Compensation

  I woke up suddenly, as if an electric charge had traveled through my body. But there was nothing electric there with me. Only he was there, breathing softly, very close to me. It was still very late at night as it was pitch black outside and the only object producing light was my cellphone, on the nightstand just behind me. I sat down on the bed, trying not to move too much. I went through my cellphone and erase every notification, in order to make the light go away. I saw some pictures of us together and then decided it was better to go back to the world of dreams. I left the cellphone facing down and just slid down the covers and hugged him softly. His body moved a bit but he didn’t do more. I fell asleep some minutes later, hugging him a little tighter.

In the morning, I realized I had maybe slept too much as the sun was rather intense on the outside. He had been kind enough not to pull up the blinds in the room. He was not there with me and I couldn’t hear him in the bathroom. A bit reluctantly, I went to the living room and the kitchen, and he wasn’t there. Apparently, he had taken everything and just left. I felt abandoned, even if we weren’t really a couple and he wasn’t living with me. We had been going out so often, I just assumed he would say something before leaving like a whirlwind. As I was already in the kitchen, I decided to make some breakfast. As I cooked, I couldn’t get him off my head. That was probably the reason why the eggs almost burned and I poured orange juice on the floor.

 Trying to leave last night in the past, I decided to work. Normally, that would make my mind so busy, I wouldn’t have time to think of anything else. It did work, as I had to grade several papers on Stanley Kubrick’s films. Some students had obviously not seen the movie they had chosen, as they repeated words and sentences often and used words, you know the kind, that make anyone sound smart but do no really mean anything. Some other works were better or at least not as offensive. I surprisingly took an hour and a half doing that and when I was done, he was there again, on my brain. Why couldn’t I just let him go?

 The rest of the day was about me trying not to think too much about it all and succeeding for a small amount of time, then my head would go back to the same thoughts all over again. I decided to watch a movie and order pizza and beer. I would not let him run my Sunday. But when they rang from downstairs some time later, it wasn’t the delivery guy nor the one that had left me alone on the bed, it was someone I hadn’t seen in a while. And I say “someone” because right then I didn’t know him very well and just recalled him from high school. I had no idea how he had gotten my address, as I didn’t speak to anyone from high school. But there he was, knocking on my door some minutes later.

 I remembered him as one of the few people that didn’t make me want to kill myself in high school. The rest were snobbish little rats, but he was all right, not a great person but not a bad one either. His cousin, a guy who had gone to the same high school with us, was a successful artist although I didn’t remember what it was he did exactly. Singing or something like that. I told him to sit down on my sofa and offered him some orange juice, as I had nothing else to drink. However, he said he wasn’t thirsty and that he had come only to deliver a message. “How mysterious!”, I thought. I mean, I didn’t really knew him but he had never struck me as the kind of guy that had any mystery in him but here he was.

 He had a backpack from where he took a envelope from. He gave it to me and I took it, as it was a bomb. The situation was not normal, at all, and I didn’t want to further spoil the only day I was really free from any commitments. He just told me to open it and read it, talking in a very hush voice, as if someone was hearing or as if he was afraid of talking too much or too loud. I opened the envelope and took out the letter inside. It was from his cousin, who apologized for stealing one of my ideas. I had no idea what it was all about and the letter didn’t really explain. He said he was sorry, very sorry, and that he just wanted to make things right for everyone involved. So he had included something else, for me to be compensated for what he had done.

 Inside the envelope, there was another paper. I had not seen in before. It was a check for several thousands of dollars and it had the signature of the deliveryman’s cousin. Then my patient just disappeared. I asked him what kind of joke this was and why they had to do it on Sunday, when I just wanted to be left alone. The poor guy, who had turned some shade of green, tried to speak and to explain himself but he couldn’t. That made me so angry, so I told him to please stand up and leave my apartment at once. I pressed the envelope, all papers inside, to his chest and told him to take all of that and go away. The doorman downstairs rang: it was my pizza, finally.

 I told him, again, to leave. He tried to speak but he just couldn’t and gave up. He left almost running and I saw him all the way to the elevator. When the door opened, he crossed paths with the man delivering my pizza, to whom I smiled and thanked deeply. I gave him a small tip and close the door, in order to enjoy my afternoon. But as I saw the movie and ate my pizza, I had that check and the letter on my brain. What the hell was that about? What did that man’s cousin wanted to give me money? Was it to bribe me? No, I didn’t even remembered his name… Maybe it was just a stupid joke, some kind of prank based on a dare they had done to one of the other idiots they knew well.

