Part I
evanescence
(noun)soon passing out of sight, memory, or existence; quickly fading or disappearing.
Chapter One
My whole life changed the night I came across that word.Nostalgia. A word so powerful that it did not only reveal the truth of the world but also the truth of myself.
Every Friday evening, I visited Mr. Leonard’s bookshop on Marble Street and picked out a book or two so I had something to read over the weekend. It was my favorite thing in the whole world: leaving work early so I could enjoy a full hour of browsing, watching the city’s lights glimmer over the poster-dazed facade of the bookshop featuring all the latest and most popular publications, hearing the little bell chime as I pushed the glass door in, then getting hit by the vanilla-hued aroma of paper and the subtle chemical scent of ink. Instant warmth in my chest. The resplendent relationship between habit and feeling. It was like going through a passage to another realm, into a world composed solely of characters whose lives, I knew, were about to change forever.
To me, a good book was one that made me feel something outside of myself. Sometimes it was something I needed to feel and didn’t know how, and other times it was something I hadn’t known myself capable of feeling at all.
And then there was the bookshop itself, the comfort and loveliness it would bring me. How Mr. Leonard would look up from his cherrywood desk, his spectacles flashing white for a single moment before his whole face would light up with a smile. “Welcome, Ms. Anya. You came at a good time. I have just the right book for you.”
Sometimes, I would pick out something immediately, a sizzling new romance or the thriller everyone was reading at work, and other times I would keep on browsing until the very last minute, looking for something I didn’t even have the words to describe. Perhaps a story that would affect me on a deeper, subconscious level, for there was nothing I dreaded more than the idea of going through this life unaffected. That was how I stumbled over that book. During a casual Friday evening, looking for something inexpressible.
The cover was pale blue, boasting a drawing of a telephone, with the title scribbled over it in bright pink:Acquiescence.
I took it home with me and spent most of my Saturday reading, stretched out on the sofa, with the window open so I could still feel the crisp autumn air on my skin. Plot-wise it was nothing extraordinary, just a typical office romance, but then, all of a sudden, the word popped up, the neat, black characters so distinct amid the rest that they gave off a haunting dark glow.
Nostalgia.
The word was so foreign, so disturbingly alien to me, that my breath hitched and my heart began to flutter like a frightened bird inside my ribcage.
Over and over I read it within its context, trying to extract its mysterious and utterly inconceivable meaning until each dark letter became imprinted upon my optical nerves.
Why had I never heard of this word before, and what could it possibly mean? Why did it make me feel so restless, almost hopeless, and why was I so certain that if I rummaged through the boxes of my mind I would find it there, that bizarre, outlandish thing dangling right beyond the reach of my comprehension?
The next morning, I returned to the bookshop to ask Mr. Leonard about it. I was so flustered with curiosity that I barely washed and brushed my hair before I was out of the door, the puzzling book tucked under my arm like a newspaper. I didn’t even notice the time, and only after I found myself standing before the bookshop’s lightless front did I realize that I’d arrived an hour too early.
September had been a warm, humid month, summer clinging on to it like a stubborn child, but October came fast and determined. Mornings grew crisper and nights unexpected. One moment the wind was rustling pleasantly through the sycamore trees, rattling the loosening leaves and sweeping them up in the air, and the next it was all bluster and rain pelting the earth, or blankets of mist falling over the city, the pavement left dappled and streetlight-bright.
Now, the unrelieved sky arched menacingly above me, so I decided to go into the coffeehouse next door and wait out the impending storm.
Inside it was packed and feverish, and a waiter suggested I take one of the sidewalk tables, which were protected by a green scalloped canopy. After he brought me my steaming cup of coffee, I lit a cigarette and for a while just watched the rain. The trees lining the sidewalk stood out gray and tender, and the tram slipped past us with windows fogged and streaming. I pulled the sleeves of my sweater over my knuckles and tasted my coffee, which was milky and velvet-rich.
My thoughts quietened, my breathing slowed, my eyes grew bleary observing the fat raindrops darken the pavement until it was sleek like a mirror and emanated a lovely petrichor scent.
More and more people gathered under the canopy of the coffeehouse, seeking sanctuary as the rain grew heavier, some laughing, others scowling, clutching their windblown scarfs and checking the time on their wristwatches. But within minutes, everyone, even the most irritated of patrons, started talking to each other to pass the time, with their coffee cups in hand and their red-cheeked faces half-obscured in white clouds of breath and cigarette smoke.
That was the miracle of the Inside. Right in the midst of an ordinary day, a moment of togetherness was induced, and the mundane was made special in the most human way possible.
An hour later, the sky cleared, the shops opened, and I was disappointed to discover that Mr. Leonard didn’t know much about the book. It had probably come from Outside, he said, and he had shelved it amongst the rest without paying much attention to it.
When I asked him how come he wasn’t more surprised by this, he said that things from Outside slipped in here all the time. Books and music and pieces of technology. After all, we were in constant correspondence with them. It wasn’t as though the Outside was some kind of forbidden wasteland. No, nothing like that. They had their way of living, and we had ours, and we existed next to each other quietly and unobtrusively.
“But do you know what the word means?” I persisted, feeling weirdly unsteady, like I was standing on the edge of a very slippery surface. “Have you heard it before?”
“Of course, I’ve heard it,” Mr. Leonard said in his crinkly grandfather’s voice. “It means the sentimental longing for something of the past. That twinge you get in your chest thinking of a place or a time or a person you can never return to. Like an old wound reopening.” The confusion must have been evident on my face, for he tried to redefine the word in simpler terms. “Basically, it’s something you’re missing.”
It wasn’t that I couldn’t understand what he was describing, only that I couldn’t relate to it, which in a way was much more disturbing—not being able to relate to something another citizen of the Inside could.
For a second, a terrible, dreadful second, it was almost as if I had stopped being connected.
“But,” I continued in the same breathless manner, “if that’s the case, then why not just say that?”
“It’s like the difference betweenwasanduse to be. Use to beimplies a feeling of loss. That’s nostalgia.”
