He’s almost forgotten about the phone call and the message on his page. 

Then, one day, as he checks his wall, he incidentally clicks on the link that did not work, on the message she had left. And this time it works. It takes him straight to her page.

He hesitates, as if on the edge of a deep fault, unable to see how far he would fall. Then he plunges…

At first he is lost. His own page is minimalist. Her wall is densely packed, with an impressive list of “friends” and pictures. He looks at her profile picture. The red hair, the young face, the green eyes, the full lips, a simple flowered blouse… a beautiful young woman, albeit a little old-fashioned. Something stirs at the deep end of his memories…  

He decides to read her profile. She has listed as much as she could, her schools, where she’s lived, where she worked. She was born two years before him, near the town where he spent most of his childhood. She’d also attended the same high school. He pauses. What he is looking at is Melissa’s page. One of her pictures is that of an adolescent, fresh-faced, athletic boy, standing in front of what looks like a school entrance with other youngsters. Julian looks at the picture, his heart beating, suddenly transported in time. It was his school, and that young man is him, probably a couple of years before he left for the army. 

He realises that Sarah is standing behind him: “An old flame has caught up with you?” she asks tenderly, with a touch of concern in her voice.

There is something else on Melissa’s page, a link to a location with a photograph: a place called Chi.

Julian pauses again, his mind a whirlpool of conflicting feelings and memories. Then, as he sits still, his mind suddenly sees her, the girl at the school gate, waiting for him, tall and smiling. A wave of nostalgia submerges him: the old town, the medieval streets, the library where he worked and studied, the provincial railway station, the ugly buildings from the post-war period, the school, the calm waters of the canal… 

And Melissa. His forgotten friend, his adolescence sweetheart. What happened to her? And why all the secrecy? Why could she not just approach him, write to him, say who she was? 

Reading his mind Sarah says “Maybe she has a grudge?” 

Thousands of pictures flash past Julian’s eyes: the small shops, the cathedral, Melissa at the swimming pool, her breasts, him boxing to pulp that big thug who had insulted her, their walks along the river, his mother asking him who that tall girl was she saw with him at the market… 

A sudden dread seizes him: where is Melissa now? And this page – what is the meaning of it? He takes a closer look. The friends listed on her page are all of her, of his generation, but there is something else: when he tries to follow the links they all lead to the same message. He is not allowed to see their profiles. 

“She’s protecting their privacy, and yours…,” Sarah says calmly.

Something else attracts Julian’s attention. There are notes, scores of them, some by Melissa. For a second he hesitates, and then he starts reading.

The early notes sweep through three years of her life. The years they were together, his school years, the years before the war and the world took him away.  Melissa has written at first a sort of journal, recounting their first meeting, their first kiss, her hopes, their walks, the many kisses that  followed, the tender touches, her wondering why he seemed so gentle, almost shy with her, and such a tiger with the others, whoever they were. She guesses at his internal violence, the turmoil in his young mind. She was ready to give him everything, yet she admits to her puzzlement, at times even irritation. She also wrote about the delight of those days, their intimacy, his way of ignoring the jealous looks, the sly comments of the other girls. How he fought for her, suddenly changed, his fists tight, his jaw hardened, the pitiless concentration of a street fighter. She made it her mission to win him over, and to give him happiness – forever her virgin lover. 

The last sad note is of a walk they took along the river, when he spoke to her of the war, and of a man’s duty. She was puzzled, and worried. Then the tone of the notes change. Melissa was alone, and he was gone, with hardly a good bye.

At first she is expected him to write, perhaps even to visit. She tried to talk to some of his friends, those whom she thought, would be willing to share their knowledge of where he might be. No-one she spoke to knew.  In desperation she decided to contact his parents. His mother only said that her son has gone to fight. Neither she nor Julian’s dad would  give away anything else. 

Melissa is desperate. There was only one country he could have gone to, and this was beyond Melissa’s reach. It was a hellhole of murder, torture and destruction, closed to anyone not directly involved with the fighting. At night she cried, remembering the days, with him, with him alive, remembering their love. Then the notes stopped being a journal. It is as if someone else took over, and began reporting, factually, without any feeling.

The next note is a newspaper extract. 

Julian turns pale as a wraith. Sarah, suddenly aware of a deadly silence, looks up: her husband is crying. Silent, cold tears, tears of despair. She looks at the screen.

The excerpt states that the body of Ms Melissa Baudoin, daughter of Mr and Mrs Baudoin, a respected family of a local village, aged nineteen, was found at dawn, in a small lane near a night club where she was seen dancing with several men two hours earlier.  She’d been strangled by unknown assailants and her wrists were cut. 

There is a date: Melissa was murdered twenty years earlier.

Image source: Pinterest

<< Nothingness                            

>> Jane