Weather Systems

YOU SEE, I should have known by the way he led me through the cobblestone streets, as though I had never been to an open-air market before, as though I was blind.  Meanwhile, the memory of fingers running down my back lingered. They fit in between the notches of my backbone and I felt certain you read me like Braille.

. . .

When I first arrived to the village, I was told to keep lavender in my shoes, in my suitcase, because it was a natural and prevalent deterrent from scorpions. They sought safety in these small, dark spaces.

. . .

I’ve been kicking myself; it felt like a missed opportunity, a wish that I did not seize. There’s no way of telling, really.  It was just a look.  Maybe I mistook basic kindness for something else.  It was just a naïve notion, girlish.  At any rate, I’m never quite sure how to be around people, how to read them.

. . .

From the high perch of the village, I watched the rain storms lumber in, as if a sleepy beast had wakened. I even climbed to the rooftop of my rented room, looked out to the neighboring village and watched the sheaths of gray shuffle down the mountain and across the valley, the shift of the air a chilled inhale. I could anticipate, almost count the minutes before the release of that breath, before the rain began to fall over this village’s rooftops. Other days, the winds whipped across the valley and the shadows of clouds glided over the pastures, their shapes shifting as they went.

. . . 

He liked that I didn’t speak French; that I was left out of conversations at the parties he took me to; that I came off hopelessly American to his friends; that I was likely rich and easy and vacant the way other American girls must be like; that my only point of reference in the region was that Marseille was to the south and Paris to the north. He must have liked thinking that I’d get lost.

. . . 

In the myriad of vendor’s tents and stands, the pungent smell of olives and wheels of aged cheese mingled with freshly scented bunches of lavender.  Fruit, tea, and flowers brimmed over woven baskets.  Ceramic cicadas glinted in the afternoon light, as if wet with morning dew or newly emerged from a desiccated shell.  Sheer blouses and scarves made of silk and muslin swayed from their hangers like flags along the narrow streets.

. . . 

There is a pacing to life:  back and forth, day and night, clear skies and rains. So it felt easy, migratory even, to stop in and see you on my way to work or on my way home, to exchange these small bits of kind language, these looks that I want to mean something.  After some time, you introduced yourself. I liked the idea that you remembered me amidst the transient crowds.

. . . 

I was quick to make a habit of taking hikes along the mountainside. Each evening, after finishing my work, I wandered off and learned the lay of the land, hoping that the needle of my own compass might swivel into place, that I might become a part of things, that my pacing was actually taking me somewhere.

. . . 

Twenty kilometers, he told me, however far that is in miles.  That’s how far it was to Lourmarin, another picturesque Provencal town, nestled around mountains, vineyards, and orchards, where he took me to dinner.  He instructed me to order the white wine instead of red, because it would pair better with my entrée.  He told me this was the town where Albert Camus died.  You would have thought he had been there:  his hands on the imaginary steering wheel, his squint through all that rain, the poor visibility on that tragic night that the great absurdist died.  Maybe absurd-ism, itself, died that night too, he mused.  I forced a smile, and when the waiter came to our table, I ordered the red wine in my broken French.

. . . 

The smaller a scorpion’s pinchers, the more venomous its sting.

. . . 

The truth of it, though, was that I felt very at home despite my failed attempts of the language, despite his wearing me like a charm, despite his carrying me in his pocket.  Ultimately, I was a passing fancy to him and he got bored of me, moved onto other American girls.  It was just as well.  I was preoccupied with the memory of your look.

. . . 

The rains had traveled on and the evening opened up to twilight’s pallor, the chilled air, the moon.  There was just enough daylight left for a hike. I ran to my room to throw on a sweater.

. . . 

Later, I learned that Camus died in a town called Villeblevin, in the northern part of the country.

. . . 

It felt like a bee sting.  I didn’t think anything of it and swatted the initial shock away.  I never saw its small, translucent body snagged in the loose knit of my sweater, never saw its frantic legs squirm in my hair or its tail pull back, segment by segment, and strike me just behind the ear.  I never saw it fall away and recede into the dark.

. . . 

Part of my reluctance was that I did not know how you saw me. Was I someone who could keep you interested?  Could I be good company?  Was I just acting like a child, silly and predictable in my pacing?  Nothing more than a curiosity? Maybe I was looking for you in this foreign landscape. Maybe I was homesick.  I kept pacing these country roads, committing them to memory.

. . . 

The dirt roads winding from village to village, the mountains at my back, the crumbling farms in the valley, the smell of bonfires from farmers clearing brush needed no translation—this was home.  These were the same roads I grew up on.  So I indulged the naïve, girlish notion that I could follow these roads up the mountain, come around a bend and suddenly be on Ebenezer Church Road; or see the Unison General Store at the next curve, my house through the trees. It would be as though I could span great swaths of land and ocean in only a single step.  It could be as simple to be back as the wind stretching a cloud like cotton.

. . . 

And what about you?  Even now, so far away, still at that mile marker, still steady, withstanding the currents of commuters, of travelers, of seasons: have you felt any tug at the center of your gravity?  Have you always been a stone turning smooth under the elements? Or could it be that you once paced these same roads too? Could it have been more than just a gentle hand grazing my back?

. . .

I had already climbed the ridge of the mountain, miles from my room, when the scorpion’s venom took effect.  The winds had died down and the only sound was the throbbing in my chest, in the back of my head.  I don’t remember falling.  But suddenly I was on the ground, looking up and feeling the whole mountain shudder and rock back.  The branches overhead blurred into a sheer black cloud against a pale sky.  The stinging behind my ear was hot and tender to the touch.  I could not get to my feet.  I could not call out for help.  I could not breathe.  It was all very quiet out there.

. . . 

Much to my surprise, you hugged me goodbye.  Your hand lingered on the small of my back.  I held my breath.  I wanted it to last just a little longer.

. . . 

Whether I am still alive or not doesn’t really matter. We won’t see each other again, and I wonder if that notion ever stops you, stings you, lingers as a tender ache the way it does for me. Whether I’m home or not is known to the mountain, to the blanket of pine needles, to the endless welkin stretched out like opened arms.  The sky is your grazing hand. Meanwhile, the currents of the world move on, synchronized with weather systems, with flocks on land or in air. The pacing of things does not falter.  Other pebbles of rain, other gusts of wind, other clouds casting shadows—all these will scatter over all of us.

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