Often, when I was small, me and a friend would run off to the extreme end of the playing field, between classes, and mull around a tomb.
Or, at least, we thought it was one. None of us ever really figured out. It was a block of concrete covering a rectangular hole in the ground, and with time, rumours had sprung up around it. For us, it was our very own secret: we pretended to know something about it, yet, strangely enough, it only ever formed a backdrop to our conversations. We rarely talked about the tomb, or what could be in it, or whether the rumours had any truth to them.
Quite frankly, it was the replacement for an absent third someone, the vital third presence every friendship needs. It was a silent spectator to conversations which found themselves desperately in need of an arbiter who would not judge.
Many, many years later, we would go in search of that arbiter, someone we had befriended, who had actually materialized out of nowhere in school, and then disappeared again one day. Much later, we would find him on an island very far away from where we used to stay, living by himself in a hut, leading a simple, if frugal, existence.
Surrounding his hut were two statues, green and mouldy, and they looked astonishingly old. Again, we weren't very surprised to find that not only had he not questioned their roots, he had no intention to. The two statues faced away from his hut, and stared into the sea.
The day we visited him, we found ourselves sitting together, him by himself, and the two of us on the laps of the two statues.
"To me, they served quite nicely...so nicely, I hardly found myself missing the two of you."
We weren't offended by his words in the least. That's how he was. But, at the same time, we remember never having gone back to the tomb, after we got to know him. Not when he'd arrived, not when he left, and never in between, or after.
Or, at least, we thought it was one. None of us ever really figured out. It was a block of concrete covering a rectangular hole in the ground, and with time, rumours had sprung up around it. For us, it was our very own secret: we pretended to know something about it, yet, strangely enough, it only ever formed a backdrop to our conversations. We rarely talked about the tomb, or what could be in it, or whether the rumours had any truth to them.
Quite frankly, it was the replacement for an absent third someone, the vital third presence every friendship needs. It was a silent spectator to conversations which found themselves desperately in need of an arbiter who would not judge.
Many, many years later, we would go in search of that arbiter, someone we had befriended, who had actually materialized out of nowhere in school, and then disappeared again one day. Much later, we would find him on an island very far away from where we used to stay, living by himself in a hut, leading a simple, if frugal, existence.
Surrounding his hut were two statues, green and mouldy, and they looked astonishingly old. Again, we weren't very surprised to find that not only had he not questioned their roots, he had no intention to. The two statues faced away from his hut, and stared into the sea.
The day we visited him, we found ourselves sitting together, him by himself, and the two of us on the laps of the two statues.
"To me, they served quite nicely...so nicely, I hardly found myself missing the two of you."
We weren't offended by his words in the least. That's how he was. But, at the same time, we remember never having gone back to the tomb, after we got to know him. Not when he'd arrived, not when he left, and never in between, or after.
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