Chapter 1

Have you ever read 'Hopscotch', by Julio Cortazar? I picked it up from the library a few years ago after a recommendation from a lecturer who specialized in Latin America. It is a curiously structured book that you can choose to read conventionally (Introduction is followed by chapter 1 is followed by chapter 2 and so on until you get to chapter 155) or unconventionally (chapter 1 is followed by chapter 37 is followed by chapter 102 is followed by chapter 9 until you finish all of them - there is a line at the end of each chapter suggesting which page to turn to next, not the one which follows numerically). It is a brilliant idea, to let the reader assemble the story as s/he will, and to have it fit at the same time is masterful. I digress.

Monday.
I watched as many movies as I could stomach on the plane, as I always did. Put on my face in the cramped, slightly disgusting airplane bathroom because I refuse to look a mess getting off. The queue through immigration is unusually long, and slow. Collect baggage. Queue again to get through customs with my white card and passport in hand. The official checking the ticked boxes on the card waves me through and for the first time, after countless struggles with getting heavy bags onto the x-ray machines for 4 years, I get a free pass.

He was waiting in the arrivals hall. No surprises there. Those came later. The usual exchange of pleasantries follows, how long have you been here, sorry to keep you waiting, work-talk, accept compliment, weather-talk. Kingsford Smith has a new addition to its infrastructure - a multi-storey travelator in the carpark. It is on the travelator that he surprises me first, although I can't say that I wasn't half-expecting it. Oh the uncertainty, always the uncertainty! I think that's what gives me, us both, the rush. That potent mixture of fear, anticipation, uncertainty, defiance.

There was a light drizzle that night. The roads from the airport to my place were the same as I remembered, semi-familiar landscapes.

Later, I found myself in a room that had been mine but now wasn't. Almost everything seemed the same - the same furniture, the same people (at least the two who were around), the absolute silence of the apartment. It was a strange feeling, being somewhere that had been a home. Another curious thing was the lack of emotion I felt. I was sorry for him and would have done anything to help, but not angry or hurt or any of the hundred things someone in that situation could have been. How complicated human relationships get and how much they can change with time. But then, this was never a solid matter to begin with.