Dying to Know You Read online

  “What is, is.”

  “Meaning?”

  He glanced at me warily. He really wasn’t comfortable with this kind of talk.

  “What is there, is there. The river is there. The trees are there. You are there.”

  I thought for a moment.

  I said, “You remind me of a saying by an old Chinese or Japanese philosopher, I forget which. He said, ‘When I was young, I thought a river was a river and a mountain was a mountain. When I grew up, I thought a river wasn’t a river and a mountain wasn’t a mountain. Now I am old, I think a river is a river and a mountain is a mountain.’”

  Karl laughed. “I like that. I wish I’d said it.”

  Laughing too, I said, “You will, Karl, you will.”

  He laughed again, and took another sandwich and started eating hungrily again.

  I was beginning to know him. That movement meant Enough of this.

  “Well, anyway,” I said, “I’m no expert, but it seems to me you’re a pretty good fisherman.”

  “Except when I’m catching trees instead of fish.”

  Again we laughed.

  “How did you get to be so good?” I said. “Did you teach yourself?”

  He looked away.

  “No … My dad.”

  There was a sudden brittle silence.

  Why? Something to do with his father, obviously, but what?

  Everything about him at that moment warned me not to ask.

  I got out the flask of coffee. Asked him if he’d like some. He said nothing. Head still turned away. No movement.

  I filled two mugs and held one out to him.

  He took it without looking at me and drank.

  Nothing more was said.

  When he’d finished his coffee, he stood up and gathered his gear, still avoiding me.

  “Thanks,” he said and paused on the brink of saying something more, but all that came out was, “See you later.”

  And he strode off to the river.

  A raw nerve touched and no recovery.

  IV

  Dear Fiorella [or whatever],

  You asked me to tell you about love and what I think about it. The trouble is, I don’t know quite what I think about it, because I don’t know a lot about it. Or at least not like I think you mean.

  Don’t laugh, but I Googled it. There’re pages about it. A lot about different kinds of love. I won’t bore you by reporting on all of it.

  I think what you mean and want me to tell you about is what people call true love. I don’t actually think “true love” is such a good term because love can only be true. If it isn’t true it can’t be love.

  Am I in “true love” with you? All I can tell you is I want to be with you more than I want to be with anyone else. You interest me more than anyone else. You make me laugh and you say things I haven’t thought before. These are important points about love, I think, don’t you?

  Other important points are respect and admiration. I respect and admire you.

  But what I think you want me to say more than anything is that I am in love with you, which you say you are with me. But I have to be honest and say I don’t know. Well, not yet, even if I think I am, which I do. What makes it difficult for me is that I don’t have any previous experience to go on. I have nothing to compare what I feel for you with what I’ve felt for anyone.

  I know some people talk about love at first sight. But I’ve heard other people say they fell in love gradually. I can tell you that my feelings for you have grown stronger the more I’ve got to know you. And I want to go on getting to know you more and more. I would call what I feel for you love.

  This is the best I can say at present.

  With love [?], Karl

  V

  For the next hour or so I rewrote Karl’s letter, and took another stroll along the river.

  When I got back, Karl was sitting on the bank, his rod by his side, hunched over, his head in his hands.

  For a moment I thought he was resting. But no. Instinctively, I felt he was brooding on whatever had upset him earlier.

  I debated whether to leave him alone or to make sure he was all right and sit with him for a while. I decided it was better to make sure he was all right, even if it proved a wrong move.

  Karl didn’t stir when I sat down beside him.

  We were silent for some minutes before he raised his head and clasped his hands in front of him, his elbows resting on his knees.

  A few more minutes went by in silence.

  Then he took a deep breath, let it out.

  “My dad died when I was twelve.”

  He didn’t wait for me to say anything.

  “I know it’s a long time ago,” he went on. “You’d think I’d be over it by now.”

  I heard him swallow hard.

  “I lied to you,” he continued when he had gained control again. “I have been here before. Quite a few times … It was my dad’s favourite place …”

  Another stumble. Another swallow before he could go on.

  “I wanted to prove to myself it was OK, I’d be able to fish here again … Remember him … Us fishing together.”

  This time he stopped because he wanted to, not because of a surge of emotion.

  “I was all right this morning. It was good. I felt he was with me. Like he always was, standing beside me, telling me where to cast and how to do it better … But when you asked about learning …”

  A long silence.

  A flash of shining blue along the river in front of us.

  Karl pointed.

  “See it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Kingfisher.”

  “Oh yes! I’ve never seen one before. Beautiful.”

  He smiled his pleasure.

  I said, “Why come back today especially?”

  The smile vanished but he kept my eyes, and with self-defensive sharpness said, “Because today is the sixth anniversary.”

  “I see. So it’s a commemoration as well as a challenge?”

  He nodded and turned away.

