Terminus

A short story
by Elaine Chiew

Just before Mateja’s father died, his eyes opened, his gaze milky and opaque, as if drifting into an invisible archway just beyond her shoulder, and his last words were . . . el treno esta llegando . . . lo estoy viendo . . . . the train . . . I see it now . . . it’s coming.

The funeral crawled with her eight siblings and their families, her father’s ex-cronies and extended relatives from all over southern Spain. They asked her what she was doing in London. “Soy abogada.” Lawyer. They clucked in approval.

“Married?”

No.

“Fiance?”

No. They clucked again, distinctly not in approval.

When she was ten, her father took her to a Real Madrid football match. She didn’t care about football, but it was an honor to be taken as the youngest of eight, and as a girl. On the way there in the crowded train, they struggled to find seats side by side. When they finally sat down, he’d said, “So, your mother tells me you want to be a writer.”

Mateja nodded, waiting. She did not exhale.

“Be a lawyer. I wanted to be a lawyer but one thing or another prevented me. I’m a good businessman, but I would have been a better lawyer.”

She examined her knees. When she looked at her father’s visage again, she read twin pools of hope.

Only now, at his death, did she realize that a child could understand when someone she loved handed her his soul.

After the funeral, Mateja returned to work. Every morning, she took the train to Liverpool Street. She drafted one prospectus after another. Initial public offerings. Secondary offerings. Common stock. Debentures. She met people. Lawyers. Bankers. Accountants. CEOs. Dated some, slept with some. She traveled. Boardrooms. Printers. New York. L.A. Milan. Even back to Madrid. Home, but increasingly unfamiliar. She ate new things. Ostrich burger. Raw abalone. Fermented tofu. She ate well. Zafferano. Nobu. River Café. She drank to excess. Whiskey sours. Apple martinis. Passion hedgehog. Dark pirate. She shopped. Prada. Gucci. Tanner Krolle. She bought a sporty Porsche. Raced down country roads. Got pulled over. Stayed at B&Bs. West Sussex. The Cotswolds. Bath. The locals stared. Single good-looking Spanish lady solo? Mafioso? Tryst? Dotty?

In the spring following her father’s death, she holidayed in Venezia. She wandered all over the Piazza San Marco. Ate lots of gelato. Saw pigeons shit-bombing people, pillars, statues, basilica, gilded Byzantine mosaics. She took the Vaporetto to the island of Murano, watched artisans blowing glass, like soap-bubbles emerging from the end of a long pipette, only to plunge it red-hot into the furnace. She too felt baked alive.

In a gondola, greenish scummy water lapped. The contrast with the fiery sky, the calm evening water, the gentle pace of life, the amorous smiles of Venetian men . . . the mortality of Venice . . . mancan le parole. Grief overcame Mateja. She understood finally: her life was being spent on a spree, on loan, adrift from her customary moorings.

That same evening in London, she attended a party in Launceston Place, a party of lawyers and bankers with smiles of faux-bonhomie, people who had mastered the art of the babble. Everything and everybody felt like veneer upon veneer of mirrors. Someone mentioned that all the guys in her office had weirdly shaped ears. Another asked if anyone could name a furry fruit. Georgina, Rachel, Rebecca, Kate. Julian, Scott, Michael, Colin. Long queue of girls waiting for the toilet. Oh hello, hi there, Hiya, How ya doing, girl?

She ran out onto the balcony. There, smoking alone, a man sat wrapped up in a trench coat against the crisp, cold night. Mateja banged into him. Only when he lifted his hand to flick off ash, did she see the lit end of his cigarette glowing like tinder, his silhouette lifting from the surrounding darkness. So calmly he sat. Like her father, sitting on a ratty couch watching television while a thunderstorm raged outside, getting up to turn up the volume the harder it became to hear the program.

The man said, “Stubbed your toe?”

The man said, “Going somewhere?”

Mateja almost said, “I’m fine. Just fine.” When her father had handed her his soul, on that train seat so many years ago, the child she was had handed hers back. She said, “Going home.”

Understanding, like a journey, arrived in segments. That night, she dreamt of an English railway station housed in a Spanish-style building with red turrets. Magnificent cast-iron arches formed a grid, arcing like ribs across the roof of the terminus. Sunlight flooded through the glass clerestory on each side. Although it felt so familiar, it was no place she’d ever been. Letters forming unrecognizable destinations rolled on the boards.

Then, in the distance, she saw her father, a lone figure, legs crossed on a wooden bench, wearing a trilby and a scarf, reading a newspaper. Trains came and went, but there he sat, calm and waiting. He’d been here, at this station, the whole time.

Copyright 2007 by Elaine Chiew