impulse that defied all rational thought, he turned around quickly and descended the staircase. Within a few minutes he was out of the block of flats and walking at a quick pace down the street aligned with parked cars.

He stopped momentarily and looked up at the softly illuminated apartment window. He saw the silhouette of his wife pass by slowly and gracefully, and realised he too had become nothing more that an outline in their lives. There was nothing substantial in him; he was an emptiness, a ghost, a memory that warranted no remembering. Like an epiphany in the stark nakedness of the urban night, he would not see them again, and there would be no returning home.

He started walking. With numb hands dug deep in his pockets, and his shoulders slightly arched against the chilly breeze blowing lightly, he was nothing more than a silhouette himself, a retreating figure, fast-fading into a perfect kind of anonymity.

The Fatalist

Fate. John Holland had wondered about that word, maybe for too long.

He did not think himself a fatalist. He believed he could mould his future according to the choices he made everyday. No matter how big or small the choices were, he felt he had control over his life insofar he could make choices. He believed firmly that life was nothing more than a series of choices and the skill lay in the faculty to discern between making a good choice and making a bad choice. And, now, he had a choice to make.

In a book of Buddhist Philosophy he had recently read about how making choices was part of life-learning and how making the right choice can lead you to spiritual enlightenment and ultimate happiness. He recalled it was an easy book to read, but as always putting words into practice was the difficult step. How do you make the right choice when there may be so many variables? So many consequences? Then there is the responsibility of the choice and the awareness of the responsibility, and its possible ricochet effect on other people.

He was sitting in the kitchen of his tiny flat in north London, thinking about the choice he had to make. The clock on the wall over the cooker was an audible reminder of the inexorability of Time. And he knew, there was very little time left to decide.

He stood and walked over to the window. A soft sun shone in the late afternoon and the city sky was dull yellow. He saw the continuous stream of pedestrians walking up and down the street below like so many souls, jumbled together in the turmoil of life. It was the rush hour when London never ceased to rest. He heard the rumbling traffic and he wondered if she would ever come back to him.

Making a choice can be so difficult if you give into the conflict. The Buddhist had said, "listen to your heart". Your heart supersedes rational thought because it is a holistic part of the Universal Intelligence. Be aware of your feelings. Does the choice make you feel comfortable or does it make you feel uncomfortable? Does the choice make people around  you happy or does it incur misery and sadness? And what about you? Are you acting selfishly or are you acting unselfishly in the choice you are making?

Like saying, "am I a saint or am I a bastard?" he mused to himself. He was sitting back at the table and had lit a cigarette. He had tried to quit smoking, but at this moment in his life, cigarettes had become part of the entire choice making process.

In his flat-soled slippers, he shuffled into the bathroom, lifted the toilet seat and urinated. He stood in front of the sink mirror and his pale face stared back blankly.

The doorbell rang abruptly disturbing his thoughts. He knew it was Michelle. The bell rang again, more insistently. He continued looking at his reflection in the mirror. The bell stopped ringing and a silence settled in. The clock ticked loudly and forlornly. Suddenly she was banging on the door with her fists, frantically and pleadingly.

"I know you're in there! Open the door!" and her sobbing voice pervaded the small flat, and seemed to climb the walls and hang up side down on the ceiling like a gheko. And John Holland knew her presence was part of his life.

Like the fetus she bore in her womb.

He left the bathroom and halted in the corridor. Now all was silent again.

They stood on either side of the front door. So silent now, they could almost hear  each other's heavy breathing. Through the spy hole John Holland saw her dyed red hair that made the pallor of her face seem so ghostly. He saw the smudged make up from her crying and he saw the plaintiveness in her waiting.

Waiting for him to open the door. He opened the door.

TEA IN SUDAN

Snake Boy

Because something like this could never happen not by a far stretch of the imagination; but it did happen, and it shocked me and shocked almost everybody in the little Canadian town of Castlebridge

The snake, a boa constrictor, coiled its length around two sleeping boys and killed them. The coroner said they died of asphyxiation, and when he assisted the autopsy, he saw how the boa had crushed their rib cages into their hearts and into their lungs.

Such young hearts were these two boys of eight years old as they slept together in the same bed after a day of fun and games.

On a television broadcast, the grandfather of one of the boys said sadly, "they were just typical boys, who played typical boy games, whoever would have thought this could have happened?" And his aging lined face was expressionless and morose, as he looked out on the world and tried to make sense of this nonsensical happening.

