The White Room
Abstract war scenes gave way to paintings of what the flood did to buildings.
Dan added paint and scraped, and added more paint.
He woke up early. He woke up with the fear that he would never paint again.
He listened to the waves in the darkness, watched the white foam form and disappear across the sand.
The locals had casado for lunch. They made bread from corn.
Bed-and-breakfasts had flooded the beach town. The bus brought surfers to the beach.
The surfers eyed him and didn’t find him worth talking to.
He sometimes went to his studio to sit and read. Whenever he went there and smelled the paint, he felt like smoking. He hadn’t smoked in years.
He’d thought about passing the remaining days in Toronto where his daughter Anna lived, though she hadn’t agreed to meet him.
He browsed Anna’s pictures on a screen. She seemed to have the essentials—there was a man in her life, and a dog with long limbs. She lived in a house facing the lake. Dan kept a photo of her in his wallet. In the photo, she was still a child, and Dan was holding her.
He was watching the pelicans crashing against the waves at a beach without surfers when a family arrived. Two little girls in matching bathing suits dipped their feet in the water. One of them screamed and swam in. The father followed her. The other girl stayed on the shore, took one step forward, then stepped back again.
Her father and sister kept calling her in.
“Come in! Come in!”
The father and the sister both jumped, splashing water at each other, laughing.
The other girl stayed where she was. She took one step forward, took another step back.
Dan didn’t know why he started to cry.
Dan had to go to his studio to finish the painting. He didn’t remember if he had brushes, if he had any paint. If he could find the beach, he’d find his studio too.
His bare feet touched the cold sand. Why was he barefoot?
In his pockets, he couldn’t find what he thought he needed.
He didn’t recognize his suitcase until it was the only suitcase rotating on the belt. He took his jacket out of the suitcase and put it on. He had not travelled back to Toronto since he’d left. He’d met Anna last time several years ago in New York.
The noises muffled in the snow. Passengers opened umbrellas as they waited for cabs.
He took out the address to the Airbnb apartment and gave it to the driver. He didn’t recognize the highways or the streets. He felt trapped inside somebody else’s dreams. A pressure behind his eyeballs.
He was on the bed in the Airbnb with a bottle of wine on the bedside table. The sheets had wine stains on them, but the bedding still smelled of bleach. He looked at his naked body in the mirror. He moved the pillows around, looking for his phone.
A book was left on the desk with a blue sticker attached to the cover. The handwriting was quite familiar. Call Anna, the note said.
He opened the book. The first page of the book went: She woke up in a room with white walls.
He remembered a white room, a woman plugging in a pump and filling up a purple air mattress.
He couldn’t remember the woman’s name.
The window looked at a big crane. Tall buildings blocked the light.
From the balcony, Dan watched the snow fall on the frozen surface of a half-filled pool.
At night, he left the room to find food. He wore his soft sweater and his army boots. He walked in the snow to a place where people were sitting behind wooden tables on the other side of frosted glass.
When he entered, they asked him to show his cards. When he couldn’t find his wallet, they told him to sit and wait on a chair. They didn’t tell him to sit behind a table like the others.
After he left, he couldn’t find his way back home. His father had taught him how he could follow the aspen trees around their village to get back home. But tonight, he could find only one such tree.
“You seem lost. You don’t seem like you know where you are,” a boy said to him.
The boy asked, “Do you know where you’re going? Do you want me to call someone?”
Dan reached in his pocket, took out his wallet. He handed the boy a piece of paper.
“Do you want me to call this number?” the boy asked.
Dan couldn’t remember if he’d called Anna after he’d arrived here.
He looked at the numbers on the sticker, and tried to touch the same numbers on the screen.
A man answered the phone.
“Please stop calling,” the man said.
“Who is this?”
“Please don’t do this. Don’t you remember what happened the last time? She told you not to come here.”
