Ecce Homo

Chapter One

C hooked his finger under the top edge of the handle — he supposed fewer people would have touched that bit — and pulled. The door opened with a reluctant groan, and gave way to the interior of the café, and his nose wrinkled slightly as the smell of coffee, cleaning products, and recently fried egg imposed itself upon him. The coffee was pleasant, if nothing else, and their having cleaned was hardly something about which to complain, he thought, as he considered the prospect of smelling faintly of egg for the rest of the day.

He entered, carefully navigating the remains of the doormat — its lamentable state was the result of people pushing the door upon which the word 'pull' had been emblazoned by somebody with a misguided faith in the public's attention to signage, and proceeding to squeeze themselves through the half-open door, driving its corner into the doormat as they did so. C had watched this conflict play out many times, ensconced in the corner that he liked to occupy when the weather did not tempt him outside, bemused by the protagonists' apparently steadfast conviction that this must simply be how this particular door worked, rather than entertaining the possibility that they might be using it incorrectly.

He walked to the counter, and smiled perfunctorily as the barista greeted him by name.

“The coffee machine has changed colour.”

“I hadn’t noticed.”

C walked to his usual corner, thinking that there was something faintly peculiar about a person remembering, presumably, the names and faces of hundreds of patrons, and not noticing that the black coffee machine was now white.

Outside, the sun pierced through the sparse clouds and sparkled resplendently on the water of the dock; this, coupled with the lingering smell of eggs, was enough to tip the balance out of favour of his usual corner table. He sat down outside, and dedicated himself to repeatedly adjusting his position in an effort to make something comfortable of the chair that had been designed either by somebody particularly corpulent, or by somebody who had never once sat down. As he perched with his back to the window, a cup of coffee appeared in front of him. He reflexively moved it to the centre of the circular table, careful to avoid touching the surface with the sleeve of his coat — he could smell the mildew from the cloth with which it had been wiped. Having done so, he picked up the spoon and collected some of the steamed milk, turning the utensil over just before putting it into his mouth. He repeated this once more, just as he always did, and then stirred the coffee, being careful not to let the spoon touch the cup — he hated the noise — and took a sip.

The café’s outdoor tables stood on a very old, very uneven flagstone floor, poised to eject the contents of any receptacle placed upon them into the lap of careless patrons. This very old, very uneven flagstone floor was adjacent to a dock in which a volume of water, isolated from its parent river by the unyielding steel gates of a lock, effortlessly supported a great number of boats, in a scene that quivered as though it were alive, with perturbations in one area washing inexorably over everything else in the basin. If one paid attention, one could identify individual little disturbances: atoms with budding wills of their own, precocious and unique, unleashing themselves on their world, and C, with his habit of luxuriating in sensory minutiae, did pay attention. The whole scene breathed together like an orchestra: the slow bass notes moved the entire ensemble in concert, gently lifting and lowering the heavy boats. The melody of the tenors danced with the smaller, lighter craft, leading them a gentle step that pranced elegantly on top of the bass beneath them. Above this, spurred on by the whispering breeze, the sopranos held court, so quick and delicate that only the birds floating on the water, tenuously attached to the scene, could follow their song.

This visual symphony was cloven in half horizontally by a black chain, supported by narrow steel posts spaced a few metres apart. Another such chain bisected the space between this chain and the flagstones below to form a structure that had doubtless been constructed to help the less attentive of the species avoid an unexpected swim. Rather disappointingly for C, somebody with an exalted view of the ingenuity of the less attentive of the species, as well as a particular affection for them, had decided that these chains were not properly administering their duties, and had added vile black netting across the understated and somewhat elegant chains, crassly carving the bottom part of the basin’s beautiful, integrated dance into discrete little squares. The segregation of this one body into individual, isolated sections stirred a nebulous discomfort within C as he sipped from the cup, the top of which obscured the black netting in what he felt was an appropriate punishment for its discourteous imposition.

As he sat, transfixed by the boundary that the uppermost chain drew between the discrete and the continuous, he became conscious of a sharp clicking noise piercing the scene, setting itself in stubborn contrast against the smooth, sonorous oscillations of the boats on the water. He turned his head slightly in the direction of the knee high, black leather boots whose stiletto heels were beating out a dissonant, staccato rhythm against the flagstones beneath them, drawing louder and nearer with each bar. After several more such beats, the clicking stopped, and C looked up to observe the boots’ owner sit down, two tables to the right of the one over which he was hovering. He glanced at her, and was bewitched for a moment by the assortment of small silver spikes that pierced the smooth, pale skin of her face, catching the light as she moved, mirroring the ripples on the water.

A moment later, the owner of the boots’ hand darted into her black leather handbag, artfully avoiding the spikes that beset even this, and emerged, its pale, slender fingers curled elegantly around a vape. C tensed slightly as she set this device on the table, her right hand next to it, her long, black fingernails resting lightly on the white surface of the table, and turned her attention to her phone. He noted with displeasure that his table was downwind of hers, and glowered anxiously at the device over the rim of his coffee cup. From that moment, he felt like a marionette, with his strings bound to the woman’s elegant fingers. In every barely perceptible twitch of her form he saw a harbinger of the white cloud that would soon consume the æthereal light that danced bashfully in the ripples on the water, and suffocate the melodious sounds of the orchestra that played within it. C finished his coffee more quickly than he wanted to, stood, straightened his coat, and left. As he walked past her, the woman returned the device to her purse; perhaps she realised that the strings had detached and its power had faded, more likely she was entirely oblivious to the fraught drama that had been playing out in his mind. Either way, the white cloud never came.