In expectation of Spring, new things and old, here is an extract from Teju Cole's "Open City", 2011:
“In the spring, life came back into the earth’s body. I went to a picnic in Central Park with friends, and we sat under magnolias that had already lost their white flowers. Nearby were the cherry trees, which, leaning across the wire fence behind us, were aflame with pink blossom. Nature is infinitely patient, one thing lives after another has given way; the magnolia’s blooms doe just as the cherry’s come to life. The sun coming through the petals of the cherry blossoms dappled the damp grass, and new leaves, in their thousands, danced in the April breeze, so that, at moments, the trees at the far border of the lawn seemed insubstantial. I lay half in shadow, watching a black pigeon walk towards me. It stopped, then flew up, out of sight, behind the trees, then came back again, walking awkwardly as pigeons do, perhaps seeking crumbs. And far above the bird and me was the sudden apparition of three circles, three white circles against the sky.
In recent years I have noticed how much the light affects my
ability to be sociable. In winter I retreat. In the long and sunny days
following, in March, April, and May, I am much more likely to seek out the company
of others, more likely to feel myself alert to sights and sounds, to colours,
patterns, moving bodies, smells other than the ones in my office or at the
apartment. The cold months make me feel dull, and spring feels like a gentle sharpening
of the senses. In our little group in the park that day, we were four, all
reclining on a large striped blanket, eating pitta bread and hummus, picking at
green grapes. We kept an open bottle of white wine, our second of the
afternoon, hidden in a shopping bag. It was a warm day, but not so warm that
the great lawn was packed. We were part of a crowd of city-dwellers in a
carefully orchestrated fantasy of country life. Moji had brought Ana Karenina with her, and she leaned on
her elbow and read from the thick volume –it was one of the new translations-
only occasionally interrupting herself to participate in the conversation. And
a few yards away from us a young father calling out to his toddler who was
wandering away: Anna! Anna!
There had been a plane travelling above us at such a height
that the grumble of its jets was barely audible over our discussion. Then only
its faint contrail remained, and just as that faded, we saw the three white
circles growing. The circles floated, appearing to float upward at the same
time as they were falling down, then everything resolved, like a camera
viewfinder coming into focus, and we saw the human shape within each circle.
Each person, each of these flying men, steered his parachute, to the left and
to the right, and, watching them, I felt the blood race in my veins.
Everyone on the lawn was by now alert. Ball games stopped,
chatter became loud, and many arms pointed upward. The toddler Anna, astonished
as we all were, held onto her father’s leg. The parachuters were expert,
floating towards each other until they were in a kind of shuttlecock formation,
then drifting apart again, and steering toward the centre of the lawn. They
came closer to earth, falling faster. I imagined the whoosh around their ears
as they cut through the air, imagined the tight focus with which they were
bracing themselves for landing. When they were at a height of some five hundred
feet, I saw that they were dressed in white jumpsuits with white straps. The
silken parachutes were like the enormous white wings of alien butterflies. For
a moment, all surrounding sound seemed to fall away. The spectacle of men
fulfilling the ancient dream of flight unfolded in silence.
I could almost imagine what it was like for them, surrounded
by clear blue spaces, even though I’ve never skydived. Once, on a similarly
fine day a quarter of a century ago, I had heard a boy’s cries. We were in the
water, more than a dozen of us, and he’d drifted away toward the deep end. He
couldn’t swim. We were in a large swimming pool on the campus of the University
of Lagos. As a child, I had become a strong swimmer at my mother’s insistence,
and somewhat to my father’s dismay, since he was himself afraid of water. She
had taken me to lessons at the country club from the time I was five or six and,
a good swimmer herself, she had watched without fear as I learned to be at home
in the water; from her I had learned that fearlessness. I haven’t been in a
pool in years but, once , my ability had made a difference. It was the year
before I went away to NMS; I had saved another’s life.
This boy, of whom I remember nothing other than the fact
that he was, like me, of mixed race (in his case, half-indian), was in mortal
danger, drawn into increasingly deeper areas of the pool the more he struggled
to keep his head above water. The other children, shocked into inaction by his
distress, had remained in the shallow end, watching. There was no lifeguard
present, and none of the adults, assuming any of them was a swimmer, was close
enough to the deep end of the pool to help. I don’t remember deliberating, or
considering any danger to myself, only that I set off in his direction as fast
as I could. The moment that has stayed in my mind is of having not yet reached
the boy but having already left the crowd of children behind. Between his cries
and theirs, I swam hard. But caught in the blue expanse around me and above, I
suddenly felt like I was no closer to him than I had been a few moments before,
as though water intervened intentionally between where he was in the shadow of
the diving structures and where I floated in the bright sunshine. I had stopped
swimming, and the air cooled the water on my face. The boy flailed, briefly
breaking the surface with frantic arms before he was pulled under again. The
strong shadows made it difficult for me to see what was happening . I thought,
for an instant that I would always be swimming toward him, that I would never
cross the remaining distance of twelve or fifteen yards. But the moment was to
pass, and I would become the hero of the day. There was laughter afterward, and
the half-Indian boy was teased. But it might easily have been a tragic
afternoon. What I hauled the short distance to the diving platform might have been
a small, lifeless body. But almost all that day’s detail was soon lost to me,
and what remained most strongly was the sensation of being all alone in the
water, that feeling of genuine isolation, as though I had been cast without
preparation into some immense and not unpleasant, blue chamber, far from
humanity.
For the parachuters, the distance between heaven and earth
began to vanish more quickly, and the ground suddenly rushed upward to meet
them. Sound returned, and they landed, one after the other, neatly, in
billowing clouds, to the whoops and whistles of picknickers in the park. I
applauded, too. The parachuters slipped out from under their tents, crouching,
and signaled to each other. Then they rose like victorious matadors, gesturing
to the crowd, and were rewarded with our happy cries and louder applause.
Then it stopped. Above the noise, we heard the blaze of
sirens on the east side of the park. Four officers came racing over the ropes
around the perimeter of the lawn and ran toward its centre. One was white, one
Asian, and the other two were black, all as ungainly in their movements as the
parachuters had been balletic. We began to boo, safe in our numbers, and were
pushed back from the congratulatory circle
we had formed, so that they could arrest the daredevils. Someone at the
far end of the circle shouted “Security Theatre!” but the wind had picked up,
and it swallowed her voice.
The parachutists did not resist arrest. No longer encumbered
by their wings, they were led away by the police. The crowd began to cheer
again, and the parachutists, all young men, grinned and bowed. One of them,
taller than the other two, had a full ginger beard that glinted in the sun. The
parachutes remained in a glossy heap in the grass and, when the wind picked up
again, seemed to give off trembling exhalations. And so we watched the
parachutes breathe for a while, while the men were led away. Then, but only
after what seemed like a long time out of ordinary time, we came out of the marvellous
and resumed our picnic.”
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