 Jun 18, 2024 | 3 mins | #short stories , #writing

It was Camden Town

He’s wearing those old jeans, torn and repaired over and over again, but oh so comfy; his favourites. He has that long-sleeved shirt, brown, printed on the front the image of a tree with a little noose hanging from a branch; now it’s threadbare, worn, and the cuffs are torn. He has that old pair of green All Stars on his feet, although the colour is now difficult to recognise, faded by the sun and the years. The left one has a hole in the sole, but he doesn’t notice. He walks along the bank of the Regent’s Canal, between Oval Road and Gloucester Avenue, slowly, with no hurry. He has already stopped a couple of times to throw stones in the calm, clear waters, watching the concentric circles crash into each other, and observing the reflection of the clouds. It’s not one of the best days he has seen: the sky is cloudy, grey, but it’s not cold, and deep down he’s fine with that. Behind him, if he listens closely, he can still hear the music, the sounds, and the voices coming from Camden High Street, and every now and then the wind brings him the smells, the flavours, that mix of spices, incense, sweat, which together with the colours, the patterns of the fabrics, of the clothes, of the people, makes that place so magical, so particular, so unique. For a few moments, he thinks again about Her, and wonders if he will meet her again here, once again. He shrugs, and starts walking again, immersed in his thoughts… Over the years there have been other girls who gave him glances, sent signals, which he has ignored, or pretended not to see, because in the end, it was better that way. He stops again, a plane passing low overhead, landing at Heathrow, or perhaps departing, he doesn’t know, he no longer remembers which way they arrive, and which way they go; he looks at the water, and tells himself that one of these days he’ll catch one of those planes, or maybe one of the trains that slowly leave St. Pancras, and he will go away. Yes. One day.

Or maybe not.

He looks at the water, and a plane erases the reflection of Her face, those fine, beautiful features, that he knows oh so well. He turns, slowly, and walks back towards the sounds, the smells, towards that place where many years before he asked her that question. The setting sun meanwhile has broken through the clouds, and casts his shadow in front of his feet, and fills everything with its red, warm light.

The boy observes for a few moments the old man without an anti-radiation suit, who walks dragging his feet under that oily rain that still every now and then falls from the now perpetually dark and black sky, one of the many madmen who still wander through the rubble after the great radioactive fire that erased almost everything, and he wonders, but only for a moment, what the man is seeing in that rubble, in that putrid, slimy, and smelly water, what he is enraptured by, what thoughts are passing through his mind. But it’s only a brief moment. The boy shakes his head, and sets off towards his destination, already forgetful of the old man and his story unknown to him.