Like Cartoon, Fish, Oldie, Pilgrim, Nirvana
The Gothenburg Tales
Someone entered the gym but she could not see who it was. She was lying on her stomach on the leg press machine. She was lifting the weights with her legs. Someone, man or woman, of her age would shudder to lift that weight with the back of the feet.
Rhythmical grunting echoed the gymnasium. That was why she chose the odd-hour. And she grunted heavily. Her grunting was similar to Maria Sharapova the Russia-born but living elsewhere tennis player. (An ace on the court: clay, hard court, and grass. Now she is retired. What a journey: She had stunned the tennis world by winning the Wimbledon at the age of seventeen years and seventy-six days. By the time she touched her thirties, she experienced fame, stardom, infamy, and successful retirement.)
She got off from the leg press machine with a feeling of triumph. She noticed the one who had entered the gym. He was on the rowing machine; he was rowing at the pace of a snail, blinking incessantly. What a cartoon character, she thought, with fatty breasts and stomach. She moved on to lift weights in other shapes and sizes.
He moved to the cross trainer, and started to hike. He was face to face with the mirror like she was. They could see one another in the mirror. She looked into his eyes but his eyes were elsewhere. His eyes were stretched widely and unblinking. What is he doing with his eyes, she thought, silly eye-movements and hiking like an oldie. She remembered a pilgrim over the Pyrenees on the way to Camino de Santiago, home to the shrine of Saint James the Apostle, in Galicia in north-western Spain.
The grunting grew as she lifted the weight plate, almost half of her weight. She held one in her hands and moved it closer to her chest and stretched out her arms by looking into the mirror. She knew she had a toned body, and it was getting finer and finer, fitter and fitter to her desired shape.
He moved to the treadmill and started walking like a guy walking to the hospital upon discovering a terminal illness. As he walked, he stretched his arms to the ceiling along with his forehead. What he is doing, crazy stuff, she thought, with his arms in the air, and eyebrows raising and falling, eyes opened like a fish.
She sat on the gym ball and stretched her limbs and arms and twisted her back. She looked at him whether he would establish an eye contact for it was an expected, and unexpected, gesture when two unseen gym-goers meet for the first time in this gym in a corner of Gothenburg. But he was engrossed in walking and staring at the ceiling.
The gadget on her left wrist reminded her ‘time to go’. She preened at herself, seeing her reflection in the mirror, pleased. She remembered Lagertha the Viking era’s shield-woman brought alive on Netflix’s series on Vikings.
He moved to the cycling machine by the entry door. He was cycling as though he was on a steep stony path somewhere in Spain. He had closed his eyes. She watched him as she changed her footwear and picked up the jacket into her hands. She reckoned he would open his eyes to her presence but he was in his world. Cycling and face flowering, in conversation with himself or what, she thought. But a voice in her asked, the grunting one or the unseeing one?
Feeling the wintry breeze, she stood outside the gym holding the door. She watched him, saying to herself the Nirvana face ought to open his eyes, and say a parting greeting.
