bare en mann

Denne novellen nærmest rant ut av meg i løpet av jula for et år siden, av en eller annen grunn på engelsk. Jeg har publisert den tidligere annetsteds, men legger den ut her også, “til glede for nye lesere”, som det heter. God jul!

He is in the driver’s seat of a mid-sized sedan, aquamarine in colour, parked on the pavement outside a dry cleaner’s in Morristown, New Jersey. He is waiting for his colleague to pick up and drop off shirts. It is an overcast Monday morning in November. The commuter traffic on the road opposite is reflected in the dry cleaner’s window and shifts across the blue and red lettering of the neon sign, making it hard to see the insides of the shop. People squeeze past the car and send him annoyed glances. He wonders if perhaps he should not be parked on the pavement like this.
     He is struck by the newness and sameness of the world. He finds the newness exhilarating and the sameness puzzling, almost as if he had expected the sky to be green and the grass to be blue. A constant fluttering in his abdomen has been keeping him both alert and dazed since well before he arrived at JFK yesterday and was taken on a speechless tour through Queens and lower Manhattan and on to the suburbs of New Jersey. He saw rivers of yellow cabs in twilit canyons below towering skyscrapers. He saw steam rising from manholes just like in the movies. In New Jersey, the trees were bare and the fields a yellowish green, just like home. But the trees are bigger here. Earlier this morning they drove through long, greyishly translucent tree tunnels.

This is to come: In half an hour he will have parked the car outside the octagonal office building which is his new workplace and he will enter the elegant atrium and follow his colleague across the newly polished marble floors, past the elaborate fountain that smells slightly of chlorine, and they will take the elevator up to the fourth floor where he will be received by his new superiors who will inquire about his journey and wellbeing before sitting him down in a meeting room to explain their expectations.
    In the meeting room will also be a young woman with nice curves who is the office assistant and whose job it will be today to make him feel in place. She will show him the kitchen area with the coffee and vending machines. She will administer his access card while making American small talk that he will be uncertain how to respond to. She will smile and put her hand ever so lightly on his arm. She will show him to his desk and introduce him to his new colleagues, among whom will be a slim woman from Rajasthan with silky black hair, shiny white teeth and eyes like deep wells. ‘How dark she is,’ he will think wordlessly to himself as he takes her small hand in his, but in the coming days he will see that her darkness is offset by the flash of her smile and the sparkle in her eyes. In a few weeks she will drive him and two other colleagues confidently across the George Washington Bridge back to the bright lights of Manhattan and he will follow her through the lobby of the Marriott Marquis and up to the rotating restaurant on the forty-seventh floor where he will make her laugh and sparkle with his quick wit and burlesque stories, and later they will go dancing at Webster Hall and her radiance will merge with that of the city and her confidence likewise and he will kiss her and she will succumb to him that one night only, after which she will have his undivided heart but he won’t have hers, because even if her boyfriend will be miles away he will still be her boyfriend.
    Over the coming weeks he will sense her presence by the heat that she radiates and the silent sigh of her breath as she walks by, and his heart will freeze over. Almost daily he will find himself across from her in meeting rooms and he will clench his teeth until his jaws hurt. Then slowly and unnoticeably his anger will subside and give way to bitterness, then to disappointment, and finally to indifference, at which stage he will find his clenched teeth and cramped smiles loosening and their conversations becoming less forced and increasingly straying, and as his heart’s ice-cover finally thaws it will dawn on him that he is every bit as smitten as before. This will come almost as a relief to him, and then she will be gone.
    But before she leaves they will meet in an overcrowded pub on Bleecker Street where they will greet each other warmly and spontaneously touch hands for an instant. On this last night they will go for dinner at TriBeCa Grill and for nightcaps and transgender antics at Lucky Cheng’s, and after a rare evening of spirited conversation and much laughter they will say their final farewells through the open back door of a yellow NYC cab. Later that night he will weep himself dry at the loss. And unbeknownst to him, so will she.
    This is all to come, to flow over him like a river or for him to labour through.

He tries once again to locate his colleague through the shifting reflections in the dry cleaner’s window. The throng squeezing past the car is getting larger and some are gesturing angrily for him to get out of the way. In a few moments, a police car will pull up next to him, lights flashing, and an officer with a gun holstered at his side will tap on his window and order him off the pavement, which he will do, heart thumping, slowly squeezing through the crowd and back onto the road and around to the back of the shop, where his colleague will eventually find him and laugh at his shaken demeanour, and together they will rejoin the commuter traffic on this grey November morning.

