The Black Notebook

The pain lay somewhere beneath the darkness. It was like a constant, raging fire. It bellowed and howled, taking his oxygen in all its fury. And when he felt that the fire had suffocated itself, a trunk with a glowing belly of embers would belch sparks into the sky and slowly it would start again. Ceaseless and all consuming.

A few days after she had passed, Asad had felt only an existential numbness. But gradually the flames grew, starting deep within himself; a firefly glow in a dark abyss. Grief was soon joined by the guilt and regret of all that could have been. He had lost his mother and for whatever godforsaken reason the rest of the world hadn’t stopped with him. It just kept moving, moving on.

It was the witching hour when Asad arrived at his front door. He placed his key inside the lock and paused. No sea breeze had come that night and the heat pressed against him causing his skin to prickle with sweat. Despite his 16-hour long shift, he didn’t feel tired, he just felt stressed and the thought of opening up the door to an empty apartment only made him feel worse. Placing the key back inside his pocket, Asad began to make his way towards the heart of the apartment complex where years ago somebody had converted the empty floor between the flights of stairs into a lobby. Asad walked noiselessly, allowing the silence to wash over him. He always felt that the old building took on a preternatural feel at night, the air static with a silence that was both dreamlike and unsettling.

The lobby area was care-worn to say the least. The sofas were bald, the lamp was cracked, and the coffee table’s laminate curled like a paperbark tree. It made Asad smile to think of the person who had set it up and the vision they might have had for the place. Asad turned the lamp on, filling the room with a flickering cheap light and to his horror he saw a lumpy human shape out of the corner of his eyes in one of the armchairs.

He jumped before realising that it was one of the elderly tenants that lived a few doors from him. He quickly turned the light off, hoping he could retreat back down the hall without having to talk to her, but the light had startled her awake. Instantly, she brought her hand to her chest, her eyes bulging with fear and she knocked a little black book and pen, which had been resting on her lap, to the ground.

“Mrs Waterhen, sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you” Asad said, picking the book and pen up and placing it on the coffee table beside her.

“Where am I?” she asked, grasping once more at her chest as if her body was the final tether between this world and a void of nothingness.

“Just in the lobby area, you must have fallen asleep” Asad replied apprehensively as Mrs Waterhen continued to stare at her surroundings wide-eyed.

“Did you want me to take you home?” Asad asked.

“I just need to sit a while. Would you sit with me?” and she placed her cold hand on his arm, her eyes wide and pleading.

“Of course,” he replied and sat beside her. Neither talked for some time, the silence between them bridged by Mrs Waterhen’s deep breaths.

“I’m so sorry, I just have such a terrible memory these days” Mrs Waterhen finally said, her eyes sparkling with the beginning of tears.

“No Mrs Waterhen, it’s completely fine. I haven’t been able to sleep lately, so I’m happy to sit with you” Asad said, smiling softly. “It’s completely fine” he repeated but his face fell, and he picked at a fibre on his work shirt, lost in thought.

“Are you alright?” Mrs Waterhen asked, staring at him closely. Asad kept quiet, trying to think of a lie, but he was too tired, and he shook his head.

“My mum passed away recently, actually, and I’ve just been… It’s not been great” he finished.

Mrs Waterhen nodded with a sad smile, “My daughter passed away a few years ago.”

“Oh, I’m sorry” Asad replied quietly.

“I always thought I’d get to go first” Mrs Waterhen said, pausing as she took another deep breath. “And for so long I just kept seeing her. Wherever I went, her face appeared in crowds or in dreams. I don’t think she wanted to leave. She wanted to look after me. I haven’t got anyone else in my life and that’s okay. But my goodness I’m tired and so lost without her” Mrs Waterhen sighed, wiping the tears from her cheeks with a withered hand.

“Do you have someone lovely in your life?” she asked, giving Asad a watery smile.

“My sister” Asad replied, “I’ve been trying to bring her here but it’s certainly not cheap and the immigration laws are pretty strict. I think… All that I had for my Mum, I think I’m putting all of it into getting her here, if that makes sense” Asad said quickly, reddening slightly at his honesty. He hadn’t had a conversation like this with someone for a long time. Mrs Waterhen smiled softly at his shyness.

“Perfectly understandable” she said. “I think we all need a purpose. I took up writing” she said proudly, patting her black book. “I actually used to be a child psychologist and wrote terribly long essays for academic journals. But with my memory going the way it is, I just write about what I do and the people I see. I’ll put you in there” and she wrote Asad in neat cursive letters. “Anyway” she said, readying her frail arms against the sofa, “I think it’s time for bed, don’t you?”

