[red.:] Deze tekst is een fragment uit een roman-in-wording. Nieuwsgierig naar het vervolg? Keep watching this space!
A while ago, time faded during that period, we all got locked up, locked down. We all know why; we know we had to. During that time, I was confined to a small apartment. Bathroom, bedroom, everything else room. It wasn’t large enough to house more than a man and his cat, as the mice inhabiting the place when we got there years ago soon found out, and now the animal and I had established our rule in there.
At least, that’s what I pretended. I turned the three rooms into our world. I painted the walls white, lumpy paint over what was once floral wallpaper, and began to draw on them. Messily at first, many places were painted over several times, but soon it became more refined. The floor got divided into sections, into provinces and seas. Soon, the bedroom and the everything else room were conquering nations, and because I needed all available space my bed became a mountainous region. Cities were mapped out, nations split up and united, natural disasters happened and more and more characters were born. My laptop became the archive of one massive world, with culture, architecture, history and change. And at the centre of it: me and my cat, rivals until the end.
Gerald and me.
Or, by our names in that world: Emperor Geraldinus the Bright Eyed – for Gerald has such beautiful icy blue eyes – and King Marcus the Creator. From our thrones, the old kitchen chairs bearing a pillow and a cat basket, we ruled, fought, flourished. With defined economies, we had rations, populations, supplies and infrastructure. A program to calculate resources, and dice to decide the outcome of our battles, like a massive game of Risk, just like the severity of winter, the actions of our people and more. The world in our furry hands and naked paws, and yet no utopia. That was the fun of it.
For years, at least within the constant roleplaying game we played, this went on. Court cases, famines, earthquakes, riots, new inventions, religious disputes, everything happened.
As the world outside lay still and life had stopped out there, in here it was finally beginning.
You need to go out someday.
I can’t abandon my people in here.
Marc, you are a grown-ass adult. You can’t live off your parents’ funds forever. You need a b, and you’ve been hiding for years.
It’s not like they can’t afford it. They’re the ones who offered.
What if you saw it as making new alliances? Getting a job could give you advantage in battle, it’s in your land’s interest.
I don’t need alliances, Gerald. My current military is far superior to yours.
Marc, you’re talking to me.
So, out I went. My first trip out lasted about two minutes. Cooped up in my space, I’d grown accustomed to constant, stable temperature and no wind. It took seconds for me to realise that out there, weather still very much existed.
A coat later, I was out again. Hunched over against the cold January (was it January?) wind, I walked down the once familiar roads. Everything felt strange to me. The sidewalk was lower than I remembered, and the tiles were more cracked, the cars were louder, as was everything for that matter; I had to walk with my hands pressed to my ears to not have them hurt from the screeching of the birds. The trees were bare of leaves, just like they’d been when we went into lockdown. I could almost convince myself no time had passed.
The wind blew a lock of hair into my face, something it’d never done before. Back then, it’d always been clipped short; now it reached my waist. I hadn’t bothered to tie it up, I would have to untangle the knots the wind was making once I got home, a chore I wasn’t looking forward to.
Still, the sensation of the air hitting my face wasn’t all bad, it was mostly interesting. The feeling of the wind, while like that of a million little needles poking my skin, had something nice to it. Not the kind of nice you could enjoy forever, but for now, for a few moments, I enjoyed it.
A car drove past, and the noise was deafening. It left me with a sense of unease, and then I noticed the people.
Suffice it to say I ran back inside, already dreading having to explain why I had no tuna with me.
At night, I tried again. Now, the streets were empty, and I took the time to take in the sensation of the world.
The sound of the wind, playing with the branches of the naked trees, drops falling into a puddle off one of the roofs, the rumble of a single car, softened into melody by the distance, they were like things from a dream. I knew they would be there; I knew they’d always been there, and yet I’d seemingly forgotten them, buried them underneath a layer of new memories. Not quite gone, but never crossing my mind, and now that I was back outside, I got the strange sensation I was coming home to them.
Looking up, I saw light pollution painting the sky with reds and yellows, obscuring many of the stars I knew were there. I couldn’t remember if they’d always been that vague, in my memory they hadn’t been. Then again, the city had always emitted much light. It was cold and cloudless, and between the tones of black, blue and orange, the moon shone bright and white. It had been full a few days ago, and sadness at having missed the sight of the full moon swept over me, instantly diminished by the joy of simply seeing the moon again, as she was, like an eye in the heavens, looking down on me when the sun had to rest.
Maybe someone was looking back at me. It wouldn’t be a moon, but there were people up there, astronauts. Space sailors, I remembered from somewhere, I couldn’t think of the source of the etymology. Maybe one of them was looking down at the blue planet, at me. They wouldn’t be able to see me, obviously, but perhaps if they could’ve, their eyes would’ve met mine and they’d see a young man, dressed in the clothes he’d bought years ago, that were now patched up with scraps of fabric; a young man, whose light brown hair, still not tied up, was blowing in the wind, tangling before his very eyes, as he noticed when he ran his fingers through it; a young man who was taking in all he could like a sponge, every detail of the small area he could observe, slowly but surely printing it into his mind to ponder over when he went inside again; a young man who was a stranger to the street he stood in, just like the astronauts would be when they got back down and would be welcomed by a world that had revolved before their very eyes, but without them in it.
“Hello,” the man who they might be looking at whispered, as my lips formed a careful smile; “Bonjour, hallo, guten Tag,” he- we continued, greeting them in every language we knew.
When everything was silent again, I turned around and walked back inside, up the stairs I’d now walked six times since going in that other January.
juni 2023
Storm Leibbrandt
