TE23 Double Feature

Tomas Espedal

The Year

in the compartment: IS IT POSSIBLE TO OPEN A WINDOW? No it’s not not at this speed not in this Icarus-train. I’m on the point of burning up unable to breathe losing consciousness darkness isn’t far away. The fever has taken hold of my body and everything inside wants to come out and here it comes: I puke into a plastic bag and look at the sun it dazzles my eyes and pricks out a negative image behind my eyelids: It’s your face. Then I pass out. Everything goes black. It turns cold. I come round on the floor in the gangway someone has placed me here so lovely so good to lie down so good to have been absent so good to lie perfectly still and be carried at enormous speed through the countryside 132

towards your destination. Avignon. Sunday the sixth of April I find a hotel in the middle of town a bright single room with air-conditioning switch the conditioning on draw the curtains it’s dark and cold in the room so soothing and quiet just the hum of the fan the cool fresh sound almost like wind almost like rain almost like home almost like you were here a fever-fantasy daydream: You stand by the window pull open the curtains and are pierced by light almost disappear as you turn towards me and vanish. All worldly pleasure is a fleeting dream Petrarch wrote in the first sonnet of Canzoniere and that line is a truth 133