Carrying a single bag

Carrying a single bag, the young man is travelling alone at his whim with no particular destination.

‘It’s all about the journey,’ his wife had said, a few months after the crash.
‘How can you say that when..?’ replied Michael.
Michael’s first instinct had been to mention that she couldn’t walk, but, bewildered and hateful of his immaturity, his constant need to block feelings, instead he wept.
He wept at her feet for the poverty of his mind, for the unfunny jesting that teased his conscience into deflective avoidance, for time to be cast back and for the woman he had crippled to rise, to kick him, to show him that she too was imperfect.
He wept. Like a baby, he wept at her feet, silently begging her forgiveness as she stroked his head, and then, as she prayed for him to know peace, he slept.
When he awoke, Jenny had slipped away on a blissful wave of sleeping pills cushioned by capsules for sea-sickness.
A handwritten note rested on her lap. ‘I am in the next place. I am happy. This is where I need to be. Please look after Delia for me. I love you both with all of my heart.’

Six years to the day, Michael stands at Newhaven train station.
He does not know where he is going. All he hopes is that he will arrive somewhere and sense that this is the place where he can join Jenny.
Michael has failed to look after Delia, who now lives with his brother’s family. He has not spoken to anyone for two years. His eyes have the hardened glaze of a killer.
Michael sits and eats the fish and chips without expression. He wants this to be the last time he eats fish and chips.
On board the boat to Dieppe, he sits alone with his back to the future as he watches England fade.
He thinks about Delia for a moment and wants to cry, but he cannot.
He will not cry. He has not cried for six years.
At Dieppe, Michael wonders where to go and starts to look for signs. He sits at a café and orders coffee.
He walks into a supermarket and stops at the chocolates, noticing Jenny’s favourite, Lindt. He buys a bar.
From his phone, he finds that Lindt are based in Zurich.
It seems fitting to die in Switzerland, but Michael will not require any help to find peace. He has all that he needs to end his life in his shoulder bag.
On the train to Paris, his mood lightens. Three people smile directly at him in the space of a minute as they pass through the carriage, but he does not understand that they can see his pain, and quickly returns to a state of morose sadness.
At Gare du Nord, Michael steps into a taxi for Gare du Lyon to catch the overnight train to Geneva.
Although he had hoped to spend at least a week to find his destination, he cannot help feeling an early sense of accomplishment as he falls asleep on the train.
By dawn, he arrives at Geneva.
Sitting at a café for breakfast, he feels the strange lightening of mood which he thought had abandoned him forever. People instantly warm to him.
One very attractive woman beams a wry smile full of sexual promise, but Michael shrugs it off with disgust. Such thoughts repulse him.
Perhaps she’d like to know that I killed my wife. That would wipe the smile from her face!
The connection to Zurich is swift. Michael books into an ordinary hotel and takes a shower.
After dinner, he lies on the bed and sighs at the ceiling, wishing for a sign that this is the place. Quite sure that it is not, he scans the room; an amateur painting of a dog asleep at a doorway and a beaten man on a wooden chair.
Tomorrow, he thinks, I will find a suitably desolate village such as the one depicted in this painting.
‘Nearly there,’ he says to Jenny, before falling into a deep sleep.
It is completely dark when he wakes with a start, gasping for breath. For a moment, he imagines he has died.
Once he has gathered his thoughts, he sits upright, trying to make sense of the dream.
In it, he sees himself as a child in a corner of a room.
Jenny (he couldn’t tell whether it was her or his mother) has somehow risen from her wheelchair and is screaming and shouting at him. She kicks him hard in the chest and laughs at him. Unknown people are there, and they smile.
Before breakfast, Michael buys a map of Switzerland and finds the most isolated village in the most isolated area.
He asks for a taxi at reception and the lady insists that her brother takes him. Within three hours, he is there.
It is perfect. Ramshackle, abused by the ravages of war and battered by the cruel shifting of economic affections, neglected beyond repair, like the bedroom of an addict.
Michael feels sure that he has arrived at his final destination.
That lightness of spirit sweeps through him as he sits at the empty village café, which called itself ‘Sans Sans’.
Michael smiles to himself and places a picture of Jenny on the table.
‘Nearly there,’ he says, stealing another smile, unaware that a man is standing directly behind him.
‘You left this in the car,’ says the man, placing Michael’s shoulder bag on the table.
Startled for a second, Michael looks up guiltily. ‘Thank you,’ he says, sliding a hand over the photograph.
‘A beautiful woman,’ remarks the man.
‘Thank you,’ repeats Michael.
The man presses Michael’s shoulder and turns to face him, asking, ‘Are you meeting her here?’
Michael appears perplexedly angry. ‘Kindly remove your hand.’
‘I will do as you say so long as you do one small thing for me,’ says the man.
‘And what might that be?’ asks Michael.
‘I would like you to visit the masseuse over there,’ says the man, pointing to a shabby little doorway across the empty square.
‘I do not want a massage,’ replies Michael.
‘Please. You need to see the lady there. She can help you.’
‘I don’t need any help,’ replies Michael, tightening his jaw-muscles.
‘I could have taken your bag if I had wanted to. There is no pharmacy in this village.’
Michael bristles angrily, but then finds himself walking the few yards to the entrance, disappearing inside.
The masseuse is sitting at a table, reading a magazine.
She looks up and approaches Michael. As she gets closer, her expression changes. She clasps his hands and wails in horror. Tears roll down her cheeks.
Michael begins to pull away but her grip tightens.
‘Please, don’t leave, whatever you do, just sit with me,’ she says.
Michael sits at a wooden chair as the masseuse kneels down before him.
His hardened expression has disappeared from his face, and he is aware that he is slipping away from a conscious state.
‘My God,’ she says, ‘you never knew, did you? You never knew what happened all those years ago?’
Michael has no memory from before the age of seven. The mental torture was too great to live with, and he had done away with it for his survival. So well had he hidden the truth, he had lost himself.
‘Show me the photograph,’ she demands.
Michael plucks it from his pocket and gives it to the masseuse.
She looks at Jenny and begins to whisper incomprehensible words.
‘Mr Michael,’ she says gravely, looking so deeply into him that he almost falls from his chair, ‘Jenny will not meet you if you go to her. She has asked you to look after someone, and until you do, she will not rest.’
Michael’s eyes wrestle and judder without escape.
‘Jenny wants you to forgive your mother, and to forgive yourself,’ she says.
His eyes widen as he sees the room where it had taken place.
Falling to the floor, he weeps and prays as if possessed, wailing to God for forgiveness.
A short while later, Michael thanks the woman and leaves.
He is met by his driver and on his way back to England to retrieve Delia.