July 22, 2020

I found something I would like to share with you. I don’t know what it all means – those A4 format pieces of paper with words scribbled on them without a name or title. They were in the flat I am renting now, on the book shelf. All the books on the shelf belong to my landlord, along with the cheap furniture. However, my guess is that he did not buy any of this stuff himself; instead, countless generations of tenants before me got rid of it, because it was of no value to them. To prove it: half of the books are foreign. My dear landlord is not foreign, he is local. I am foreign, by the way, and that was my luck, because those notes I found, by chance, were written in my native tongue. Here follows my modest translation of somebody’s dreams, visions, and stories. It’s all fiction, of course. At the moment I can’t find much connection between the writings. Nonetheless, I commit to posting it regardless, with the hope that maybe sooner or later the owner will appear to finish them off and not me for copyright violation.

Probably I have a tendency to melancholy

It is about when I used to live in accommodation provided by my employer. I am an immigrant, and upon arrival to England, I didn’t have any permanent place to stay. Fortunately, I was provided with one. The best part of the flat they let me have was its en suite bathroom – enormous, impressive and cozy. It didn’t make much sense because the bathroom was twice the size of my bedroom and so luxurious and bright in contrast to the bedroom’s darkness and shabbiness. Although my bedroom was small, I loved the fact that it was not pretentious and belonged only to me. I had never had a room of my own in my life, so private bedroom of any size was a luxury. Therefore, I had high hopes that the whole apartment, no matter how unbalanced it was, would become my true shelter. Surprisingly or not, the only real feeling apart from confusion during those first months I had was just pure, unadulterated loneliness. Not curiosity, not a sense of freedom as I had expected. And what I used to do when it became too much: I would sit on the floor in that bright lit bathroom with my back leaning against the radiator. I would come out from shadows of my room, from dark and cold weather, from difficulties at work and sit on the floor mostly holding my head or staring at bright walls. Exactly the same way I used to sit on the floor in the kitchen of my parents’ apartment back in my country when I was very young – against radiator to keep warm. It was always cold everywhere otherwise. As a teenager, I would smoke a lot while sitting on that floor. I mean back home, not in England. Here in England, I had to give up smoking because I didn’t have anyone to smoke with, and I also realised that smoking alone was making me even more depressed. Anyway, what I wanted to say is that every time I smoked on my parents’ floor, my dog would come to sit beside me to comfort me and my heartache. And he would sit with me like that for a very long time. For as long as needed.

What was happening in England was similar. My dog, who is no longer with me, would come and sit with me on the floor like before, just as he did in the past, more than a thousand miles away. I would want to stroke his fur, to put my fingers in his coat and shake it gently. He would look at me in the eye, his eyes so beautiful that my heart would sink. He would lie down and put his head on his paws. He just waited and waited, patiently. Until I started feeling better, he wouldn’t move. Sometimes he sighed. Sometimes he even fell asleep. When that happened, I would contemplate him quietly breathing on my bathroom floor.