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The best thing about autumn was the interminable sunsets. The shadows cast by the passengers filing through the doors seemed to bisect the station like ley lines, or the mysterious figures in the ground around Nazca cities.
Den had never been to South America but had read about it in the yellowing National Geographics Rissa used to leave lying about their house. For Den, they evoked visions of chocolate people with blue eyes, warrior queens with pendulous breasts, ribbons of gold and silver round their ankles.
Wondrous, fictional people, he believed.
Then again, no fairytales validated the existence of Surbiton, a town nestled anonymously beside the Thames; for all he knew, this town was the fiction.
Den walked the three blocks home as the sun finally sank below the horizon. Sunday in November was a weird twilight time when the stores shut just as the afternoon wore completely away and the darkening high street was illuminated with headlights.
Today was no different.
For Den, Sunday meant no duties to fulfill, no chores to complete, except possibly the one of surviving the empty hours till Monday: when it seemed intolerable to do anything except watch Simpsons episodes until bedtime.
So different from Manila, he thought, rounding the last corner to his house.
On the train he had caught the strains of heavily accented Tagalog being spoken in a low undertone, in the polite manner of most Filipinos abroad, and he casually glanced round to find the speaker.
“Going home for Christmas this year?”
“Nooo-o. Next year, maybe.”
Two faces, whose glances flickered briefly on him before going back to their conversation. Den’s green eyes aroused no suspicion that he could, in fact, understand the gist of their conversation.
Den’s heart went out to the nurse (he always thought of them as nurses... as she was, once.) She didn’t even sound sore about missing the most important holiday in the Philippines, just resigned to another year “abroad”.
He thought about Rissa, and her last day here; how she had scheduled her flight to fall on the weekend before Midnight Mass started.
He thought about Rissa, and her last day here; how she had scheduled her flight to fall on the weekend before Midnight Mass started.
“You know I don’t want to miss the 5am bibingka afterwards!” she had quipped, packing her case with clothes wrapped in plastic bags. Making light of the situation, of goodbyes left unsaid.
Den was at his door now.
He wondered whether the winter would be milder this year. How he had sweltered in the heat of his only visit to Manila - “her” city! It had been November then, too; a dark blanket of unbearable humidity on the streets. You could sip the air, like soup.
Here in Surbiton the air was as thin as a desert’s, vaporless as the moon. Here the very rivers seemed thirsty.
Even hearts dried up, eventually.
He paused for a moment, inhaling November; and thought of Rissa again, before stepping inside.
30 November 2003