I had woken up quite early, and to do so in winter is rather strange. But to be fair, it was only the beginning of October. The cold hadn’t quite bloomed, so to speak. Yet the buds had started to form, and you might spot a whisker of fog here and there.

I got out of my bed and grabbed my blanket on my way to the balcony. At the front, the buildings with their customary municipal-yellow had lost their human fervor and looked eerie against the setting fog—almost abandoned. Behind the buildings, there was an overgrowing stretch of the district part. When I was growing up, I used to think that it was a forest. It had always muffled the city noises for us and had given our neighborhood an effect of the suburbs. And so, the silence was deafening. It was 4 in the morning, and I was still not sure as to why I had left my bed. I mean I definitely wasn’t in the early-risers club.

Then I heard it. The horn of the train. The one I had been dreaming about for days. Am I actually awake? I will not mind admitting that I had gone along with waking up early part, simply to avoid this dream. For just one day, I did not want to dream about it. Because I knew, if I did, I would start believing that there is more to dreams than regular gibberish.

The horn produced an old sound associated with cargo trains. I expected to hear it once again like in the dream. But the next thing I heard was the doorbell. At this point, I was a bit unnerved. I had half-a-heart to not answer it. But I did because I lead a very boring life, and ghosts usually do not ring a bell.

I opened the wooden door slightly and tried to peek at the stranger before me. It was a young man dressed in formals. But perhaps, ‘formals’ wasn’t the right word to describe it. His coat was made of feathers, ridiculously small pillow-feathers in black. From afar, one might not even be able to notice them. But I noticed them, and I was not ready to have something so strange happen to me in my uneventful life.

“Yes?” I had so many questions, but I was rather speechless. 

The man stared at me, and asked me in a rather monotonous tone, if I could follow him to his vehicle. I asked in further disbelief, “What for?”

The man smiled a brief smile as if his lips could not exceed  certain boundaries and told me that he wanted me to check out his new bookstore. His voice was controlled and the words in his speech were spaced out rather oddly. “At this time? Really? What exactly is your scheme here? Do you take me for a fool?” The man looked unsure and almost wanted to turn back. Any other person would have shut their door at this point, but I admit I was very bored of uneventfulness. “Wait,” I told him, “Where exactly is your bookstore?”

“Sir, it is right across the park.” He paused as if to think and then continued, “I really wanted a writer to be my first customer…if you could give me feedback about…” he paused again as if trying to remember words, “…about the kind of books that I should keep. I know that you were born here, and you know the kind of customers I can get.”

“Let me tell you, young man…a bookstore was a bad decision. This neighborhood is dead as a fly on your best Van Gogh…if you know who that is. But since I am up and I would like to see the scheme you’re fooling me into, I would come with you. And let me tell you…my whereabouts are known to my sister. She’d call the police if I am gone for too long, and the CCTV above my door is sure to catch your face.”

“Does she really sir? Well…I did not take you for a fool, and I would only want your honest opinion. As for the time of day…I was reading that many of your types wake up early? Yeah? To practice writing etc.?”

I rolled my eyes and told him to wait at the door. I fished for the keys at the coffee table and sighed at the scene. They were lost in a book pile. Needless to say, the room was a mess. It smelled like something had died in it, and I was regretful about not cleaning up over the weekend. But that’s just mental health I suppose.

*

Although the road across the park was within walking distance, the man had brought a scooter with him. He put on his thick skull helmet, the old hat-shaped ones which the soldiers would wear in war, and asked me to sit behind him. His scooter looked old and used. Befitting a bookseller, I thought and hopped up behind him.

As we turned to the road behind my house, the scooter started making odd noises. It was like a Trojan horse, ready to burst open at any moment. At this point, the young man found a parking area close to the elongating park and announced that it would be better to walk because “such is the limited life of these things.”

As we entered the park, it looked like a proper forest. The walking paths were swamped by the overgrown shrubs and the dampness of the night. On the behalf of cold weather, there was not even a bird or an animal in sight, let alone a jogger. If it was not for the streetlights, it was easy to imagine that you have let go of civilization and entered the realm beyond humans. But such was my imagination. I grew up here and yet everything felt alien.

