Work Text:
“A faint clap of thunder
Clouded skies
Perhaps rain comes
If so, will you stay here with me?”
- Man'yōshū, Book 11, verse 2,513
On certain evenings, the city shivers in its own skin, and street lamps hiss and flicker in the after-storm chill. Then, to the traveller, districts just seem to slide in and out of their personal halos of golden incandescent light.
Something so erotic about the rain.
The way the skies part. The nighttime glisten in the streets. How everything seems that much more intense, closed in with a sea of people– each person in their own bubble, bringing with them their own scents and sounds.
Jon feels it all. Jostled among the 3:15 crowds to Kensington, he senses the hint of freesias lingering on someone’s throat, mixed in with workplace smells. The neon glow of a hundred phone-screens, drip-drip-drip from a stranger’s umbrella, staining the seat a darker blue.
This is what rain does. It forces the life back into everything. Forces one to live, with stronger zeal if needs be, through every squall. It’s the fear of this which forces some people into their personal shells-apartment garages, shop-fronts and cars, anything to prevent being probed by what they cannot avoid. Others, like Jon, and the curious creatures of the trees and lakes, wait for it with all the feverish abandon of a sweetheart.
The rain. Not the most faithful of lovers, perhaps. Or even the most dependable. But in passion, in ardour, it is unmatched. Surely, surely that must count for something.
APRIL
The subway would’ve made the journey shorter, but crowded places, smelling of sweat, combined with the heavy odourless odour of air-conditioning, often seek to accentuate his restlessness, not quench it. He needs the cold, the moist air, the open space.
So Jon walks instead.
The rumble in the skies which greets him when he steps out at Notting Hill Gate doesn’t deter him, nor does the rain, arriving mere moments later, sleek silver sheets of it bouncing off the streets. He looks up once, at the clear, pale-grey sky; to the west, slightly darker clusters of clouds, mother-of-pearl, the colour of his eyes. A mirror opens in the heavens.
Jon smiles. He keeps walking.
Garden of Two Hearts. That’s how Jon always thinks of the place. Kyoto lies at the centre of Holland Park, which in turn occupies pride of place in the middle of Kensington. Two hearts.
It doesn’t belong here, here in this sad asphalt borough. No, Kyoto Garden, with its display of gorgeous blossoming trees, its miniature waterfalls, preening peacocks and large pond teeming with koi-carp, belongs to an island country miles away; the same country that had had this plot built as a gesture of amiability. It isn’t tethered to the ground the rest of the park stands upon, perhaps; it is a slice of elsewhere tucked into a pocket of city.
That is why Jon keeps returning here. Because both he, and the garden, live in two bodies at once. It’s the dichotomy which attracts him.
Also, simpler: Kyoto, in the rain. A bit of heaven, hidden in the heart of West London.
It has to be here. Here, or nowhere else.
He’s not alone.
The green of the place is obscured in warping silvery mists of the June showers, but she stands out all the same. A young woman, in her mid-twenties, sitting on one of the stone slabs that circle the pond. She faces away from him, looking at the rain from under the shade of a clear umbrella, feet dangling inches above the pond, which now moves and bristles like a living beast.
He moves closer, clearing his throat. The woman turns to look at him.
Who could be so lucky? Who comes to the lake seeking water and finds the moon instead.
Jon hesitates. He’d have moved elsewhere, but the ease of his gait has clearly betrayed his plan to have stopped here. Now that she’s seen him, it would be rudeness to just walk away. So he takes a seat beside her, snaps open his own umbrella, wedges it in a cluster of rocks so it wouldn’t budge, and brings out his sketchbook. Through all of it, the woman remains unbothered, sipping on a can of cherry cola, eyes roving the landscape for something she cannot find.
In between etching lines on the paper, he steals glances at his companion. Waves of red hair that fall well below the shoulders, lovely blue eyes, wearing what looks like a semi-formal outfit: a fitted, long-sleeved black blouse, and a pleated silver skirt, heavy and slippery beneath her knees. Beige sandals, slightly cuffed at the heels. A leather tote bag, rather overstuffed, on her lap. She cannot be very old, not more than twenty-four, but despite the attire and the cola can, there is something very tired, very aged in her gaze. A look of defeat.
It’s that last thing that makes Jon slightly uneasy. It’s too familiar a look, one he’s certainly seen before, yet, as with most of such situations, the exact details of it evade him. Had she been on the train with him? Perhaps a customer at the bookshop?
“Have we met before?”
He regrets saying this almost immediately. The woman flinches, a deer-in-the-headlights reflex. “N-no, no I don’t think so.”
