Arrividerci

A short story
by Dorothee Lang

A street. In Rajasthan. In Bikaner. A town of dust, a town of worn facades, a town in between coloured places. It’s dusk; it’s the time of going home; it’s the time of not being out on the streets any more. Not here. Not on those streets. So they walk back home, a man from Belgium, a woman from Greece, a man from France, a woman from Spain. Four travellers, connected by this place for an evening, connected by the time they sat together, at a table, drinking chai tea, eating nan, eating dhal, knowing that they will never sit like this again. Tomorrow their ways will take different directions; tomorrow it will be another place, another street, another table. Yet for now, for this moment, they belong, in ways you can only belong when you are out there, in this realm of passages, of crossings, of changing horizons.

A shop. Filled with bottles, filled with cans, filled with packages.

“Just a moment, I need some water,” the man from Belgium says.

The other three wait while he buys a Binari bottle. No tap water here; it’s better not to risk it.

The moment takes a while; the moment draws the vendors.

“One puppet, four hundred rupees,” a boy offers.

“One puppet, four hundred rupees,” a girl offers. Maybe his sister. Maybe his cousin.

Maybe just another vendor.

The three waiting travellers look at the puppets, carved out of wood, dressed in silk.

“And this one?” the woman from Greece wants to know.

“Same, same,” the answer. Almost a saying, here, for all those things that are almost the same, that aren’t exactly the same.

“Same, same,” the woman from Greece repeats, and thinks about another place, about another kind of dusty streets, red and unreal, like the sky in the last minutes of light, like pearls of blood dripping on brown earth, like water from the sky.

The others, the shop, the street, it is far away. The puppet boy, he is a figure of another play; the street, it is a stage. The figure turns, raises his right hand, spreads the five fingers, puts them in a question.

“Do you know this?”

The woman does. She knows it from three days before, from the desert. It had been the same constellation there, three others and her. And a young Indian, addressing her and not the others. Talking to her without trying to sell.

Raising his hand and spreading the fingers. Telling her what she repeats now. “Five fingers, no same.”

The figure nods, slowly, carefully. In the last moment, when the water bottle is bought, when the street returns, it adds, “Like persons. No same.”

A street. In Rajasthan. In Bikaner. It’s morning; it’s the time of leaving, the time of waiting for busses, for trains, for the next step. The man from France, the woman from Spain, they are gone already; they are in another place already. The man from Belgium, the woman from Greece, they are still there, standing at the bus stop, with a couple from Australia. In their minds, they are gone, too; they are done with this place.

Yet, the place isn’t done with them. Bikaner, it approaches them again, in the figure of the puppet boy.

“Hello,” he says. Not to both of them, just to the woman. “Hello, what is your name?”

“June,” the woman says.

“Vinu,” the boy answers. And then, for no reason, he adds: “You are lucky. You are different.”

The woman doesn’t know what to do. Doesn’t know what to say.

The figure, the young man, the boy, they know something about her. But they won’t tell. No way they will tell. The real matters, if you want to know about them, you have to find the answer yourself—that is as far as she got by Bikaner.

Yet she tries. “Why?” she asks again. “Why me?”

“If you want something with your true heart, you can do it,” the boy answers. The others, they don’t even look at the boy. The others, they don’t see that the figure is not a boy. That there is something behind those eyes that is older. Yet, it already fades, while it says goodbye. Not in the Indian way, but in the Italian way. “Arrividerci,” it says. “Arrividerci.”

A moment later, the bus arrives, leaving her with the journey again.

Copyright 2007 by Dorothee Lang