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All I Need To Hear

He wakes with a start to the sound of church bells. Ding. Dong. Ding. Dong. Ding. Damn it. Only five o’clock. His ability to sleep through the night has been worsening for some time: he falls asleep later and later and wakes up earlier and earlier. Getting out of bed is harder too. He rolls onto his side and with an awkward, hunched-over swing of his torso and an audible groan, he shifts onto his feet and shuffles across the creaky hardwood floors into the bathroom. He brushes his teeth and splashes cold water on his face. He stares at his reflection in the mirror; his lonely face distorted by watery shrapnel. Skin sags from his hollow cheeks and dark circles mark permanent territory under his glossy eyes. He does not recognize himself.

 

He trudges over to the wooden coat rack, who’s many limbs in the right lighting can pass as very still company. He runs his fingers up and down the crocodile green fabric of her overcoat and fidgets with its buttons, moving one back and forth between his fingertips like she used to do when she was lost in a thought. He couldn’t bear to part with that coat. She smiles at him from the opposite wall, forever stuck in that white dress, in that antique frame, like a beautiful jail. He remembers that day like it was yesterday: the smell of hydrangeas, the feeling of her lips on his, the sound of church bells.  It’s still too much. He can’t imagine a day when it won’t be. 

 

Abruptly, as if some invisible hypnotist suddenly dropped his mesmeric pendant, he snaps out of a dream. Coat, wallet, cap, umbrella. 

 

He’s lived in the same apartment on Veverkova Street for forty-seven years. He got his first job in that quaint yellow building and raised his children between those walls. But it hasn’t felt the same since she left, it hasn’t felt like home. So every day, he walks. He traverses thousands of cobblestones, churches, children on their way to school, tourists marveling at a Prague he no longer recognizes. He’s searching for something, but what that something is, he does not know. A sign? Her? Himself? 

 

He crosses the Čech Bridge and strolls down Paris Street, looking straight ahead to avoid glimpsing his own reflection in the glares of the lavish storefront windows. Decades ago, he bought his engagement ring here. Someone stops him to ask for directions, but they aren’t loud enough to reach him from deep within his memory. One foot after the other, he walks and walks and walks. 

 

He steps into Old Town Square. It’s still dark outside and the square, usually brimming with the sounds and smells of the city’s tourism industry, is quiet. Empty with the exception of a few drunk stragglers who stumble in search of breakfast or a next adventure. The street lamps are still lit, and instead of its familiar enchanting vibrancy, the town center is magical in a different, eerie way. He approaches Jan Hus who stands honorably on his pedestal. He looks stoic from afar, but the moonlight reveals a longingness in his expression. The man asks the statue who he’s yearning for, but he does not reply. His granite gaze remains locked on something in the distance.

 

The man trudges on, past the astronomical clock where the apostles hibernate amidst the gears. The sun is beginning its daily ascent, casting strange shadows on the walls around him, creating hundreds of shapeshifting ghosts. He’s not afraid of ghosts. He’s looking for one.

 

He approaches the Charles Bridge, which even at this early hour is alive with people admiring the gothic architecture and view of the sun rising over the Vltava. He scrutinizes the statues that line both sides of the bridge, examining their deliberately carved expressions. The man chuckles to himself — how bizarre it is that they were both born of dirt, the man and the statue, yet one lives and breathes and walks and the other is eternally stagnant. He wonders if the statues know that people travel the world to stare at them. He wonders if, when nobody is looking, they stare back. He hopes they do. 

 

He continues his trek, one foot after the other. It might only be six in the morning, but damn it he needs a beer. When he arrives at Café Louvre, he’s the only one there, with the exception of a tired young waitress who hastily retreats into the kitchen after pouring his Pilsner. In the silence of the vacant dining room, the man drifts into a daydream. It is 1972, or maybe 73, on a late Saturday morning. She sits across the table from him, sipping slowly on a coffee with milk and two sugar cubes. Her blonde curls bounce softly around her face as she flips through a book. He sips on his beer and pretends to read, staring up at her between every sentence. They were poor, the world was scary, but he was the luckiest man alive. She dreamed of visiting Paris, but they didn’t have the money. So every Saturday, they visited Café Louvre instead, reading and practicing French, because one day, they would go. She picks her eyes up from her page and he quickly shifts his gaze back to his book. She laughs, she knows. How do the statues do it? 

 

Someone near him clears their throat and pulls him back to reality. It’s the sleepy waitress with his bill. He asks her, do you know what I’m looking for? She responds with an apathetic shrug. He finishes his beer with a conclusive gulp and chucks fifty crowns on the table. His chest warm from the alcohol, he steps back into the chilly February air and walks to Letna Park. He sits at the base of the big red metronome overlooking the city’s peculiar skyline. In his adolescence, he would have been sitting on Stalin’s stone feet. He pulls a cigarette from his pocket and lights it, letting the warm smoke fill his lungs and exhaling clouds of grief into the world. He can see everything from up here, every building, every alleyway, every tram, every bridge. He can see every moment of his life, but damn it he can’t find it. He can’t find what he’s looking for. There’s no damn sign.

 

A drop of water strikes the tip of his nose. Then another on his shoulder, then the back of his neck. Drop. Drop. Drop. The rain comes out of nowhere, putting out the man’s cigarette with a decisive, tsss.  No matter, he needs both frail hands to hold his umbrella. 

 

He walks quickly in the direction of home — as quickly as his tired legs allow — stopping for cover in a damp alley. His face is soaked with water. That shit umbrella. No— the man is crying. He didn’t realize he had started, but now he can’t stop. Everything he hasn’t let himself feel expels from his tear ducts like tiny shards of broken glass. Drop. Drop. Drop. He weeps alone under the stormy sky, finding shelter under the saturated clouds that offer the man their own sympathetic tears. 

 

"Oh, I don’t care if you’re insincere, just tell me what I want to hear / You know where to find me, the place where we lived all these years, oh / Tell me you love me, that’s all that I need to hear"

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