  I needed to move. Sciatica and old man’s bones didn’t like squatting on the damp, cold ground for long. But something else. Something worse. Jane.

  I stood up.

  “Maybe you should do something.”

  “What d’you mean?”

  I could tell from the way he said it that he knew what I was getting at.

  It seems to me there are two kinds of people. There are those who prefer everything to be spelt out, clear and direct, nothing left to doubt. The others are people who prefer to read between the lines, who don’t want every i to be dotted, every t to be crossed. They need room to decide for themselves what you mean.

  I have to confess that by nature I belong to the spellers-out. But I was learning that Karl belonged to the understaters, the ambiguists.

  Sometimes the spellers-out need to restrain themselves, and sometimes the understaters need to be given a hint, a clue to help them.

  I said, “Maybe you should do something to mark the day.”

  Karl stood up. We faced the river, side by side.

  “Like what?” he said.

  “I don’t know. Something that would mean something to you. Something that would have meant something to your father.”

  He thought for a moment before saying with that defensive sharpness of tone again, “You mean something that will help me say good-bye?”

  I didn’t reply.

  “That’s what my mother keeps telling me. Let him go, she says.”

  “Maybe she’s right.”

  “She’s always right. That’s the trouble.”

  “And you’d rather she wasn’t.”

  He chuckled. “No.” Looked serious again and said, “But I don’t want to say good-bye. My dad was the best person in my life.”

  And he walked away.

  Just as well. We were getting into deep water for him and for me, and I knew I’d be out of my depth.

  Also I needed to visit a c
onvenient clump of bushes.

  VI

  When I came back, I said, “Had enough? Ready for home?”

  “You said about doing something.”

  “Yes?”

  “Dad always did something. When he’d finished for the day. He always did the same thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “He’d find a bit of stick. He’d cut notches on it, one for each of the fish he’d caught. Then he’d pack up to go. And the last thing he’d do was stand on the bank, say some words, always the same words, then throw the stick into the river.”

  “He did that every time?”

  “Every time.”

  “A kind of ritual. Did you ask him about it?”

  “My dad didn’t talk much.”

  “Like father, like son,” I said, smiling.

  Karl returned the smile. “I’m a chatterbox compared to him.”

  “So you never asked?”

  “I did once.”

  “What did he say?”

  “‘Never take anything for granted.’”

  “‘Never take anything for granted’? That was all?”

  “Yes.”

  I thought for a bit.

  “When I asked you what you believed, you said, ‘What is, is.’ Did you get that from your dad?”

  He nodded and said, “I’ve found a stick.”

  He showed me an ash twig about an inch thick and a foot long.

  “I’ve caught five today. I’ll make five notches. Then I’ll do what Dad did. Want to do it with me?”

  We went to the edge of the bank.

  Karl sat and cut five snicks through the thin bark, till the white of the wood showed through.

  Then he stood up facing the river, me beside him.

  He held the stick out in front of him, and in a voice only just loud enough to hear, intoned,

  “Water brought thee.

  Water take thee.

  I have caught thee.

  I shall eat thee.

  Dwell in me,

  As I in thee.

  I give thanks

  For water,

  And for thee.”

  He dropped the stick into the river.

  We watched it swirl away.

  FOR TWO WEEKS AFTER THE FISHING TRIP I HEARD NOTHING from Karl.

  Had I upset him? Was he sorry he’d told me about his father? Did he wish he hadn’t shared the ritual at the end?

  Every day I checked my emails, hoping to see his name, and kept my mobile phone beside me in case he sent a text.

  I was surprised at myself. Yet not surprised. I knew he was helping me as much as I hoped I could help him, though he didn’t know how, and I still wasn’t certain myself.

  In the few days after our trip I boned up on dyslexia, wanting to learn more than the sketchy general knowledge I already had.

  I can’t think without making notes, so I listed what I found out:

  –Dyslexia takes many forms.

  –There’s no one condition you can call dyslexia.

  –There isn’t even agreement on what the word means, except that it comes from an old Greek word meaning “difficulty with words and language.”

  –People with dyslexia usually have trouble with spelling, sometimes reverse numbers and letters—confusing d and b, for example—and have difficulty with cursive (joined up) writing.

  –They have difficulty putting their thoughts down on paper—writing is often torture to them.

  –They are often slow readers, and often need to read the same passage two or three times before they can understand it.

  –They often mix up left and right, sometimes have difficulty finding their way around, even in familiar surroundings.

  –They sometimes have difficulty finding the correct word, so they say “whatyoucallit” and “thingies,” and get ordinary words twisted.

  –Their vocabulary is often limited. They don’t know as many words as they should. They suffer from verbal poverty.

  –Because they have had difficulty with reading and writing, they feel they are failures, suffer from low self-esteem and embarrassment, and think they must be stupid. This is often reinforced by the way people treat them, especially if teachers do not understand their condition. Therefore they lack self-confidence.

