Stéphane

Stéphane stepped out onto the pavement and winced at the soft crunch of the ground as it made contact with his outstretched foot. Holding the edge of the car door for support, he struggled to manoeuvre his other leg out from underneath the back of the driver’s seat, and as he finally managed to stand upright, his fingers still gripping the edge of the door, he looked towards the sky, closed his eyes and let out a sigh that seemed to penetrate the soft swirl of the clouds above and rain back down on him in thick waves of relief, a feeling that was gone the instant he reopened his eyes and reawakened his senses to the reality of his pain.

‘Stay there Stéphane, I’ll get your crutches from the boot of the car’

Stéphane looked at the woman whose strange sounding words had called his name with such easy familiarity, and as she disentangled herself from the driver’s side of the vehicle, he found himself concentrating on the small but powerful details of her appearance, breathing her in all at once as if for the first time. He looked into her eyes, the sense of panic alive in them that seemed to glow deeper inside of him somehow, like a single ray of light captured by the arc of a small magnifying glass. He watched the tousle of her reddish brown hair; considered her pale skin, stretched like a smooth canvas over the long curve of her face; traced the delicate sweep of her neck, the unassuming curvature of her breasts beneath her dark winter jacket, the long and slender hips sculpted by the pale grip of soft blue denim.

She was beautiful, that was certain, and in an artistic way that Stéphane found himself appreciating without knowing why. But none of this detracted from the fact that he did not know her, had never known her, and the unsettling feeling that had followed him in his stomach all the way from the hospital began to rise in his chest and throat like hot knives. As she smiled at him from behind the car, he thought about what the doctors had told him.

He had been in an accident, a car accident, had stepped out onto the road and been hit at 40 miles an hour, breaking his left femur, shattering his left hip and subsequently spending four days in a coma. He had been confused at first, to see the faces crowded round his hospital bed, people he didn’t know, tall strangers who looked on with a strange mixture of intimacy and concern, and then had become frightened, angry at the way they looked down at him and asked him questions as if they knew him, as if they had always known him. She had been one of them, and he remembered her tears as she had seen him for the first time, how overwhelmed she had become and how she had been led away by one of the others, a tall man in a leather jacket with glasses and short cropped hair. He had shouted at the doctors for these people to be removed, for them to stop pretending that they knew him, and their faces had formed bewildered expressions as they were led out of the room, ushered along in quieted whispers that drifted together like the inscrutable chatter of ghosts.

One of the doctors had later returned and told him that the people gathered round earlier had been his friends, that as well as the damage to his hip and leg he had sustained considerable head trauma during the accident, and that as a result it was highly likely that he was experiencing some degree of memory loss. Stéphane had become angry at first, accusing the doctor of lying to him, and when the doctor remained calm and Stéphane realised that what he was saying was at least partly true, that he was unable to form any clear image of himself inside his head, he accused the strangers waiting for him outside of lying, of inventing a story that they were his friends in order to take advantage of his situation somehow. He searched his tired mind frantically for any fragment of truth, any small piece of splintered self that he could take and mould into a complete whole, but found nothing beyond a vague staccato of confusing images. He was able to generate a clear enough impression of his physical self, could recall more or less what he looked like, and knew that he had come to England several years ago, although for what reason he could not be sure, but apart from these details it was as if someone had painted over all the things of his past in thick, grey brushstrokes, had rendered the substance of his memories into shattered glass, smoothing over them in deep shades of grey that washed over everything that he had once been.

He refused to see any of the strangers that claimed to be his friends for several days, still desperately searching for anything that would tell him who he was, anything that would confirm that these people were lying. And when he finally accepted the possibility that they might be telling the truth, that in the absence of any other alternative he had to accept that they might actually be his friends, she had been the first to sit with him, the first to occupy the lonely seat beside him, hold his hand and talk softly about the weather and hospital food and a thousand other immaterial things. He remembered how the light tone of her voice had done nothing to conceal the sadness that showed itself in her strained smile and fragile eyes, eyes that looked as if they were balanced over a thin stretch of wire and would falter at any moment, a desperate and profound sadness that caused all the anger to drain suddenly from Stéphane’s tired body.

Others soon followed and repeated the same sombre ritual, sitting beside him and talking desperately about nothing as if Stéphane’s damaged mind could be somehow repaired by a steady and consistent stream of inane conversation, all with the same forced smile, the same way of avoiding his eyes as they spoke, the same resigned despair drifting in the space between them, hanging ominously in the electrified air of the clean white room. Eventually the doctors had told him that he would be able to go home, and when Stéphane said that he didn’t know where home was, she had emerged quietly from the corner of the room and told him that she would be taking him home with her, that he would be staying at her place for a little while. Disarmed by the gentle softness of her voice, the subtle pleading of her eyes, Stéphane had accepted with reluctance, had followed her out to the car and let her help him into the backseat like a character in some surreal dream, wondering as he pressed his back against the taut upholstery if he would ever begin to remember who these people were, if he would ever be able to recall what, if anything, they had once meant to him.

‘Here, let me help you’

‘It’s ok, I can do it’ Stéphane snapped, before checking himself and offering a gentle smile as he removed the crutches from her outstretched hands. He balanced the crutches carefully under each arm and pivoted slowly on his right foot, pushing the car door to a close as he turned, and as he looked up at the incline of grey steps that stood directly opposite he noticed a tall building with fading brickwork and a bright yellow door. He turned round to confirm that this was the place and noticed the same entrenched sadness in her eyes, the same subtle tension, and as she nodded slowly his thoughts turned again to the first time she had sat with him at the hospital.