 The rest of my Sunday was pretty good. I drank several beers and watched movies I hadn’t seen in a long while. At night, I ordered another pizza, not caring at all about my body. I loved the taste of pizza and beer and if I had to pay with a belly in my future, I really didn’t care. No one had ever looked at me looking for a swimsuit model. Well, to be honest no one really looked at me… Well, except him. Again with him on my mind and with that stupid envelope. As I waited for the second pizza, I browsed through the local channels on the TV in order to check out the news. I stopped when I saw a familiar face: it was the guy’s cousin. And the news said he was dead. Apparently he wasn’t a singer but a filmmaker and he had died in a car crash in France.

 The news was shocking but it was even more shocking that his cousin, instead of being in France or at least mourning him, had decided to pay him a visit with a check. On the other hand, I realized I had never seen a picture by that man. And I should know, being a teacher to future filmmakers. Maybe one of my students had mentioned him once but I just couldn’t remember. I decided to look for him online. Must of it was about his tragic death, apparently a very shocking scene to witness, but I also found his filmography and had no idea what to look for. The buzzer interrupted my thoughts. Five minutes later, I had a slice of pizza on one hand and an open beer can in front of me.

 I stopped reading about the poor guy and decided to let it go for the day. Granted, it was something very strange but there was nothing I could do now. I started watching another movie when the doorman called again and told me I had some mail. I told him I would pick it up in the morning but he said something had just been delivered and that it was probably urgent, at least judging by the expression on the mail guy’s face. That was weird enough to go downstairs and grab my mail. Most of it was junk and a couple of bills but the letter that had just arrived was another unmarked envelope. I went back home and read it there. This wasn’t from the cousin but from the delivery guy.

 In the letter, he explained who he was, thinking I wouldn’t remember. He said we had been brief friends for a time when we were really young. I didn’t recall that. He also explained that the first movie that his cousin had made was base on a short story I wrote in English class. He actually copied it and made a movie version of it. He wrote that he had always felt bad for that and had begged his cousin to acknowledge that what they had done was wrong. Months before his death, he convinced him and the cousin wrote him a check to compensate. He was sorry for everything and apologized more. The check was, again, inside the envelope.

 I took him on my hands and, only doubting for a second, I tore it apart into little pieces and through it all to the garbage. I didn’t need the past to compensate for something I didn’t even recalled. I grabbed a slice of pizza and ate, a bit more angry than usual, and then my phone rang. It was him. He wanted to come up and chat. I couldn’t stop smiling and, hours later, I had to ask him to stay and never leave.

Trans-Siberian

   Niko handed Natasja with an envelope, telling her to read its content and then destroy it. He also gave her an umbrella, saying it was raining a lot in Vladivostok. He finally wished her a nice trip and promised to see her in two months on a plane to Japan, if all went well.

Natasja then boarded the train and looked for her seat. To make things less suspicious, she had bought a seat in a four-seat cabin. Getting to know other passengers and playing cards with them would make her less of a target for people watching, looking for odd behavior.

She found her seat and realized the compartment was still empty so she took the seat by the window and looked at all the faces outside: family members of the travelers, the travelers themselves giving advice about unimportant things, police officers and station guards, providing weak security to the building and even tourists. It wasn’t uncommon to see them, especially in the summer, but people around these parts noticed them always.

Sure enough, a tourist couple sat in front of Natasja and an older woman besides her. About fifteen minutes after her finding her seat, the train began to leave the station. The young woman leaned back, clutching hard on her envelope, thinking this should be her last assignment. She was so fed up with this job, always moving from one point to the next, never really having a place to call home or someone to actually care for her.

The older woman pointed something through the window and the tourists smiled and talked to her. Natasja then remembered she had to do exactly the same, blending in and trying not to look too strange among the fairly common passengers of the train.

She proposed a game of card, which they all eagerly joined. They played for well over an hour, laughing and learning each other’s name.

The couple was composed of Marisa and Tommen. She was French and he was German. They had boarded the Trans-Siberian in order to get to Lake Baikal, a place they had always wanted to visit because of its landscape and fishing possibilities. Every couple of minutes, they would say something about a fish or some sea creature they had captured while fishing. They could get annoying if Natasja or the older lady didn’t change the subject.

The older lady’s name was Katya. She had been visiting a sister in Moscow for a month or so but now she needed to go back to her home in Irkutsk. When asked why she lived in such a harsh city, especially during winter, she answered her father had been one of the first colonists to exploit oil in the region, by settling near the city. And she had always loved it there so there was no way she would leave, even if her old bones couldn’t cope with the cold as well as they did before.

