On the Platform | headlong into darkness
Apparently, he was rational and inquisitive to the howling end.
With heavy steps, the Lawyer imagined a crowd at the end of it all. Eyes down, tracing dark stains of blood trickle through dusty cracks where the wood was caked with soot and mud, red streamlets which trickled down the platform lengthwise, dripping in a patter, patter, patter at the steps where he stopped. Some kind of holler sounded from the silence before him, but he kept his gaze. He must be close enough to view. Jeering and hooting, and a deep rustle of fabric and hair that sounded like autumnal reeds on the banks of the Seine. The little see-saw came into view now. A small, single plank; the wood shone from its numerous visitors, each time a little smoother. Perhaps this device was once part of some skiff or cart, a stabilising device next to an axle or a grate. The Lawyer scoffed. Apparently, he was rational and inquisitive to the howling end. He was the one to break things apart, to isolate each component and find its purpose. But the shouts grew clearer now, first mere hazes of emotion and now distinct words, phrases. And in the whim of the moment, he pondered how absurd his existence was, to see an imprint of his earliest memories displayed conveyed presently to him in a cruel twist of fortune; when he was a little boy in the schoolyard, rocking back and forth on a similar plank. Was this bascule, which he sat upon now, once aflush and green with leaves? He felt dizzy, and strong hands gripped his shoulders and down he went. The wooden board had an earthy smell, like a long day’s toil in the woodland, pursuing boar or capercaille. He closed his eyes now. There was no reason to open them anymore, anyway. And with darkness came dissolution. Almost on cue, abstract notions of virtue and reason dissipated like entropic stars far, far away. What was left was slightly faded, like watercolours in rain, faces rippling over faces, all gone, all gone. The schoolyard, the see-saw, the boy. And it was a strange love, he confessed. But it was even stranger to reason with all this once it’s been done and over. And there was no shivering. And he did not stall his breath. And when that gleaming pendulum did come down, down, down
— he was still, himself, in quietness.
