Figures in a landscape

I was walking along the Ledborough Road this morning, past the little shops and into town. You see every kind of person, it seems, from anywhere on earth. Something struck me about one man, the way he glanced at me as I passed. It seemed to say “My soul soars, but here I am stuck with this body.” He had a well-worn face, and his glasses were slightly askew. I judge him to be four-foot nine (145cm), about fifty years old; and a man who wants to walk tall and not be seen as short. He wasn’t strutting defiantly like some of the others I often see, the ones who are shorter still.

Yesterday I was still editing the paragraph when K rang me from town after her shopping, to come and have lunch at the pub. I walked as usual through the playground at the back of our house and along the derelict school playground, which the County Council has now protected with high fences and left as a wilderness, theoretically awaiting redevelopment when the right buyer comes along. I was still rewriting the paragraph in my head. It came to me that I should add something: that a day will inevitably come when I can no longer walk within any landscape. Life is a season. If we are lucky, it offers a brief flowering.

And then I had to pass a point on the sidewalk where such big weeds hang out through the fence that there’s only a narrow space to pass. You could step off the kerb when someone comes the other way but cars often like to speed round the corner with reckless disregard. I saw a tall man coming the other way, walking with difficulty, supporting his weight on a stick. I hadn’t yet reached the narrowest section, so stopped while he got past the stinging-nettles. He was grateful and said it was a nice day; and then in very halting English started to talk about his affliction. He had a name for it, I think, but couldn’t pronounce it, something beginning with M. He made a hand gesture which seemed to implicate his whole body, especially his head and right wrist, which looked misshapen up to the elbow, as if poorly mended from a broken bone. He says he cannot read and write—he surely means no longer, because he gives an impression of being cultivated,  to use an old-fashioned word—and points to his right eye, or perhaps his brain. “Four months in hospital, no work any more now”. I feel there is much that he wants to tell me, though not about his damaged body and diminished circumstances. He mentions those merely to have me wave them away as irrelevant; and then to share that which still blossoms in him, and which he and I hold in common, despite the lack of language to express it.

I should add that it’s nothing unusual round here to greet people whose English is rudimentary, and have limited conversations across an uncomprehending gulf between our cultures. Almost everyone in our street falls into that category. But this was special, like a soul-to-soul reaching out, as if this man, at the very time I passed, was harbouring the same thought as I, that our flowering season is not over. We are still figures who can walk in the landscape, see the world pass by in all its wondrous variety, and smile. It was as if my thoughts had escaped from the dark chamber of my consciousness, and bounced off the outside world to meet me again, against some angelic mirror. Not for the first time. And so he offered his left hand, the other one looking very painful, and we shook that way. And then we had to part, I conscious that Karleen was waiting in town. And then over lunch, when we didn’t have much to talk about, I knew it would be impossible to tell her of this encounter—no point in mentioning it. In writing, I can only try.

I compare the message of these two encounters, and imagine that each in his own way was answering my questioning glance. The short, man who seemed to be saying, “My soul soars, but here I am stuck with this body.” The tall afflicted man with his stick, seemed to be saying: “I see you look at me with pity, and I can understand that, because this body is not what it was, this brain too, my eyesight. But I have been someone. Underneath this surface, I still am. You may be sorry for me because I can’t walk fast like you, and have a lot of pain, much more than you. But what are these, in the bigger scheme of things? Here we are both,  still walking in the landscape, warmed by the sun and a stranger’s smile. Our flowering season is not yet over. We have lived, you and I. We’re not going to spoil the moment by wanting what we haven’t got. And now, every day, I give thanks for having left hospital alive. Whatever happens.”

I felt as if I’d met my future self in the street, and that all was well.