'You always have been rather remote, of course, I could tell that, but now it's as if you stood on a threshold and you dared not step over it. That evening in Marienbad, said Austerlitz, I could not admit to myself how right everything Marie said was, but today I know why I felt obliged to turn away when anyone came to close to me, I know that I thought this turning away made me safe. . .' (W G Sebald, 2001, Austerlitz, London: Penguin, 304)
Ok, let's play the pause game one more time. I'd stop time here, if I had the chance:
We had walked all day and talked the way we always did. We had picnicked in the shelter of a dry-stone wall. Yorkshire in autumn: the sky stretched out blue and forgiving above us, and the beech trees were dressed in copper-red.
We walked for miles and, with you, I felt complete. As I always had and did with you. With you, I knew, I was safe.
We dropped down the hill. We passed the Co-op on the left and the Inn on the Bridge on the right. We reached the station, and laughed about something I can no longer remember.
You said, 'I'll see you soon'. And I said, 'yes, please'.
I wanted to add, 'I love you. I don't like this life without you', but I didn't dare say it; say how I felt. I had learned to be wary. Even of you. We had learned to be as bad as each other at not daring to ask for help.
You said, 'I'll see you soon', but, you never came back.
I'd stop time before you said, 'I'll see you soon' because, then, there would've been no promise to break. And I wouldn't have wasted so much time anticipating, desperately longing, for your return.
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