Between Marco Polo And The Strawberries

I’d never thought that I could talk about the complexity of life, for I never had experienced the blow of the Fates. For eighteen years I had lived a perfect life; the life others envy, the life others dreamed of. So, when the first surge of misfortune had struck me, I just found myself crumpled in this compartment of a train with a suitcase; pictures of my smashed perfect life playing like a slideshow on the train’s window.
-----
‘Marco?” someone called.
“Come in.”
Leo groaned the moment he entered my room. I had flipped it upside down. Everything was a complete mess and I was crawling on the floor like a two-year-old.
He sat by the window overlooking a meadow of fully-grown wild grasses. “Learning how to crawl?”
“I lost my gift for Mom,” I replied rummaging a box of childhood stuffs. I pushed the box under my bed and began rummaging my brain instead.
He sat quietly, starring outside. See, Leo was a little melodramatic but when he was looking outside from that window motionless, there’s nothing going on in his mind except those times when we were just kids playing in that meadow until we were rolling on the ground, our whole body itching.
Do you remember? That was his first line to start his drama followed by repetitive account of our adventures as kids. Sometimes I would be kind to reminisce frantically with him, but most times I would just groan or pretend to listen.
“Do you remember?” Leo asked.
“Not that again. I’m in a room-wide search right now Bro.” I was right; he was going back on old times.
“Well, something of that. Remember Marco Polo?”
I grimaced. “Marco? It’s me. But… who’s Polo?”
“Rack your brain you hopeless, I mean Marco Polo,” emphasizing the last two words.
I never had a good memory and my brain needed to be really rack sometimes. And so, I racked it. Marco Polo? Marco Polo? Is that the guy in history that…
He stood up and walked on all fours cooing Marco then Polo.
Bah! Now i remembered.
---
It was Sunday, ten years ago; I was sitting by the road adjacent the meadow waiting for my parents to come home.
“Marco?” someone called from the grasses.
“Who’s there?” I asked.
But the voice didn’t seem to hear and continued calling, “Polo?”
I looked around to see if there was someone else who was by chance named Polo, but no one was around.
The voice kept calling Marco then Polo, getting louder and louder as it approached.
“Marco!” the voice boomed.
“Hello?” I called, slowly getting scared.
“Polo!” the voice boomed again.
I stood up from my seat and walked backwards to the house, keeping my eyes on the tall grasses.
“Marco!” the voice boomed again.
Startled and scared I shouted, “Yes! I am Marco!” My heart was beating frantically and the silence of the afternoon worsened my fear. I could not move from where I stood.
“There you are,” the voice said sweetly.
My heart thumped even harder because the bad guy had finally found his victim and he was going to punish him until he drew his last breath- at least, that was what I thought.
The grasses moved; someone was walking through them finding his way out. I caught my breath and waited for a beefy man in tattered jeans and muscle shirts.
“Excuse me?” A boy about my age but a bit taller came out from the grasses cuddling a guinea pig. His hair and clothes full of dried leaves and grain stalks as if he just had a fight with the grasses. Obviously, he heard what I had said because he looked at me intently and waited for an answer.
“You’re… You’re calling for Marco,” I answered still stuttering from my residing fear. “I, I am Marco.”
The boy studied me carefully then smiled showing his dimpled cheeks and gone incisors.
---
Still dimpled but with new incisors, that boy was in my room now cooing Marco then Polo looking for the ring. He explained to me the day we met that Marco Polo was a traveller’s chant used to find something missing. He used it to find his missing coins, missing socks, missing anything.
“I always told you Marco Polo chant works,” he beamed at me holding a ring between his fingers.
“I always believe in that.” Yes, I always believed on how that chant works, I just forget it, sometimes.
“Another proof of your Marco Polo chant?” Sophie asked, standing by the door.
“Hey,” I greeted then kiss her forehead.
“You should know that chant Sophie, it really helps,” Leo suggested.
She smiled. “I know, but I think I’m not going to suffer memory lost any time soon.”
“Uhm… who are you again?” I teased. She just punched my arm.
“Are you not yet done with this?” Leo asked. He was standing beside my linen-covered easel.
“Don’t you dare remove that linen,” I warned him. He and Sophie were dying to see what I was painting, but I was still working on it, so no one’s allowed to take a peek.
He raised his hand in surrender. “Fine, just finished it quickly 20th century Michelangelo.”
---
I didn’t know where I was bound to go riding this train, but life left me no choice. I knew I didn’t have the right to question my fate, but was else was to blame?
