Correspondence

The sunlight shone down through the leaves of the oak trees, giving brilliant glow to the well-trodden footpath Charlie was walking along in the woods. The autumnal air was full of the smell of fallen leaves, crunching and squishing beneath his steps, the songs of small birds echoing around him. The crisp air, reduced to a breeze between the trees, rustled the half-bare branches above him, and the hues of gold and brown gave the world a sweetness you could almost taste on your tongue. The blue sky was cloudless above him – Charlie, however, was looking down.

The young man of twenty-five was watching as his trainers slipped between spots of mud and fallen branches on the familiar path. Though he was aware of his steps, careful to stand on the crunchy leaves whenever he came by them, he was mostly absent, away in his mind. He wore a nice brown jacket with a fluffy cotton interior, a fine maroon tweed scarf around his neck, and a thick head of long dirty-blond hair above his unshaven face, so he couldn’t feel the cool air on his skin. He was undistracted by the chirping of birds around him, and the sweet, honey-like ground did not enchant him with its sugar, but only troubled him with how sticky it was to walk through; how uneven and heavy his slow and careful steps, how aimless his journey. How lost he felt on a familiar path in the woods.

Charlie was thinking about how lonely he felt – how lonely he’d been feeling for a long time. He hadn’t noticed the feeling until only recently. For as long as he could remember, it had been concealed by the veil of familiar surroundings and smiling faces. Only now, at a distance, could he see the truth that accompanied it.

The decision to leave everything and move away so suddenly did not feel like anything to him. That, he thought, was the first sign that his body had known for a long time what he was only now discovering. He abandoned his job as a professor of mathematics at the University of Tript, so soon after acquiring it at such a young age. His apartment, the one that shared memories of two relationships that hadn’t gone so well but left emotions behind that still lingered into this forest, that too he had cast away, without a second thought. The familiar park near his home, his favourite pizzeria around the corner, his friends – all those he had simply left be, while he himself departed. Only his car, that which had helped him arrive at his widowed mother’s cottage, and his mobile phone remained as relics of his past life. The car stood parked behind the house, having been left untouched for two weeks, and his phone, even when it got service, never received a call from anyone he left behind in Tript. The silence it gave off, he thought, was the sound of loneliness, and it sang louder than any of the beautiful birds that blessed the branches of the forest.

Charlie slowed down momentarily, coming to a complete stop. He thought about the path he was on, where it was leading him. Home, to his mother’s cottage. He had come all the way out here, abandoned his life, for her – that was what he had originally thought, anyway. Now he realised that his decision was for him alone, and she, the spirit that had possessed that cottage since his earliest memories of childhood, was a poltergeist he’d come to somewhat detest, as he’d done when he was younger. It felt like such a grand gesture to him at the time – his father had departed, his mother was left alone, he, the kind, prodigal son, would come home to keep her company in her time of need. In their¹ time of need. That was the story, anyway. No less, he felt like he was the one being haunted, and the ghost, undeparted from the living, was still echoing from within the cottage walls.

What would he do next? he wondered. He looked forward at the path. It led where it had always led; out, beyond the trees, over the small hill, down and to the single home that speckled the green meadow like a rare, wilting flower of frail petals made of memories and a stem of hard oak wood planks. Nowhere around him was there another path that could take him elsewhere. From one fate to another, from a loneliness among bustling skyscrapers and choking cars to one in the throes of solitude between ancient, forgotten trees. He had come so far, yet he felt like he hadn’t moved at all.

Some, but not all of his ruminating thoughts were interrupted by the shine of a peculiar glow along his path in the woods. It was a couple of metres ahead of him, a protrusion of white light emerging from between golden leaves. From his distance, he couldn’t tell what it was, and it intrigued him enough to spur him back into motion, making careful steps that brought him closer, and eventually right next to, the curious shine.

Standing right above it, Charlie saw that the white glow was made by the reflection of the sunlight off the front of a white envelope, lying squarely on the ground in front of him. It was lying undisturbed, pristine with uncrumpled corners and a fresh hand of black ink on the front, as if it had been placed there only seconds before and the elements hadn’t been given time to disturb it. Even more curious, Charlie looked around him as he had before. He checked his left, then his right, turning all the way behind him to find nobody in sight. He was, as far as he could see and hear, alone in the woods. There was nobody there who could have left this letter here, and nobody else that it could have been addressed to.

Charlie bent down and picked up the letter. When he straightened his back, he read the address.

To You.

It was, certainly, the most perplexing thing he had ever seen in his life, or at the very least approaching it. Was it left by a lover, to a recipient who knew the hand? Or maybe a friend, as a sweet joke to one who knew what awaited inside without even breaking the seal. Or, more interestingly yet, a letter written by someone to themselves, filled with unspoken words that needed to be cast out into the world like a lure, so that the seeking mind that wrote them might draw them back and find something new caught on the end, fished from within.

Or, most fascinatingly and dangerously of all, perhaps it was a letter left for him?

