Satisfaction
It was a lovely letter. Any letter that gives you a car in the postscript has its bonuses. But I must admit it made me feel exhausted, troubled, and even more confused than I had been to begin with.
I don’t have long left… Well, that answered one thing, I realized, as my heart drummed away. She knew she was going to die. But she didn’t mention an illness or give any other reason, and it seemed a very long way off a suicide note. Someone once told me the way to die happy is to die complete. To live like you eat a delicious meal. To devour and enjoy every course so that when you have finished, you are full and enjoyed every mouthful, but aren’t too sad there is no more. It seemed that Christina, after a mediocre starter, may have had a satisfying main course and dessert, and left this planet content.
I reread her recommendations. I felt, somehow, they were more than recommendations. I felt they were signposts to something I wasn’t yet able to understand. So, even though I was hardly in the mood to be a proper tourist, I thought I would take what she was saying – or half saying – in the letter seriously. I looked again at her advice.
A lot of the things had to be ruled out instantly. There was no way, for instance, I was going to go scuba diving. I was pretty sure it wasn’t advisable to start at the age of seventy-two. And even with my new legs, I very much doubted I would ever dance again. After all, I hadn’t danced since 1992. Never mind the seagrass. I felt like I was the oldest living organism on Earth.
The one part that really stood out was the bit about keeping your mind open. I suppose it was a normal thing to say, especially after the mention of scuba diving. But that, and the reference to some of the strange tales being true, and the cosmic books around the place, made me wonder if Christina had come here and taken too many drugs and got into some mystical mumbo jumbo. She had, I distinctly remember, been into star signs.
I was being judgmental. It was a bad habit I’d got into after festering in my bungalow for too long on my own. I calmed myself down and went to the bedroom and unpacked my suitcase. The wardrobe, like the rest of the house, was a bit tatty. It had scratches all over the wood.
The first item I unpacked was a dressing gown. I would say it took up about 28 percent of the entire case. It had been Karl’s dressing gown. I couldn’t leave it or get rid of it. I needed it, even in the heat of the Mediterranean. After he’d died, I often pressed my face into it. And wearing it was the closest thing to a hug from him. Ridiculous, I know, but everything is ridiculous after a certain point in life. I’d also brought with me Daniel’s drawing of a bluebird. The one he drew me for Mother’s Day. We’d had it in a frame for years, and I’d wanted to take one thing of his with me.
There is a comfort in unpacking, Maurice. I recommend that whenever you arrive at a new place, unpack with great care. It gives a sense of order and ritual to the new. And so I sorted my clothes as carefully as if leading a tea ceremony for a Ming emperor. I don’t know why I was surprised to see Christina’s clothes in the wardrobe. Maybe I felt someone would have been in to sort them out.
They were colorful and bright and the kind of things that flew off the rails at the charity shop when the students came in. It was sad to see these kaleidoscopic outfits pressed together, a concertina of colorful ghosts. A spectrum of personalities I never knew. And then, after I placed all my clothes in there, I realized how drab they looked. All muted creams and corals and lilacs next to her indigos and yellows. It looked wrong, our clothes side by side. Like I had just put mashed potato on a fruit salad.
I then lay on the bed and tried to have a nap but couldn’t. Well, actually, I think I did doze off for a couple of seconds, but I soon woke up, achy, my back ill-attuned to the mattress and with my mind contemplating what she might have meant when she wrote keep your mind open.
Cars sped by on the main road, a kind of white noise I found soothing. And I needed soothing, as I wondered what the hell had happened to Christina and why she had chosen me.
It is hard to explain what I was feeling. Vulnerable, I suppose. And alone. The nightclubs, beach clubs, luxury villas, sunset bars, yoga retreats, mega hotels, and Michelin-starred restaurants the island was now famous for may as well have existed in another universe.
