Memories of Now

Tajalli Keshavarz

Description

It is winter. Seven university friends reunite in a country hotel in Scotland. Over dinners, drinks and walks, they face their dilemmas, their emotions and the stories they hadn't told themselves over the years.As banal games and conversations turn to bickering and arguments, the friends must face their actions and question their thoughts, values and moralities. Personal and social events are remembered, religion and faith are interrogated, and expectations, doubts and death are confronted.As images of the past intermingle with realities of the present, the living memories of the past thirty-five years rise to the surface and the frozen flame of time is rekindled in the snowy countryside.

Sujets

• Escocia
• Scotland

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 05 juillet 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781838599959
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

Copyright © 2019 Tajalli Keshavarz

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Cover Painting: Neda Dana-Haeri
Cover Design: Simon Bunegar

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries
concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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To Jila
Contents
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-1-
‘Do you want to tell me? Do you want to tell me all?’
She looks at me, with her hand under her chin, as if she is interested. As she smiles sitting on the sofa, the wrinkles show at the corners of her eyes and, slightly, at the corner of her lips; this reminds me of her skin some thirty years ago, or more. Good old Ana.
‘Fancy seeing you here, in a hotel lobby. How long has it been?’ Ana asks.
‘Over thirty years I would say,’ I say.
‘That’s for sure, but look, it’s more, don’t you remember…’
There is a loud voice from the restaurant. We both say, ‘It’s Colin.’
‘I thought people wouldn’t be here so early,’ I say.
‘I had a momentary loss of memory about it all,’ says Ana.
We walk fast to the restaurant.
Colin’s loud voice comes from the other side of a table at the centre of the restaurant.
‘This is to us, those who are here and those who couldn’t make it. Can I have silence for a minute? We are not in uni anymore. Behave yourselves, act your – dare I say – age!’
Yes, those who couldn’t come and those who wouldn’t come. Al had been dead now for five or six years. He, more than any of us, would have liked to be here to sit next to Ana where Frank is sitting with his persistent cough. I remember her small purse with shining fake stones looking awkward… impractical. I remember the way she used to open it while talking, taking the coins out.
‘You’ll have coffee too, won’t you, Adam?’
Of course I would. I would have done anything she asked me back then. Looking at her, where she was sitting, the trees were growing behind her head. I could hear their buds opening, their young branches stretching out to catch some more of the sky.
Then she would press the lid of the purse to close it shut again. I would look at her thumb, delicate, pressing on the lid. I remember her nails with and without the varnish, I remember the chipped-off varnish, her hair glowing or tired, her face fresh and bright, pale and withdrawn.
‘Here’s the coffee, Adam.’ She would put the cup on the long black table. ‘Are you better? Are you better now?’
Her hair was soft and black then, long, shoulder-length. I liked summer, when her shoulders were happy under the sun.
‘Adam! Where have you gone? Where are you? What are you looking at?’ She would slide the cup closer to my hand resting on the long black table; her finger touching my skin with a breeze.
‘Why do you call me Adam? I am—’
‘Oh come on, what does it matter? It’s easier. You are Adam, native of paradise! Coming from a mysterious land, always dreaming, you are Adam, let’s face it.’ She laughs together with Colin and the others, but Frank is deep in reading the paper.
‘And Frank, Frank, what are you reading? The best part of it is the crossword, isn’t it? Isn’t it? Confess, you take it to bed with you,’ Ana says.

That was the only time I saw Ana so forthcoming in those days.

And now she is sitting next to Frank. I liked him then with his tidy uniform complete with the tie from his school years… wearing them religiously in the university. Every day, over the winter days, he used to add to his gear a striped woollen scarf; I firmly thought it once belonged to his father. ‘I like biography books,’ he used to say with a low voice, and none of us took him seriously, apart from Ana, of course. I guess they exchanged notes on the books they read. I was curious to know, but then I was curious about Ana, and whatever she did. I remembered the breeze of heat from her hand, the smell of her hair; I carried it with me while washing the plates alone in my flat, while drying my hands, feeling my skin… while passing by a bush, my hand touching the leaves accidentally.

