John Hawkes - Death, Sleep & the Traveler

“Allert,” she called, “will you come?”

It was then, while staring through the clear window glass at her small white English auto parked in the snow, that I realized that I was to be invited after all to share in the ritual of her departure. And nothing was as I had imagined it, since she was taking her own car and not Peter’s or our family sedan, and since it was dawn, and since there was no man behind the wheel of the waiting car, and since she was making no mystery of her departure.

“Allert? Will you come?”

When I climbed the stairs, corpulent and wrapped in my dressing gown, I found Ursula surveying for a final time the scene of her room. Her luggage, consisting only of a handbag, a small suitcase apparently made of the softest lambskin, and something that looked like a soldier’s duffel bag and made of the same material, lay at her feet in the simplest order. She was wearing white slacks, a red knitted top, a red kerchief to protect her hair in the little open car, and driving gloves the same color as the luggage.

“Well,” I said, “why are you leaving? I mean, why are you not forcing me from the house and keeping the house and cars to yourself? Is that not the usual thing to do? You needn’t be generous on my account. I should think in this situation you would appreciate the reassurance of the familiar home.”

“If I need anything,” she said in a gentle voice, “I will telephone.”

I noticed that she had made up her fulsome lips and that her white pants were extremely tight and trim. I had known her in every way yet not at all. Now she was dressed as I had never seen her for traveling, and already she was distant, attractive, strange and busy in the very room that was still filled with the confusion of her dormant nature. Evidently she was indifferent to the unmade bed, the quilt and satin nightgown kicked to the floor.

She said that she had already eaten her roll and drunk her coffee. She was simply not the Ursula with whom I had lived so many years.

She slung the handbag from her shoulders, I took the luggage. Outside it was much too cold for an older man in his dressing gown, but I stood there until she drove from sight.

She sat behind the wheel with the red kerchief already blowing and her luggage in the small back seat.

“You will be cold,” I said. “Where’s your jacket?”

She shook her head, she started the engine which to me was suddenly familiar, terribly familiar, and sounded much too big for the little car.

“Where are you going? Please, you must write me a letter.”

She shook her head, she smiled, she put the car in gear.

“Don’t worry,” she said then, smiling up at me and speaking over the noise of the engine, “you will find someone. You will find some nice young thing to hear your dreams.”

And then she drove off. Perhaps she was simply trying to follow my own footsteps. But she would not return.

Perhaps I should commit myself to Acres Wild. Perhaps I should go in search of the village of my youth and childhood. Or I could ask the international telephone operator to locate Simone. Or I could lock myself in Peter’s frozen car and submit to asphyxiation, in which case I could no doubt join my departed friend on the island of imaginary goats. But I shall do none of these things.

Instead I shall simply think and dream, think and dream. I shall dream of she who guided me to the end of the journey, whoever she is, and I shall think of porridge, leeks, tobacco, white clay, and water coursing through a Roman aqueduct.

I am not guilty.