“Oh. I must’ve mistaken you for someone else.” It would have to have been a monumental mistake. She doesn’t have a face one would easily forget.
The rain picks up pace. Pelts of it slam into the pages of his book. Where the water hits, the colours from the paintings explode in little bursts across the page.
When he looks up, she is staring at him.
Well, not him, exactly. But the badge on his shirt. It’s an old shirt, a part of his school-uniform, from almost two years back. He’s never bothered to rip out the badge, because it feels funny without it. But he supposes with the insignia he looks like an overgrown man-child. “Oh, this,” Jon laughs. “I’ve already graduated. I just didn’t bother to remove this.”
As if she didn’t hear him at all, the woman smiles and rises to her feet. Then slowly, as if in a trance, she says-
“I came to you one rainless August night. You taught me how to live without the rain. You are thirst and thirst is all I know. You are sand, wind, sun, and burning sky, the hottest blue.”
It must be a verse; Jon cannot think very clearly. But before he can so much as ask her what she’d meant by the words, or if she’d meant for him to be the listener at all, she is gone. Leaving him alone with his sketches.
And the storm, of course.
It’s a strange, hideously charming apartment. If a single area is not occupied by the modernistic, almost Bauhaus woodwork that characterises all of Sam’s furniture, then the vacancy is surely fulfilled with some peculiar indoor greens, courtesy Gilly, Sam’s girlfriend. There are Tibetan masks on the wall to cover chunks of peeling plaster, a cellophane bag taped over a low-voltage bulb to double as a night-lamp and innumerable riff-raff bunched up together to provide “some colour, some variegation” -as Sam vigorously insists- to the place all three of them call home.
It’s coal-black outside when Jon returns, and yet the clock says it’s 6:15 only. He closes himself off in the little room which serves a hundred different purposes- bedroom, studio, study, even a mini-kitchen sometimes-and all this despite the fact that it’s hardly bigger than an average supply closet. But it’s his safe space, and it’s where he gets some sense of purpose back into his head, every time he looks at the narrow walls, plastered over by pictures, pencil sketches of busts, headshots, side-profiles in charcoal. Occasionally, some of his more youthful works appear on the wall, made back when he had less skill but infinitely more enthusiasm. Among them, an oil of his old house and his personal favourite, an ink drawing of Ghost, his old and beloved dog, who had passed away shortly after his graduation.
Art School is expensive.
I’ll work part-time and make it up to you.
But you’ll need extra classes. And proper supplies. And if you move to the city, then you’ll need an apartment and additional expenses. Besides, your mother wants you here, with her.
He sighs.
“The Carpaccio crisis strikes again?” Gilly walks in, smiling down at him. She is carrying a tray with two covered porcelain bowls on it. Steaming bowls. “I brought some soup over from the work.” She pauses. “The door was open, so I didn’t knock; I hope that’s all right.”
“You know it is.” since his unceremonious cast-out from his beloved father’s abode, Sam and Gilly have taken him in under their wing, kept him from starving himself to death, and then some. They might wake someday, decide to dress him in yellow gingham and parade him on the streets and Jon would still remain grateful to them, simply because they accepted him when no one else would. He supposes they are his family now, although a more incongruous family wouldn’t have existed anywhere in the district: Sam and Gilly are in what he and his schoolmates would once call “the hipster-crowd”; they grow their own vegetables, attend protest meetings discussing animal cruelty and nuclear warfare, and probably plan to honeymoon in a comic book-store. It’s Sam who owns the bookshop downstairs, while Jon keeps the accounts, and Gilly works at a restaurant some blocks down. It’s not the life Jon had envisioned for himself but it works.
For now.
Gilly sets down the tray at the side of his table, careful to angle it away from the palettes and scraping knives. Jon peeks into the bowl, turkey and dumplings in a light brown broth. “You’re an angel.”
She laughs, but doesn’t deny it. “Anything else I can do?”
“Actually, yes.” He reaches beneath the endlessly growing mountain of papers on his desk and pulls out a sheaf of stationery. It’s the verse from the woman in the garden. Fragments of it, pieced together as coherently as was possible for him in his haze of bewilderment. “Tell me what this is.”
Gilly frowns at the words. “Is it erotic?”
“No. No, I don’t think so,” he takes the page back, traces the words with his pencil. “It’s a poem, but I cannot remember the exact lines and it bothers me.”
“I think you should ask Sam when he gets back. He’ll be proud to see you poring over rhymes. The painter is now a poet. You truly are a prodigy, Jon Snow.”
