Big White Void

I actually did try to prevent myself being submerged into it by clasping my hands to the desk, the knuckles all white, my fingernails leaving the eight small curves — four to the left and the other four a bit more than a feet to the right — which my wife found in the soft pinewood of the desktop after I was gone. She found my seat empty and still warm when she put her hand on the seating in a gesture of both worry and tenderness. As it had been a fresh although bright autumn day, the window was closed. The sheet of paper lay pristine on the desk with on its right the black fountain pen — its cap beside it — she had given me for my birthday, years ago. No engraving, we weren't like that. The inkpot was at the left, placed on the light blue ink-smudged cloth. I hadn't even opened it yet. All was untouched.

She went downstairs, checking all the doors, which were locked, opened the back door and stepped into the garden where the cold had become almost biting. There was no movement, no sound. She stood there in doubt but then, with a shiver, returned to the house. All the keys were on the rack, he could not have closed the door from the outside, he had vanished, she thought.

The void was like a mist. The edges of the paper started to blur, like when you stare at an object for too long. My hands, first resting calmly on the desk, started to cramp, as it were, as soon as this mist coming up from it reached me, cold and damp at first. Shivers were running down my spine but not so much of the cold but more because, at a certain point, I lost sight of all details. There was only this impermeable white-gray. There was no sound and when the cold had gone there was no temperature, no feeling, not the usual gravitational pull, nothing. I had no weight but neither was I floating weightlessly in ... wherever I was.

I would have thought I had died if not a bright yellow light shone through all, evaporated the mist and gave me a soothing warmth on my skin. Sparkling green meadows stretched out around me for miles and miles. Small birds flew over me in flocks, their wings black against the clear blue sky, fluttering fast. Standing still, looking around, my joints felt strong and young and I started to run, just like that. I felt the grass and the soft ground beneath it under the soles of my feet, the wind on my skin, my muscles flexing. I was dreaming, for sure.

Then this house, that I entered and not before I opened the door to the hallway — with its small red-brown tiles — memories came back to me and there I was as a little boy on my knees with this tiny toy rocket that I threw on the floor with its metal tip, making its small charge explode with a bang echoing in the hallway. There was the claying of ashtrays and cups with my dad and sisters in the dim evening light and there was the soft whiz of the flames of the coal stove. There was the bull broken free, trampling the flower beds of our front garden, so carefully planted by my mother. The animals we saw being born came by; the foals and deer on their fragile legs, the calves that were pulled out of the cow with all of the force of the farmer's strong muscled arms. There was the village idiot who chased me with a knife but turned out to be harmless as a dove.

Back in the hallway once more, I went up the stairs to see the bedrooms. I recall having been in the study, looking for my birthday present which I found before they were given to me. Everybody angry. Especially my dad, but he didn't give me a beating. It was my birthday after all. The bedrooms of my sisters, had I ever been in there? I recognized my own bedroom, overlooking the large back garden, the little park next to it, and the woods behind it in the distance.

Evening, the sky orange-lit from the fire to Bernies Bar that was burned out flat to the ground. I sat on my knees, leaning on the windowsill, and saw only the orange light, moving against the dark of night because of the flickering flames below. Three times a fire truck passed, with howling sirens and red-blue lights. My eyes were wide with excitement.

All rooms so far were empty, cobwebs hanging motionless from the walls and ceilings.

I opened another room, a large double bed with a mattress only. In the corner next to the bed, a chair. On it an old man, bald on top, a thin white beard, well-kept. His glasses ... it was my dad. He looked up to me as if awaking from a dream.

"Son." He smiled but I could see he was tired, his back curved, his arms on the armrests, his hand gripping their ends.

"My son." He paused to push up his glasses. He coughed. Smiled again.

"Yes boy, this is how it is with an old man like me." The sound of his voice was somehow muffled as from a greater distance. He gestured, or tried to, to the bed.

"This is what it is ....," he repeated and then stared out of the window where the afternoon light was dimming.

"A few hours and it will be dark," he said, still looking at what had caught his interest outside, "everything dark and all gone. Times is endless but passes so quickly. Isn't that something odd." I wondered what I was doing here. He looked at me.

"How are you doing son? I really want to know," he said, lifting his head and giving me a solid look.

"I ...," I hesitated. I didn't know. No, I knew but was reluctant to tell, him. "I ... I am... It's that ...," I sighed and stared at the floor. My hands were cold and I was sweating on my back.

"Your book," he said, "I always hoped so much that you would write it, and I could have read it before I was gone."

"Well, I know and you said that but maybe you shouldn't have." I had raised my voice and immediately after I was blushing.

"I see." He paused, folding his hands in his lap, then looking out the window again. "Stupid cows, thinking to be a bull, jumping each other." His chair was cracking and from the corner of my eyes I saw how he tried to get up a little, his hands leaning heavily, somewhat wiggling, on the arms of the chair and stretching his neck, "Now they're being called in." There were sounds of mooing, bells ringing and the barking of a dog. Then he sat back again.

"I understand." He continued and nodded his head, "I'm sorry son, I really am but I thought ... you had such great imagination and ... what did that teacher say? You had the power of the word, that's what he said." I could not lift up my head to him but would he have reached out a hand I would have taken it, unable to stop my tears.

"You know yourself what is holding you back?" he said.

"No." I looked right at him with burning eyes, then looked the other way, shaking my head.

"How old are you now?"

"What?!"

"How old?"

"Fiftyfour."

"I see," I saw he was looking at me and maybe a smile was on his lips, "The power of the word. Man." He paused. "But I didn't really push you, did I? Maybe I should have, or maybe we should have talked about it, or talk at all. We didn't talk that much, did we." He waited to catch his breath. "But well, what do you know, as a parent. Nothing, I tell you." He was silent, his breathing quiet.

When I finally looked up at him he was gone, the chair empty and the window open. Threads of dust and spider webs were swaying softly on a breeze.

I got up from the bed and stepped to the window. Moving the cobwebs away with a hand I saw him go, slowly, through the meadows, with my mother — fierce as ever — at his side, her hand on the arm he had put through hers. I watched them until they were gone. I was tired and could not resist to lay myself on the bed for a while, just to close my eyes and to try not to think of anything at all. I only thought of my wife, Jocelyne, and then fell asleep.

She woke me up stroking my head. I opened my eyes and looked up at her, turning my head, and with a brief smile I closed my eyes again.

"Where were you?" She shook my shoulder, lightly.

"In my mind," I answered without hesitation, I looked at her face. Her lips curved in a smile and she frowned, all at the same time.

"In your mind."

"Yes." I paused and said, jokingly, "if you don't mind."

"Tell me in advance, next time you go in your mind, so I don't go looking for you and won't worry so much about you vanishing into thin air. Okay?"

"It befell me," I responded. That was true, I thought.

Jocelyne nodded, said, "I see."

"You talk like my father."

"I know," she said and she smiled.

"Was he there too?" I gave that one away.

"Yes, he was there too." I remembered our conversation.

"Did you guys talk?"

"Yes." I didn't feel like getting into that too much. I closed my eyes again.

"Well?" God, there was really no escape. I yielded.

"He started about my book again." She laughed.

"Again?" Then, serious and with calm, "Anthony, he is dead for ... sixteen years now..." She put her hand on my shoulder and I felt the warmth of her hand through my clothes. I sighed.

"I think I should give it up. You saw that white sheet, that big white void?" She didn't answer.

"Why don't you just write down what just happened." Her hand was still on my shoulder and I loved her so much. "I'd like to know."

"We'll see," I said to her and for a while, we sat together in silence.