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The phone rings shrilly in my silent apartment, and I look up from my book, startled. I look at the clock on the bookshelf. It is almost 11 o’clock. I shake my head and wonder who would be calling. The phone rings again and deadens. In the moment of silence before it rings again, I pull myself up from the comfortable couch and move unwillingly across the room to the kitchen. The phone rings again. I was hoping it would stop. I glance toward the balcony and see a yellow moon rising over trees on the other side of the street. The late summer wind is lively coming through the partly open doors and makes the curtains move wave slowly. The phone rings again and, reaching through the kitchen door, I pick up the receiver and press it to my ear.
“Hello?” I say and wait for the customary response.
Instead there is nothing. There is no static or sound of a computerised service. A fax machine does not begin to squeal. A dead line.
“Yes? I say impatiently, and a moment later I hang up.
I look at the phone on the wall and then shake my head.
I return to my comfortable couch, feeling vaguely disturbed. I tuck my feet under a large cushion at the far end and lay the book open in my lap, while partly reclining on a similar large cushion. I consider that my parents, by this hour, are long asleep in their condo across town. No one would be calling from Italy now because it is still early morning there. My friends are mostly accounted for.
Suddenly, unbidden, Anna comes into my mind.
Or the memory of Anna; my dearest friend and lover over several years until her death in a mundane traffic accident several years ago.
The aftermath of that loss had been not dissimilar to the combined effects of an earthquake and a hurricane in my life. The thought of not having her near me and, of feeling that acute and painful absence had been devastating to me. I suppose I was in love with her, but I soon substituted that for the love of the bottle. In the space of six months, I lost my job and many of my oldest friends. Time passed in a blur of waking up, trying to clear my head with pots of coffee long enough to get to the liquor store, and then the long, slow, tearful spiral into an alcohol-soaked, evening oblivion. Sometimes, I would go out to a club or bar with the inevitable disgraceful results.
A year later, I began to emerge from the fog. I think I got tired of the headaches. I began to get up and shave in the morning. I would put on a jacket and tie and sheepishly visit old work colleagues. I found a job.
I also gradually put Anna out of my mind; I put her to rest. This was not something that I was happy to do. It was, however, necessary to my sanity which I chose to preserve. And then the phone rang again.
I emerge from my private thoughts with a jolt.
Everything is as it was before I drifted off. The apartment is dark except for the reading light with its gentle arch over the couch. That piercing trill comes again shattering my thoughts and I swing my feet down to the floor. I am feeling disturbed again. Perhaps my parents are unwell. The phone jangles again. I pick it up with a sense of anxiousness.
“Hello”, I say, maybe too aggressively, into the receiver.
The silence on the line swallows my answer in its vastness.
“Hello, is there someone…”
And then there comes a sound, barely discernible from silence, as though heard from an unknowable distance or as an echo through years of loneliness.
A breath…
Or a sigh.
I thrust the receiver onto it’s cradle and stare at the phone. A narrow beam of moonlight pools around my feet and makes them glow, colourless and pallid. I begin to shiver. I grope on the table for a cigarette and try four times before the match catches and flares to life. In that instant, my shadow is thrown, huge, trembling and distorted on the wall and cabinets behind me. I inhale deeply and feel the smoke curl into my lungs. I cough briefly and then again before I feel the tears sliding cool and viscous down my cheeks. I stand and smoke, glancing randomly about, leaning against the kitchen counter. I look at my cigarette. I look at the balcony door, where the wind from outside makes the curtains dance and swirl in the subdued light of the moon. In the other room, I hear the clock ticking dully. I do not look at the phone.
Moments later, I snuff out the cigarette in the tiny ashtray on the counter and then run my fingers through my hair. I gaze up absently and look toward the phone. It hangs inertly on the wall. Silent and innocuous. It is light coloured and, in the semidarkness of the moonlit apartment it is almost invisible against the wall.
I take a step toward it. My hand trembles as I reach out and my knees feel like they are about to crumble under my weight. I rest my other hand against the door frame to steady me. I touch the receiver and feel the cool, smooth plastic form as it falls under my palm. I lift the receiver from it’s cradle and the silence of the apartment draws closer around me as there is no answering dial-tone. Silence as deep as a well or deeper and I feel myself drawn into its welcoming emptiness. I press the receiver to my ear and listen to a silence that is wider and more infinite than any ever heard; and the words that come up from my throat seem to drop into it and disappear. As I hear myself speak, the words already sound distant and foreign as though coming from another person in another place far away.“Anna”, I hear myself say as I drift into the silence. “I miss you and… I…want to be with you. I miss you.”
The sound I hear is the receiver as it clatters against the wall, swinging languorously on its chord.
And then silence.
Black and deep and infinite.
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Posted by badlydrawnstickman on 2007-10-22 16:15:03 | Rating: | Views: 126
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This is so sad...and beautifully written.
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Posted by DifficultSoul
on 2007-10-22 22:01:02
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This is great. I usually hate fiction.
But this IS beautifully written
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Posted by political_silence
on 2007-10-23 10:34:50
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I'm having a little weep, that was luverly. Thank you.
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Posted by bede
on 2007-10-28 14:19:59
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You are a bloody fantastic writer! Peace~
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Posted by TheMidnightCowgirl
on 2007-10-31 19:21:12
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you captured me again
you are a captivating writer
you hold us prisnor till the end, I doubt if you ever lose a reader becuase of length, as I do, people want you to make a short story longer...bravo
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Posted by roe
on 2007-11-20 21:19:21
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