“Haha. I wish.” He puts the sheet away and looks down at his work, a blur of grey-greens and hazy blues. “I’d been to the Kyoto Gardens today, when it was raining in the afternoon. I want to get that down.”
“In the rain?! Did you carry an umbrella? Did you get a cab? Tell me you walked, you idiot. Just tell me.”
Instant regret. Jon pretends to yawn, stretch his limbs in faux disdain. “You know what would go well with this soup? Some crackly toast. Like the one Sam’s left in the pantry.”
“You’re funny,” Gilly says, still furious, and leaves the room. Jon half-amusedly returns to his painting. Contemplating.
He adds a dash of bright red to the palette.
Then one morning, when he wakes, it’s dark outside, again.
There are news reports of increasing relative humidity, with a sharp spike in coastal temperatures. “There might be showers, later today,” Gilly calls from the kitchen. “Take an umbrella.”
“He’s an artist, getting drenched is the aesthetic,” Sam quips.
“Pneumonia is not an aesthetic.”
“I think this drizzle can barely bring a cold,” Jon laughs. “But, advice duly noted.”
By the time he reaches Kyoto, it’s pouring down again.
She’s not there by the pond, but he finds her under a weeping willow near the stone washbasin. She stands so still she might be a statue. Like a ghost, mingling in with the thick red foliage, distinguishable only in the way she swings her foot restlessly against the ground, twirling the umbrella. “Hello.”
She glances up, pleased to see a familiar face. “We meet again.”
“The rain seems to follow us.”
“Truly, it does.”
Then, silence.
Lightning strikes, and the garden lights up in a spark of violet and white. Somewhere, the shrill, unpleasant trill of peacocks, dancing in the rain, fanning out their rich plumes marked by beautiful, iridescent eyes- Argus’ hundred eyes, preserved by Hera.
The tasselled branches of the willows hang precariously low, a row of grieving souls. She looks very much like a willow tree herself, the woman standing next to him, slender, and red-haired and slightly drooping, as if the storm has bowed her down. He has a sudden vision of how it would all look on paper. He would need more greens, golds, some darker reds for the trees.
And for her.
“Do you want a drink?”
He falters. The woman smiles mischievously. “You’ve been slogging away at your painting for some forty minutes now. Figured you might need some refreshment.”
“Um, no thanks.” He is not sure how he feels about the beverage, especially when offered in such a summary manner. She nods, unruffled. “Okay. How about a lemon cake? I have about six of them stowed into my bag.”
“I’m not hungry, but thank you so much.” She might be senile. She might be a psychopath lurking for her next kill. That umbrella could have a retractable hatchet within.
As if on cue, she titters. “You think I’m crazy, don’t you?”
“No, I-”
“I don’t blame you. Who goes about skulking in the rain, drinking cola and offering sweets to strangers? But see, here’s the thing: we are all crazy. Some of us are just better at hiding it, that's all.”
“Fan of The Breakfast Club?”
“You caught me.” She nods in mock resignation. It makes him laugh. “My name is Jon,” he offers. “I come here because I think it is the most beautiful place in the entire city.”
“Then you’ll love Japan.”
“Not necessarily. Maybe it’s the way it stands out that gives it its beauty. In Japan I suppose, it wouldn’t be so special.”
“What, a flock of doves is less beautiful than one of them?”
“That’s not what I meant,” he begins, although frankly he’s not sure what he even means anymore.
She finishes the drink, crushes her can. “It was nice talking to you, Jon. We’ll speak again.”
“When?” does he sound too eager?
“I don’t know. The rain will tell us.”
She is about to walk away when Jon says, “Shouldn’t I have your name too, to be even?”
“No,” the woman says quite kindly, and leaves.
One day, after the storm, Jon takes the 148 to Holland Park, where he ends up in a stationery shop. He restocks his supplies, fresh tubes of glossy acrylic paint, brushes, a new scraper.
That which had formerly been a mere blend of shifting details in his head slowly assume form, shape and texture. He sees it all, where he’ll put in the magenta of the willow, the lighter pink sakura, the greenish-yellow grass.
Kyoto Garden blazes in a shaft of fresh sunlight. She is waiting for him. He nods politely, sets up his easel and tells her, “I can go pretty crazy too.”
The woman nods as if she understands.
Then Jon begins to paint.
Pink:
It happens often, that the storm takes up so much force that even the sheltered garden feels dangerous, exposed. Gusts of wind make the trees sway as if possessed. Torrential winds moan in their ears, an obscene low moan, that makes the hairs on their arms stand. Then they, he and she, are forced together under her umbrella.
It’s transparent, the umbrella, but at the very tip there is a cluster of light pink floral patterns sewn into the fabric. “I got it from a Japanese store in Charing Cross. It’s cherry blossom.”