Asad helped her to her feet and walked her to unit 107. She smelt faintly of sweat and her hair was very greasy as if she hadn’t bathed in a while and Asad worried for her and made up his mind that he would help her as best he could. After finally finding her keys in one of her many pockets, Asad unlocked the door and turned the light on for her. Every inch of the floor was covered in old newspaper clippings, photo albums, pens, pencils, paints and books. Thousands upon thousands of books. He even noticed in the dark that there was one with her face on it. The sweaty, stale smell intensified the further he walked, so he stayed close to the front door. Mrs Waterhen had perked up now that she was home and bade Asad goodnight as she trotted off to her bedroom.

Locking her door behind him, Asad went back to his apartment and went back to bed, the fire now burnt down to embers and he drifted off to sleep.

Asad had the next morning off and decided to check in on Mrs Waterhen. Not wanting to turn up empty handed, he quickly ran to the shops to pick up some sweets and grabbed her mail on the way in. He could hear Mrs Waterhen rummaging around inside after he knocked, but it took some time before she opened the door.

“Can I help you?” she asked, her eyes as wide as they had been the night before.

“It’s Asad. I brought you home last night” he said but he could see that she didn’t recognise him. “You wrote my name in your black book”.

Mrs Waterhen reached around her and grabbed the little book, flipping to the last page with writing on it.

“Had a chat with Asad” she read, her eyes squinting as she held it close to her face. “Oh, sorry I must have forgotten. I have a terrible memory now a days, come in” and she waved him inside.

“Now if you wouldn’t mind telling me a bit about yourself again, I’ll write it down this time” she laughed, moving the books and papers onto the floor to make space for them to sit at the table, “and I’ll fetch us some tea to have with those sweets.”

Normally Asad would feel guilty for talking about his Mum, but for whatever reason, he didn’t seem to mind telling her again. He didn’t feel like he was burdening her with his stories. For the first time since everything had happened, he felt free to talk. He told her all the lovely stories of his home and his Mum. Of hiding behind her saree when they went to guests’ houses, the smoothness of her hands, the way she made the roti fresh every morning. How he would play with his friends in the deepening dusk amongst the mango trees till his mum called for dinner. He told her of how much his sister looked like his Mum, how beautiful they both are, how lucky he felt.

“It’s a lot though” he finished, the smile fading away. “Everything that’s happened, trying to bring my sister here.”

“Are you getting by?” asked Mrs Waterhen concernedly patting A’s hand. He felt the touch of her cold hands and was overcome with a great sadness for the frail lady before him, alone in an old apartment.

He nodded a curtly and tried his best to make his face look reassuring.

“Everything’s fine”

Whenever Asad had some time off he would go and visit her and the two would talk long into the night with Mrs Waterhen scribbling down all the stories Asad could tell her into her book. After a few months though, it all stopped. Mrs Waterhen was either not home or unable to get to the door. He thought one night that he could hear an ambulance pull up, but when he peered through the peephole there was nobody out the front of 107. Months passed before a short, bespectacled man appeared at Asad’s door.

“Mr Chowdhury?” he asked.

“Yes” Asad replied hesitantly.

“I’m the executive to Rosalind Waterhen’s will. She left you some items”

Before Asad could process what had been said, the man pulled out a little black notebook and placed it in Asad’s hands.

“I can’t accept this,” Asad said, staring confusedly at the executor.

“I’m just here to carry out Rosalind’s wishes, Mr Chowdhury. Do with it what you will. If you have any further questions you can give me a call” and with that the executor placed his business card on top of the notebook and left.

With the executor gone, Asad looked down at the notebook, opening it to the first page. A note addressed to Asad had been written on the inside of the cover.

Dear Asad. I had such a lovely time talking with you. I wrote as many of your stories as I could remember. Sorry if I made you repeat yourself. Thank you for sitting with me. I hope this helps it is all I have left.

Love Rosalind Waterhen

Frowning, Asad flipped through the pages and suddenly his stomach and legs turned to jelly as he saw a small cheque wedged into the middle of the notebook. Twenty-two thousand, six hundred and forty dollars was written on it in Mrs. Waterhen's neat cursive. He stared at it in disbelief. With tears beginning to well in his eyes, Asad slowly closed the front door, dialling his sister’s number to tell her the good news.