What You Were

It really was strange to look at her now, here in this foreign city she called home with an ease that almost made N flinch. It looked odd, wrong almost, to see her in this environment, hear her speak fluently in a language she had always said she disliked and rolling her own cigarettes when she had never smoked before. Not when they had been together, at least, and that was really the only reference N had; S didn't exist as a person much before and not certainly long after that period in time. Until now, when she undeniably and unquestionably did, sat there as a person of her own, arrogant almost in her self-awareness. Sat there, just existed, outside the role of his wife as well as outside the range where N's power on another was able to reach.



N watched as she ordered drinks for them from the tired-looking waiter and lit up her smoke, nonchalantly, letting the smoke escape between her pale lips towards the stained ceiling. He tried not to stare but couldn't help but to be strangely mezmerised by the sight of this woman, one who bore physical resemblance to the person next to whom N had woken up for almost eight years but still had something entirely unrecognizable in her. It was hard to name, that streak of unfamiliarity that coloured her aura; it was something equally foreign and incomprehensible as the angular language that filled the air, swirling everywhere like the blue smoke from her cigarette. For a short while N wondered if it really was S opposite to him in this run-down corner pub or if it was someone else who just looked like her; and how could he possibly know the difference between the two.



Maybe he couldn't, and maybe it didn't matter even. maybe, even likely, there was no telling a difference - to him S was his wife, and now that she wasn't, she wasn't S any more. It then led him to think how much of what she had been then had been because of their marriage - because of N even - and how much because of herself. How had their relationship affected her personality and ways of being, and as the void brought about the end of their marriage had been filled, what had she filled it with? It was impossible to see her clearly now, read her like he had used to be able to; it was as if the years that had passed between then and now would have created a haze between them, a thick fog that hid her details.



N had called her up that evening without really even knowing why. Perhaps he had just been bored, conference trips abroad always were just that, long days of presentations followed by tedious group dinners were enough to make N want to claw his eyes out. After a particularly dull day he had been lying on his bed in the generic hotel he was staying in, staring at the white ceiling his hand spread on his sides like Jesus' on the cross when suddenly somewhere from the back of his brain had emerged the knowledge that S lived in the very city he was currently at. Before he had known what he was doing he had called her old number, at the same time thinking that it would probably not work any more, not after all these years. But against his expectations it had worked and she had picked up after a few rings, sounding exactly as he remembered: her words came slow and her tone was low for a woman. Hearing her voice had felt strange, but not as strange as he would have thought; what had been perhaps more unexpected was that she hadn't sounded all that surprised to hear from him. When he had asked, S had agreed to meet him as if she had expected the question for a while now, and now the day had merely arrived; and in all honesty, when she had given the address of the place to meet with an even tone that bore little emotion, N had felt a twinge of disappointment over her calmness.



They had sat in the pub for some time already, hours maybe; time didn't somehow seem relevant. The longer they talked the more it puzzled N how she had both changed and remained unchanged at the same time. She was maybe a bit more frank, more straightforward; less interested, perhaps, of his opinion. Less bothered whether N agreed with her or not, and less concerned about making N see her point in something that she said. Less, if at all, moved by what he thought of her, N concluded, and this realization made him slightly sad. In that he saw that she didn't care about him any more than she cared about any other character from her past and she didn't deem it necessary to make an effort for him. She didn't have to any more, N understood, didn't have to try to be nice or take his feelings into consideration. It was a take it or leave it -scenario, and for S it seemed to be perfectly alright if he left it.



Very much, N thought to himself, like she herself once had.



The night had already fell and the air of the pub was thick from smoke when she suggested they'd walk a bit; there was something she wanted to show him. N readily agreed as he felt the last drink he had had was probably the one too many, and the idea of clearing his head a bit sounded like a good one. As they stumbled out to the street, the cool and fresh night air felt like a slap to the face after the stuffy indoor space. N inhaled deeply, enjoying the feel of the fresh air in his lungs. He heard the faint click of a lighter as next to him S lit yet another cigarette; and he really had to bite his tongue so as not to make a remark. It was not his business, after all, just like it wasn't his business that she seemed skinnier than before, more frail, and that the dark circles under her eyes made her look older than her years.



Not his business because she was not his wife. Not really a friend even, too much had happened for them to ever be able to honestly call each other that. But, N was now forced to wonder, what was the word for someone who you used to love more than you had loved anyone, for whom you would have done anything, everything; for someone who you had thought you'd grow old with, hold their hand on their death bed or maybe they would hold yours, who knows who would go first. What was the word for someone like that? What word could encompass the love you once had as well as the fear that had gripped your heart when you realized they were drifting away from you? The pain you felt when it became clear that they couldn't find their way back, even if they had wanted to? And the anger that inevitably followed, the guilt as well as the accusations, and the distraught brought about by still loving someone - or rather, the person they had been - and hating them at the same time?



There was no such word, N decided there in the sick yellow light of the street lamp, inhaling the sharp night surrounding him. No such word because there was no definition, no way of simplifying such an excess of human emotions into a handful of letters; and that was maybe part of the confusion he experienced when he looked at S now. Most certainly he didn't love her any more, or hate for that matter; but all of that had once been there, and the memory of the emotions was too strong to be overlooked, and he didn't have a word for it all.



They walked alongside the river, towards the general direction of N's hotel. She was quiet now, even more so than in the pub before; not that she had ever been the chattiest of people, but now she had fell almost completely silent. But it didn't really matter all that much as the silence wasn't of an awkward kind, not the type you felt the need to fill with anything at all. Rather, the silence was the third member in that small party, and as it was at the moment, also doing all the talking. It was almost nice, really, walking with silence like that, the only sounds coming from the few passing cars and their footsteps.



After some twenty minutes of walking she stopped, abruptly as if hitting a wall invisible to the eye. They had arrived to a crossroads where the road running next to the river met another one surging from a tunnel cut through the hill rising right next to the river. There was a footpath dropping down the side of the hill, and the crosswalk of that path was just after the slight bend the main street made before joining with the road coming from the tunnel. One could immediately see that it was a dangerous crossing; the visibility of a person crossing the street in a wrong time was such that if a driver on the main street had too heavy a foot on the gas, the chances of that pedestrian coming out sound from the mathematically likely collision were somewhat low.



And of course N knew why she had wanted him to see this place. She didn't have to say it when she looked at him in the darkness; he knew the reason even if he couldn't see it in her eyes. And on that moment N knew the answer to the question she now asked of him.



The reason he had called, the reason why he had contacted her and asked her to meet; it hadn't been out of boredom, and it had nothing to do with sentiment. He didn't want her back and he didn't want to cause her any distress, it was none of these things that had made him pick up the phone. The reason, and it seemed very obvious now, was that he had needed this closure, this final chat with S, had needed to see with his own eyes that the woman he had married no longer existed; that the attributes and feelings he had attached to her, be them good or bad, when they were still married didn't fit with what she was now.



He had needed that because he hadn't had the chance for it before her funeral.



And as N stood there alone on the empty street in the heart of this foreign city, in the same one in the depths of which somewhere was a graveyard with a plain stone with his last name on it, he finally felt the weight of that stone being lifted on him. S hadn't been S after they had gone their separate ways; it was not the woman he had loved as his wife who had played the chances here and lost. It was N who had made her as she had been then, well partly at least, enough so that no one else could have done the same; and after him she had not been the same S that he had known. S had ceased to exist a long time ago; and it was not his wife who had died.