There were more empty bottles surrounding the bed. Dan’s mother had said she was too fat to wear the black bikini. Dan opened the closet beside the bed and took the bikini out. Its shiny surface made him shiver. He took off his shirt, put on the top part first, and looked at his skinny body in the mirror. He locked the bedroom door before taking off his pants. The last time he’d worn the black bikini, his father had walked in on him. He’d slapped Dan across the face.
This time, Dan made sure nobody was home. He looked around as he put on the bottom part. When he looked at the mirror, he remembered that he was renting somebody else’s apartment, that his father had died in an accident years ago.
They were both dead, his father and his mother.
His penis drooped out of the underwear, like a plant in need of watering.
Had he left Anna’s mother for the woman? He didn’t remember the woman’s name.
He remembered walking with her by the ocean. Her long fingers on the nape of his neck.
The light painted yellow strips on the book. Dan scrambled through the pages.
The woman’s body twisted. Dan pictured her body in the ocean.
El cielo es azul.
He couldn’t follow the sentences. He was back to the first one.
He put on his jacket and looked around for the door. The door opened to another room. He pulled the bath curtain and looked around. He dipped his toe into the water.
El cielo es azul.
Las olas se ondularon.
The leaves of the trees were like tongues. A tortuga.
The light glowed on the frosted corn field. Golden yellow.
He took a leaf in his hand and looked at how the colors had changed.
A tortuga.
Cars moved past him.
Hambriento, he screamed at the cars. The cars didn’t stop.
He opened his mouth and tasted the snowflakes on his tongue.
The sky had turned red. Red the color of the dead deer on the snow. The blood had melted the snow, turned black after it froze again.
The horses trampling on a white field. How the figures turned into movement. The movement turned into lines and texture, shadow and light.
Snow and ice. The feel of a white stretched canvas. How the shapes change, the way the ice shines in different lights.
Alizarin crimson. Cobalt blue.
The river under the bridge had frozen. Figures ringed around the fire pit. The people there poured gasoline on tires.
A black dog licked Dan’s face. The dog owner passed him a bag, a can of beans.
They asked him if he had any money. They had dope and speed.
The mouths with swollen gums, broken teeth. The faces suctioned in.
The stray dogs barked.
What had they done to his mother? To his father?
Aspens, Dan repeated.
The sun was red when he closed his eyes. He told himself they would travel towards the sun.
He couldn’t remember her name.
The figures laughed and came closer, surrounding him. They pushed him against the barbed wire. The wire tore through his jacket, cut into his skin.
Sharp objects into flesh. The colors bleeding into each other. How to turn it into paint.
“If you pretend you’re mad, that’s not going to help you,” they said.
“Give it to us, old man!” they barked.
Warm liquid flowed between his legs, colored the snow. Yellow dots on white. The mattress was wet. “It’s just a bad dream,” his mother said.
“You’re a big boy. Did you wet the bed again, Dan?” his father said.
“It’s just a bad dream,” Dan repeated.
They searched his pockets and took what he had. His face sank into the wet snow.
He didn’t remember who took his wallet, but he wondered if they could make him a potato. He had a card that he could give to them.
They showed him maps and photos of different people he didn’t recognize. They took him somewhere else.
The light was cold. People in white coats undressed him, touched the wounds on his back. He was still shivering.
He remembered the days of harvest in the village. The scythes cut through the air. He threw a match into a pile of hay.
El fuego was the word for fire.
They were listening to a fugue. The woman put her head on his shoulder, her fingers reaching his neck.
He trembled by the fire.
El abrazo was an embrace.
Babak Lakghomi is the author of South (Dundurn Press, 2023) and Floating Notes (Tyrant Books, 2018). His writing has appeared in American Short Fiction, NOON, Electric Literature, Fence, Southwest Review, Ninth Letter, and The Adroit Journal, among others, and has been translated into Italian and Farsi. Babak was born in Tehran, Iran, and currently lives and writes in Toronto.