“Would you like to ask about my clothes?”

His voice felt out of place, almost disrespectful to break the silence like this. But it was a surprising question. “I would have,” I told him, “But I don’t know what young people wear these days.” He looked surprised. There was a sense of hope in his eyes for some reason.

“I ought to thank you for this walk,” I continued,” no matter your intentions. It is starting to stir my imagination…Let me tell you a secret…it has been some time since I wrote. I mean I started something, but I left it quite unfinished. The story kept expanding like a balloon and I got tired of it. I stopped. Maybe months ago, now. But today, I feel…when I  return, I might just finish it.”

“Do you want to talk about these thoughts?” I was amused by this change of tone and alien way of wording but I let him continue, “It might not look like it but I have a penchant for learning. I’d like to know about the writing process and why it stops.”

“At this point, I am not necessarily dealing with thoughts…but memories. I am thinking of various things at once. My life seems to be flashing in glimpses. It is strange…I am thinking of my first early morning, you know the first that I can remember. There was a fancy dress competition at the school, and I remember that it was one such cold night. My mother had bathed me and was dressing me up next to the worshiping place. The rest of the house was dark. Maybe the electricity had gone out? But I remember that she was putting sweaters on me even though it was supposed to be a fancy dress kind of a deal. And as she did, I remembered splendid candlelight bouncing about in the room. It had the effect of a fireplace and yet it was so small.

Then there is another memory of an estranged lover. But I’d rather not talk about it.

Such a strange thing you know. To think and recall several memories at once? But we do not think of our consciousness like that. We think we are only supposed to think only one thought at a time. Like a single path to be tread upon.”

“A story can have multiple end-points…?” he paused with an indication that he was still thinking. “That’s what the western writers do…I have heard? Is that what you’re talking about?”

“Very good,” I looked at him with fresh eyes. I was certainly starved for a good conversation. 

The path stretched ahead of us, and the contours of the small rolling mound-hills came into view. I looked at them with distinction and they seemed to be looking back at me. The feeling was almost somatic. It spun inside my body like dancing dots. “All stories have multiple end-points,” I continued, “because all stories realize according to their readers…the readers might have multiple ways of interpreting and closing the chapter.” 

“But the reader can’t end it without the writer. And the writer has to stop writing at some point,” he smiled broadly. 

“Well, you can always throw the book away. I am guilty of doing that to George Eliot and a few others.” I laughed dryly and pushed my hands deeper into my jacket pockets. “But then you’ve writers like Tolstoy…the Russians…they are not just writing. They are looking for something. Within their words…it is a beautiful process. They want to know the meaning of life. At the end of Anna Karenina, Tolstoy will have his main character find it. But most people hate such endings now…they do not want the search to end. Because that is life…the very search. The journey.”

“I have always liked clean endings. Razor-sharp. You know…as they show in the films?”

“Oh, I don’t agree with those. The element of search is always important. Otherwise, only one meaning would reign above other and then, well other people’s life…those who could not find that meaning in particular, would simply become meaningless out of this derivative logic?” “But why must we keep pursuing it if there is no final goal? To keep writing and writing endlessly. The book wouldn’t be able to hold so many chapters. There will be nothing left but forgetting. A writer should know when to stop writing.,” he looked rather exasperated.

“You’re really asking the wrong person,” I lowered my eyes. I had no idea what time it was. It still felt like 4 am and I was certain we took a wrong turn.

We should have been at the other side of the park by now. I noticed that he had stopped walking. I turned back in surprise and looked at him. His eyes were cold, and his face was serious. His black feather coat shone strangely under the streetlight. He looked very other-worldly to me at that moment. Fear took the rest of me. 

Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to just follow a stranger in the night. What was I thinking? Why would I do something like this? He could bury me next to this streetlight and it would take them at least a month to notice. My heart was ready to jump out of my chest and I was questioning all my life decisions.

He took a step closer and with very measured words, said, “You need to finish it now. You have to finish the writing.”

