EPTDreaming about her was none of his better notions either and he didn’t know why he did it. Sooner or later, you wake up, and then there’s also the matter of all the disappointment following. It seems like something he wouldn’t have done on purpose.
In his dream, she was trying to prove that her thighs were very beautiful. She was wearing her pijamas, the white ones with the yellow flowers, back from when it all started. She was stretching the cloth on her legs, sitting curled up on the mattress layed down before the wardrobe. “It’s very muscular, you see?” Bálint didn’t quite believe her.
He had a hard time believing in anything for a better part of half a year. It was a problem, all who cared could see. He lost something pretty important, you see, when coming to Denmark. Himself.
It wasn’t clear at first, what was missing. When he was staring out the loft window looking at the romantically-colored sky and listening to ridicolous scandinavian love songs, trying to hide his tears and moving silently into the background, it was as though somebody else was missing.
Then, sometime later, he was squatting in his black hoodie in the ghetto, wandering aimlessly through the streets, crying out in anguish and utter desolation and hopeless anger, a lashing rain beating down on everything he was – a lost man, a boy sudden, devoid of all he had: a purpose, a companion, friends, family, stability and a will to continue.
Even Peti was surprised at that. “I never thought I’d see you like this”, he said, his voice calm as ever. Then she came for him, to ease the suffering. It was the most beautiful thing she has done as a person in her life. That was beautiful. She gave up everything for him, travelled across two continents and arrived in the cold without any winter jackets. It made him happy, perhaps the happiest he ever was, trembling and overflowing everything else inside.
Eszterencs was looking down on all of that with a shy anxiousness. Or did they not come up with the name for their daughter to-be, yet? She might perhaps have not yet existed. If she did, however, she was getting worried.
Bálint was a hard man to please. He was kept being presented with things, and whenever a new gift was upon the horizon, he would smile sadly and shake his head. She would be very sad at that. It still hurts Bálint to think of all those moments and it had hurt him then, so he always cheered her up whenever she had tried to cheer him up and got sad in the process.
Sometimes it was apples crusted in caramel. Sometimes it was notes left on the bed beside her sleeping body, yearning for him even in her sleep, moanig “Bálint” every time the door opened. It was her darting from their room to crash and jump into him back from work, trying to wiggle her small self into into his heart and fix whatever was broken there. An other time it was a comic book, artfully assembeled and overflowing with creativity and humor to cheer him up. It was a picture of a heart and their names in it drawn in the sand of a beach on a continent far away. A birthday note promising everything that is to come. Gifts small and big, an endless river of innocent love.
Bálint shook his head. She didn’t understand. She didn’t understand him at all. He pointed at his chest, gasping for words, and at a loss to find them.
Eszterencs was weeping soundless, playing still in a corner of a green field, turning her back on all of it, refusing to look, tears glimmering soundless on her cheek, dropping like rain on all the christmas gifts she got.
One whisper in his ear with the right words, a gentle push every day... Those never came. She was putting her back under the table they carried home, clad in her ridicolous jacket, no money to buy a new one. She was helping to save money on artfully created dishes and a household maintained on as little as possible, but there was a burden she didn’t help carry.
Bálint took her to Prague, him working two jobs besides school to provide for it. They have always been planning to go to Prague... But it wasn’t as they had planned it. Sometimes, it was beautiful, but it wasn’t beautiful in Prague. They couldn’t see it, even though it was right in front of their eyes. They resolved to fix it nonetheless, but they didn’t know what needed fixing.
It was beautiful when Bálint had just read a pieace of art before arriving home, it was beautiful when the sounds of music washed away everything else and the two of them remained only, to immerse in the love that was more beautiful than anything in this world. It was beautiful when Bálint had to go to work unexpected and Zsófi didn’t want to let him go and he cried and told her all of it is for them, all the work, all the money, all of it, he’s doing it for them.
Eszterencs was raging, she broke all the gifts, she was shattering all the beautiful memories stacked up high on oken shelves, she broke the one where they had first kissed as the grey plague of empty embraces licked the green field and started turning everything to stone: the dragons flew out, scared, unknowing, spreading their wings and forgetting their pledge to water the rainbow, promises made hung in the air, unbroken, still remembered, “I will play the part of the sailor again”, he had said, “but I am rather sleepy now, so can we please get some of that now too”, I still remember, the promise screamed as it fell, falling through the green field, down into greyness where Bálint awoke in the cold with no one to warm his double bed through the night and with that familiar sinking feeling in his stomach.
Waking up, he shouldn’t have done that, it was a bad idea. He was thinking about Hasselager and he didn’t understand why, and he only understood it later, it’s because of the cold, it’s because of the emptiness, all the wealthy suburban houses arranged in a organized, empty manner, and the cold, it was slicing through their bones as they trodded in a land foreign and threatening and the guy didn’t even let them in further than his hall, but they were happy on the bus, and they were happy walking back to the bus stop, clutching their prize that they had just bought, a laptop for the future, a laptop he had decided on, for the school that he was preparing her, to be able to get a residence permit that way, for a job, where she wasn’t going to be yelled at, harassed. It was a tough little laptop and it was the right choice, that much was simple and it had made him happy.
Yet all the insecurities, all the slights, all the things he had to endure, it was too much. He wasn’t there, it wasn’t him, he was screaming at the world “THIS IS NOT ME!”, but nobody heard him, nobody said a reassuring word, he was alone, no, he wasn’t even there and she couldn’t do it anymore, she needed something in return, some semblance of happiness, somebody to provide her with all that he had provided before, he was her home, he was her place to be in this world, she told him exactly so. “Why doesn’t he understand?” She wanted to scream at him later, “You are a great person and I love you more than anything in this world and I gave up everything for you, how can you still not understand that you are a great person?” She was gasping for air and tears were swelling up and they shouted at each other in anger in the ghetto, but that only made a somalian kid laugh and mimic them and they couldn’t figure it out. He was her home, he was her place to be in this world. But this home had grown desolate and forlorn. She didn’t want to accept it, but she did the same as he: started looking for comfort elsewhere.
Eszterencs sat there, shattered memories all around, spilling out of their glass cases, all of them beautiful. She was smiling, none of the bad ones mattered, they spilled and faded away into some far away grey land, she had so many beautiful memories to play with as she sat there thinking, observing.
He was given a huge push. He would have preferred small, gentle pushes, maybe with hints of kisses and warm embraces, but alas, that was not what he got. He saw it all now, all that he was trying to analyze and it was so simple. He just needed to be himself. Beautiful things happen to Bálint. He just needed to be himself, the best version of himself. He just needed to be able to love himself, he just needed to be able to be happy with himself. They told him long ago, Sárkány sempai had said it, “the battle is decided in your head”. Yet he forgot.
“She was my dream woman”, he said.
“So what happened”, the guy answered.
“Eh, things didn’t work out”, he said, remembering that always he used to blame the world all around.
“Well then she wasn’t your dream woman, plainly” came the reply.
“Okay, but I’ve just dreamt about her, so that makes her my dream woman, plainly” said Bálint.
He smiled and felt that life is full of opportunities and all he need do is be himself and start fighting again.
Beautiful things happen to Bálint.
English is not my first language so I am very curious to hear some feedback on all aspects of this.
