About a basin

As hard as I try to remember, from no part of my being can I summon a reason for me being here.

Image credit: Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Today, I wake up in a basin. Without paying much attention to it, I assume it is my own. But this one is too deep and suspicious. My basin is only half this size. It looks as though it was made around sixty years ago. It is not mine, certainly. It is filled with water, yet there is no tap nor spout, and a tiny white sponge and bar of plain soap sit on the rim. I am supposed to go to university today, but my classes must have already begun; besides, there is no chance of finding my way there. As hard as I try to remember, from no part of my being can I summon a reason for me being here.

Looking down, I realise with faint horror that my body is covered in Worcestershire sauce. Or at least what seems like Worcestershire sauce. I smell a perfume of petrol and cigarette smoke. The sauce clings to me like it had lost me many a time before. Grabbing the soap and sponge, I scrub my limbs with vigour. this does not work, in fact it causes more sauce to materialise on my body, increasingly so as I scrub harder. I grow tired and accept defeat. I relax my body, beginning with my toes, and focusing on every muscle up to my forehead. My back folds over, and I sink further into the basin in a confused daze.

Little people are dancing inside my head. I can feel them in there! I feel their feet caress the fissures of my brain. They samba, then they flamenco. They are doing the twist now! As they are about to take their bow, they are drowned and washed away by an influx of red. Red! I cannot stop laughing! I feel a misshapen, hairy foot stepping on my scalp, pushing me down, concaving my cranium. I drink the water, taking in gurgling mouthfuls in between chortles. I have never been so amused! I clap my hands! There are ducks in the basin! Hundreds of them! Is this euphoria? I never want to leave this place! I inhale the smell of soapsuds and petrol and manically laugh myself to sleep.

I fall into a dream of literature class. Or perhaps I have just woken in literature class, having dreamt of being in a basin?

When I wake, the Worcestershire sauce is gone, and there are no more ducks. I am still in the basin, but it feels like a comfortable bed that I never want to leave in the morning. I am placid and content. The basin is in motion and the water ripples. Beyond its rim, I reach to touch the ground that has just appeared; it is black and tacky, resembling fake leather. I am not alone. I hear a man clear his throat. I look over at him. I am not frightened, no; I am at once transfixed, as if any slight change of atmosphere would cause the universe to collapse, like removing a crucial piece in a game of Jenga.

The man is a stranger. His hair is black and heavy, grown long at the top but shaven at the rear. His face is freshly shaven. His skin is the colour of an old book and crinkled like one too. He is overdressed, his fingers overly graceful. I take a good look at his eyes. They see right through me, his undivided focus in the distance. I turn my head and unify our gaze. We are on the road, moving quickly, driving in a car. My basin is embedded in the dashboard, to the right of the steering wheel. The road on which we drive is the road of my university. Shoegaze plays on the radio. The man hums and taps his thumbs.

The man is my father. Although I have never seen him before, I am certain of it. It is undeniably the truth. How had I not realised?

His fingers pursue scant movements on the steering wheel. Suddenly, I become hyper aware of my own hands. Extending my arms out in front of me, I look at them in close detail. Before, they were just hands. Everybody has a pair. Now, it feels obscene that my hands should ever be bare in the presence of others. I look away from the man’s elegant fingers, blushing, feeling as though I have imposed on someone getting dressed. Such beauty should be concealed. If it were constantly on display, it would lose all its magic. I love these hands. I wish for them to belong to me forever.

“What is your name?” I ask innocently, immediately surprised by the sound of my voice. I didn’t realise I could talk here, in the basin, in the car. He looks at me now, as if he has just noticed my presence. The straight line of his mouth cracks into an idyllic smile, revealing his flawless teeth lined up in perfect rows like soldiers. He pulls out a brass cigarette tin and an old-fashioned butane lighter from his suit pocket. He selects a singular cigarette and lights it, holding it carefully between his ever-so graceful index and middle finger, brings the end to his lips, and takes a long drag. He chuckles a bit and exhales with pursed lips. He looks at me in the eye as he speaks slowly and humbly: “I don’t know. You don’t know either, right?” I nod at him in total sincerity and reply. “Right you are.”

It is night-time now. I know because the air smells yellow and in contrast to the darkness of the sky, there sits a circular piece of cheese. It is spherical and porous, and it glows with an amber light that it omits onto the train tracks below. Two trains run parallel to each other, adjacent to the road on which we drive. The trains light up from the inside, with a welcoming bronze light. The train that is the closest to us stops in an instant without slowing down first. Two cars appear from nowhere on the track behind it, like two ducks following their mother. Though the train is stationary, it seems that the cars have no serious intent of slowing down. I close my eyes as they collide.

I move my focus to the second train. A train of four carriages, and they hug each other at the side. They become at once aggravated, as though one of them has made a crude and insulting joke. They jerk and they spasm, grab each other’s shoulders, and push with all their might. The hug is broken, and they break away, becoming equally spaced apart. The road begins a descent, and the carriages move in unison. As they reach flat ground after the hill, the first carriage begins to slow. The proceeding carriages bump them head-on in sequence as if someone had knocked over a trail of dominoes.

A strange lady runs onto the road, and the man engages the brakes immediately. We get out of the car in tandem. The lady has no hands. There is no clear-cut ending to her arm, no! They become more and more transparent the further down, fading to nothing near her wrist. The man and I stand side by side. The lady begins walking and passes between the man and me. We pivot to face her back and follow her towards the fallen train. Not one word is spoken between the man and I, but the lady is mumbling something. Her lips move in a rush. “Ma tasse de thé… jalousie! tu aimerais que je sois elle’ She speaks in incoherent sentences. ‘J’étais… non, non, tu as tort. Jalousie ! Quelles jolies mains tu as.”

My university has been demolished by a train. It lays upon the crumbled building, arrestingly still, like a muse posing for the painting of their portrait. Around me is a circle of cameras shuttering and flashing. The man and I stand still. The lady asks me a question, but the words fall out of her mouth one after another, like soldiers marching into the sea, and I cannot comprehend them. She holds a microphone to my mouth, but upon further look, it is not a microphone at all. No, it is a torch! She shines it in my eyes. The man is speaking loudly, using over-exaggerated hand gestures. She repeats the question.

I squeeze my eyes shut. I see scarlet. The lady crawls closer to me, shining the light nearer to my eyes. It hurts in the same way that it hurts to stare into the sun. “Stop that!” I yell. I can hear the man laugh. The light switches off, and there is complete and utter darkness. The lady backs away. I cannot see her, but her presence has shifted elsewhere. I rub my eyes with my fingers and massage them with my palms. Patches of white appear, like ink falling on paper. The ink bleeds into the lines of the man’s palms.

I am in the basin in the car again, and the man is there. He smiles at me truly, holds his hand out with a protruding thumb, and dissolves. I will not miss him, but I will miss his hands.