Paris, Charles de Gaulle Airport. Saturday afternoon, second day of December. Sitting on a red couch, drinking gin and tonic, waiting for the flight after the one I missed, the flight after, I am watching people coming and going.
A sound like the music that used to play when I was a baby, sleeping in my cradle. Departures, arrivals, the sound of baggage, bags, trolleys rolling..
Watching the crowd, looking at the bar in front of me: a woman in her early forties, beautiful eyes and make-up that reminds me of an aunt that used to visit us every December before Christmas, is talking with a man. They are strangers, I think. After all, she was sitting already atthe bar when he came, asked for a lighter and ever since then they started talking.
Twenty minutes are past, they are chatting as if they’ve known each other for ages. I go on observing them: she is smiling while he is trying to hold her hand-could they’ve known each other or is it a brief unexpected encounter in an airport, where strangers can become friends in a very short time because they need company? Sound of departures and arrivals, I am looking for the sign of brief unexpected encounters.
A man is staring at me for some time now- or is he staring at me? or is he wondering what I am writing? You see, the problem with writing is that it is active and attracts attention, especially in places like this bar in a big airport in the centre of Europe, where everyone is either reading or chatting with a stranger, or at least staring at other people doing different things. The sound again.. I am staring at the man too- he starts writing.
I am stopping for a moment, ordering coffee, lighting a cigarette, looking around, waiters are serving people, smiling, with some of them they are rather friendly. The woman and the man go on talking, they are laughing loudly now. Last sip of gin, first sip of espresso, a sweet nostalgia for an unexpected, brief encounter, somewhere in the past or the future. I pick up the pen again and get ready to go on writing:
‘Strangers at airports can’/but.. hold on a minute.
The man and the woman are getting ready to go, he is helping her put on her coat- perhaps they knew each other after all? They are walking to the exit together and, then, he is helping her with the suitcase, she is kissing him. No.. this was not an unexpected ‘airport’ encounter, I was wrong. That was a moment of life that I only happened to witness in an airport. So much about unexpected circumstances and brief encounters…
Final sip of the espresso, the sound of departures reminds me that I should get ready, no more writing. I am walking to the exit, I am looking at the man (he stopped writing when he saw me leaving), he is vaguely smiling at me, I am smiling back and start walking fast- I am almost running away.
‘I have to catch the flight after/after the one I missed’, she said.
Every year
