(Some mild language.)
NANA
I didn't know what to think when I passed Andrei on the stairwell. He was rushing down the steps and nearly crashed right into me.
"Nana..." he said, breathless and looking guilty. He moved to get past me, but I stopped him.
"Look, I'm sorry about earlier," I told him. "I don't even know what I was thinking. I just -"
"Forget it, Nana," he replied briskly before brushing me off and running down the steps.
As I continued up towards the flat, I shook my head, thinking Well, I deserved that. I did a horrible thing. Maybe he's told Dora what I did, I thought. Oh shit, oh shit, he'll kill me.
I took each step slowly; it felt like I was walking toward my death and Dora was the grim reaper. I could just envision him, suddenly a lot taller, in his long black Ramones hoody, holding a giant scythe. "How could you do that to my best friend, Nana!" he would say in a deep voice (so unlike his human voice, of course). "Now, you must die!"
I felt my imagination so vividly that when I opened the door and saw him curled up, I was almost disappointed. He's sleeping, that's probably why Andrei left.
And then I heard a sniff.
"Dora?" I asked the room quietly.
The side lamp was on, and the light was dim, but I could see his t-shirt on the floor. I called his name again, and this time, he sat up slowly.
"Nana..."
I rushed over to him, seeing his red eyes and wet cheeks. "What's wrong? What happened?"
I immediately noticed how clean and tidy the flat was, and that he's actually showered, which meant that this wasn't some day-long cry he was having.
"You need to tell me what happened because you're really scaring me," I said, reaching for his face and wiping his tears with my thumbs.
"Why am I this way, Nana?" he whispered, still tearful. "Why can't I just not feel anything?"
I somehow managed to convince him to talk, to tell me what happened, but it took a good ten minutes to get it out of him; that he was in love with Andrei, that he'd made a terrible decision.
He didn't go into extensive detail, but I could put the pieces together myself.
And so I made him get dressed, all the while trying desperately to get a hold of Ichi but his phone kept ringing out. Where the hell is he at this time of night? I kept thinking as I watched the clock go ten p.m. As we piled into a taxi, I refused to tell Dora where we were going because if I had, he probably wouldn't have come. He'd yet to visit Ichi's flat, so he had no idea.
As I listened to Dora recall the whole thing, I watched Ichi's face and its transition from confusion, to anger, to disbelief and then to pain. I could see how much he was feeling for his brother.
"Theo, why didn't you tell anyone before?"
"How could I? I didn't really think it mattered."
But it did matter. Because if Dora had told us how he'd felt, then maybe we could have prevented it.
And then I thought about Andrei, and how distressed he was when he turned up at the bar, and how I'd not only made him feel worse, but I'd turned him away. I thought about how it might have been had I just listened to him, instead of... what I actually did. I hadn't known what had been going through his head when he thought it would be a good idea to go to Dora and act impulsively, but maybe I could have stopped it from happening.
After Dora had finished his story and crying, I could see how tired he was.
"I need a cigarette..." he muttered. Ichi immediately took a packet from the table and handed him one.
"There's a balcony off the kitchen, you can smoke out there." Ichi pointed to the door as Dora nodded sadly before leaving the room.
Ichi sat with his head in his hands, and I turned away from him, staring out the window, into the dark night. The dead silence was unbearable, the room muggy with it and so many unsaid things.
And then I decided to say them.
"You know, I actually came to the bar on your birthday."
Ichi looked up. "You... did?"
"Yeah." I bit down on my lip. "I saw you with Panda."
"Why didn't you say anything before?"
"Because he's my damn brother, that's why!" My voice raised. "How would you feel if I fucked Dora?"
Ichi stared at me, wide-eyed and silent before letting his head fall back into his hands.
"I didn't exactly plan for it to happen."
"That is your defence?" My voice cracked a little in the middle, my mouth completely unable to control itself.
"He's an adult," Ichi said. "He can do what he wants."
I couldn't tell if he was talking about his brother or mine, but I glared at him nonetheless.
"You're supposed to be my best friend." My voice quietened as I resisted the urge to add "Not Panda's" to the end of my sentence.
"Trust me, I wish it hadn't happened." His voice was so quiet and small; I could barely hear it. And then he lifted his head again.
I was about to say something - I can't remember what because I was so blown away by what came out of Ichi's mouth then.
"Nana, I think I might be falling for him."
Then get back up! I wanted to scream at him. Get back up, dust yourself off, and leave him alone! But I didn't. I just looked at him as if he hadn't just sent my heart hurtling out of his sixth-floor flat, towards the concrete, and left it splattered all over the street.
I barely remember standing up and walking out of his flat while he called after me. And I barely remember wandering around Camden aimlessly for two hours until I wound up outside Maki's flat. I didn't know why, but it felt like the only place I could go to. He was the only person in the world I could possibly talk to.
I planned to tell him everything because I just needed to get it out of me. But I didn't. I said it to him in the vaguest way possible, and even though he probably didn't quite understand, he at least pretended to. And after a couple of hours of drinking, smoking and playing the guitar in a beautiful graveyard, I felt much better.
I couldn't burden him with it. It would be too much. We didn't know each other well enough for me to pour all that shit on him. So instead, I took his amazingly beautiful guitar from his hands and started to play that song I'd heard him singing all those months ago, that had made me feel so emotional I wanted to cry.
And as soon as I started playing it, I wasn't entirely convinced he'd sing. He just leant back on the bench and closed his eyes.
And then his voice came out, burning and quiet and full of meaning. Each word he sang as if he'd written it himself; as if they were just coming straight from his own aching. And I felt exactly what I had done in Tamaki's bedroom, listening through the wall. I kept strumming along, tears grazing my cheeks as I watched his face. It was if my heartbreak was merging with his and I couldn't contain it inside me. It's as if the whole evening had come crashing down on me at once, mixed with the shit of the last four days, and the harrowing sound of Maki's melancholic voice.
Eventually, I couldn't keep going. I stopped just as Maki sang the last word because my fingers had stopped working, and I direly needed to wipe my face before he saw. But he didn't even look at me. And I couldn't move.
It wasn't quite the same after that. I don't know what happened, but Maki seemed to distance himself, and I started to feel guilty for him singing it when it seemed so personal to him.
As we said goodnight to each other, it was hard to stop from just pulling him close to me. I just wanted to hold him for a second, share our misery together. I wanted to fix him. And I wanted him to fix me too. But I didn't. Instead, I just watched him walk away, back into his building, wishing we weren't both so fragile.
No comments:
Post a Comment