The Lost Postcard

The Lost Postcard

 

I found it inside his favourite book, I promised him I’d read but never finished because I didn’t have time. It was sitting on page five hundred and eight. We’ve been using museum tickets, plane tickets, postcards, receipts and all sorts of things as bookmarks and then forget them there. The next time we rediscovered them, they summoned memories to mind, also forgotten.

I picked up the postcard. The thick paper felt dry against my fingertips, and the colours had begun to turn a faint sepia shade. The weathered marble statue of a dying Achilles, pulling an arrow from his heel, filled the front of the postcard, and at the bottom, golden letters proclaimed "Achilleion Palace" in an archaic-looking font.

It was the postcard from the trip to Corfu island, our last holiday. We booked the tickets for September because it was cheaper, but it still felt like the heart of summer. We caught the bus in Corfu town to Achilleion, where we made our way on foot to the palace. The cicadas around us drowned out all other sounds, attacking our ears with white noise, while the crisp, resinous aroma of the Mediterranean cypress trees filled our lungs.

On our way out, we visited the souvenir shop, where tourists were browsing a variety of items, from keychains and statuettes to handmade soaps made from lavender and herbs, and jewellery fashioned after Empress Sissi of Austria, who had commissioned the palace. To commemorate our visit, we got the postcard and an oval pin with Achilles engraved on it to add on the wall.

I placed Infinite Jest on the coffee table. I moved across the study, postcard in hand, towards the northern wall, where, almost two decades ago, I had drawn an outline of a political world map that covered the surface from top to bottom, with clear borders defining each country using black acrylic paint. Every time we visited a country, we filled in the corresponding space with colour and small memorabilia. Iceland was painted ivory-blue for its glacial ice, and a light red chunk of lava rock we picked up from Kerið Crater was protruding in its midst. Italy was painted light green with a magnet of the Colosseum at its capital and a miniature Vesuvius right next to Naples. It was a crazy idea of mine that gave us an excuse to visit the world and become collectors of colours and culture, a puzzle we craved to piece together.

The pin of Achilles stood attached on the island of Corfu, in the north-west of Greece, which was painted in the light blue colours of the sea and the sky. Delphi was represented by a wooden sphynx, and a marble fridge magnet of the Acropolis towered over Athens. The magnet was so heavy it had fallen countless times until it broke in half; we had to superglue it back together and then to the wall to secure it.

The medley of textures and hues produced a vivid visual mosaic, which contrasted with the emptiness of the unexplored countries. Our love for manga, bonsai, picturesque cherry blossoms, and the dramatic waves of Katsushika Hokusai drew us to Japan as our next destination. But before our excursion we needed to save because the trip was going to be long and costly. That didn’t dishearten him, however; instead, he said it was all for the best because we would get the chance to learn some Japanese before we left. And then our plans got interrupted, and the four islands of the Japanese Archipelago remained blank.

It's funny how things sometimes turn out, realising how out of our control our lives truly are, even when we pretend we’re on top of things and schedule entries in our calendars of obligations and things to come. I was at work when I received the call. It was as if the world had lost its cadence and the earth retreated beneath my feet. What was the man on the phone saying? He was offering some formulaic kind words, the sort one hears in a news statement after a plane crash or a catastrophic bridge collapse.

“What?” I asked.

The monotonous voice of the caller spoke more words, words that didn’t seem to make sense at first because the stillness inside my chest drowned them out.

“I see. Yes, I understand. Which hospital? Yes, yes, thank you”. I ended the call.

Five identical walnut desks around the office screamed with laughter and bustling colleagues going about their business, but an invisible barrier grounded my ears in a consuming tinnitus buzz. The days after the accident are still undefined in my mind as if waking up from a deep sleep, blurred-eyed, stumbling, disorientated flashbacks of images behind wet window frames. I spent them sitting on the sofa, staring at the incomplete wall map, the missing countries that would never earn their mementoes and distinctive colours, and remain empty.

Time passed. His scent slowly faded from his pillow, the bonsai tree we had grown from the seed of the great oak tree in Campbell Park, withered, and I needed to feel him again. He was my Infinite Jest. I fished his favourite book and came across the postcard, which now rested in my arms.

I reached for a pushpin from the desk drawer and attached the postcard in the centre of the map.