We were both dreams then when we first met; ideas that hadn’t conceptualized, sperms that hadn’t blossomed, philosophies that hadn’t met. But we had promised each other various things - Evan and I - that I would help him no matter what form he would be in and he would remind me no matter what place he should reach.
So we set out like driftwood on placid sail, entering the wombs of our own mothers, spinning through the flesh of her placenta and body of her blood. We became nuances, nuisances, morning sickness and tummy kicks. I was born in a swanky hospital, whole, like a vine tree while he was born years later; premature, a forceps baby with an elliptical lip in a local general hospital. And we blossomed out into teenage children each in our own time, playing games that kept our minds and bodies engaged.
The first encounter with him was when I fastened the rope around my neck and hung myself upside down in play over a tree. I was fourteen and at a picnic to a farmhouse. I bled through my nose and had a blackout. The doctor said I would have died, or I was blue, I don’t remember. I met Evan through the doors leading to a steamy, icy place. He looked tall and muscular and full grown and I recognized him only because he was the only person in the room. Evan had his back turned in introspection or debate I couldn’t be sure and he turned his head slowly to face me and peer into my soul.
He had landed there some time back through a delirium, hit on the head by a reckless car road accident. He was six. Some bloke had driven the car right over him and the people sleeping on a dead pavement where the street light did not reach. He sustained injuries to the head and escaped internal bleeding. Few others died. ‘You didn’t help me. You didn’t even take notice yet.’ said Evan. ‘I will I promise. As soon as I grow up.’ But that day never came or it came and went. I gather that Evan got better eventually and returned to the rest of his family. They were pavement stonecutters but gradually migrated to better jobs. It was years later that I crossed the flyover under which Evan, now a contract laborer, worked. This flyover was to bridge two parts of the city also dividing the underbelly living under it from the rich ones flying over it. Evan was laboring and I was stuck in traffic. That’s all I know about us before we were brought back to this steamy, icy place. ‘Did you see me then? I was about to fall off the railing. I was going to lose my balance if in time I hadn’t heard an impatient honk from a car that turned out to be yours.’ ‘It is impossible’, I told Evan speaking through thought, ‘that you could relate such small things.’ ‘It is only small things that are relatable’, came his reply. I waited for the scene to dawn. Yes, I was sitting in the car. It was a blue Mercedes and I was running late for an appointment. An important client from overseas had been waiting to see me and sign a deal. I waited impatiently amidst immense traffic under the flyover where Evan worked. Evan was shown as a dirty grey man sweating through the seams of his thin shirt with exhaustion painted on his face like greasepaint. He was called Raghav and would have been inconspicuous if it was not for that loud, yellow metal hat that he wore that was supposed to protect the heads of laborers. ‘You had promised to help me’ said Evan in a soft voice as a wave of vapor arose. This place was something I knew before where he and I had met for centuries if not generations. It is like a non place, a place that cannot be described and yet has an existence. A place filled with ice blocks that do not swell the cores of the feet because there are no feet and do not fill the nose with cold because there is no nose or air but only thick ice cold vapors that breathe and rise heavenwards. Only there are no clouds and this is heaven. ‘Yes’ came the hiss of his reply as he picked on my thoughts. ‘At least you remember something now.’ I make a promise once again to help Evan. At this he turns and I see a light shinning through his heart. Was it God? Or was it goodness? ‘How will I do it’ I ask myself before retreating and being sucked back into my body and waking up bandaged from head to toe. An electric pole had come off weak under the flyover and smashed into my car electrocuting it. I had been saved only because of Evan’s timely act. Now the debt had to be repaid. Once I recovered I tracked him down and saw to his education. He was put into a night school and I had a social worker look upon him. He was twenty four though he looked seventeen, and I thirty-two. Quite a distance when you think that we looked mirror replicas of each other in heaven. But I guess heaven does that to you. It subverts reality. I checked on him every fortnight for eight months through the social worker until I divorced my first wife, flew abroad, remarried and relocated. And Evan vanished to another site on another construction project and our paths never crossed and we were never made to have another near death experience. My debt was finally paid and I managed to do it in good time too. Today I don’t owe Evan anything. But I may owe others, who knows. I don’t go near sharp or inflammable objects anymore and I make sure to have my car windows tinted. Bio: Rochelle Potkar works as a scriptwriter for children's education films. She won a gold place for her short story, The Point of Irish Coffee at the 2008 Revenge Inkcontest, which will soon appear in a print anthology. Her stories have appeared in Muse India, Shine Journal, an anthology of paranormal stories by Unisun publications and is due to appear in Cantaraville, Bewildering Stories and Women Writers. She lives in Mumbai.
I was outside the house on the same pavement strolling with my friends that night, planning a long road trip. We had seen a hullaballoo on the road, a car with a cracked bonnet standing near a wailing tribe of people, onlookers and policemen. But we drove past as the morning dawned to the farmhouse that had the tree with the rope on it.