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almondinflowerA Travelogue of Young Adulthood, part 2/?
Wordcount: 850
Summary: Series of vignettes centred around Fuji, Yukimura, Tezuka and Kirihara as twenty-somethings in Europe. In this part Yukimura explores Aix-en-Provence, and makes a phone call to an old friend.
Part 1 here.
Seiichi in fact knew everything, had known everything since before he even stepped on French soil. It was why he had come to see Fuji. Or at least partly why; he'd always liked Fuji as a person. Most of the time he had reason to believe that those feelings were reciprocated.
Fuji wished to say goodbye to his sister before beginning their journey, which meant that they would not leave until after the weekend. In order to give Fuji time to pack and prepare, Seiichi decided to spend the next two days exploring the town and surrounds by himself. He had a list of places he wanted to visit but only consulted it intermittently. It was good to be prepared, but never too prepared; there was a certain richness of experience that could only be encountered when you allowed yourself some spontaneity. This was true of life, and also of art.
Through a combination of planning and desultory wandering he had a delightful time in Aix-en-Provence. On the first morning he visited two museums and a library filled with old, yellow-papered books. After that he had lunch on the Cours Mirabeau, in a cozy, modern cafe that served its salads in pastel-coloured square bowls. Seiichi was pleased to find that he could understand the waiters with ease, even with their southern accents. His own spoken French was average, and badly pronounced despite his efforts, but exotic good looks and an easy smile served him well. He ignored the inner stings of humiliation that occurred whenever he made a simple error. Mistakes were inevitable, and he intended to speak better French by the end of summer.
He saw many things he wanted to sketch, as he walked through the streets: mainly fountains, with their stone decorations and falls of water catching the sunlight at brilliant angles. He found an ornate park bench outside a church and sat there for half an hour quickly pencilling out the scene before him: graceful old-fashioned buildings standing in rows, and and trees with flowers coming into bud everywhere. Next to a nearby streetlamp there was a child feeding pigeons; and across the street a golden retriever pranced at the feet of a blond-haired boy. There was a great deal of life in this place, too many pedestrians and changes in cloud and daylight and shadow; each time Seiichi looked up from his sketchpad the view was a little different. He smiled when he thought of the days to come and the places the two of them would see together, of the click and whirr of Fuji's camera while Seiichi searched for easel and charcoal, each of them seeking to capture the present moment in his own way.
In the evening he went back to his hotel and called Tezuka.
“I've met Fuji,” he said, after the necessary polite greetings. “He's much the the way you thought he would be.”
“Ah.” In the silence that ensued Seiichi could feel questions being considered and discarded in the other man's head.
“Not as bad as I feared,” he added. “I think Provence suits him. It's an awfully picturesque place.” Fuji had always liked beautiful things, and if he had a propensity for seeing the melancholy side of beauty – well, as long as he took pleasure in it, that was a good thing, wasn't it? “Do you want to talk to him? I can give you his phone number, if you like.”
Again, a pause. Seiichi listened to the background noise at the other end of the connection – a kettle boiling, muted sounds from a radio or television. Finally Tezuka spoke: “I hope the two of you have a good journey together.”
Seiichi thought he could hear an unspoken thank you in that response, unless he was imagining it. Hard to tell with Tezuka. “We should be able to visit you in Berlin next month. We'll catch up then.”
“I look forward to it. Akaya misses you.”
He raised a brow. “Is he being a nuisance again? I grew up with Sanada, you know; if you're too subtle I shall completely fail to understand you.”
Tezuka sounded amused. “No, he's not a nuisance.”
They exchanged a few more pleasantries (mostly initiated by Seiichi. Tezuka's responses were shorter, although gracious) and then hung up. They'd always gotten along well, although not with the intense, non-verbal recognition of kinship that Sanada and Tezuka seemed to share. Or Tezuka and Akaya, for that matter.
Akaya. It'd been such a long time. He placed his cellphone on the bedside table and lay back on the coverlet, staring up at the ceiling.
Tomorrow he would visit Mont Sainte-Victoire, where Cezanne used to paint in his mountain hut. He would not think about tennis. This last thought was almost a postscript, an old mental habit he'd thought long gone. He did not pay any attention to it, and if as he prepared for bed some memory stirred in him of sweat, pleasantly aching muscle, the springy sound of ball bouncing off racquet, it was only a superficial recollection, and did not cause pain in his sleep that night.