  It was obvious that Karl suffered from some of these symptoms. Even though he’d only shown me printouts of his writing, when he must have used the spell-checker, I could tell he’d struggled when composing sentences and ordering his thoughts.

  But when he talked about something that really interested him, like fishing or plumbing, he was fluent and mature and entirely coherent. You’d never have known he had trouble with words. His vocabulary was far from limited. I knew from his driving that he had no trouble with left and right or finding his way. As a plumber his hand-eye coordination must be good, as I knew it was from watching him fish. Yes, he didn’t like talking about his feelings, but many people don’t who are not dyslexic.

  There was a plethora of guff on the internet about dyslexia, thousands of references. But as usual, finding clear and brief answers to straightforward and simple questions wasn’t so easy.

  What was certain, which I had already thought for myself but which the experts confirmed, was how best you can help someone who is dyslexic.

  They all mentioned the frustration sufferers feel when they are clever, as Karl certainly was, but can’t be clever in reading and writing.

  Their difficulties are caused by a difference in their brain and the way it works, not because they are lazy or stupid.

  They need to be sure you won’t make fun of their difficulties, or do anything that makes them look silly in front of others.

  Most of all, you need to give them confidence, and to know, really know, that they aren’t odd or stupid or have a weird illness.

  What they have is different from most people, but is not a disability. In fact, because of their difficulty with language their brains open up new pathways that the brains of the rest of us don’t. And those pathways often enable them to be more creative than people who aren’t dyslexic.

  I was sympathetic with Karl because I’d had trouble with reading and writing when I was a kid. Bad spelling, a slow reader. In fact, couldn’t read at all till I was eight. In those days, ordinary people, including teachers, had never heard of dyslexia. So teachers especially thought you were “dull,” “not very clever,” “thick.” “He’s a little slow” was how a teacher expressed it to my worried mother. She meant I was halfway to being the village idiot. Not so, as it turned out. I don’t blame her. She didn’t know better. But that didn’t prevent me feeling I was a dead loss, a failure at the two things everybody knows are the most important in our word-dominated society: being able to read and write well.

  But something bothered me. Yes, it was true that he showed some of the signs of dyslexia, but not to a serious extreme. And, yes, he was finding ways of dealing with the difficulties—his brain must be opening up the new pathways. And, yes, the last thing you’d say about him was that he was slow-witted. Quite the opposite. He was clever, thoughtful and creative. But I sensed it wasn’t only dyslexia that troubled him. It wasn’t dyslexia that was jamming up his feelings about himself. And it wasn’t dyslexia that prevented him talking about himself. As a recovered dyslexic, I know that I’ve never been shy of talking about myself and my deepest feelings—so long as it was to someone I liked and trusted.

  Of course, he might not want to talk about himself because he was happier keeping himself to himself.

  But that’s not what I sensed with Karl. I became convinced he was bottling up a brew of strong feelings that he wanted to let out but couldn’t. There’d been three or four times when I felt he might explode. And one moment when he had. The moment by the river when he talked about the death of his father. Then I’d caught a glimpse of his inner self. And he was no longer an eighteen-year-old young man, expert at fishing, competent as a plumber, no doubt tough on the rugby field, and good
at chess—the young man Fiorella had no doubt fallen for. But instead, he was a little boy, a distressed twelve-year-old, vulnerable, hurt, and grieving.

  Hang on, though, I told myself. You could be wrong. It’s always a mistake to think you know what makes someone tick.

  Karl was right. Actions speak louder than words. When all is said and done, you can only go by what people do, not by what they say.

  Now, two weeks after the revelation of his father’s death, I’d heard nothing from him. This action, this silence, meant more than words.

  But then, just when I’d decided he wanted nothing more to do with me, his name popped up on my screen.

  His email’s subject line said:

  Fiorellas poem

  His message read:

  Fiorella sent me this poem, is it any good, don’t know much about poems, hope you ok, meet tuesday 8?

  Not shut out after all!

  One of my weaknesses is always to fear the worst. And another is to think that anything that goes wrong is my fault.

  I replied:

  Tuesday. 8:00 p.m. Meal at the pub? My treat.

  He replied pronto:

  ok but on me

  Here’s the poem:

  Two poems for Karl

  1

  Do you believe—

  As I believe—

  What there is

  Is all there is?

  Do you believe—

  As I believe—

  That we are

  More than we

  Yet know?

  Do you believe—

  As I believe—

  You are

  Who I would know

  And I am

  Who you would know

  So you can be

  What you are

  And I can be

  What I am?

  2

  I would be known

  As known as

  Knowing can be

  By you

  Who knows

  How knowing is

  That knows

  No knowing.

  And I would know

  As known as

  Knowing can be

  The you

  Who keeps me

  From knowing