Charlie looked around the woods again, giving a full spin this time to take everything in. Suddenly, though he could not tell why, he began to notice the glow of the space around him, the enchanted air that he had missed when he found himself entombed by thoughts of desolation. The cool air skirted up his jacket sleeves and into his nostrils, chilling fresh life into him, and where the sun shone on his skin there was new warmth beneath the breeze. The sticky mud that ate the soles of his trainers felt like a delightfully soft carpet for his tired feet, and the singing birds of the forest chirped in invitation – ‘go on, open it. What are you waiting for?’

With careful fingers, Charlie split open the envelope’s seal. He pulled out the letter inside. It was finely folded into three parts, on delicate–but–firm, high-quality paper. He unfolded it back open, and took his time reading the words it contained. When he was finished, he thought for a moment to himself. Then he closed the letter back along the creases it had come with, sliding it back into the envelope.

‘Naive,’ he whispered to himself. His word, however quiet, sent a shock through the forest; the tiny birds around him fluttered away. ‘It must have been written by a child,’ he added.

Though the letter was optimistic, Charlie felt that it was naively so. Not everybody could simply do good, it took more than the magic of poetry to inspire good, and some clouds were too dark and too dense to shine from beneath them. Some things, he thought, were simply brutal. How wonderful it would be to believe in the letter’s promises. To abandon reality, and believe in such simple hope.

Disappointed by the letter, which had in its mystery enchanted the world for a moment, Charlie felt that it was time for him to go home, and he set his feet back in motion. He held the letter indifferently between his dry fingers, entirely prepared to drop it after only a few steps, but without thinking it found its way into his jacket pocket, one end of it sticking out just under his sleeve.

He walked through the thinning trees and out of the woods onto the path that carried him up the hill. From its top, Charlie set his eyes on his mother’s home – his home. In his mind, the cottage bore a ghastly image, one that pushed him out on his daily walks into the woods; yet in the sunlight of a cloudless day it looked oddly beautiful. Careful steps took him down the hill and onto the flat, open field of dry autumn grass and scattered dandelions, which he crossed without another thought to reach the cottage.

Walking up to the wooden abode, Charlie couldn’t hear a single sound coming from inside. He knew his mother usually cooked around this time of day, but her schedule had been irregular recently; she could have been taking a nap, or doing one of her crosswords. The home slept with a deathly quiet, grieving amidst the sunbeams that shone around it. Only Charlie’s steps, a pressing of the door handle, the creaking of the oak door, caused it to stir at all, before the hum of those sounds faded, casting everything back into abyssal silence.

Charlie walked into the hallway that started from the front door. There were no windows near it, placing everything in darkness once the door was closed, illuminated only by ambient light from left and right – the kitchen and the sitting room. There was nothing there bar coat hooks and a row of shoes lined up at the wall. Charlie hung up his jacket and took off his trainers, shuffling them into the empty space they’d come from. As he stepped back from the hooks, he saw the same odd, white protrusion he’d seen in the woods, not shining as brightly in the low light. 

He removed the letter from his jacket pocket. He looked at it for a moment with a blank expression, then wordlessly lowered his hand to his side, letter between his fingers.

In the silent cottage, every step reverberated around every room. Charlie stepped to the door to the kitchen, peeking inside. The curtains were drawn; it was dark. The small table at the centre was clear, unset for any meal. He went deeper into the room, past the table, pulling the curtains apart and casting light onto the empty stove, tidy countertop beside it, the fridge and cabinets around them, and the square of brightly discoloured wood on the wall where the picture used to hang.

Charlie turned around, standing for a moment in the empty space. The air was tasteless and still, as it was in the whole cottage, his nose getting used to the smell of antiquity that roamed the halls. Though the radiator behind him was on, warming the back of his legs, he still felt that it was cold there. It was a difficult feeling for him to understand. Once, however long ago, there was a warmth to those walls, now subdued and ambiguous beneath the memory before him. And yet, he felt little longing for that warmth, not wishing to revive its subtle hues. He would have just liked for it to not be so cold.

The sound of creaking springs coming from the other side of the cottage sprung Charlie out of his memory and back into motion. He stepped around the kitchen table, brisked by the counter and stove and reached the closed door to what used to be his father’s study, now repurposed to be his bedroom. He opened it quickly, not alerting the air to his presence, placed himself inside and closed the door just as gently. He listened for a second at the door. He couldn’t hear any footsteps nearby.

Releasing the urgency from his bones, he slinked back into the bedroom. With almost dancing stride, he stepped along the wall of cabinets, all empty now, neighbouring a single wardrobe stuck into the corner, painted a darker brown than the other wooden walls of the room. Charlie reached the oak desk that remained after his father, sitting under a wide window and housing only a single ballpoint pen, and dropped the envelope on top of it, where it skidded for a second before coming to a stop askew with the surface. He was about to continue past it, when he suddenly stopped. Taking a single step back, he reached for the letter. With two fingers, he dragged it to the middle of the top of the desk, aligning it parallel with the edges of the surface. It was an extemporaneous adjustment, but it felt right. He turned back around as quickly as he had moved the letter and, without any more regard, languidly cast himself onto the covers of his single bed, awkwardly lodged between the desk and the adjacent wall. 