The sun was now shining brightly in the sky, maybe it was already noon. How long had I been sitting here? How long had I been going back on those times of smiles and tears and pains? For how long should I still sit here before I forget that my world had already been doomed and I needed to find a new one?
I was probably getting ripped from reality. I just want to forget everything.
I was awakened from my trance when a woman knocked on the train’s compartment-door. She was smiling at me softly, the smile I had been seeing my whole life.
“Mom?” I stood up and quickly opened the door. I hugged her tightly and felt her warm hug caressing my desolated soul. “Mom.”
“Marco,” she said in her soft voice.
“I miss you Mom.”
“I miss you, too. But Marco, don’t wish to forget everything.”
I didn’t answer. I just want to hear her voice, for her to continue talking.
“Marco, pains are part of people’s lives to make them stronger. I know your pain, but never wish not to remember anything. Cry if you want to, run if you like, get mad; but after all that, remember who you are. Remember everyone you left behind. Maybe now is not the right time, eventually you will find your heart again, and if you did, follow it. It will always lead you to the right. You’re stronger than this son.”
My tears started falling.
“I love you Marco.” She kissed my forehead and disappeared in thin air. The reality that my Mom was gone slapped me again.
“I love you too, Mom.”
Then, I woke up. The sun was now shining brightly in the sky, maybe it was already noon. I looked at the compartment’s door, but no one was there. I was still alone.
---
It was dark and I felt like I have been sleeping for quite a long time. My heart felt heavy because of pain, but my tears seemed to be spent up.
A silhouette was leaning against the wall.
“Marco,” her voice was husky, maybe from crying. She tried to sound upbeat to see my eyes open but the shiver in her voice showed fear. She walked to the foot of my bed and sat down. The streak of silver moonlight that escaped the slightly opened curtains hit her face and revealed her serene and lovely features.
“Are you hungry?” Sophie asked without looking at me.
I didn’t answer.
“I brought strawberries.”
Again, I didn’t answer. She was silent.
“You shouldn’t have told me that you won’t fail me if eventually you will,” and with that, she stormed out of the room dropping the bowl strawberries on the floor.
“You knew her better than anyone else,” Leo said. He was standing by the door. “She stayed here not bothering to remember herself and you can’t even say a word to her?”
Anger crept through me. I stood up from my bed and said, “What do you want me to tell her? That every… everything will be okay? Tell her I will be okay?”
“No.”
“Then what Leo? What do you want me to do?”
“Get out of this room and try to at least remember what is outside of this hell!”
“Great! As if it’s the easiest thing to do!”
“And this is the easiest thing to do? Barely living? You’ve been sulking in here for a month!”
“You do not know how hard it is to be left alone.”
“Alone? Could you not live with us, with your girlfriend, with me? You still have us. You’re not totally broken Marco, you’ve just been cracked.” He was silent, and then turned his back on me. “Don’t wait until no one was left waiting for your return, Marco.” Then, he walked away.
I was left standing in the darkness. Whatever things they said, no one could erase the fact that Mom and Dad were dead. I felt an urge to run after Leo and hug him. I did not know why. Maybe I just wanted him to comfort me, but a voice whispered to me that it was more than that.
I never talked since the day my parents died. I kept to myself the pain and grief I was feeling. I thought no one could understand me nor save me from that destruction. Life has drained me. I was living yet I felt lifeless.
The next morning I woke up, I looked around to see if Leo or Sophie stayed, but found no one. I got up from my bed and opened the curtains, the sun was rising.
I scanned my room and saw the linen-covered easel. I walked to it and removed the white fabric revealing an unfinished painting of three people, people who had gone a long way; who had shared laughter, smiles, jokes, tears and pains together. But now, they were falling apart because of the grief burdening one of them.
I walked to the cupboard and retrieved my painting materials. I wondered if I would be able to draw their eyes and lips that would show how they looked million years ago. It was hard remembering their smiles because the last time I had seen their faces, they reflect nothing but pain.
I closed my eyes and tried to remember Sophie’s bright eyes every time I gave her strawberries, her gentle smile as she said thank you; Leo’s expressions as he laughed at my silly jokes, every time he saw his crush, every time he thought of something odd, the way he smiled to himself; and my joy every time I was with them.
Finally, I did it! The perfect expression of three happy friends.
“This is now fictitious,” I whispered to myself, starring at the just finished painting.
I walked back to my bed when I accidentally stepped on a strawberry on the floor. That was when I remembered that Sophie brought it last night and I just broke my promise to her. Though it was a childish promise, I had tried to keep it for five years.