Sakura is what the Japanese calls it. Someday, Jon will make the trip across the continents; see the sakura in their native country, for himself.
Later. For later. Currently he is content with his lot.....
Green:
He works in silence, as the rain continues to pour. Beside him, she is working on a Sudoku in the newspaper. The boughs come out looking near-perfect. Jon is proud of his work. He uses the knife to scrape the edges and as he does, flecks of paint shoot like bullets onto his face.
“I envy you. To be able to create the world in the image of what you see, that is something I’d like to have.”
“It’s hardly that uncomplicated or lovely. Most of the times it looks nothing like what the real thing is.”
“Still. How must it feel, to mix the greens and blues to make the perfect teal, just so? I’d love to feel that sometimes.”
“Yes, very godlike.”
There is a tiny smear of green on her upper lip. He stares at it, stares too at the strange way it accentuates the red gloss on her lips. He almost tells her, then decides against it, wondering what she’ll feel, what’ll think, if she’ll smile when she goes home, sits before the mirror and sees the memory of their time together stained on her face....
Gold:
“Oh, no don’t see that,” he swipes his hand over the page, “I’m not terribly excited about my work from the schooldays.”
“But it’s gorgeous.” She gently removes his hand, looks at the study of a group of children lounging on the school-grounds. “I love what you can tell about each of them from this picture alone. Like the dainty one here, she has pulled her uniform closer to her so it doesn’t get dirty. Or the one who’s a bit of mischief-maker, look at his casual sprawl.”
“Impressive.”
“Just saying what I see. Nothing as impressive as the sketch itself.” She closes the book. “Now tell me about what happened with your father.”
“Maybe someday.”
This dream, again:
He’s ten once more, and it’s spring once more. They sit on the same stone slab he had found her. His mother claps her hands in glee. “Now what have you two gotten me?” she asks in her pretty, childish voice.
His father, not yet made ungentle by the lurking shadows of his future only smiles. “It’s a surprise.”
“OPEN IT!” Jon screeches, bobbing on his toes, his hands resting on his mother’s knees. His mother laughs, musses his curls, gently unboxes the gift.
Inside, there’s a sketchbook. “Oh,” his mother says as she brings it out, goes through the pages. “Oh.”
On each of the pages, Jon has painted his mother. Dexterously, for a ten year-old, immaculate brushstrokes depicting her reading by the window, feeding the dog, tending to the blue lilies in the garden. The last page shows all three of them together: he and his mother alike, same hair and eyes and face, his father standing a bit apart, looking quite distinguishable, longish silver hair, deep blue eyes that are almost violet.
A drop of red falls to the page.
Then another. Then many of them all at once, runny blots staining the page.
Jon looks up, curiously to his mother.
He screams.
Jon wakes, perspiring. His throat is raw. Has he been shouting? Unlikely, given that Gilly and Sam don’t seem to have woken.
He checks his watch. 5:00 am. Growling clouds, outside.
It’s awful, this nightmare of his. Every time, he thinks he’s prepared. And every time, it returns to remind him he is not, to show him just how fragile the mind can be, how easily things held together by brittle will can be shattered.
“Don’t you work?”
“Well, don’t you?” Jon asks a bit defensively.
Kyoto garden is glittering in a patina of soft magic. The rain has stopped an hour back, but here’s the afterglow: the soft, sweet smell of crushed leaves and wet earth. Best aphrodisiac in the world. She’d arrived minutes after him, but those minutes had been the most agonising moments of his life. He’d worried himself sick. Is she sick? Tired? Has she grown bored of the garden, of me? Was my refusal to speak too rude? When he’d heard the familiar sound of heels on the wooden bridge, the clink from the key-rings on her bag, he’d almost wept for joy.
“Come now, I’m only teasing. Your work is here. And as for me, well, I just like it better here. In here I’m at peace.”
He muses on her words for awhile. A most becoming golden light falls directly upon her left profile. “My mother died before I graduated. My father and I fell apart. I’d plans to join an art school near Waterloo when I turned sixteen; I’d sent out my applications too. Big dreams: a gallery of my own, interviews, trips to France. He refused to pay, refused to let me work for myself. He’d plans for me taking up on his business. So I left.”
“What business?”
“Restoration and Mitigation Facilities, mainly for industrial fires.”
“Goodness.” They laugh together. Then he says, “You know what’s awful? The applications were accepted. All of them. When something is temptingly near your reach and then it is snatched away, that feels twice as horrible. Better to not have anything at all, isn’t it?”
