Underground Without You

A fictional travelogue; four minutes to read.

Dear Travel Journal,

Under a dreary, grey sky, without purpose or enjoyment, I’m walking along the Stockholm waterfront. The bay is black, foreboding. In the solitary confinement of their berths, the boats are alone, dispirited.

The streetscape is a Scandinavian murder mystery, moody and morose. Inside a coffee shop, diners in slow-motion soundlessly reenact an Edward Hopper painting. If my wife were here, we would have stopped for hot chocolate and shared a pastry.

Arriving in the city center, I submarine down a long escalator into a subway station—one of ninety underground public art galleries throughout the city. It is extravagant with a Baroque-like profusion of mosaics, paintings, tableaus, sculptures. A jubilant riot of colors, designs, shapes. Modern cave paintings. This is just the kind of public art space my wife and I used to seek out, then endlessly talk about and, years later, revisit in our treasured travel memories.

If she were here, I wish she was, she’d be pointing to her favorite artworks. Instead, the colorful public murals seem rendered in sepia. Without her sparkly eyes to illuminate them, they’ve turned dull and drab.

Bustling, swarming commuters--already mentally at their places of work—flow around me like whitewater rapids. As unaware of me as a river to a rock.

I know how I look. The passing crowd, if I’m noticed at all, sees a stationary tourist, a touch lost.

The man inside me is bent, caved, stooped. Below ground, underground, buried. I have less and less resilience for the bustle and buffeting that happens above ground.

With no place to go, and no reason to stay, the only choice is the nearest up escalator. Emerging into the salty air, I am confronted with a maze of cobblestoned paths, walkways, sidewalks. None will lead me towards her.

The darkening clouds drift downward to rest on the rooftops. The cement is dank and dirty. Except for the aching sounds of a ship’s horn and scavenging seagulls overhead, the soggy air is quiet.

The harbor waters are white-capped. I tug at my leather gloves and woolen ski cap. The wind has stormed itself into a mini-mistral—scratchy, shrill, stinging.

My wife gifted me a traveler’s vulnerability. In a stodgy, dark chapel, her insights were the illumination I wanted. In a castle of cold stonework, she was the warmth I needed. In throngs of tourists, pushing and shoving, hers was the reassuring hand.

From the day we met, I’ve coveted more of her. A chance to be her travel buddy. Artwork, museums, monuments, park benches, pastries were all just a pretext to be near her. Another way to help her enjoy her life and for me to enjoy it because I am with her.

My clogged throat makes it hard to swallow. With each wind gust, my chest pangs deepen.

I’m struggling to convince myself why I should return to my hotel. No one is waiting for me. Nothing is there for me to do.

My wife doesn’t need me anymore.

Click here for more short stories set in Sweden.