Violet-Blue
I had just switched into mathematics, and had to stay an additional year to earn the degree. During this time, all my friends grew up and moved from the old wooden jungles, to their new monkey zoos and indoor labyrinths.
You can probably imagine that it was hard to watch for an entire year as most of my class became mildly rich overnight, while I descended further into debt. In the evenings, they soaked up Murakami novels, while I spilled pasta sauce on Fundamentals of Algebraic Topology. Weekends, my friends spent with Madeon; I, with Erdős. And indeed some days were awful; some days, I could not help but think what a foolish choice I had made.
But most days were nothing of the sort. Most days I would wake up at nine-thirty, wash, eat some fruit, and head to class, where I marinated in theorems and their proofs until well into the evening.
I listened to waltzes. I had developed a particular affinity for them as a child in youth orchestra—they were always fun to play, and typically not too difficult. I liked to start my mornings with Dvořák’s Serenade for Strings, the second movement in C-sharp minor. I would pass anonymously through the halls, conjuring up a ballroom, with all the students waltzing about me in a steady triple meter. The velvety tones of a Czech melody, wistful yet restrained, set them all in motion. With no acquaintances in my midst, I danced solo, 1–2–3, 1–2–3, from lecture to lecture.
In the evenings I would pick up dinner on the walk home and down it while reading the week’s problem sets. By the time my progress was satisfactory, it would be well past midnight, and my body would crawl eagerly towards a dreamless sleep, though my mind was indifferent.
In the spring, sometime in the middle of March, I came home to a slight feeling that something was missing. I wanted something more, but not money, or time. As I was working on a term paper, my mom called to ask how I was doing. I said I was fine.
“It’s friends, son. You need to get out there and talk to people, make new friends.”
“I know. I’m trying,” I lied.
But that was not it. And that night as I slipped away from Earth, the unresolved yearning grew and grew.
I found myself sitting at a table for two, chatting with a young woman of similar age. The setting was blurry but familiar: a small, quiet cafe in the student district of Nagoya, where I had spent a semester abroad. I had always despised dates, but she and I both seemed to be enjoying ourselves.
And though the dream-state never exposes its details, I had a strong sense that the two of us talked about anything and everything: the savoriness of the street food, phases of depression we had experienced in high school, the university subjects we studied with such mild enthusiasm, and how we wanted to make our parents proud (a corny thing to be driven by, we knew). We must have been chatting for many hours, as the dome over the dream-world turned a deep violet-blue, and she and I both had to leave for home.
On the train ride back to my host family’s apartment, all the self-awareness I lacked during the day came out to play. I began to feel a hopelessness burning like a mild acid, only slightly at first but crescendoing to a wicked agony, at which point I woke to a clock that read 6:52 AM. I breathed deeply, then got out of bed to start the day early.
In the weeks and months that followed, the dreams came in many variations. Sometimes I was again on a date—they were always in Japanese cities I had visited—though surprisingly no dream was ever sexual. Other times I was in California with long-lost friends from junior high, or occasionally with family. What never changed, however, was that each day when I woke, the slate was wiped of any trailing sense of longing, connection, bitterness, or gratification, and the waltz continued precisely as it had left off. At school, job fair season came and went, but I did not notice.
Before long, it came time to graduate. The morning after the last day of exams, while others marched on stage in medieval robes, I boarded my flight back west.
I put on a pair of old Sony noise-canceling headphones that I brought only on flights, and summoned my waltz playlist, starting with the Dvořák. Why not, I thought. I could not shake off the need for a routine anyway.
The customary announcements were made, and passengers were seated, and the plane made its way toward the long runway. The stranger to my right glared disapprovingly, but I glanced at my phone, and noticed a message. It was from a woman I met in Nagoya two years ago, who I had hardly spoken to since.
At the cafe, it occurred to me. Or was it? Had I not gone there alone to study? It had been too long, and I could not be sure anymore. I began to write a response, but there was no time; with a jolt, the plane began to roar forward. Dvořák’s Serenade gave way to the rude opening of Khachaturian’s Masquerade.
As if it had taken the jolt of takeoff to awaken me, I felt as though I could think for myself for the first time in years. And my first original thought was that in that moment, I was thankful for being on a cheap flight. Not a car or bus or cruise line—somewhere I could text a friend, or call an ex, or talk to someone sympathetic—though everything in me wanted to do so. For the time being, I could do nothing and be nothing but myself: a jobless fresh graduate confined to the window, clutching in hand a message that would have to wait a good six hours. I sat back, closed my eyes, and let the unrestrained longing of a Soviet waltz carry me into the clouds.
This story appeared in Trouble Sleeping, issue 1.
