First I found him at a local coffeeshop but I said that already. Just sitting there looking like he stepped out of his grave to drink coffee. Delicate, his movements, his face, his demeanor. At any moment he stood on this precipice, this cliff or edge or boundary, and if he crossed it he’d collapse, disintegrate into dust to be carried off by the wind into the ocean with the rest of the deadsouls. That first day I mostly watched him, followed him. He walked and walked but never went anywhere. His only stop the entire day was the coffeeshop but he walked for about two hours his head in the air, mind miles away, his gait slow but deliberate. His house mirrored him, barely together, on a tightrope ready to dismantle, its atoms and molecules dissipate and leave nothing left but a heap of dust.
My heart beat so loud I couldn’t think and my throat was dry, clicking every time I swallowed. My body on fire, every single atom burning alive, ready to burst, I waited as long as I could without dying and knocked on his door, a hollow thud.
Nothing. I waited forever but no response so I knocked again and waited and knocked and waited but he never came. I wandered around his house. It was small, single story, and only four rooms, a perfect little square. The curtains drawn, no light went in, no sight went out.
Buried alive, living in a hole. The long grass infested by weeds broke the pavement of his walkway. He lived like a ghost already. Lost in the world of the living, hiding in shadows, dropping echoes as films, the dirty coffeecup. I sat on his stoop and waited, picking grass and throwing it in the air, covering ants with it and shoving blades down antholes.
The sun began to set and I had nowhere to go, no orientation, even. Following him got me lost, so lost I didn’t remember even how I got there, so I kept knocking and then kicking and then yelling for him, screaming his name over and over, no longer caring that I had come there only to meet him, the desperation grabbed me by the stomach and pulled down through the earth threatening to bury me there outside his door.
‘Who the fuck are you?’ His voice growled, rasped, and slurred. Standing there, drunk, peering at me with one eye.
So taken by surprise I just stared at him, my mouth agape, my body frozen, but sweat all of a sudden covered me and my shirt stuck to me. I swallowed hard, ‘Sebastian Falke?’
‘What the fuck do you want?’ He steadied himself on the door, his legs too used to the slur of the drunken world to stand with the sober.
Nothing was going right. The plan, I don’t know. He took me in his arms, kissed me, told me that he’d take care of me and love me. I was sixteen then, it seemed possible. Instead of a man I met a growling beast, a monster returned from the dead, woken from his infinite slumber. I knew he was in there, though. The man who made those films. He had to be.
I told him I wanted to talk about his films and he slammed the door.
He left me out there until it was dark, the breeze cold. I didn’t scream or pound on his door, I just sat on his stoop crying until I thought the skin of my hands would prune. They didn’t.
He opened the door without a word and when I turned he wasn’t there. I waited for a few minutes but he didn’t come back to the door so I went in. The house was a mess. Garbage and food and bottles everywhere. Everything stank of stale air and mold. Books rotted on shelves. The television was on but he wasn’t watching it. I tiptoed through the house. I may have been on the streets for a few months at this time, only showering once, wearing the same clothes every day, but even I thought this place was filthy. I crept around but he wasn’t there. At the far end was a small kitchen and across from that was a bathroom with a tub and sink and toilet. The only room left was behind the closed door attached to the main room beside the bathroom.
I sat on the couch watching television but he never came out. I heard him, though. Muttering, pacing, screaming in quick bursts that disappeared as if they hadn’t existed.
Teeming with them. Ghosts. They lived here with him but he never knew. When he was drunk like he was that first day, though, a part of him felt it and that’s who he talked to. He couldn’t understand them but they came to him. I don’t know why. I never talked to his ghosts. That’s not the kind of things lovers do. Everyone’s allowed some privacy.
On the couch I clung to my knees rocking back and forth without looking at the television. I stared at his wall until it went silent. I had come all this way, running from so much, and, now that I was there, what was I to do?
I cleaned. I filled bag after bag with the trash, the food, the bottles. All night, my first night with him, I cleaned and never even saw him. His bathroom had maybe never been cleaned but he had some bleach and a scrub. The kitchen was much the same. No vacuum cleaner but I didn’t want to wake him and nothing was going to clean that carpet anyway. I opened the curtains which were really just sheets strung up over the windows and the first light of day poked through. Exhausted, I lied on the couch and watched the sun crawl across the floor.
I was woken by a prodding at my shoulder and a grumble, ‘Who are you?’ repeated until I woke up to see him poking me with his index finger
I sat up, brushed the hair out of my face, ‘Alina.’
He leaned back and scratched himself, his eyes squinted as if not used to sunlight, though it was certainly already afternoon. ‘What’re you doing here?’
‘You made some films a long time ago. I’ve been watching them, the ones I could find, and,’ I watched his feet because I couldn’t stand his small eyes, my hands clenched and damp on my knees, ‘I wanted to meet you.’
I waited for his response, for him to throw me out or laugh in my face but he just stood there, his feet not moving. Raising my gaze, his face was in his hand, the other crossed his body holding himself.
‘I watched your films, The Hand of God, Songs for the Dead, and one that didn’t have a name about a woman painting. Watching them,’ I stopped, caught my breath, ‘all my life I’ve been waiting or running or trying to find the answer to some question no one ever asked me and then it all fit, everything came together, when I watched these. They’re all I can think about and I’ve been watching them over and over and over for days. I, I had to meet you,’ my voice trailing to a faint shiver.
He walked back into his room and I brought my knees up to rest my chin on, nothing going properly. After a few minutes he came back with a DVD and put it in and turned on the television. It was The Passion of Joan of Arc.
No words passed between us and I was careful not to touch him, to try to not exist. I recognised the name of the film from the library but I had never watched it.
It shocked me, hurt me. She was so beautiful, so sorrowful, and those eyes, the intensity blazing from them at every movement. Every tear reached out to me and I found my own tears to match. The quiver of her lip, the wide-eyed insanity. And then, her eyes faded, death was taking her one frame at a time, the same way death had been dogging me for so long that I could smell them everywhere, the ghosts, especially there. She faded and I crumbled with her. So invested was I that I forgot Sebastian beside me, forgot that I had travelled all this way to meet a man who didn’t care who I was or what I wanted, forgot that I was just a girl, barely sixteen, on her own, alone, holding onto her knees to keep her very body together, to keep herself contained lest she fall apart and join the haunters. My heart failing, my vision blurred, I felt a hand on my neck, between my shoulders, I hadn’t realized the way I sobbed, and then she awoke and so she was burnt for sins she didn’t have, for her unwavering faith. Unfair, unjust, how life killed her before she had a chance to die, before she found what she looked for, the answer still beyond her, but, maybe, in death, burning.
My head fell to his lap and he stroked my hair and later I apologized for making his jeans wet but I didn’t even care then who he was. There was too much in too short of a time, Gorecki, Falke, Dreyer. Each one splintering me apart but only Sebastian put me back together and his hands tried then, stroking my head and then holding me in his arms and then taking me to his room and lied beside me, sweetly, not trying to fuck me but just trying to keep me steady, keep me breathing, keep me together like I had been trying for so long and only just succeeding.