Odyssey

Odyssey by Chris Green

The huge red and green trucks thunder along the carriageways in both directions. There is something both hostile and haphazard about the way they cross from lane to lane, throwing up dense clouds of dust from the parched road surface. The trucks are military in design with names like KRAZ and VRͶX, spelt out in assertive typefaces over sinister radiator grilles, their menace tempered only by their remarkable luminosity through the haze. On each wagon, the red and the green bodywork sparkles as if neon-lit.

I have no sense of smell, but the powerful stench of diesel from these precipitate leviathans somehow overcomes my olfactory disorder and makes me feel nauseous. We are close to the side of the road and we are on foot, which seems somewhat foolhardy out here in the fading light. Although we are miles from civilisation, it has not occurred to us that we might hitch a ride in one of the trucks: they seem to exist only in a virtual sense, as if they belong to a separate realm. Perhaps it is through fatigue, but we do not speculate on the mission of these ominous convoys, even though there is no other traffic on the road. No private cars or buses. The terrain stretches out all around us for miles in every direction. Featureless and barren. We pass road signs, but these are in Persian script. Not that it would help us much were they not. We do not know the name of anywhere in these parts.

I must have blacked out at some point earlier because I have no idea how we have ended up in Iran, close now to the border with Iraq. If Lois and I booked a holiday, I have a strong feeling that this is not what we would have had in mind. I remember sitting at home on the terrace of our apartment, looking at promotional pictures of blue seas and beaches resplendent with sturdy coconut palms.

Towards dusk, we follow a rough track towards what looks like a small village, and after a few hundred yards arrive outside a gnarled wooden shack with an illuminated sign with an orange and red logo and some Arabic writing. Hesitantly, we step inside hoping that we might be able to buy food. A group of men in brightly coloured djellabas sit around a long table playing some sort of communal board game. They do not appear to register our arrival. A television mounted high up in the far corner of the room playing an Arab news station is thrashing out an issue with some malevolence. A map of the UK comes up on the screen. The attention of the men is captured by this. There are one or two guttural mutterings from the table, followed by an angry shout and a burst of waving of arms in the air. It seems prudent for us to leave. Once outside, we hear a shot ring out. Lois and I run. There is altogether too much going on here, none of it fortuitous. I begin to feel very tired.
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I awake with a start and switch on the light, bringing to life a flickering fluorescent tube. I establish that I am alone. The room I find myself in is familiar in an ambiguous kind of way, although deeply unattractive. The walls are deep purple and most of the furniture is black. In the corner is a lacquered rococo dresser on which is a vase of dead flowers and a stuffed marmoset in a glass case. I form the impression that I have been here a few days, perhaps emerging now from a protracted slumber. I notice I have several days’ growth of beard. Was I clean-shaven before? I sense I was. Some of the clothing scattered around the floor looks like it might belong to me, which seems a reasonable assumption. I struggle for some moments with my short-term memory. My recall is close to zero. I have in the back of my mind something about holidays. It occurs that people rarely go on holiday alone. So who, am I on holiday with? What might my partner’s name be? I cannot remember. I call out several names in turn. Lois! Natasha! Mercedes! Each of these names seems to hold a significant association. I try others. Sharon! Tracey! Rover! Rover is something of a longshot. I have no memory of owning a dog.

No one replies. I push back the duvet, which sends the Gideon bible and a wooden ocarina hurtling to the floor. I have a quick swill in the blackened enamel sink, slip on my jeans and Iceman hoody, and search for clues. I look for items that might be useful in my present situation like a mobile phone, map, passport, tickets or money. I conduct a thorough search and come up with a registration document for a Dodge Challenger and some Barclaycard receipts for night-time lingerie, neither of which seems particularly helpful. I venture down the stairs. Dusty etchings reminiscent of Jake and Dinos Chapman hang on the walls, and the empty echo of a lingering silence hangs in the air. There is a small lobby at the foot of the stairs. I ring the bell more as a gesture than with any real hope of someone appearing. I can’t help noticing a 1983 A-Team calendar on the wall. Am I in some kind of time warp?

I take a hesitant walk outside. I experience the feeling of being outside myself, like an onlooker on my situation. It is dark, but although it is dark, objects still cast a stubborn shadow as if it were light. The half-standing buildings and piles of collapsed masonry and rubble suggest to me that the place has been bombed and abandoned. There are no signs of recent habitation. No vehicles. No bodies. I wonder momentarily how it happened. Is it a terrorist attack, or is there a war going on at this very moment, whenever this is, in whatever country I am in? In whatever year? The building I have come from is the only one still standing. Remarkable that it still has electricity. But this is far from the only peculiarity. In the distance, the old man in a long overcoat and homburg hat calling to his cats has a spectral aspect. I wave to him and call out, but he does not seem to see or hear. I approach and call again, but still, he does not acknowledge me.