“I’d disagree, Jon. Better to have something. Now you know you are worthy.”
His name. She addressed him by his name. But he only demurely says, “I cannot be an artist and a bookshop cashier at once. Some people can manage. I can’t.”
She laughs again, this time at his lofty bearing. “It’s Sansa, by the way.”
“What?”
“My name. My name is Sansa.”
Good things come to those who wait.
On Jon’s twentieth birthday, Sam and Gilly surprise him with a slim envelope. Their faces are shining with an indescribable tenderness, and Jon soon finds out why. He’s barely skimmed the first line- We’re pleased to inform you that- when he makes a sound like a palpitating train engine and almost collapses into a chair. “Gilly made the compilation,” Sam says, beaming widely, “because she’s got an eye for those things. I typed the application.” Gilly blinks back tears, as Jon pulls both of them into a bone-crushing hug.
Three days later, in a tiny shelf of some of the more obscure American anthologies, he finally finds what he is looking for.
MAY
Beautiful, wonderful time. Around now, the poppies will have overtaken the garden, a blood-red army, though she personally prefers the softer, cream-coloured ones. And there will be the clematis twining up their balconies and the corn flowers to balance out the poppy’s fire with their calm, rich blue. Two years back, Harry had spotted a hummingbird in the yard. She’s read somewhere that a hummingbird’s heart could beat more than twelve hundred beats a minute.
Will passengers intending to travel on this service please join the train, as it is ready to leave. First class is at the middle and front of the train.
Sometimes, at night, she feels a hummingbird’s heart beat within her body.
Sansa sighs deeply. Leans her head against the signpost.
It’s that time of the year again.
He’s not there. She doesn’t know why she’d expected him to be. He’s a young man, brimming with dreams and golden ideas about making it big in the city. She on the other hand... she is twenty-five this month, and already, already her road ahead is dust-covered, beaten-down.
But the gardens are so empty, so forlorn in the mild warmth of the impending summer. Despite the flowers and the squirrels and birds and all those visitors- Londoners and tourists alike- she feels lonelier than she’s ever been all her life.
One day, he’ll make a choice. Another land or his own country for the rest of his life. The allure of the unknown versus the rosy pleasantness of familiarity.
Till then, this apartment. This store. This train. A Japanese garden soaking in the last of the spring showers. A red haired dryad by a stone shrine. An unfinished story.
When it rains, the roof leaks. She’s meant to get that fixed, but like the other mundane things of her life, it has remained neglected and still of certain nights, she can feel the moisture pooling beneath the flaky paint.
She makes breakfast. Sloppily, but enough to subsist- some burnt toast, some cherry marmalade, boiled eggs. A flask of coffee to pour from until it goes stale and cold. She mixes up things sometimes, uses the bread knife to carve butter, forgets to put the dishes into the washer.
Then, the voicemail.
To avail of the benefits of-
Delete.
Hiiii, Ms Stark, it’s Ella from downstairs. So, like, on Friday, we’re having a sort of a brunch-
Delete.
Sansa, hey, it’s me, Harry.
She curses loudly as the coffee spills in a fat puddle on her carpet.
How’re you keeping? London treating you good? How’s the medication? Did you tell Dr. Tyrell the ibuprofen is making you throw up?
The stain, it’ll take hours to wash that out.
Listen... Cissy will be staying here for ten days, Monday onwards. I-I haven’t spoke to her yet. So... I hope you understand. Just, don’t call please. I’m sure you’ll understand.
Maybe more. Maybe it’ll take more than a single wash.
I hope you are well. Let me know if you need anything. Oh, and a belated happy birthday.
Sansa falls to the floor. Crumples and sobs.
From: [email protected]
Subject: None
Harry, it’s nice to hear from you. It’s been awhile.
I’ve been quite good recently. The pains have stopped and I don’t throw up anymore, as the doctor’s changed my meds. Also, I can eat well again. Too long since I could taste anything but cola and cake. I’d become a bag of bones. It feels good.
London is beautiful in the springtime. There is a park I quite like to visit. It’s made to resemble Japanese orchards. You’d like that, I think. But soon fall shall be here, and I’ll get busy with supervising the coursework again. So I’m enjoying it while it lasts.
I hope you are in good health, Cissy too. Take my love.
-Your friend,
Sansa
She strongly wishes to add “Oh, and your wife” beside the salutation, but always, always, her spinelessness wins.
The next day, when she wakes up as usual, probably hours before the alarm sets off, a droplet of water falls to her face. The ceiling has a dark patch shaped like Australia, a patch that is steadily growing.
It makes her want to sing.
