John froze at the sight of the old man, who was down on one knee, holding himself up with one hand on the park bench and clasping a thin wooden stick in the other.
“Everything okay over there?” John asked from a safe distance, just loud enough for his voice to echo faintly across the stagnant autumnal dusk. The old man lifted his head and studied John with deep-set, judging eyes. John edged closer and knotted his arms under the old man’s, gently tugging upward, feeling the coarseness of his raggedy brown coat. The old man smelled of burned hay and livestock.
“Stop it, get away from me,” he said in what sounded like an overstated British accent, jerking his arms from John’s grasp. “Just give me a minute, will you?” He struggled with quivering limbs to thrust himself up, the fog from his long, heavy breaths bouncing off the frosty ground and dispersing into nothingness.
“See?” said the old man, brushing himself off. “It just takes a minute.” John’s kind smile revealed coffee-stained teeth, poking through his naked gums like jagged icebergs. The tenderness in his eyes belied his oafish build, and his pale, blotchy skin and dusty blonde hair shaded him with the soft edge of unrushed mid-life. “Just making sure you were okay, that’s all,” he said.
The old man soaked in the surroundings with all the horrified awe of a newborn pulled out into harsh light. Thick white hair flickered out from his small face. “What year is this?” he asked.
“Is that a trick question?”
“It’s not a difficult one to answer.”
“It’s 2018.”
The old man’s eyes widened. “And where am I?”
“Well, you’re in the park.”
The old man shook his stick at John in frustration. “I don’t mean where literally, I mean what place is this, what town?” John’s mouth twitched nervously, as if rummaging for an answer. “We’re in North York,” he said. “Look, do you want me to take you to the hospital, because I—“
”Oh, give over,” said the old man. “England?”
“Sorry?”
“York, England, yes?”
“No, Canada. We’re in Ontario, Canada. Near Toronto.”
“I see,” the old man said softly. His nostrils tilted up as though he were savouring every detail with his long, thin nose. “Okay, well, have a good night, sir,” said John. He whistled to Pepper, who was absorbed among the scents in the damp grass, pulling gently on her leash and making to walk off. “Come on, girl.”
“Wait,” said the old man, panicked. John turned back. “I am Percival Wright, and I have traveled here from far in the past. It would appear that my time-traveling apparatus is conspiring against me in ever crueler ways, as this is not the destination I intended. That said, it would be foolish of me not to make the most of my stay here.”
John feigned polite interest before turning again and starting to walk away. Percival shuffled urgently towards him, flailing his stick like a possessed conductor. “Stop!” he said. “You are under no obligation to believe me, but consider that you also have no good reason not to.” John turned back, grinning awkwardly. “Okay, I’ll play along. What is it you want to tell me?”
“On the contrary, young man, it is I who wishes to ask the questions,” said Percival, calmer. “How about I walk with you and your beast? That way you can go about your business.”
“I’m just picking up a few things from the grocery store and then heading home. I can’t promise much excitement.” Percival hobbled up beside John and the two men made along the park’s grey footpath toward the suburban street. Percival, squinting, observed the imposing row of houses ahead.
John stole curious glances at the old man from the corner of his eye. “Where did you time travel from?” he asked with a tone of almost courteous mockery.
“As I said, what is your name?”
“John.”
“As I said, John, please leave the line of questioning in my capable hands. All you need to know is that, if my previous experience is anything to go by, my malfunctioning contraption could cause me to vanish before your very eyes at any moment.”
“Your previous experience?”
“I have arrived here from the city of Paris, France in the year 1808. During my meander along the River Seine with a Frenchman of most pleasing sophistication, everything suddenly went black, and moments later, I awoke…here.”
“Is that so?” said John, stifling a mischievous smirk. “And how was Paris of 1808?”
“Truly splendid,” said Percival, beaming in reminiscence. “There lingered a revolutionary spirit in the air, a proud and heroic ambiance. The grand influence of their Emperor Napoleon loomed over the city, which was adorned with the most magnificent architecture and monuments to the nation’s glory. Artists and peasants alike soared with an intoxicating dignity through the marvellous boulevards and squares. Have you visited Paris, John?”