How could this horrific event take place in such a hidden away, sleep-sodden town? How could the rural peacefulness of Castlebridge be so uncharacteristically turned up side down by this event? By a boa constrictor?

And the mother of one of the boys, shivered and shuddered as she recalled that morning, walking into the room to find the boys asleep in death. The night had been rainy and cold, but the bedroom was warm and cosy making it an ideal nest for a snake that had crawled through the ventilation pipes from the pet shop on the ground floor below.

John Crawford owned the pet shop. He was a young man, short in stature and robust in body. He had bright blue eyes and and a crop of sharp blond hair that stood out on the clean cut contours of his face. His easy smile and propensity for socializing was the perfect combination for someone who worked with the public every day. A motley crowd of customers visited his shop to buy pet food and sometimes a puppy or a kitten, a hamster or rabbit; but most customers came to marvel at the exotic reptiles imported from different parts of the world that he kept in temperature controlled cages. John Crawford was proud of his collection of snakes that included vipers and rattlers, but his prize joy was the boa constrictor that coiled its length around the two sleeping boys and killed them.


John Crawford had always liked Leslie. She was twenty two years of age, blond, like himself with twinkling blue eyes and she was gorgeous to look at. The blue jeans she wore showed off her slender legs and pronounced the smooth round curves of her buttocks, and beneath her tight white cotton blouse her breasts were snug and small.

That fatal night the snake coiled itself around the two sleeping boys, John Crawford was distracted by the simple scent of sex and the desire to have her, and this is when forgetfulness of other things of primary importance falls into secondary importance.

Because that night, as the rain beat outside, he fondled her breasts, removed her tight white blouse and removed her jeans and because the feel of flesh on flesh drove him to a frenzy, it made him forget; forget to put the lid back on the cage of the boa constrictor he had shown her.

Yes, he had pulled the snake from out of its cage and showed her its length and its softness and its hardness and its silky skin that he had let her feel, and she had giggled girlishly at the smoothness of the snake with its licking tongue slipping in and out, out and in. She did not recoil when he kissed her on the lips, and she did not mind the snake stretched to its full length as he guided her onto the floor and made love to her.

But the snake was outside its cage and freely sliding across the tiled floor making zig zag movements to the ventilator pipes that led to the bedroom on the floor above where it coiled its length around the two sleeping boys and killed them.

The Exit

He sat in the semi darkness of the corridor, his face faintly illuminated by the red fire exit light on the opposite wall. He sat in silence and waited. It was now only a question of time before he would know the outcome of all his thinking; hours spent brooding, analysing his feelings, misleading himself into a quagmire of lost hopes. Now his mind was at rest, strangely inactive, as if resigned to an uncontrollable destiny. Because he could not do anything; because he had, so to speak, out thought himself, he was ready to accept whatever was in store for him.

And so he waited until he heard footsteps echoing down the corridor, the echo of high-heeled shoes on polished marble. As if in a dream, he rose to greet the woman approaching him. She was tall and slim, elegantly dressed.

“How long have you been waiting here?” she enquired. Her soft blue eyes seemed to sparkle in the dim light.

“I think a couple of hours, more or less,” he replied, embarrassed by the uncertainty in his voice.

There was an awkward moment of silence. Their eyes met and held each other momentarily. He was the first to break eye contact, looking around the sterile cold corridor.

“Guess, I was waiting for you,” he said. “Guess, I wanted to have your answer. I’ve been thinking about this for so long, day in and day out, and my thoughts keep going round and round in circles. I need to know if this is going to work, or are we just wasting time?”

“Wasting time?” she questioned, with an unfamiliar hardness in the tone of her voice. “How can you be so naïve, Tom! What answer are you waiting for? Have I got to say this is how it all ends with an embrace and curt farewell?”

He wanted to take her in his arms and reassure her of his love. It seemed to be the most natural thing to do. After all, if he did not take the initiative, if he did not tell her how much he cared for her, or how much he loved her, then how would she ever know?

“I love you,” he whispered, surprised at his own boldness. “I have always loved you, ever since I first set eyes on you.”

He realised instantly this sounded horribly crass, like a string of hackneyed words out of some second rate love film, but these were the words he said, and he did not regret having said them because he knew the words came from his heart. Maybe that was the problem: protected behind an impervious shield of silence, he never spoke his mind.

In the long, empty corridor, the man and woman stood facing each other. They talked in quiet voices without touching. Shades of red and black played on their faces, and their unanimated conversation was conducted in whispered words.

So that is it. That is the way it was to be.