She closed the door behind her and just stood there. The big house felt empty now. Not like when her late husband passed away, not even like when her two daughters decided they didn’t want anything to do with their own mother any longer. Tonight was different. The big space without any life other than her own, was colder than ever, darker, and that smell . . . a smell that made her close her eyes to hold back the tears that were threatening to fall once again since that freezing September morning. But she did it anyway. With no difficulty, she opened her right fist, which held tight the handkerchief she received in her post office box at the Geneva main post office building. A little white handkerchief full of wrinkles with her name and phone number written in red ink and dotted with a bunch of dry red spots. Then she thought about Geeze and his decision one more time.
It was on that cold September morning, not in Geneva, but in a west suburb of another big city, London, when the body of Geeze turned up at 22 Portman Avenue, Mortlake -- his head split in two. He was wearing an old pair of jeans and his legs were twisted and broken, as if a victim of an attack or a macabre dark cult ritual. His arms and hands turned backwards and his thin light blue sweater, darkened by blood. He was holding something very tightly in his right hand.
The residents on the house at 22 Portman Avenue and everyone else on the entire block, had been awakened by the very loud sound of an impact in their street. Portman Avenue awoke that day earlier than ever. On the road, was the body of a young man. At first, the neighbors thought the man had been a victim of a hate crime. Could that be possible? In that quiet suburb? Were they getting to close to the ever growing big city now? Why in their neighborhood? Why on their street? Then, they thought, he could have been in a tragic accident. But as time passed by waiting for the police to show up and amid conversations and more speculations, neither of those possible scenarios seemed to add up.
The resident at 22 Portman Avenue decided to call again. The police were taking too long to arrive and more neighbors were congregating in front of her house. She dialed on her cell phone and waited for someone to answer. A huge plane flew over, nothing unusual for the West London suburb in the landing corridor. But then, the lady at 22 Portman Avenue froze looking at the sky. With a pale countenance now, she couldn’t talk when someone on the phone seemed to have answered her call. Everyone looked at her taking her free hand to her face and covering her wide open mouth. Forgetting about the phone call, she turned her gaze back to the lifeless man in front of her house, then back to the sky, her face now transformed by torturing thoughts. Instinctively, everyone looked at the sky without understanding what was going on. Then, the lady still holding her phone in the air, lost stability and someone helped her to sit by the curb, while the police siren interrupted everyone who was asking her what had just happened. But the police almost immediately confirmed the lady’s suspicion: The young man had just fallen from a plane arriving in London.
When the phone rang in Geneva, Jessica had been waiting to hear from Geeze for four days and that day was Geeze’s birthday. Was he planning on calling her on that day? Was he planning a bigger surprise? To think that way, to daydream, was much better than the dreams of falling dead birds she had been having since her husband had passed away. There was no doubt that early phone call was Geeze calling and she answered with an ear to ear smile.
In London, the police had found her name and phone number written on a little ladies handkerchief, that the man was holding tight in his hand. It was the police phone call she answered that cold September morning. She couldn’t understand what they were talking about at first, but then she knew. Fast flashes of the last times she saw and spoke with Geeze rushed and flooded her mind, blocking her from answering to the police questions about the young guy they had found dead in that London street. Why did he have her name and phone number? Who was he?
Jessica knew his entire story but was paralyzed, broken inside and unable to talk.
Mental pictures of the handsome Geeze taking care of her flowers blinded her. The memories of this good man who, on that same day, would have celebrated his twenty-sixth birthday. A day they had planned to spend together since she moved to Geneva with her ill husband.
Geeze was her gardener after he left the flooding and the hard life in the mines in Mozambique and moved to South Africa. It was then they met and never could take their eyes off of each other. Jessica’s husband was already very sick and Geeze was a comfort at first but then, an unstoppable and passionate love was born between them. Their clandestine affair was only put on standby when the doctors recommended that she take her husband back to Switzerland, because there was nothing else they could do. Her daughters were in Geneva already, waiting for them, so they never knew what was going on with their mother and Geeze in South Africa.
Jessica and Geeze dreamed of the day they could finally be together, in Europe, to pursue a better life. Once in Switzerland, Jessica managed to send him some money so he could get the papers needed to travel to Europe. Unfortunately, Geeze trusted the wrong man, who disappeared with all his money, without giving him the so needed papers, leaving him penniless. He decided to go overland from South Africa to Angola were he called Jessica again. But Jessica’s husband had just passed away and her daughters overheard her conversations with Geeze on the phone, the man who was supposed to be their gardener was having an affair with their mother while their father was dying. Then the girls, in agreement with their fathers-side grandma, decided to sue their mom for their inheritance, which immediately froze all family funds. Jessica ran out of money very quickly and with it, the opportunity to help Geeze. She desperately asked him to hang in there, for a while; to get a temporary job in Angola.
Geeze still didn’t have a job when he made that final phone call four days before his birthday. Jessica then cried for Geeze for the very first time and every day since, when the nights were darker than ever, without having received any more news from him. That’s why she was so happy when she heard the phone finally ring that cold September morning, the same day as Geeze’s birthday.
Finally, Jessica was able to tell the police that Geeze was originally from Mozambique, but that she had heard from him just four days prior from Angola. She didn’t know he was planning to travel as a stowaway.
Planes travel at thirty five thousand feet during international flights as the one from were Geeze fell from over London. Someone told Geeze that, if he could manage to get into the undercarriage at night before departure, so not to be seen, he could find an access door that would give him access to the rest of the aircraft. Without thinking twice, and with the only precaution of taking a couple of crumbled tissues to stick into his ears during departure, he decided to take off. He only wore a pair of tennis shoes, an old pair of jeans and a light blue sweater. He had no idea of what was to come. So confident, Geeze went. It was dark, the plane was already moving when he realized there was no door to be found. But it was too late, to jump out of the moving plane now -- it would be suicidal.
The space inside seemed big enough for him, but he wasn’t sure in which direction the wheels would fold in. The noise, the vibration during take off in total blindness was intense. He panicked, but his only thought was that he had forgotten to call Jessica one more time, to let her know of his plans, while putting the tissue papers into his already deaf ears. Then he saw the wheels coming in and thought they could crush him. He felt horrified with the burning rubber smell and the spinning wheels getting closer and closer. But then, the compartment was completely closed and he believed he felt the wheels stop spinning, perceiving how claustrophobic his entire journey was about to become. He had made it, and now it was time for him to relax a little. The temperature dropped very quickly in the undercarriage, his ears were feeling weird and almost at thirty-five thousand feel in the air, the cold and lack of oxygen rendered him unconscious.
He awoke very confused, not even knowing where he was. A loud new noise was coming in when the wheels compartment finally began to open for landing. He didn’t have time to react and hold onto anything and then, he flew alone over Mortlake. He was still disturbed to grasp reality and he could only think in the moment when he and Jessica would be together again.
The trail to knowing his identity was not easy and maybe could have been impossible, if not for the lady’s little handkerchief with Jessica’s name and phone number on it. The same handkerchief Jessica was holding in her hand now, while trying to contain the tears one more time, for the man who fall on 22 Portman Avenue.
