Empires

A man abandoned in his marriage uses history to distract him from the fact his own history has slipped away.

Empires

Did you know that it only took ten years for the Qing dynasty of China to collapse after nearly three hundred years or ruling 300 million people? Or how about this: that at the height of its power the British Empire covered a land area of 33.7 million kilometers, a size greater than all of Africa? Or that the Russian empire included " and still does - over half the world's longitudes? This is what I read about when my wife is away. Empires. And what I find most intriguing is that no one knows why, why they collapse. People offer theories " over-stretched supply lines, royal or political in-fighting, passionate local revolts defeating the tired and lowly paid soldiers of the empire " but no one actually knows.

The last time she left I did something different. I asked her to stay. Her hand was on the open door. I came out of the kitchen and asked her to stay. She nodded her head as if acknowledging a minor favor from a stranger. I didn’t know what else to say, I would only have repeated myself. The door opened and let in a slice of cheap electric light. I repeated myself. And then she was gone.

My wife and I have been married for forty-two years. I can’t remember even being forty-two. We have lived here, in Sarrià, a comfortable suburb of Barcelona, for almost a year now, since I took early retirement and sold the family furniture business. Our apartment has an almost clear view of Tibidabo, the largest mountain in this area, and it is with a view of this that most of our days start.

Neither my head nor my heart was ever in business or money, and after a lifetime of struggling with the day-to-day slog of running my own company, I was more than happy when I received a sizeable offer and a percentage of future profits to sell my life’s work to my then partner. The next week I was already free. My wife too had tired of her job at the local comprehensive school, as her students become harder work and less rewarding. If anything, we didn’t come here soon enough.

Our English friends warned us that the routine-free days of our new life would soon become tiresome and suffocating. That you can’t go on holiday forever. They ran a book on when we would return home to friends and family and work and life in London. No one, so far, has won that bet.

My life, without the enforced schedule of commute and work, has nevertheless created its own patterns: I wake early and put on coffee for my wife and while the water boils I leave the apartment before the sun begins its bake and cycle the four blocks to, my local bakery, La Baguetina Catalana, timing my arrival so that the bread is still hot when I return (I am not alone in this; there is usually a queue out of the door by the time I have finished locking my bike.) Once home, I set up breakfast on our balcony and serve the coffee and bread with olive oil and, if I have the energy, freshly squeezed orange juice.

Once breakfast has been taken care of, my wife, younger than me and still with her strong dark hair and tight long legs, will shower and prepare herself to leave for the day to help at the local school teaching English as part of a volunteer group. Although her job description says that language is her only subject, she has helped in all areas of education; such is her quick intelligence and slow patience.

I cycle to the local pool and swim until I can feel my chest tighten then relax with a salad at the health bar before coming home for a 30 minute nap. I wake before my wife returns and clean the apartment. We have a cocktail and compare days (we used to do this in Spanish, or tried to, until we both found listening to each other so frustrating we gave up). Some nights we meet friends for dinner, other nights we read until the sentences slide and then we watch meaningless television before we brush our teeth. Since our first month here I haven’t thought about returning home once.

Of course there are disadvantages to our new life here: the constant angry hum of motorbikes riding the mountain; the language, which I am too old and too slow to get, and I have been robbed of my wallet twice, the inconvenience of getting new bank and identification cards far outweighing any financial loss. I do miss the comforting gloom of the pub, the endless parks on a silent spring morning, the sense of heavy history that coats the city streets. But would I go back? And sacrifice peace and sunshine and rest and heat? I know the answer to that.

So that is our life here. Any more description is not needed or warranted. To imagine an old English couple abroad hardly requires a leap of the imagination. The sun shines and we sit in it, while we drink and read and sleep.

One of the unwritten rules of marriage was that we would always grant the other time alone when needed. Solitude has always been a large part of my life as I was an only child with working parents, and my wife’s job, which is so heavy with human contact, leaves her badly lacking her own place to be. We have, like all couples, learnt when this time must be given.

In truth, I am not so in need of being alone much more now. The majority of my day, in fact, is spent alone. I have become ambivalent towards it yet strangely feel fear and anger rise when it is encroached. We all grow old as ourselves. Once a month I meet other English men who I know in this city and we spend the day watching a football game. We meet for lunch and then walk to the game, arriving early to savor the atmosphere. During the game, and perhaps due to the alcohol heavy meal we have enjoyed, it is always a surprise to see that three retired Englishmen are cheering the loudest for a team we don’t support.

Never less than once a month our only daughter arrives with her fiancé to spend the weekend with us. After the first few trips where we rushed around the city taking photos of everything that was in the guidebook, the two days are spent now on the balcony drinking cold red wine and chatting pleasantly about unserious topics. Two days is the perfect amount of time " any more for them and they would become restless, I believe, and any more for us would leave us tired and uneasy. We are glad to wave them goodbye from the airport gate and happy to return home to our safe and silent apartment. That may seem harsh as for us, retired from life, weekends no longer exist, but the pace of youth and its demand to move leaves us rushed, even panicked; the quiet flow of our basic life refuses to be hurried.

When my wife wants to be alone she goes to a sex-party organized by another retired English expat in a mansion on the outskirts of the city. I have never been. She leaves before dinner on Saturday and comes home before dinner on Sunday wearing different clothes. On her arrival I busy myself in the kitchen cleaning glasses and organizing shelves while she unpacks, showers, and returns herself to our life. We meet on the balcony cocktails in hand, and the mountain, and turn our life towards the new week and all the minor battles it will bring.

I regularly ponder what to make of Roman Emperor Nero's last words: "Qualis artifex pereo" or “What artist dies of me?” This is how I wait for my wife to come back to me, heavy books full of heavy history bent on my lap, my old eyes searching the dense pages for feats of human enterprise that are so huge I for a moment can forget where my own history has gone. These are not great concerns of great deeds. When I read of these ancient times do I think of my own time, or lack thereof? No, not with any real sense of doom. I am healthy, the right weight, never smoked, moderately drink (for an Englishman). I eat right and I exercise. If I am lucky I have another decade in me.

Here are my theories: at some point I was unable to satisfy my wife any more. Or, perhaps, at some point I did not want to satisfy my wife anymore. Both could be said to be true and both could be said to be false. I cannot rule this out: at some point my wife did not want me to satisfy her any more. In poetry they say a man is an island. And a relationship is a novel no one can read. But a marriage? I let her go or she would leave and not come back. I give her the freedom to leave and she chooses to return. We have that mountain, that victory of time; it stands and grows. Marriages and empires are different because they fall.

© 2013 Andrew James Talbot

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Decanter Red

So as I read this story, it finished faster than I expected because the font was so HUGE, it was rather hard to scroll down and my eyes were popped from reading.

The tone you adopted fits the plot like a finger and ring-it sounded tired and idle, like a purposely retiree. Personally, I cannot imagine retiring without any purpose- I remember how my 80 year old english teacher refused to stop working because he couldn't be idle, and his friends died swiftly after their retirements.

I can almost picture the scene of Barcelona in my head, thanks to the fact that you dropped little fragments of location names and scenic detail in the story. Oh, and the breakfast! That was my favourite part especially I'm starved right now, gonna grab a bun roll haha.

This is quite inspirational- it can give people an insight into a retired couple's life and how the marriage's spark fade after these long years. I have to careful now! The ending was EPIC, and how you relate marriage to empires is a great idea. The only problem I have here is the uncomfortable font size. You should really publish this one.