Wordcount: 850
Summary: Series of vignettes centred around Fuji, Yukimura, Tezuka and Kirihara as twenty-somethings in Europe. In this part Yukimura explores Aix-en-Provence, and makes a phone call to an old friend.
Part 1 here.
Seiichi in fact knew everything, had known everything since before he even stepped on French soil. It was why he had come to see Fuji. Or at least partly why; he'd always liked Fuji as a person. Most of the time he had reason to believe that those feelings were reciprocated.
Fuji wished to say goodbye to his sister before beginning their journey, which meant that they would not leave until after the weekend. In order to give Fuji time to pack and prepare, Seiichi decided to spend the next two days exploring the town and surrounds by himself. He had a list of places he wanted to visit but only consulted it intermittently. It was good to be prepared, but never too prepared; there was a certain richness of experience that could only be encountered when you allowed yourself some spontaneity. This was true of life, and also of art.
Through a combination of planning and desultory wandering he had a delightful time in Aix-en-Provence. On the first morning he visited two museums and a library filled with old, yellow-papered books. After that he had lunch on the Cours Mirabeau, in a cozy, modern cafe that served its salads in pastel-coloured square bowls. Seiichi was pleased to find that he could understand the waiters with ease, even with their southern accents. His own spoken French was average, and badly pronounced despite his efforts, but exotic good looks and an easy smile served him well. He ignored the inner stings of humiliation that occurred whenever he made a simple error. Mistakes were inevitable, and he intended to speak better French by the end of summer.
He saw many things he wanted to sketch, as he walked through the streets: mainly fountains, with their stone decorations and falls of water catching the sunlight at brilliant angles. He found an ornate park bench outside a church and sat there for half an hour quickly pencilling out the scene before him: graceful old-fashioned buildings standing in rows, and and trees with flowers coming into bud everywhere. Next to a nearby streetlamp there was a child feeding pigeons; and across the street a golden retriever pranced at the feet of a blond-haired boy. There was a great deal of life in this place, too many pedestrians and changes in cloud and daylight and shadow; each time Seiichi looked up from his sketchpad the view was a little different. He smiled when he thought of the days to come and the places the two of them would see together, of the click and whirr of Fuji's camera while Seiichi searched for easel and charcoal, each of them seeking to capture the present moment in his own way.
In the evening he went back to his hotel and called Tezuka.
“I've met Fuji,” he said, after the necessary polite greetings. “He's much the the way you thought he would be.”
“Ah.” In the silence that ensued Seiichi could feel questions being considered and discarded in the other man's head.
“Not as bad as I feared,” he added. “I think Provence suits him. It's an awfully picturesque place.” Fuji had always liked beautiful things, and if he had a propensity for seeing the melancholy side of beauty – well, as long as he took pleasure in it, that was a good thing, wasn't it? “Do you want to talk to him? I can give you his phone number, if you like.”
Again, a pause. Seiichi listened to the background noise at the other end of the connection – a kettle boiling, muted sounds from a radio or television. Finally Tezuka spoke: “I hope the two of you have a good journey together.”
Seiichi thought he could hear an unspoken thank you in that response, unless he was imagining it. Hard to tell with Tezuka. “We should be able to visit you in Berlin next month. We'll catch up then.”
“I look forward to it. Akaya misses you.”
He raised a brow. “Is he being a nuisance again? I grew up with Sanada, you know; if you're too subtle I shall completely fail to understand you.”
Tezuka sounded amused. “No, he's not a nuisance.”
They exchanged a few more pleasantries (mostly initiated by Seiichi. Tezuka's responses were shorter, although gracious) and then hung up. They'd always gotten along well, although not with the intense, non-verbal recognition of kinship that Sanada and Tezuka seemed to share. Or Tezuka and Akaya, for that matter.
Akaya. It'd been such a long time. He placed his cellphone on the bedside table and lay back on the coverlet, staring up at the ceiling.
Tomorrow he would visit Mont Sainte-Victoire, where Cezanne used to paint in his mountain hut. He would not think about tennis. This last thought was almost a postscript, an old mental habit he'd thought long gone. He did not pay any attention to it, and if as he prepared for bed some memory stirred in him of sweat, pleasantly aching muscle, the springy sound of ball bouncing off racquet, it was only a superficial recollection, and did not cause pain in his sleep that night.