‘So this is it, this is home’ she said as she turned the key in the door and pressed it open, revealing a long green hallway in which an impressive array of photos and paintings were hung at seemingly random intervals along its busy walls. Stéphane followed her inside and was instantly captivated by his new surroundings, gazing up and around at the many different paintings and images and running his fingers almost absent-mindedly over the many curious trinkets balanced on the tops of bookcases and wooden shelves that lined the entrance. He looked down and rolled a small plastic snow shaker in his hand, watching the small flakes of artificial snow with almost hypnotic interest, before the sound of her voice, drifting in from some far off place, pierced his concentration like a warm beacon.

‘I’ll be back in a minute to show you your room, just need to go and get the chair out of the car. You may as well go into the living room while you’re waiting’

Stéphane hesitated, rolling the plastic dome between his fingers and shifting his eyes nervously from side to side.

‘It’s the first door on the right’ she said quietly, pausing for a moment before walking slowly out the door, leaving Stéphane alone in the green light of the hallway. He placed the snow shaker carefully back on top of the shelf and turned, tracing his fingers idly along the wall to his right before stopping at the angled projection of a doorframe.

As he pressed the door open and stepped inside, Stéphane stood back and examined the interior of the living room with almost childlike fascination. The pale blue walls were covered in framed pictures and paintings just like in the hallway, and above the mantle piece was a large abstract print of circles within circles, the colours fading and overlapping like an exploding rainbow. In the corner of the room stood a curious wooden board sculpture, seemingly African in origin, with painted shells and beads attached at various intervals along its heavily carved surface, while at the other end of the room sat a long leather sofa, elegantly poised and flanked either side by two leather companion chairs.

As Stéphane edged further forward he noticed a small framed photograph out of the corner of his eye, resting in the middle of the mantle piece just to the left of the circle print. He pulled the frame down from the mantle and, cradling the image in his hands, studied its contents thoughtfully. It was a picture of him, him and the girl, stood with their arms round each other, laughing and smiling as they faced the camera.

‘Stéphane?’

He looked up to find her stood in the doorway, and tilting his head up at her and then back down at the photograph, Stéphane’s mind began to form vague impressions, distant outlines of possibilities flashing into existence, drifting in and out of focus as he turned the picture over in his hands.

‘You and me, are we, did we used to…’

He left the words unsaid, though the look on her face told him that she had understood, and the silence that followed as she searched his eyes seemed to stretch into forever.

‘No, no Stéphane we aren’t…we didn’t...we are just friends. That’s just an old photograph…’

She took the photo from his hands and placed it silently back onto the mantle piece, holding onto his fingers for a brief second, before clearing her throat and allowing her arms to fall back down to her waist.

‘Come on, I’ll show you to you’re room’

Stéphane followed her back out into the hallway and into a side room with red walls and a smooth wooden floor. A large bed extended out into the middle of the room, and along the wall on the far side was a large open window looking out onto the street below. Underneath the window a wheelchair was positioned at a conspicuous sideways angle, facing a blank canvas which stood opposite and rested against a tall frame flecked at odd intervals along its sturdy wooden length with stifled beads of dry paint.

‘Thank you, but I am confused? The canvas…’ Stéphane asked, gesturing with his fingers towards the window. At this her expression remained perfectly still, and taking her silence to be a sign that she had not heard him, Stéphane repeated himself.

‘The canvas, please, why the canvas?’

Stéphane noticed her lips begin to tremble as she turned to face him, and as she cleared her throat to speak, he thought he saw her eyes break under the weight of her words.

‘You…you like to paint Stéphane, it is what you do, you have always painted…’

Stéphane turned this information over in his confused mind, trying to understand what it meant.

‘I am a painter?’ he asked, rolling the words around in his mouth with the object curiosity of someone who had never seen them before. She nodded silently, the slow trickle of a single tear running stealthily across her cheek. Stéphane turned in amazement, mumbling to himself and repeating the words over and over again as if repeating them would somehow make them more real, as if through repetition the words would suddenly begin to make sense.

‘Excuse me’ she stuttered, turning and hurrying out the door, the tears now streaming in rivers across her face. As the sound of gentle sobbing echoed along the hallway he thought about going after her, but then realised that he didn’t know what to say, and, strangely defeated, he moved over to the window and sat down in the wheelchair.

Stéphane stared at the canvas for a while, studying its vast whiteness carefully, searching between the lines of its blank texture for an end to this strange feeling of impotence that pressed down deep inside of him, an end to the pain and confusion that had followed him ever since the hospital. And then, without knowing what he was doing at first, he reached out towards the shadow of a paintbrush balanced on the ledge of the easel. Picking it up, he felt its weight in his outstretched palm and paused for a moment, before holding the brush straight between his fingers and extending his arm purposefully forward, pressing the brush delicately against the taut skin of the blank canvas. Closing his eyes as the dry bristles made contact, he remained perfectly still, the sound of distant laughter drifting in through the window, mingling with the desperate sound of her tears in the next room. And then, bowing his head and whispering something quietly to himself, Stéphane reopened his eyes, looked up at the canvas and, with the sound still ringing in his ears, slowly began to paint.