The Seat Opposite

The last thing I said to my husband in twenty years together: "We'll talk this evening." We were fighting over milk. How stupid, over milk. He slammed the car door and drove off to cool down. He always came back within an hour, with a shopping bag and a guilty face. And then there was the night, the phone call and the highway. Only Maksym's keys and a shattered phone came home.

It took me a year to learn to say "was" about him, and I still stumble on that word, breaking into tears. A year later, the railway station called. During renovations of the old left-luggage office they were sorting through unclaimed baggage and found a bag under my husband's name. On the card, my number was listed as the backup contact. I remember he had a small travel bag.

Probably because of its size it simply got lost among the other luggage, which is why for so long nobody noticed that no one was coming for it. I answered: "It's a mistake. He didn't leave anything there." - If you have the receipt or a token with the number 89, bring it, - they told me and hung up. So that evening, for the first time in many months, I opened the drawer where I kept some of his things and papers.

Under the old tickets lay a small brass token with that very number. The drawer also held our old map of Europe. Once, as teenagers, we divided up the countries. Italy was his, Gdansk was mine. Portugal was labeled in his handwriting: "split in half." I decided to check after all. An ordinary station, dust, metal, coffee from a vending machine, a woman arguing into her phone, a child asking for water. The clerk checked the number and brought out the bag.

Inside lay two tickets and a brochure for a city by the sea. The date - six months after that night. I clutched the tickets in my hand, and it plunged me into a memory: a hotel room, a wet towel on the back of a chair, good wine, the sea outside the window all night long. We had never been there. I kept going through the things. A cheap faience cup with a map of a foreign city on it. I took it in my hands and saw myself in a mirror, Maksym beside me, both of us past fifty.

I closed my eyes, and when I opened them I was in a little cafe, the two of us after a quarrel, and he had ordered two pastries. - I don't want one! - That's why I took two. You'll eat it anyway. I ate the pastry. The station came back, an announcement about a delayed train, the cold cup in my palms. I stood in the middle of the hall crying like a madwoman over a pastry that never existed. Next came the glasses; they lay in the inner pocket of the bag.

I touched them - and he's holding the menu at arm's length, squinting, his temples gone completely white. - You can't even see the prices without glasses anymore. - All the better. Those prices are better not seen at all. Beside them lay a shirt in a very large size. - That's what family prosperity has done to me, time to buy a bigger one.

I laughed out loud and understood: it was the first time I had seen him old. "I never even knew how you were meant to go grey, my love." A pharmacy bag. Nothing frightening - blood pressure pills. Every evening I ask: - Did you take it? - Yes. - Show me. Keys to an apartment that never existed. One touch. I remember the kitchen, the crack by the window we spent ten years promising to plaster over. We never would have.

I lost thirty colds, two hundred quarrels and thousands of mornings in which nothing happens. I asked the elderly attendant: - What is this place? He shrugged. - The left-luggage office. - Do you believe in the soul? - I don't know, ma'am. I keep things here, not souls. At the very bottom of the bag lay a photograph. In it I'm old. Sitting by the sea. Alone. Even in that life he went first. We simply got another twenty years or so. And then someone still woke up alone.

Under the photo lay one more ticket. A real one, for this coming Friday. Portugal. The same one marked "split in half" on our map. I searched a long time for the second one. Turned out the bag's pockets, went through everything twice. There was no second ticket. Once, when my mother was gone too, I said to my husband: - Now I'm a complete orphan. He answered: - Silly girl. You've got me.

As a child I thought orphans were only children. But adults become orphans too. Just much later, and through other people. I went. The train took longer, but he knew about my fear of planes. The seat beside me was empty. Maksym was always the first to notice the little things outside the window: a lonely house, a bird on a wire, an old water tower. The sea appeared beyond the glass, and I said out loud: - Look. I lowered my eyes.

And then, among the distant rooftops, I saw one red one, tiny, and I knew for certain: he would have spotted it first. Maybe there is no soul. Maybe we just spend years making one in each other. The train went on. I watched for the both of us.