“I haven’t. I’ve seen it on TV, obviously. It looks beautiful. I doubt there is a revolutionary spirit in the air today, though. More likely the spirit of a million tourists.”
“TV?” said Percival.
“Television,” he said, then paused, furrowing his brow. “It’s—sort of—a machine with a screen that shows moving images and plays sounds, and certain people get to decide what to put on the screen, and everyone else sits at home and watches it.”
“What a miserable oddity,” said Percival. John considered telling the old man about the Internet and how that was changing things by the day, but decided against it.
The two men strolled along the street, past the enigmatic new-builds and prim lawns set out in perfect symmetry into the distance. The alluring aroma of frying meat wafted out onto the sidewalk. John could sense the old man’s irritation growing. “These are awfully pretentious dwellings,” said Percival. “They are quite clearly attempts at imitating some former distinguished style, but either through architectural incompetence, the poor taste of your age, or perhaps both, turned out as clownish distortions.”
John listened, peaking through the front windows into the show home living rooms as they walked by. “Not a soul to be seen out here,” said Percival. “It’s so quiet I can make out the sound of each leaf rustling in the breeze. Where are the children? Where is the life? Say, do the people who live in these common castles even know each other?”
“We’re in the suburbs,” said John. “Nothing wrong with a little peace and quiet.”
“But this is surely no way to build a community,” said Percival. “Where is the cathedral, the market plaza, the public house?”
“We have those things, just not around here,” said John. “The way I see it is, living in the suburbs is the better of two bad options for simple folks like me. It’s either this, or squashing me and my wife into an apartment in the city. The noise and chaos would drive me crazy, I know that, and they’re not exactly communities nowadays either. There’s no 19th century Paris for me to escape to, nor are there dainty little farming villages like the one you presumably live in.”
The drone of evening traffic grew louder as the two men approached the main road. When they turned onto it, the atmosphere burst to life, agitated people of all shades and creeds streaming down the sidewalk, the air thick with the hidden smog of exhaust fumes. Colours and words vied for attention across a schizophrenic corporate landscape dominated by immense faceless blocks of shimmering grey. Cars plunged forward like hulking metallic hornets in the hundreds, a cacophony of humming engines.
“Good lord, John,” said Percival. “Why is everyone in such a hurry? I feel dizzy just being here, and I can barely hear myself think. How can you people stand such a repulsive assault on your senses?” The old man’s face turned red with scorn. “My word, do you people have any regard for beauty, for aesthetics? Do you care about the grotesque soullessness of this place?”
“You ask as if it were a conscious decision,” said John. “We didn’t make it ugly on purpose. Let’s just say, somewhere along the line, we decided there were things more important than beauty.”
“Who decided?”
John raised his head to gaze at the structures towering over him. “Well, if you mean the buildings specifically, then the builders,” he said. “They don’t live around here, so they don’t care what the buildings look like. They just get the job done and move on to the next place.”
“And you simply allowed them to come into your community and make it depressing, brutal and ugly?”
“You said it yourself before: this isn’t much of a community. There is nothing binding the people here together, no shared story or purpose. I mean, has anyone even acknowledged my presence?”
Percival’s expression turned grim, his voice sombre. “You roam around as if the other does not exist, each of you seemingly in a dead-eyed pursuit of some alien objective,” he said. “It’s as if there is some holy mathematical formula you have deemed greater than yourselves. The place buzzes with an impressive efficiency, but there is no lifeblood, no esteem, no stimulus. I sense I am neither here nor there, a place that owes its existence to the mindless outgrowth of a civilization bereft of all ancient wisdom.” Percival inspected a slender Asian man walking past, whose numb eyes were fastened to the phone in his hand. “Are people content at least?” he asked.
“I’d say most people don’t think about it too much,” said John. “They are probably nagged by a vague sense that something is not quite right, and it frustrates them, but that’s as far as they will ever get. They are too busy with the day-to-day trivialities and anxieties of their petty lives to look around at what it is we’re creating and ask why we’re doing it this way.” John stopped outside the supermarket and tied Pepper to a grey post by a heaving bin.