At the sight of the familiar little wooden bridge, she practically breaks into a run. Almost crying, tripping, as she makes her way to the familiar spot by the pond.
He’s there. Gods, he’s there.
And before him, there’s an easel. Set with a blank sheet.
He hears her footsteps and smiles. Without shifting his glance, he tells her that he is leaving in August. Paris.
“That’s brilliant. You found your dreams.”
“Yes but before that-”
She stares hungrily at his face.
“I’d like to try something new today. With your permission.”
Red:
How the world spins. Everything is on fire. Nothing quite like this.
There are things he can never achieve to perfection. Like the way the peacocks preen, their luminous bodies glistening wet. A squirrel that comes to observe his work, nibbling on the apple he offers it. The scent of flowers after rain. The way Sansa smiles for him as he tries to put brush to paper, bring out the hundred kinds of blue in her irises, emulate her immeasurable magnificence, turn into something that’ll stay on long after all of this- the garden, the spring and they-cease to exist.
7th MAY
For fourteen years of his life, Jon had sworn allegiance to the Sacred Heart of St.Venerini’s, a wet-feather convent with rigorous discipline, a brilliant academic legacy and the most iron-hearted faculty in all of British history. On 7th of May, the feast day of their patron saint, the school throws open its gates to every Catholic in the region, sometimes the ex-students too. Jon takes this as an opportunity to bid goodbye to some of his oldest teachers and friends. At home, Sam is in splits. “Jon attending an Anglican feast!” he chortles. “Times truly are a-changing!”
Not much has changed in the years. Jon makes his way through the corridors, normally swarming with boys and girls in sober uniforms of blue-and-white, deserted today because they have congregated at the assembly hall for the reading of the Scriptures. He looks fondly through the old, beloved classrooms, the desk where he had once sat, sketchbook hidden beneath whatever text it was they were supposed to be studying. Sometimes, they’d etch their names on the wooden panels, a small part of childish ownership. He wonders if he might find the seat that has his name on it.
And here, at the end of the corridor loomed the statue of Rosa Venerini, who had braved the sneering women-hating conformists of her time to battle for girls’ education. This institution had been all-girls too, until late 1961, when they changed it to co-educational for “better character enhancement”. Jon looks at the marble face of the saint, somewhat eerie, with its pupil-less eyes and eternally frozen smile.
“Miss Stark, please don’t leave us!”
A sudden, agonised cry breaks the silence of the afternoon. Then another, louder, more plaintive wail. Jon follows the sound to the round stairwell by a second-floor classroom.
He stops short.
There, huddled by the stairs are a group of girls, aged roughly between twelve to sixteen, all of them crying and pleading. And standing at the middle.....
A sudden bolt of realisation.
The familiar look, the despondent gaze.
Of course.
She is gently stroking a girl’s hair, speaking to another. Her eyes are rimmed with red. She looks fatigued, broken.
“Sansa?” he calls out. His voice shakes.
She turns to look at him. Her eyes widen in shame, in horror. “Miss Stark,” she hisses through gritted teeth and brushes past him, leaving him-and all those wretched sobbing girls-to fend for themselves.
“You didn’t know?”
“No. We had Professor Royce.”
“Figures.”
Val is about three years younger to him, in her junior year now. Thin and pretty, with short golden hair and sharp blue-grey eyes. He’d been friends with her older brother, who now studies bio-chemistry in Boston.
“Well, Miss Stark’s been teaching us English as long as we can remember. “She’d studied here too, you know,” she tells him, sweeping her hand to show the school-grounds. “She graduated with excellent scores but there were personal troubles, I think, an accident took half her family. The school wanted to fund her higher studies but she refused and began teaching here.”
“Shortly after you graduated, she got married to this American embassy fellow. I don’t know what happened but...well, these things are common, no? But it kind of spoiled her reputation, the separation I mean. And then now....this girl, Myranda, senior-year, she says Miss Stark has been...getting close to her male students. You know.”
“No,” he breathes.
Val must’ve seen the look on his face, because she guffaws. “It’s bullshit, obviously. I suppose Miss Stark is just pretty and soft enough to be an easy target. Myranda spread that rumour cause her boyfriend, that Bolton dude, got some obscene stuff on his phone, stuff he’d written about Miss Stark,”-she flushes- “...and that bitch took it out upon our teacher by claiming she’d seduced him. There were like warrants and shit. God, it was terrible. So she quit today.”
Jon stops listening. He sees Sansa walking out of the gate, that familiar droop to her shoulders, as swarms of students, almost like a mourning procession trail after her. Something cold clenches his heart.
“Jon.” Val taps his hand.
“These seniors. What are their names, again?”