Lying on his back, his limp head fell sideways. He looked at the whole room, easily visible from the single point on the bed. It was a tiny space, resistantly coaxed into functioning as a bedroom. Although it was at times claustrophobic, the compactness gave a certain cosiness to the cramped walls and sparse floorspace. His duvet was striped with a combination of mustard yellow and crimson red, which despite making him feel at times like he was going to sleep covered in condiments, gave the corner a pleasant glow when the sunlight hit the bed in the mornings. The wardrobe was filled with the clothes he could fit into it that he’d brought from his apartment when he moved, and the cabinets were empty, though he occasionally wondered about filling them, but could never imagine what he would put inside them if he did.

Charlie’s musings about the room were interrupted by a gentle knock on the door, to which his eyes immediately shot. After little wait, the handle moved and the door creaked open, swinging only to leave a slight gap. His mother, Matylda, stepped into it, her legs covered by a charcoal skirt that reached her calves, where light grey socks dropped into small black heeled shoes that at one point were reserved only for special occasions. She wore a loose, light grey sweater, and on her neck there was a transparent black neckerchief whose end was just about tucked into the collar of her white top. Her hair, dyed black to hide the strands of silver, was tied into a neat bun. 

Charlie looked at her for the instant she stood there without saying a word. She appeared so repressed beneath the grieving greyscale, so unusual without the scattered glistenings of her golden jewellery that helped give her her usual sense of life. She had abandoned her use of rouge, too, which within all the other ghastly shades gave her face a deathly pale appearance. Her wrinkles, though not numerous, became even more visible

‘I’m making vegetable soup,’ she said in a soft voice. 

Today, more than any other day lately, she appeared defeated. There was an absence of gusto, of fight, of the relentless and aimless vigour that irritated Charlie so much in her growing up. It felt like such a visceral absence that his first impression was that he was looking at a corpse, dead in the doorway. He looked at his mother for a second of awkward silence. There was a quiet sadness pouring from her with mute force, dimming the sunlight around it. For the first time he could remember, Charlie felt sorry for his mother. 

Right as he was about to give her a plain answer – ‘alright’ – his lips stayed frozen. 

Matylda looked at him with a similar awkward stare. After a blink, she wordlessly stepped out of the gap she had made, closing the door behind her as she went back into the kitchen. Her footsteps made no sound as they carried her to the cabinet, where she found a cube of stock, and to the fridge, where she got some leeks and carrots. The light shone from the window behind her, casting a shadow on all of her movements.

From one of the drawers under the countertop she took out a wooden cutting board. As she was half way through taking it out, however, she was struck by a pulsing pain in her gut, propagating to her chest and her limbs. It arrested her breath, closed her throat. She shut her eyes, focussing on her body, trying to regain control over the sudden, unexpected ambush. When she opened them again, they landed on the discoloured patch on the wall. Where the picture used to hang.

A sudden coldness wrapped around her hand, startling her. She looked down, finding the fingers of Charlie’s hand holding her palm. When her eyes went up to find his, there was a soft, humble smile beneath them.

‘Here,’ he said, a gentle, unfamiliar soothingness in his voice, ‘let me make it. You go lie down.’

Matylda remained frozen, confused by the barrage of alien events happening around her. Charlie’s hand left hers, wandering over to find the cutting board, delicately removing it from her paralysed grip. 

The sounds suddenly became sharp to her ears, becoming one with the image before her. The board made crisp contact with the countertop when Charlie gently lowered it. He reached over, humming the drawer open from between her arms to slash out a vegetable knife from the clamour of scattered cutlery. His hand glided over to find a carrot, rustling the plastic packaging as he removed it. He did all this standing right next to her, so close that they almost touched when his arm moved back when he started cutting. She could smell the faint residue of the autumnal forest still on his hair. 

Eventually, the stiffness in her body faded; her limbs relaxed, and she could move again. Charlie continued cutting the vegetables as she made her way out of the kitchen and back to the bed she had come from. Placed beneath a window at the middle of the wall, in a room that felt otherwise barren, it had covers and pillowcases dressed in illustrations of lilacs on cream white. They were one of three sets of covers they owned, but these specifically were Harold’s favourite.

She slipped off her shoes, untied her neckerchief, drew the grey sweater over her head and alongside her skirt dropped it indifferently onto the floor. She untied her hair, casting it loosely onto her shoulders. Clasping their edge with weak grip, she lifted the covers, breaking their perfect fold, and crawled underneath them, her head descending softly into the goose down pillow. 

She looked at the ceiling for a while. After enough time, she reached above her and drew the curtains closed, casting the room into near perfect darkness.

Outside, the sun still shone its afternoon glow, warming the windowsill beneath the pressing cold air. On it landed two little birds, who began singing their song.

24.IX.2024

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