Hjulene smeller taktfast over skjøtene i betongdekket på I-78. New Jerseys ørkenaktige industrilandskap og slitne forsteder farer forbi som diffuse skygger. På den gråsvarte kveldshimmelen i sør er en kjede av fjerne fly i langsomt fall mot Newark International Airport. Silhuetten av Newark Bay Bridge trer ut av mørket, omslutter meg og forsvinner bak meg. I det fjerne funkler lysene fra Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.
     Veidoseringen i en tett venstresving sluker synsranden. Et grønt skilt med hvit skrift markerer Exit 14A mot Bayonne. Ved utgangen av svingen flater doseringen ut og utløpet av Hudson River dukker opp over veiskulderen. I det svakt krusede vannspeilet glimrer gjenskinnet av et menneskeskapt landskap som reiser seg fra motsatt elvebredd, strekker seg mot himmelen som en hvitskimrende tinderekke og kaster et gyllent skjær opp mot de lave skyene. En ulmende ildebrann brer seg fra mageregionen. Som en komet i bane vender jeg tilbake, tilbake til Manhattan.
     Jeg forserer køene ved bomstasjonen i Jersey City, suges ned i Holland Tunnels underverden som bukter, vender og vrir seg gjennom mudderet under Hudson River. De skittenhvite tunnellveggene viker til side, taket løfter seg mot en gråsvart himmel, ragende silhuetter trer ut av mørket og omslutter meg idet jeg spyttes ut i tåhøyde mellom høyhusene på nedre Manhattan. Metropolens monotone sang, dens metalliske, allestedsnærværende brumming, slår mot meg som en hymne, inntar meg og gjør byens hjerteslag til mine egne. Det er som et favntak, en velkomst.
     Jeg følger tunnellutkjørselens omvendte S-form til ende, krysser Varick Street og følger Laight Street til den munner ut i Canal Street i et sydende, fortettet kaos. En viltvoksende skiltjungel gløder mot meg, billigbutikker og improviserte utsalgssteder kjemper om plassen, albuer seg fram til fortauet og falbyr alt fra elektronikk og dataspill til Rolex-forfalskninger og de nyeste plastlekene fra Taiwan. Overalt kjøpslås det, ekte og uekte bytter eier i en stri strøm. Jeg åler meg langsomt gjennom vrimmelen og tar til venstre opp Lafayette Street. Det blir bedre plass, farten øker, trafikken bølger nordover, uptown.
     Jeg passerer Astor Place Theatre på venstre hånd, den blå plakaten for Blue Man Groups TUBES-show henger fremdeles over inngangen. I et glimt ser jeg henne for meg, gjenopplever spenningen i forkant av showet, smilene i foajeen, den søkende, famlende samtalen. Jeg husker hvordan håret hennes berørte kragen på den svarte skinnjakken, hvordan showets suggererende surrealisme tok farge av den sitrende fornemmelsen av å ha kroppen hennes ved siden av min, kjenne varmen, den varme pusten hennes.
     Teatret forsvinner bak meg, og jeg suges tilbake til den bølgende elven jeg befinner meg midtstrøms i. Horder av ildgule taxier omgir meg, det tetter seg til og løser seg opp, hvirvler og bakevjer oppstår og forsvinner.
     Ved utgangen av en svak høyresving ved Union Square åpenbarer Park Avenue seg som midtskipet i en enorm, selvlysende katedral, flankert av tohundre meter høye søyler av glass og betong. I det fjerne funkler Grand Central Terminal som en flombelyst altertavle mot MetLife-bygningens tunge bakteppe, en kile slått i jorden som av himmelen selv. Jeg løftes opp og tynges ned, kjenner meg rotfestet og lett til sinns.
     En marinegrønn Saturn SL1 på skrå til venstre delvis foran meg truer med å legge bagasjerommet sitt på panseret mitt. Jeg bremser kort og slipper ham inn. Han blinker til høyre, skal inn 26th Street. Jeg blinker til venstre, følger med i sidespeilet og legger meg over, smetter inn mellom to taxier.
     Jeg holder meg i venstre felt, vaker bak taxien og henger på som en klegg idet den stuper ned i Park Avenue Tunnel ved 33rd Street, akselererer gjennom det trange røret og dukker opp igjen ved 40th Street. Grand Central Terminal troner midt imot, i bakgrunnen ruver MetLife-bygningen som en dump skygge. Jeg krysser 41st Street, klatrer opp kjørerampen mot Grand Central Terminals bueganger, skimter mylderet på 42nd Street under meg, bremser ned og svinger til høyre ved bysten av industri- og jernbanemagnaten Cornelius Vanderbilt. Jeg får et glimt av Chrysler-bygningens skimrende spir i øst før rampen tar meg rundt hjørnet og langs utsiden av Grand Central Terminal og MetLife-bygningen, videre i et dykk under Helmsley-bygningen og ut igjen på Park Avenue ved 46th Street.
     Det er ikke langt igjen nå. Jeg svinger østover på 48th Street, krysser Lexington og Third Avenue, ser etter gateparkering, svinger sørover på Second Avenue og vestover igjen på 47th Street, finner en ledig luke, lirker bilen på plass og stopper motoren.
     Jeg blir sittende og kjenne på stillheten og en murrende uro i mellomgulvet. I kveld skal jeg se henne igjen. I kveld skal jeg se henne for siste gang.