He hears them before he sees them. Hanging out in the art supplies room, with the windows opened wide to cover the smell of their cigarettes. Loud, gleeful, contented. For a moment he almost feels pity at their senseless and displaced malice. Stupid kids.
Then, he remembers the rest.
“Which one of you is Ramsay?”
There are five of them. Three boys, two girls. Jon instinctively knows the culprits, by their shared snigger. Then, the big-boned youth at the front, with the blotchy skin and pale eyes makes a little curtsey, “Here, officer.” The others laugh.
“Miss Stark had to quit her job because of you.”
“She had it coming,” says Myranda. She has a petulant sort of face. Her fingers drum an open can of red paint. “You don’t know what she did. Or whom.” Cue, orchestrated cackles. Jon wishes he were a few years younger. Or they were older.
“It wasn’t her fault, was it. You framed an innocent woman, slandered her to the point of harassment-”
“Who are you again? And why the fuck are you so hard-pressed for that slut? She got you too?”
Myranda looks visibly uncomfortable but says nothing. Ramsay, rather proud of that last line, looks back to his minions, no doubt for their unwavering approval of a leader who dares to spar with an older dude.
He is, in fact too proud to see the blow coming. Maybe, that’s why when they find him writhing in a pool of blood, his blood, in the supply room, he looks more surprised than anything else.
To her, then.
Where else can he go?
By the time Jon reaches Holland Park, a miniature dust storm kicks up puffs of dried leaves and the smell of asphalt from the road he takes.
The first drops show up on the pond’s surface, mild ripples on a mirror-smooth surface. He walks to the familiar spot and knows, without the mildest trepidation that she’ll be there.
And she is.
Reading a book, seemingly oblivious to the storm. Some paperback.
“What book is that?”
Sansa doesn’t answer the query, instead jerking her head questioningly towards his face.
Jon shrugs. “I’ve looked better, I’ll admit. I fell off the train.”
She looks startled. In his defence, Jon has looked better than this. He really hadn’t expected anything less after he’d punched Ramsay. When he grins, he becomes rather conscious of the matted blood in the gashes on his face. That, and the sting above the brow-bone. It’d probably be in poor taste to spit now, because he can taste it behind his teeth. For high-schoolers, Ramsay’s minions sure have skeletons made of doornails and steel.
“Relax. A joke. I got into a scuffle. Some stupid people at the store.”
“Oh,” she doesn’t look completely convinced, but doesn’t probe into it either. “I’m reading Kitchen.” She holds up the book, its cover depicting a stylised art of the flag of Japan, with an ornate motif of what looks like two chopsticks. “By Banana Yoshimoto.”
“And is it a good story?”
“It’s a story about loss.”
That’s all the answer he gets.
The sound of a cloudburst seems to cleave the skies in two, almost shaking the very earth. When the deluge begins, they can scarcely see a metre ahead. The waterfall, the shrine, the trees-all of Kyoto Gardens is shrouded in thick curtains of water. Thunder, once, then again. Darkness envelopes them.
So they flee.
Her umbrella is of little use, as they are both drenched to their knees and shivering by the time they board the train. It’s a different kind of tempest, this one. Nothing tender about it.
Once again, stations. Shimmering points of light in an endless, infinite tunnel of black. They are sandwiched together, pushed and elbowed by a hundred sopping-wet city-goers. Sansa leans her head against a pole, smiles at Jon. “My book got destroyed.”
“I’ll see if I can replace it from our store.”
“Always playing the brave knight,” she smiles sadly, pressing her hand gently against his cheek. He closes his eyes at her touch.
She knows. All of it.
Her house. The smell of her, the feel of her in everything. Half-rumpled shirts and dresses in a laundry basket. A bottle of the cheap citrusy perfume that she always dabs at her throat.
In the tiny, sparsely decorated bedroom with the soft lilac furnishings, Jon peels off his clothes, the wet shirt sucking inwards with a soft plop sound. Disgusting. He puts on the fresh garments Sansa’s lent him for the day. A crisp blue linen shirt, beige trousers. They have been worn before, and they are not her clothes. They have belonged to some man.
He wonders.
The wonderment increases when he goes to the bathroom to wash the mud off his feet and notices the array of pill-containers. What really makes his stomach sink is he recognizes some of these pills from his childhood. They’d lined the shelves of his mother’s room, in those last, fatal months.
Well, these things are common, no?
The realisation kills him.
Sansa is in the kitchen, tossing a salad. It’s a messy place, the kitchen. She’s probably never cleaned some of these plates. Mould crusts the insides of a few glasses. Sour-milk smells.