Natasja introduced herself and told her cabin companions that she had been attending a specialist in Moscow. When asked if she was sick, she answered she had been attending chemotherapy, because of an odd tumor the doctors had found in her lungs. She had lived in Moscow for the time being but now that she had being deemed healthy enough, she had decided to travel to her family in Vladivostok.

She learned the story so well; she had started believing in it. She even gave precise details about the procedure, her family at the end of the line, her house and a dog named Flo, who she claimed was waiting for her in the Vladivostok train station.

But the truth was far from that nice story, which had nothing to do with her.  After playing for some more, Natasja excused herself and told everyone she had to go to the ladies room and to get a drink of water. She even asked everyone if they need something: Katya asked her to buy a water bottle to drink her pills with. She agreed and exited the compartment calmly.

Outside, however, she was impatient. She had to get to the nearest bathroom and read the documents Niko had given her in the station. No one, or so she thought, had seen her come out of the cabin with the envelope. She walked for a while until she found the restaurant wagon. There, she asked for a bathroom, which she found easily.

In there, she read all the papers. They were only two, detailing what she had to guard so carefully and instructions about what to do if the object in her possession became lost or was destroyed. This last thing was preferable than see it taken by someone else. In any case, it was imperative she got it safe to the Pacific and gave it to another person in the train station, at her arrival.

When she finished reading, Natasja soaked the papers in the toilet and then saw the ink falling, as it was made of some strange liquid. After a couple of minutes, all the letters had “melted” from the two sheets of paper. She threw the two empty papers into a trash bin and then came out of the bathroom. An annoyed tall woman was waiting outside. Natasja excused herself but the woman didn’t even care.

She went back to the restaurant wagon and bought the water bottle for Katya who was very happy to see it when Natasja got back to the cabin. They were all fed up with cards so they just started talking until they all fell asleep. The first day of seven had finished.

The next two days were all the same: playing cards and seating all together for breakfast and lunch. Natasja excused herself from eating dinner, as she had never really liked to eat at night. Her body never responded kindly so she preferred to stay in the cabin and read one of the books a kind lady rented every passenger for a couple of pennies.

The truth was that Natasja didn’t want to get too far from the cabin. The object was there, and it would be madness to leave it alone but also to take her with her everywhere. It would make her too suspicious and, somehow, she knew someone watched her everyday.

She felt it first during lunch in the second day, when she stared a little bit too long at the window and suddenly she felt everyone in the restaurant was looking at her. She was probably being paranoid but it was better to be paranoid than not to be careful.

Sure enough, her cabin companions had asked about her papers and she suddenly faked she had no idea where they were. They even called one of the train’s guards to help them look for the envelope but it was all in vane, of course. Natasja told her new friends they were only the results of the last blood test, affirming she was now well and free of any cancer cells. She just wanted her parents to see it, to make them happy.

This, somehow, made Natasja the subject of unwanted attention all over the train. She couldn’t go the to panoramic wagon or to the restaurant without people telling her how brave she was and how young and beautiful they thought she was. The young woman started having a problem with it, because some people even broke in tears and confessed they had suffered from cancer too. After all she was human and it was disheartening to see people open like that, for no real reason.

On the fourth day, at night, the train arrived in Irkutsk. So she had to say goodbye to her cabin companions. They even hugged and Katya shed a tear, handing Natasja a bottle of lemon juice she had bought in the restaurant. She said it was good for the cells and that it was the only thing she could have bought as a present. That little present made Natasja actually happy, as friends were not easy to be found, not for her at least.

They all exchanged phone numbers and then parted ways. The next day, just one more day or so to her final destination, Natasja went alone to lunch and thought of her life. She had never known a real family, having been abandoned by her parents in an orphanage. From very little she had to fend for herself and there was no space for love or animosity with anyone, not in the streets. When she got older, she was recruited by an intelligence agency from abroad in order to work inside of Russia, dealing with different kinds of jobs.

But she was tired of it. At night, alone in the cabin, she decided that this time it was her time to be herself. Not Natasja, or anyone else but only her. After handing the umbrella to the agent in Vladivostok, she would leave that world of secrecy behind.

When the train finally arrived to the Pacific coast of the Russian Federation, the police found Natasja’s body lying right in the spot she had decided to be free. After thorough investigation, they deemed her death a murder by poison, probably related to a bottle of juice found besides her. She had no possessions with her as nothing was found on the cabin besides the bottle.

Someone extracted the umbrella, just after she had died or fell asleep. But the identity of that person remains a mystery to this day and it’s very likely we will never now who called agent Natasja.