Gra(c)(t)eful

Well, I somehow always got what I wanted from others. Or almost always. I suppose I was lucky (although luck is a relative thingy) to be surrounded by people patient and kind enough to want to do things for me. Why, I don't know. It's as if there were a tacit understanding around me (and without my intervention) that things that please me are to be done.




I don't expect this, and yet it happens, sometimes from people who I didn't even know still thought about me, or cared about what I want. It invariably surprises me, stops me short, makes me gasp for air for a second, disarmed and cut to the core by such a gratuitous gesture.





For example, Bane, a few weeks ago. Bane is one of the very first people I ever met. Sons of my father's good friend form work, Bane and his brother Vladica were my oldest friends. In the good old days of pre-school paradise, or in the early grades of elementary school, we often saw each other -- either I'd go with my parents and brother to the third floor across the street from our building, or they would come visit us on the third floor of our building. What magical worlds we constructed in our hall, pulling out a well chosen selection of props from the toy cupboard. Bane, as the oldest among us (two years older than me, in my turn two years older than Vladica, and he in his turn two years older than my brother), often threw destructive or mocking curve-balls into our games, affirming his superior age, experience and coolness. Sometimes he exhibited a positively wild streak (like when, for example, I found him tearing into the mattress on my bed with his teeth), but there were also miraculous moments when he was this unexpectedly gentle and timid boy (like that one time when we were playing house in an abandoned phone booth, and he kept bringing me bunches of beautiful purple field flowers, or when he offered to pull a splinter out of my fingertip).





When we were still in elementary school, Bane's family moved to a bigger apartment in a distant part of the city, and we saw each other less and less. By the time we hit high school and the weirdness of puberty, we weren't even acknowledging each other any more if we happened to meet on the street. Bane fell in with the rough crowd, walked around the city with the swagger of a black-clad heavy metal fan, and as the war approached, developed an interest in drugs. On the other hand, I was rushing down my fast lane of academic success, and dreaming of green, green meadows of England where I wanted to go. Perhaps we both wanted to talk to each other, but we never did.






Then war happened. While I was meticulously and avidly studying English phonemes, morphemes, and syntax at a safely distant university, Bane was conscripted into the army where he spent a few years, was captured by the other side and tortured, released, and drawn into even heavier drug abuse and trafficking underworld when he came back home. In periods of soberness, he tried a few manual jobs but couldn't keep them down so he gave up on work, and got himself so eaten away by drugs that a couple of years ago he had to be hospitalized, lingering on the edge. He has partly recovered and has been living with his parents, not doing anything in particular, simply existing in the precarious twilight zone of an ex narcotic addict.







In the last fifteen years I saw Bane two or three times. The last time -- a few weeks ago -- it was only for a few seconds, as he decided to stay in his room during our visit. While we were chatting with his parents and brother on the balcony (the summer crickets singing lazily as the night fell), his absence hung heavily around us; his presence in the room on the other side of the wall made me listen for any sounds, and wonder. He came out only to say hello when we arrived, and goodbye when we were leaving. There was not much left of my old friend in this prematurely aged man, now in his mid-thirties. Thinned and slightly hunched, with a withered face and lifeless eyes, he moved in a cloud of indifference.





As we were parting, I wanted a picture of everyone. I didn't know if I was coming back, and wanted us all in a photograph, for my records. It was one of those awkward moments of people huddling together for a pose, even when they probably don't feel like it, and it was then that Bane surprised me, without a word, without even a look. He stood next to me, and simply put his hand around my elbow. Because he cared about what I want, and about my picture, and because he wanted it to turn out well; perhaps also, because he didn't want me disappointed. Such a small and simple movement, but it felt like a boundless act of grace. It was an act of good will stronger than a broken life, stronger than indifference; and it felt like the lost time regained, like the dead friendship redeemed.




Thank you.