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
“You can sit on a chair and not move, unless you need to powder your nose,” she chuckles.
The salad is ready-small cubes of apples, kiwis, oranges, red grapes and strawberries, garnished with a cup of sour cream. “I can’t guarantee how fresh these are.”
“It’s alright. Living rough has made me immune to...”
“Bad cooking?” she takes a chair, offering him a stool. With this seating arrangement, she appears to tower over him.
“The modesty the best cooks put on.”
They sit together in silence for a while. Sansa’s damp hair streams behind her back, a red river. Jon clasps his hands around the glass of lemonade she’s offered him.
“Thank you for sticking up for me today.”
“It’s nothing,” he says quickly. “Anybody would.”
“Yet, nobody did.”
The air is heavy between them. Waiting.
“How lonely are you?”
“Just as much as you.”
“I’m not lonely,” Jon says. A bare lie. She sees through it.
“Is that why you sought the company of a wretched old woman who’s been fired from her own school because she played a siren song for her students?” How bitter, her laugh.
“You’re not old. You quit. And besides, I know you did nothing like that.”
Sansa leans back in her seat, pressing her palms flat against the kitchen counter behind her. “My husband left me because I lost the child.”
“I know.” He explains, seeing her shocked glance, “I saw the pills. My mother took those to ease the pains after she miscarried too. But she haemorrhaged.”
We could’ve had- We could’ve been-
What, exactly?
She leaves her seat. Paces to the front of the kitchen, then back again. Then she comes to him, closer, closer still, closing the space between them. She embraces Jon, as a friend, as just another person seeking to fill the gaping space within.
He embraces her back. Just because.
Later, while she takes a hot bath, he clears the kitchen. Scrubs out the sink, the glasses, throws away the rotten stuff, and ties them up in black garbage bags.
When she emerges, he is sitting on the floor of the drawing room, staring out at the black skies.
“Jon?”
“You blow a breeze and brand your breath into my mouth. You reach—then bend your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new. You wrap your name tight around my ribs and keep me warm. I was born for you.”
Sansa smiles. “Yes. You found it. The sister verse.”
“I found you.”
“You couldn’t have. I haven’t found myself.”
“I found you. When I had no sense of where to go, what to believe in. I found you in the garden and it was a sign. It made me look forward to the rain, to something. It made me curious about life again.”
“Do you trust me so much?”
“I love you.”
A pause. Children screaming in the streets, rushing out to float paper-boats in the slush. When tomorrow comes, there will be trucks on every street spraying fungicide in strategic corners. The usual delayed traffic. And torn butterfly wings.
“You can’t love me. I’m too old.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’m your teacher.”
“You never taught me anything. Not in that way.”
“What you feel is affection. That, coupled with your solitude makes you feel like you’re in love.”
“Are you explaining this to me? Or reassuring yourself?”
“I .....” Sansa struggles to form words, goes limp. “Honestly, Jon, I don’t know anymore.”
They play a game of chess as darkness falls. Jon is hopelessly bad at it. Sansa slaughters half his army, nodding her head in sweet condescension as she sweeps the board clean.
There is too much cold in the room, too much damp, so he borrows some warmth off her mouth, tasting the underlying sweet tang of cherry syrup. He tells her he is alright, he is willing to step forward, if she is, and she replies that she doesn’t trust strangers but she slides her hand down his back anyway and kisses the base of his throat, where there’s a hollow trove of howling secrets waiting to be let out, lets him hook his leg around the secret curve of her hip bone and they don’t look back, they never look back.
What about the storm?
Maybe they’ll hold onto each other. Just a bit longer.
Something so tender about the rain. The way it opens the Madonna’s cups in the backyard, frail-pink petalled chalices wafting on the promise of a spring breeze. The way rivulets streak their ways down fogged glass.
The silence afterwards. After the crescendo. After it’s all over. Rainbows dancing in lakes, heralding the rebirth of light.
Above, below, by you, by you surrounded.
I wake to you at dawn. Never break your
Knot. Reach, rise, blow, Sálvame, mi dios,
Trágame, mi tierra. Salva, traga, Break me,
I am bread. I will be the water for your thirst.
He leaves. Without preamble. Her room, her street, her city.
He leaves behind: some words. Some smiles. Best-forgotten ghosts. The painting of the fire-crowned Ophelia in a Japanese garden.
And a promise. That he’ll find her. In a year, maybe two, maybe more. However long it takes for both of them to find themselves. Meanwhile, Kyoto remains, still beautiful, still estranged from the rest of the soapy, hoarfrost-skinned city. It blazes.
Something, so miraculous, about the rain.