Book of Memories

Laying in bed, reading Péter Nádas, I am remembering with pleasure a summer many years ago spent in Cape Cod. The bus station in Hyannis had become familiar for me then, as I had spent a lot of time there waiting for a bus to Provincetown, absorbed in A Book of Memories. I didn’t have much else to do at the time, and often had hours of emptiness to fill somehow.   On my last morning in Hyannis, the tall blond fellow I had shared rooms with at the hostel appeared at the bus station as I sat waiting there. It was strange, as I had never really talked to him. Even though our sharing of the same physical space had felt intimate in a way. This particular morning, he was wearing eyeglasses, and complaining at the ticket window about his bus ticket not working. He had some kind of accent, perhaps German? Or Dutch? He was much taller and skinnier than I had previously thought.   At the hostel, he was often gone the entire day. Although, to be perfectly honest, I was also. Late afternoons, he would come into the room sweating, as if he had just gone out for a run. His physical presence felt very palpable, masculine, as he sat on his bunk sweating, breathing heavily. We sometimes exchanged awkward hellos, but mostly just left it at that.   Whenever I was alone in the room, I would sneak looks at the various objects splayed out on his bed, trying to construct who he was in my mind. I remember a photograph of him smiling happily standing next to a woman, a friend? In a place that looked exotic, perhaps Turkey? Or Canada?   In the common area downstairs, he cooked his own meals. Afterwards, he would sit at the table eating noisily, not talking to anybody else. Sometimes he would gaze out the window as he ate. I often wondered what he was looking at so intently out there. Most people who ate in the common area also generally kept to themselves, not talking to anyone else either. The hostel could feel at times like a strangely isolated place.   The only person I actually talked to at the hostel was one of the workers. He was a tall, lanky fellow, a bit strange, but I enjoyed talking to him. He grew up in Maine, and loved cars and jazz. He was intimidated by New York City. We would stay up late at nights smoking cigarettes, talking about food and traveling. He seemed happy to have someone to talk to, I felt as if he looked forward to further of our conversations. Except that I left rather suddenly one morning without warning, without really saying goodbye. I often feel guilty about that.