*

Life as I knew it has been a fishbowl of perception. Every person I knew wore these headgears that helped them see the world. These headgears connected to the other headgears and were a part of a system—a chaotic system. So, the question remains. When death comes at your door, are you still inside the fishbowl?

*

My mother hated the concept of rented houses. She wanted permanency. This is why she wouldn’t leave her husband’s house. She hated her husband and he hated her. Sometimes she would pretend that she is living in a rented house with her husband, just to see how it would feel. It terrified her. It made her feel as if she were swimming in a dark ocean. Right in the middle of the depths. Far off from both the surface and the seafloor. There is not a fish in sight. No jelly strings. Not even a shark. Nothing to hold onto, and your hands flail around. There is nothing to touch but the omnipresent water.

But then after a period, when circumstances changed and my father started being at home more than he was outside, she decided to give it a try. It was a terrifying try, many tears were shed, but soon she was happy. She was elated. Because she forgot that it was a rented house. She would have to give it up someday. What day? Who is to know? So, she forgot. And we all forget. But one fine day, you pick up those books that remind you of your bought time, like the fool you are to pick up those books, and you realize that you are in fact, in a rented body.

I suppose this forgetting is a part of that forgetting. I had simply forgotten that it is possible to die. I mean really die. The biological event. But I am surprised at the stars, they look just the same in the wavering fog.

*

I did not want to stop looking at the stars. The park had disappeared without warning even though the mound-hills remained in the background under everlasting dawn. The streetlights were also there, though disembodied and in dance. The trees seemed real. Not the house plants that you grow in a two-dimensional world. These trees…I could feel the life inside of them. They were looking at me. They could see me.

The young man started walking again and I knew I had to follow him.

“I have the strangest feeling,” I told him.

“What feeling?”

“Like this has happened before.”

“Well, of course, it has. I come to your door every day and we often wander around in the park. On most occasions, you refuse to leave your house altogether. But when you do and you realize that you’re forgetting, you immediately decide to go back. But I suppose today was my lucky day. So far. This is no easy business. To be the reader.”

“Not that…I feel as if…as if, I have written about this…all this.”

“Well, you are the final reader. I cannot be it. Come to think of it, maybe your Tolstoy did not want to search for the meaning. Maybe he wanted to become a part of the meaning. To write and to be read.”

“And what is the meaning?”

“Meaning of what?”

“Meaning of life, of course. Can there ever be a human in history, whom you meet at their final door, and you tell them, ah, you’ve cracked it after all.”

He chuckled and paused to think of his next sentence like a foreigner, “the words…the words are helmets, you said it yourself? Didn’t you?”

“I don’t know…can’t you just tell me…I deserve to know.”

He said nothing.

It did not seem fair. I built my life around it. And I got nothing out of it. I got no recognition. And now this guy tells me, half my age too, that he will say nothing. He. Simply. Won’t. Tell. Me. I was angry. But mostly, I was terrified. An immense fear started churning up inside of me. What was the meaning of my life, forget about the life. Down the drain? Did I just dream it all up? Sheer nihilism? But I didn’t really believe it. I used to talk about it to my colleagues. So ironic. What if all of that is true? This can’t be it. There has to be something else. This can’t be it. This can’t be it. This can’t be it. This can’t be it. This can’t be it. This can’t be it.

Suddenly, a blaring sound broke upon my head like a cracking egg. The train’s horn. It shrilled through my being like a clang upon a bronze bowl. I could feel the dancing dots once again. They were stretched over my body like a moving map of the terrain. I let go of my spiral. I was coming out of my head.

In the end all disappeared but the train. It stood in front of me like a mythical thing. A train without a track. Emitting a bright light in the lonely dark of the dissolving space. It moved with the speed of those old camera shutters. That’s the only way I can describe it. There was no gliding motion of the usual train. Its movement was the bare omitting action in space which was bringing us closer. Its lights were staring at me with a sentient eye.

With the closing distance, I had a strange sense of being. Words begin to dry up at this point. Fear was also leaving my body. My last thoughts, if thoughts at all because there seem to be other elements in place, they were of a journey.

I will not need to write, I realized. I was going to become the writing.