Flash Fiction: A Child Between Us
Tourists scamper around, filling the boulevard with a whirl of accents and camera flashes. Foreign languages fall heavy on my ears, some in pleasant tones, and some in their crass immediacy. I figure out some of what they mean, and they relate to the excitement of being here, right now, and the need to make the most of it. It’s cruel perhaps to dismiss their curiosity for the unseen as typical touristy low taste. Vienna offers a lot of peace to most of us, though at the cost of a lot of unrest and agony that’s buried in its history. But I guess that’s the story of most of the so-called peaceful cities of our times.
“She’s not difficult all the time . . . see how she’s at peace with herself today,” Alice says.
I give a lazy nod, as if that doesn’t matter. I know how watchful Alice is, and she doesn’t usually bother much with explanations. I watch little Dianne feeding the pigeons, as we choose our ice creams. She stoops a bit, and her fragile figure in the midst of agitated pigeons makes me insecure. She had indicated earlier that she didn’t fancy an ice cream. I’m not yet comfortable with the idea of it, especially when we adults indulge in what’s enjoyed by kids her age.
“Should we ask her again?” I look at Alice.
“No. All that she needs is coffee, but she goes hyper if she drinks a lot of that.”
I don’t like the idea of a kid being denied what she likes, but the mother knows better, I assume. Pleasant smells waft out from the nearby café. We could have gone in there, but Alice insists on giving her daughter some time to herself, letting her go after what looks like a pleasant distraction.
She seems to get along so well with the pigeons, the way only children can. Now it looks like the pigeons have formed a protective layer around her, moving in knowing circles. She is in charge, though, determined to feed each and every one of them. I’m still a bit troubled by what Alice referred to as the difficulty that this five-year-old is.
She’s now distracted by a group of folk musicians on the pavement, and runs towards them. We hurry after her. I notice how she’s not in good control of her limbs, and how her eyes are struggling to focus.
I must be ashamed, to be so voyeuristically intrusive in my unwarranted analysis of this child, while she seems to be the least bit bothered about my existence. But Alice leaves me with no choice when she decides to bring Dianne along, on our third date, and just introduces her as the daughter, with no backstory. I was under the impression that we were a good match by all means, but now I realize that there’s nothing other than our South Indian origin and academic positions that connect us in this city. We haven’t even talked enough about our previous partners or our immediate family members. We wanted to get rid of the typical matchmaking process and get to know about each other in our own time.
“See me as a person first, warts and all, and then we can think of what has to follow,” she said when we met first.
I thought of it as a bold and honest approach, and was happy to agree with that. I knew that it wasn’t going to be a perfect story if I told her everything about my life so far—I had my share of failings and embarrassing episodes to speak of, if I were to be honest. I knew that I wasn’t mature enough in my last relationship, mostly with my inability to engage with the life expectations of my wife and her parents. But it’s never too late to learn, I thought, after my first meeting with Alice. But I was still grappling with the idea of opening up a bit, to tell her about my decision to not have any children out of another marriage. It’s traumatic enough to deal with one estranged child living with her mother in a faraway city, raised to think of me as the villain in their lives.
Alice squeezes my hands—my cold hands, which refuse to wake to warmth and reassurance. I sense her eyes on me, her hopes hovering around my responses. She hasn’t broken a pact, but it still seems so unreal that a child is suddenly between us, with no warning at all.
“We should walk faster. I’m afraid we’ll lose her in the crowd,” I say, releasing my hand from her clasp.
“She’ll be right there in front of the musicians.”
Her voice is calm, surprisingly so, but she’s right. We find Dianne standing in front of the musicians. Her head moves sideways in a failed attempt to imitate the rhythm, lost in another world. I sit on my knees behind her and circle an arm around her torso. She doesn’t move away but she isn’t unaware of my presence. I feel how tiny she is, her tummy moving rhythmically against my palm. I hear her grunts and fail to figure out what they mean.
The music has an effect on her. I sense that through the delicate vibrations in her body. Her hair smells of Alice. Her eyes are moist and flit from one musician to the other, or rather, from one sound to the other. A warm teardrop falls on my wrist. I wonder what makes her cry, listening to the simple strains of folk music passed on from generation to generation, in a country that’s not her own. She could be gifted in some way, despite what stops her from expressing herself.
Is she ever going to wake to words and what they mean, to move beyond the music that moves her? The depth of what she could be experiencing, lost fully in the moment, makes me feel heavy. My hands sweat.
I look back and see Alice sitting on a park bench, savoring her ice cream. My cone is in her left hand, and she’s oblivious that it’s melting and dripping on the nodding tender grass below. I had forgotten all about the ice cream, as we hurried after Dianne. Alice doesn’t move from where sits, and gives me an unaffected smile. I envy her resignation and trust in the world, and wonder whether I would ever be a match for that.
Jose Varghese is a bilingual writer and translator from India. He is the author of Silver Painted Gandhi and Other Poems, and his short story manuscript In/Sane was a finalist in the 2018 Beverly International Prize. His second poetry collection will be published this year by Black Spring Press Group, U.K. He was a London Independent Story Prize (LISP) finalist and a Salt Prize runner up. His poems and stories have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies.
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