to Janey
We didn’t have to get
down on our knees to see them. We didn’t have to pray. When she gently touched
my shoulder and whispered, “Look, they are here”, I only smiled, knowingly and
trying not to disturb her innocence. “Yes, darling, I know. I know they are”.
I still couldn’t tell
from her voice or her eyes whether the ghosts scared her or made her happy. I
assume it was both, but then there was simply too much to assume away from
Fifth Avenue. When New York took you outside its famed junctures and buildings,
it began to lose its disgusting clarity. The clarity that banged on your head
and thrashed your chest and your exhausted ankles. Suddenly, the engrossing
mess no longer looked or sounded all that engrossing. Suddenly, you badly
wanted the noise, the pavements, the people to make sense. Because suddenly,
New York was splitting itself into this stupefying maze of millions of streets
that were there not to be listened to. Those streets… They were there to listen
to you.
And this is where the ghosts lived.
As we were walking here
this evening, slowly and almost reverently, I remembered the first day she told
me about the ghosts. It happened in late August, three years ago. That day, it
wasn’t so much us exploring these streets as the fact that we got horribly
lost. Invisible newcomers, we had drifted away from the harrowing density,
civilized wilderness of Central Park, and ended up in an anonymous street where
you could almost be alone. Almost. It
was not dark yet, and we were in that sort of mood: we switched off the mobile
phones, we stuffed the all too confusing maps and tourist guides deeper in our
pockets, and we were just… “Flânons”, she said, trying to remember her French.
“Flânons”, I replied, trying to remember mine.
That evening, it was
still quite early, but the low clouds, paving the way for a premature autumn, made
the day look much older than it really was. The low clouds were teasing us with
the swift, sullen wind that was not yet capable of doing much damage to the
trees. Too unsure of themselves, random leaves were floating around in a
tentative, detached manner. You felt for them. They didn’t look brave, they
looked panicky. And then suddenly she said, “The girl who is playing the
violin, over there. The street corner, look”. While the street was not exactly
desolate, it took me just five seconds: “Yes, what about her?” She looked a
little disappointed, a little taken aback. “Well, can’t you see? She isn’t
there. Can’t you see?! She is a ghost”.
I looked around. I looked
at an Indian curry place with its smudgy door and windows, a grocery where you
would almost feel embarrassed to pay more than one dollar for anything, steady rows of lamp-posts that shed no light but were merely posts, scraps of local
newspapers and ice-cream wrappers scattered about our feet… People who were
either too numb or too business-like to care for a melody that got drowned in
their heels, iPods and the smoke of their cigarettes. “Yes, I said, I see what
you mean. She is. God, I didn’t even notice her at first!..”.
All the same, we stopped
to listen. The girl was good. Her playing wasn’t accurate, but then, in the
immortal words of Oscar Wilde, anyone can play accurately. You certainly don’t
need that in a New York street. Particularly, and there really was no doubt
about that, if you were a ghost. “It’s brilliant!” I said, trying to take in
all the little bumps and breaks of her passion that was so irresistible yet so
out of place. What was it she was playing?.. We pricked our ears, but it was
hard to place the tune: that proverbial piece we all know, vaguely recognize but find so hard
to remember. “It’s a really famous one”, I whispered. To which she replied:
“Yes, but I just can’t remember what’s it called”. And neither could I. At some
point she jerked the lapel of my jacket, as softly as only she could, and we
came up to the girl. The girl (she looked twenty) may have been nothing but an
apparition, but there was a hat, and there was money in it. We stooped down to throw
in all the change we had. The girl nodded abstractly as we retreated and made
our way further down the street. “Won’t be of much use to her”, I said. She
sighed in agreement.
And of course, as the
night grew nearer, we saw many more of them. Sometimes it would be me who
stopped her and pointed in the direction of a phantom drunkard, policeman or an
office clerk rushing off home, and sometimes she was the first to exclaim: “But
look, look at the beggar! The beggar’s a ghost, too”. Yes, of course he was.
The beggar was a ghost, too…
However, it was
different this evening. At first, it was the usual routine we had long gotten
used to: one by one, the ghosts were slowly emerging, creeping and crawling out
of tenement buildings and street corners. Dangling in the background. But it got worse, and pretty soon there
were simply too many of them. Which made it all a bit of a blur, because at some point it became
increasingly difficult to distinguish between them and… others. Normal people, real people, people like us. Usually, it
would be so easy to tell: this lack of lustre in their hair, the peculiar curve of their lips, the very remoteness of their frail silhouettes… This time, though, nothing was giving them away. And
this evening, for the first time ever, she seemed confused about New York
ghosts.
“Are you all right?” I
asked.
“Why”.
“I don’t know. You look…
pale”.
“You… don’t think…”.
I smiled, knowingly and
trying not to…
“No, no, don’t worry, I
don’t”.
And then I saw it, the
direction of her gaze. She was looking at someone.
There’s perhaps one
thing you should know about New York ghosts. They never reappear. They only
exist once, and if you choose to retrace your steps and face their cadaverous
features for the second time, you won’t be able to see them. Sometimes you
might be so lucky as to see trampled grass or maybe their footprints, but even
that is unlikely. What is more likely is that you will face other people, other
ghosts; or you won’t face anything at all. But this evening was different, and
here was that same girl, on the street corner, playing her violin, playing the
same piece. There was no mistake: I suddenly became conscious of the street,
which was the same street as three years ago.
“It’s… her”, she said.
“Yes, darling”.
“But it can’t be! And
she’s playing that same piece…”.
“I know”.
I could feel her trembling.
She was like a warm, homely, frightened bird caught out in the chilly air of an
open-street evening. I wanted to lead her away, take up her thoughts and her
imagination with the latest exhibitions of the Metropolitan Museum, but I could
also see that she couldn’t resist and simply had to put it all to rest.
Besides, none of the latest Metropolitan exhibitions interested her. And so we got closer. This time, though, it was not about the hat or our
change. We wanted to get a closer look at the girl’s face and that pallid
summer frock, to prove ourselves wrong and laugh at our own silliness. But all
we saw was the same girl. The girl that was our first New York ghost from three
years back.
The girl noticed us, and
we felt the expression of her eyes that in a matter of seconds turned from anxiety
into fear into utter, all-encompassing horror. The girl stopped playing and
began muttering something. The name, the title: we didn’t want to hear.
It was seconds later
that we became aware of some strange movement behind us, and as we turned
around we saw dozens, hundreds of other ghosts closing in on the two of us. All
those ghosts we’d seen in this city, they were probing us with their ashen eyes
and slow-motion steps. “What do they want from us?” she cried. But what was
there I could tell her? How could I possibly break it to her? That they were
after our innocence, laid bare against the dusty pavements of New York?..
The strange silent
garden of this awful, delightful city. No, we didn’t accept it. After all, it
was New York, and you accept nothing in New York. But then New York doesn’t
really care: it accepts you, oh don’t you ever doubt that... So no, we didn’t
take them in, all those ghosts, as their one single breath began to tickle our bewildered senses. We didn’t. But there was one unspoken deal, one that none of them had a
clue about: it was too late, closing time was upon us, so she and I, we decided
to play along.