Intermission chapter: What Do You Go Home To?

I wanted to write a bit of backstory to the female protagonist, but it wasn’t until I stumbled on a certain piece of artwork on Pixiv that I had an image in my head about how to go about it. This led to the short three paragraph excerpt below, with the full explanation behind it after the jump. I ought to add that the characters are purely fictitious (although the locations in this chapter aren’t). I wish I could personally thank the artist for his/her piece of work lending me such a helping hand though.

I’m not even sure why she kept this old photo in particular: visiting her father’s home has always been a rare event but even though that visit was so soon before the big ‘quake hit, I could never work out what sentimental value it held for her. I probably found myself just as attached to the image as she ever was – perhaps because I can imagine the circumstances under which it was taken so vividly.

I know where and when it was, at least. Pausing halfway down that narrow, well-known street, hemmed in by tourist-y stalls on both sides, something in one of them caught her attention…or more likely formed a convenient excuse for her to turn her gaze away from the camera and its owner. She pauses for a moment, deep in thought. That hardness to the lines of her eyes – the defensive glare that makes her gaze seem to retreat in to itself – wasn’t there back then I suppose. A lot can happen in a decade. Knowing the ‘her’ I know now, I can just about relate to that younger self in that photo. Appearances change but she may never admit that, deep down and out of the reach of a camera lens, she hasn’t changed all that much.

“I looked so different back then!” she’ll protest. No one can deny that. A decade has distanced her less than she would’ve liked, however… I wonder why she’s held onto this image that connects her so closely to the self she’s tried to leave behind.

I only remember taking that journey twice in my life. The first time, my brother and I were herded like a couple of sheep by our mother through airport terminals, railway stations and crowded streets, in two cities on two continents. It felt like some sort of obligation, as much she tried to convince us otherwise. The weather wasn’t different – it was an unusually cold and snowy winter worldwide that year, I later learned – but the language was different; I felt out of place, like being on some other planet. Signs and notices were printed in what looked like indecipherable runes, an almost off-limits place ‘not for us’.

When we returned home I made a promise to myself to learn how to read and speak this strange language that I was half-expected to know; I never thought it something I ‘ought to do’, although my father made some half-hearted effort to instil that point of view into us both before eventually giving up. Naturally we resisted, but I took it upon myself on my own initiative soon after. It wasn’t with the intention to blend in on subsequent visits; it was a challenge to do something, and go somewhere, without feeling restricted or reliant on anyone else. I must admit that I’m prone to doing that sometimes.

The second time was different, being as it was several years later at a different time of year: one airport on a grey, drizzly afternoon; another in clinging humidity and warm sunshine. I knew my way around this time, and it was my father’s turn to feel left behind. With his camera in hand and murmuring something about capturing a milestone for posterity, we walked the pre-Quake streets and boarded an underground train.

Of all the routes we could’ve taken, this was the line with the trains whose air conditioners didn’t seem to work too well so the carriage was sweltering. It was at least cleaner and more spacious than its London equivalent but the tense silence made me even more uncomfortable than the cramped seating did. Above ground, I still felt a sense of dissociation; one figurative foot here, one where I had come from. As I walked down the bustling shopping arcades, hearing the spoken words of the locals and understanding them clearly this time, I still felt like a visitor just passing through. This was not ‘home’, no matter how welcome he tried to make me.

In a rare show of enthusiasm, he walked amongst the crowd with his camera, offering to buy me snacks and gifts, and begged me to pose for a photo. At this point I was trying my damndest to stop being in awe or afraid of him; he was just another wealthy middle-aged man amongst a crowd of similarly dressed people, accompanying their children at one of the city’s oldest landmarks. That inborn impression still had some hold over me, but I was going through some rebellious phase, fuelled by being talked into coming here, again on his terms and was feeling really fed up with the whole charade.

I pretended to be engrossed in one of the stalls that was selling some type of cheap souvenir or other; lucky cats, t-shirts, it didn’t matter. With a toffee apple in one hand and a carrier bag full of trinkets in the other, I displayed the best show of nonchalance that I could as he clicked the shutter, gave a barely perceptible smile of approval, then suggested we move on to the next attraction. It was a sham; a public display of a devoted father and his teenage daughter on an ordinary day out although, at the time, being the stubborn adolescent I was, it still meant more to him than it did to me.

Later that day he made a respectable effort by offering the usual spiel about his only daughter coming all this way and how that meant it was only fair to get me something extra special. Getting strange looks from the other department store customers on such a hot day, I picked out a white three-quarter length overcoat with a matching beret. That afternoon I sipped iced coffee with him in a Starbucks while we watched the hurried mass of people swarming across that enormous pedestrian crossing like insects, and conversation finally dried up. Both of us were clearly tired of the pretence and were ready to go our separate ways again.

I’d always been vaguely aware of how my mother fought long and hard to keep my brother and me back in England when our father was constantly pressuring her and us, but he now seemed to be showing resignation and a grudging acknowledgement that the decision was mine and mine alone. Even before the Quake shook this entire city to its foundations and prompted so many people here to rethink their lives I was far more content keeping this hard-nosed and overbearing individual at arm’s length.

Returning to the cold, grey and relatively uninteresting place of my birth didn’t seem so bad when I felt I had everything I needed to get by on my own. Looking at the shopping bag containing the hat and coat – a rare but much-appreciated show of parental concern and generosity – I was sure I could face the cold and discomfort better than before. The task was completed; my obligation was fulfilled and now I could draw a line under another phase of my life.