I move on down the street. I speculate further about where I am and how I came to be there (by road, rail, or interplanetary craft maybe) but to little avail. My memory refuses to join in with the exercise. On finding a signpost in an unfamiliar script, for no lucid reason, I ignore the more likely roads back to civilisation and take a narrow path where the marker on the sign has been broken off. Tall Berberis hedging flourishes on either side of the path. It becomes difficult to see anything at all in the unmitigated gloom. The ground is uneven and several times I stumble and have to break my fall.

After covering a few hundred yards, I reach a clearing. Amidst the faint shafts of light, I can make out a dozen or so small igloo-shaped buildings, some constructed of regular light-coloured wooden blocks, and others made of wicker so that they looked like large baskets. A voice tells me this is ‘where the children lived’. I look around. I imagine it might be the old man with the cats that has spoken, but no one is there. What children? Where were they? What is this place?

I continue on my way, taking a track through a shallow wooded area. Mushrooms of all shapes and sizes grow in the spaces between the trees. I recognise the red and white spotted ones from children’s stories. Stories I recall I have read to my daughter. I have a daughter. My partner is called Lois and I have a daughter named Charlotte. She is five, or is it twelve? Pretty much everything else seems hazy. Like where we live or what has happened or how the holiday, if it is a holiday, has turned out like this. Something about red and green trucks is trying to make its way into my consciousness when I come eventually to a disused railway station covered in brown ivy and blind black parrots. None of this surely was in the brochure.
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Lois and I drive up the steep ravine in a dark green coach with running bars along the side. I feel l have done this many times. Perhaps every day. But Lois seems excited and wants to take a turn at driving, so I move over and I let her. I sit on the running board to take in the view, although there is no view, just the occasional colony of startled bats caught in the headlights. As we climb, the passage between the sides of the gully becomes narrower and steeper. The pitch of the engine becomes higher and higher. In places, there are only a couple of inches between the sides of our carriage and the granite rocks on the sides of what has now developed into a railway track. Our carriage is one of several being hauled uphill by an ungainly steam locomotive. We are in the goods van. A woman in military fatigues is holding a baby wrapped in a block of ice. The ice begins to melt. The script is off the scale weird. What strange world is this is where, without warning, the landscape can change before my eyes? Whoever is responsible for this wild production is making full use of the orchestra.

As the train carries on up the incline, the engine struggles to cope. A tune is going round and round in my head. It has such a simple melody, but I can’t work out what it is. This occupies my mind for several moments, taking my thoughts away from the surrealism of my situation. The engine’s boiler sounds as if it is about to blow apart. Thick clouds of smoke belch out. The tune in my head is growing faster and faster, keeping pace with the engine’s pistons. Is it Philip Glass?? Brian Eno? Talking Heads? It feels as if my head will explode. Finally, I work it out. It is Frères Jacques.

The chasm widens dramatically and the ground levels out. We join a purposeful procession of people on foot, some carrying pikes and tridents, or are they clarinets and saxophones? It is hard to tell in the gloom. Several of them are dressed as Napoleon and hold raised flags emblazoned with arcane symbols. I cannot say for sure whether we are still on the train. Or if there has ever been a train. So great is my disorientation, I wouldn’t be able to tell a green field from a cold steel rail. Where does that come from?

From our vantage, we look down point on a magnificent river estuary bathed in reflections from the town on the other side. Zipping up the river at astonishing speeds are two beluga whales. Beads of gold forming a chain of shimmering ripples on the water lay in their wake as they dive in and out of the water in a determined path upstream. They must be travelling at a hundred miles an hour and measure two hundred feet from tip to tail. A crowd that has gathered on the bank to watch. They let out an appreciative cheer. It seems to be some kind of fish race. Wait a minute though, whales aren’t fish, are they? They are reptiles. Or is it mammals?

I feel a huge jolt and my memory begins to return. A rush of random thoughts reaches out to connect. Unexceptional everyday associations with the suburban day to day. Trips to the retail park, the garden centre, the cinema. Visits to the doctors, the dentists. The daily queues at the Scott McKenzie Roundabout on the way to the office. The endless zoom meetings where you check your Facebook feed and nod off to reports of missed targets. The Cessna light aircraft belonging to the TV chef with the double-barrelled name that crash landed in the cricket field behind the leisure centre on my way home one evening. The drunken karaoke version of I Got You Babe at The Whistle Blower with Amy Rogers from work. The February storm which brought down our roof in Normal Terrace. Going through the mail with Lois at the breakfast table, hoping the insurance cheque has arrived. It’s a little hazy, but somewhere in amongst it, there’s a letter which reads, Congratulations. You have won the holiday of your dreams.

Copyright ©: Chris Green, 2023: All rights reserved