---
I was on my way home when I first met her. She was crying and pleading someone not to leave. She was crying not bothering to wipe the dripping tears on her cheeks. The man did not even care to look at her before he got on his car and revived the engine then started driving immediately, leaving the girl crying on her knees.
I ran to help the girl and accompany her to seat by the roadside.
“I’m not crying,” she said. But of course I got better eyesight to believe her lie.
I got my handkerchief from my pocket and offered it to her.
“That’s yours. You’re supposed to be using it,” she managed.
“I do not cry.”
She got the hanky from my hand and wiped her tears but it kept falling.
“That man deserves no tears from you,” I told her trying to make her feel good.
“Don’t say it like he’d been a worst father to me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“He left us to live with another woman,” she said.
I was shocked to hear her say such personal family-thing to someone. I didn’t know what to say. “His decision was wrong.”
“You think so?” she asked, looking at me for the first time.
“Y… Yes. He will regret leaving such a nice daughter.”
She smiled.
“Do you like some strawberries?” I opened my backpack and got the pack of strawberries I bought from a fruit stand near school.
“Are they good? I haven’t tasted one yet.”
“They’re perfect, especially when you’re sad,” I replied and offered her one.
“Strawberries are strange,” she commented after a bite.
“Strange? Why?”
She smiled. “I don’t know because as what I’d just said, they are strange.”
I smiled even though I did not completely understood why strawberries were strange. “I guess this is your lucky day.”
“Huh?”
“First, you’ve just tasted the world’s most delicious fruit; and secondly, you just met your knight in shining armour,” I said with smile.
“Knights are supposed to give a vow to the one they serve,” she said.
I stood up and kneeled in front of her. “I, Marco from the Land of Strawberries swear to protect and make, what’s your name?”
“Sophie.”
“Swear to protect Lady Sophie against any harm and make her happy all the time with all my might. That vow should do, right?”
She nodded with a smile.
---
“Marco! ... Polo! … Marco! … Polo!” I heard someone shouting. I walked to the window overlooking the meadow of wild grasses. It was where the calling came from.
“Marco! … Polo!” the voice called again.
I scanned the wide range of grasses to see who was shouting in the middle of the afternoon sun. Soon, I saw Leo walking among the grasses shouting Marco then Polo.
For a while, I wondered what he was looking for. What was missing? His guinea pig died few years ago.
I sat by the window watching him as he ran and walked back and forth on the meadow shouting.
Hours passed but he didn’t bother to take a rest. The sun was about to set so I decided to go down and talk to him.
“Marco!” he shouted.
“Polo,” I said.
He turned around and faced me.
“You’re looking for something.” It was hard for me to say words after the tension of our talk last night.
He didn’t answer instead he walked quietly away from me.
I followed him.
He wounded deeper in the meadow. Suddenly, I saw the small clearing we made.
“I am looking for Marco,” he replied at last as he stopped at the centre of the small clearing.
“Present.” I replied raising my right hand.
His expression was gloomy. “Not you.”
His answer took me off guard.
“You’re not Marco. You’re not the Marco I knew. You’re someone else.”
His words slowly sank in me and I felt pain twisting my stomach. I was lost for words.
“The Marco I knew was long gone, what’s left now was someone I couldn’t understand anymore,” he said then sat down on the ground. “What’s left of him was just a soulless body.”
The instinct to defend myself again crept through me but I stopped my mouth from saying a single word. I knew my words would again attempt to burn bridges.
The sun started to set.
He lay on the ground and looked at the slowly darkening sky.
I lay beside him.
“I’m sorry.” I muttered.
“You really should be sorry for your behaviour,” he said. In my peripheral vision, I saw him looked at me with a smile.
We were silent as we looked at the first stars in the sky.
“They’re probably stars now,” he said.
I looked at him and saw that his eyes were closed. I felt his hand beside mine and without much deliberation, I held it. He did not react.
This time, I did not stopped my thoughts from flowing, I could not deny to myself anymore that I loved him, I loved my best friend, I loved Leo more than what was only supposed to be.
This is wrong, I thought to myself.
I closed my eyes and felt his soft touch in my hand. It was all clear now.
That was when I decided to leave. Emotions were getting strangled with each other. Heartfelt pains complicated things and what I was feeling was insanely wrong.
I left the next morning before first light, leaving only a note that read: I’m sorry.
---
The view from the train’s window had changed from trees to a wide range of green grasses.
“Marco. Polo. Marco. Polo,” I muttered to myself. I was looking for nothing, but I could not stop myself from chanting.
“Is someone’s looking for a handkerchief?” someone asked.
“I’m not crying,” I replied.
“You’re a bad liar,” Sophie said then offered me her handkerchief printed with strawberries.