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Member
Join Date: Jul 2005
Posts: 2
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Sunny Afternoon
The town had submitted drowsily to the numbing heat swamping every street, every café, every house. Children lay, comatose, in brilliantly blue pools, unable to raise the energy to throw a ball or race each other up and down the length of water. Beach balls lay floppily on the water, half-flat and ridiculous in the lethargic atmosphere. Occasionally one of the smaller children would speculatively flick water at one of their number, but without real expectation of a return to the usual boisterous laughter that filled the pool. The water was shrugged off as the other child continued to float aimlessly- this was not a day for high spirits. Beside the pool, pasty chested fathers dazed fitfully on sunbeds, thick novels made indecipherable by the heat. The warmth seemed to affect mothers differently- they seemed luxuriantly happy as they lay, eye half-closed, in the beating rays. Their books too lay forgotten beside them, reminders of the reality of time and an eventual return to the grey clouds of home. In dazzlingly white houses, yards dotted with scrubby bushes and elegantly leaning palm trees, locals slept naked and sheetless in small rooms aired by open windows. They too felt the extraordinary heat, unexpected even in June. Even the atmosphere of the town was affected, made suffocatingly silent. The silences were split by occasional noises, which seemed strange and alien in the unnatural quiet. A baby’s yell in protest at the heat, the yap of a restless, thirsty dog, these usual sounds were translated into messages from another world of everyday cares and planning. The loungers, the sleepers, the swimmers, all lay ensconced in an eternal moment to which they could see no end. The air shimmered with heat, and the sun, almost too bright to even glance at, seemed to be stuck in one position. No one could have said how long he or she had been there for. Even the eagerest explorational fathers had forgotten itineraries, visits to monuments, churches or battlefields all rendered pointless. Hired cars baked in the lazy oven of the sun, plastic guns left in backseats melted. The bonnets were too warm to touch without a yelp of pain, but no one had risked a car journey today, even to the nearby beach. For today, the sun was the dictator of all events and all feelings. Even as the day wore on, the sense of sticky lethargy failed to subside.
There was one anomaly, one small rebellion against the domineering presence of heat. In one small courtyard, surrounded by pale, deserted holiday homes, a boy stood, clothed in dusty shorts and a faded blue t-shirt, which covered his knees. He stood in bare feet, and a wild maze of hair ran over his eyes and onto his shoulders. The terracotta tiles of the courtyard lay subdued under the onslaught of sun, glistening weakly. Stunted bushes lay slowly dehydrating around the square, like sleeping guards lying limply against the wall. The boy walked slowly towards one of the houses with a decisive start. Despite his slight build and youth, there was an air of menace about him, like that of a domesticated animal driven half-wild by pain or fear. He walked with a sense of power and presence, as if he could feel the air being driven away from him by his steps. When he reached the steps towards the door, however, he wavered. Through the slits of the door, it was possible to see into a tiled hallway. The house was empty, and had the peculiarity of a building that had never held inhabitants for a long length of time. It had not gained the hangings of personality that decorate other houses; it held no vases of flowers or rugs. Other homes pick up a certain odour, peculiar to that house and those owners. This house had its own scent, that of mild disrepair and dust. No one had yet stamped their ownership here; and no one was likely too. It lay like a blank page in a novel- featureless and opaque.
The boy felt the sun on his neck, like gauze wrapping itself around a wound. He had already been beaten a dark brown by near-constant exposure to the weather, and felt little discomfiture in the heat. There was now a key in his hand- he held it reverentially, like a token to a better life. Approaching the door, he hesitated again at the weathered mat on the top of the stairs. To him it signified the dividing line between childhood and adulthood, a boundary he was unwilling to cross. He was shaping his life here, his future. For the first time, the thought of discovery and punishment carve into his consciousness. He glances around furtively, caught in the act of growing up. The courtyard remains abandoned, as it has been for hours, and the boy is moved to wipe his brow in heartfelt relief. Another pause, and he steps dismissively over the mat, raising the key in his hand in a half-hearted attempt to legalise his entry. Taking a deep breath, he inserts the key into the hole and slowly, tensely, turns it in the lock. He expects a welcoming click, a signal of success and achievement. Still he holds his breath. The key turns as far as it will go, and the door remains a stubborn barrier halting his progress. His breath escapes as a hiss of terse anger and disappointment. For the first time he feels sweat trickling down his back and forehead, and the heat of the air seems ridiculously uncomfortable and inescapable.
With a sudden jerk of movement, the boy spins away from the door, his face darkened by a violent rage, and hurls the key towards the nearby bushes. It hurtles through the still air like a sliver of water, a solitary bolt of rain against the dazzling sky. The clatter as it hits the ground sounds loudly in the silence of the courtyard, and in a sudden spurt of shocking movement a cleanly white bird fights its way out of a tree and flutters wildly off. A mixture of shame and the remnant of his earlier anger suffuse the boy’s face. He walks away from the house briskly, masking his disappointment with action. As he walks past the useless key, he kicks it away in a cloud of dust, and his face resumes its usual expression of ambiguous belligerence. Mentally he resigns himself to another hungry, potentially sleepless night, and accepts it as a necessity. The sun is beginning to drop for the first time- the town is being restored to life after its short period of hibernation. To the poolside families, their earlier lethargy seems an unreal memory, a memory from a dream or a childhood story. The pools are filled with splashes and laughter again; parents awaken from hot and dreamless sleep. The day is forgotten, not to be remembered in photo albums on rainy days at home. A solitary boy joins a crowd of urchins on one of the streets where the ragged children play with patched footballs or scratched, ancient cricket balls, and forgets himself amongst the routine of play. For everyone, the day has begun again.
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