Inside, the smell of stale detergent and baked sugar clogged the air. Coldplay fuzzed out from above, and masses of technicolored plastic, tins, and cardboard rested neatly along the aisles. “This is your market?” asked Percival, sneering. “Orderly and bountiful, but somehow diluted to a market’s most sterile possible form. I must say, its shrill hollowness tears at the very fibre of my soul.” John said nothing, focusing on the task at hand.
He stood silently before the Hispanic cashier, trying not to stare at the rolls of blubber stretching out the seams of her too-tight shirt. “What a disgusting specimen,” said Percival. The cashier ran the bread and milk through the barcode scanner, eyes glazed. “$10.99,” she said. “Credit, please,” said John, tapping his card on the machine.
The two men moved through the automatic doors and back out into the bustling street. John looked ahead solemnly as they walked. His mind cast back to the dead bodies he had seen sprawled across the pavement here six months earlier. “Not too long ago,” he said to the old man, “a guy came hurtling down this sidewalk in a van—like one of the cars you see here but bigger—mowing people down as if it was the most normal thing in the world. He killed ten people.”
“What could have possessed him to do such a thing?” asked Percival, shock thundering into his eyes.
“Hard to say. But I know one thing: there’s a whole lot of rage and depression out there today. You can feel it simmering just beneath the surface, and every so often someone just explodes.”
“It’s hardly surprising,” said Percival, fluttering his cheeks in irritation. “The lack of meaning, the dearth of higher purpose, the absence of a community spirit. I see loneliness and despondency etched onto your faces. People slouch along as if there is nothing left to fight for, as if they are disconnected from nature, isolated from the very essence of their humanity.”
The two men stopped and waited for the red man on the crosswalk to turn white. Percival looked deep in thought. “Something I’ve been pondering, John,” he said, “is whether this bleak place created a bleak people, or a bleak people create this bleak place?” He paused in vivid contemplation. “Paris seemed to inject beauty and nobility into the veins of its people, and they in turn made it beautiful and noble. They lived with hope and honour in their hearts. This place can surely instill only misery and despair, or at the very best disaffected detachment. I do not see how man could flourish here, intellectually, spiritually.”
John sighed, eyes sullen. Red and blue light from the neon wires on the windows of a sports bar reflected off their faces as they walked past. “Come on, I’m thirsty, let’s go for a quick drink,” said John. Percival followed him inside.
The waitress’s cheeks were masked in a gummy rose-pink soot, her face illuminated by gleaming curls of bleach-blonde hair. Behind her, the faux-wooden booths sat empty, shadowy in the dim light. “Ale, wench,” said Percival. “Coors Light, please,” said John.
“See, those are TVs,” said John. Percival examined the row of screens behind the bar with a look of sour contempt. The waitress returned with copper-coloured beer. Percival raised the glass to his lips. “This beer is insipid,” he said. “I should have known.”
John smiled affectionately. “I heard they make it with a syrup extracted from corn nowadays,” he said. “Cheaper that way.”
“You truly are a wretched people,” said Percival. The two men sat in morbid reflection for some time, sipping beer. “Where does one relieve his bladder in here?” Percival eventually asked.
“The washroom is that way,” said John, pointing. Percival shuffled away and out of sight. John watched the waitresses wipe down tables, stared vacantly at the hockey blaring from the television. Minutes passed, Percival had not returned. Ten minutes, fifteen minutes. John stood up and went to check on the old man. He had vanished without trace.
“That old man I was sitting with, did you see him leave by any chance?” John asked the waitress. “What old man?” she said. “You were sitting by yourself.”
John paid for the beer, pulled on his jacket, and set off home. The sun had sunk out of view, the street newly lit by a thousand electric bulbs, each one chipping away at man’s magnificent inspiration from above. Pepper yanked on her leash, eager to get in out of the stinging cold. John tightened his scarf and tucked his chin into his collar, picking up his pace. Here he was, he thought, deprived of joy and spirit in the mechanized twilight of Western civilization, alone. No man in no place.