Very few leaves are left in the garden of the hotel; those remaining are soggy, brownish-black, and slippery. No hard work for the gardeners; a week before the snow, a strong wind had blown what remained of the leaves on the deciduous trees, blown them to the corners. But conifers are standing tall and dark green on the grey background cloud, and ferns are wet with the melted snow.

What am I doing in that room, watching in a daze, mother raising her hand? ‘Be careful when you go out! Don’t trip, do something properly for a change; only God can help you the way you are. You are so careless, so clumsy. What do you look at when you walk? You and your dried leaves… are you in this world?’
I have waited a long time, but I am in that room again, and can say ‘Look! I am in this world, living with voices of your world mixed up with the voices of mine.’

I look at the characters at the table, yes, we are each a character! I waited long to come here; waited as if I knew I would come over one day, but I didn’t do anything for it to happen, it just happened. I just waited and waited.
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‘Are you going to do it or not?’ Al would say, looking at me with his mocking eyes. The first time I saw him, and for some time after that, I thought he was making fun of me but no, it was the shape of his eyes, and everybody knew it. ‘He says what he means sort of guy,’ they would say, ‘he is what he is.’ And he liked rugby. I used to tell myself, ‘What else? The man is a simpleton. I shouldn’t expect refined manners from him.’
‘You are hopeless, Adam,’ Al would say. ‘Stop flirting with the girl, she has just arrived at the damn place; let her settle in, you miserable sod.’
‘I see she has already caught your small eyes, Al, but eyes off. She is spoken for.’
‘This is a free country,’ Al would say.
‘Yeah, exactly, feel free to look around, give yourself a chance. Don’t limit yourself to my quarters!’ I would say.
‘His quarters! What a presumptuous low-life, we shall see whose quarters she belongs to.’
And none of us asked her about it.
Wouldn’t she love to know this? Wouldn’t she have loved to know this then, some thirty-five years ago, when she held her books close to her chest, walking fast in those corridors?
‘Good old Ana is a fast walker,’ Al would say.
‘You can’t keep up with her, Al; choose someone you can catch up with,’ and I would laugh.
‘Don’t you worry, Adamus, don’t you worry, mate.’
Now I know he really meant it when he said “mate”.
Then we would go to the bar. College bar was always busy, but you could hear Colin’s loud voice before getting in.
‘I don’t care what you all might say, that bloody exam was unfair.’
And of course everybody agreed with him.
‘What do you think, Ana?’ Colin shouted.
And Ana? She was sitting in a corner, reading in the semi-dark. She was always reading, head down, her hair covering her face.
‘I am talking to you, young lady, do you think the exam was fair?’ Colin said from afar.
She looked up, with her eyes looking at no one. ‘I am not in your class, Colin, how would I know?’
Colin wobbled on his feet with the half-full pint of bitter in his left hand.
‘Doesn’t matter, you can have an idea.’ He wobbled again.
We laughed. Ana had already started reading her book again as if she were at a beach in a faraway island. Then people moved around and I couldn’t see her face.
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I liked the gravel grounds at the Student Centre, the tall green hedges and the round pond in the middle of the gravel surrounded by the geranium pots and the jasmine leaning against the wall. Almost Mediterranean, so at odds with an eroded imitation Roman statue facing the narrow gravel path. I suppose the whole design was a momentary whim of a vice-chancellor with a degree in history; and it had survived the winters, year after year. I liked the weak coffee there and the muffins… biting into them, feeling the softness of the cake and the occasional softness of the berries while listening to the music, often classical.
‘They have done a good job here, Al,’ I said.
‘Stop talking like your grandfather.’
‘Still, they have done a good job.’
Then the tiny girl with the pale face with spots would come out of the room. We had named it “the workshop”, a few canvase