Heraclitus’ Daydream
by Algor Dennison

copyright 2011 Algor Dennison
Smashwords Edition

Georg Fransen had been sitting on the Daydreamer’s white-scrubbed deck for three hours when the first passengers began leaving breakfast. He watched, soaking in the salty sunshine while he waited. What it was he was waiting for, he couldn’t quite remember, but it didn’t really matter. It could have been lunch, or perhaps someone to challenge him to shuffleboard or checkers. The former wouldn’t happen for a few hours, and the latter probably never, but Georg was, if nothing else in the world, a patient man. 
He took a sip of his ginger beer and hunched himself forward around the checkerboard on the little table in front of him. Resting his arms on either side of it, he stared at the board and pretended to contemplate it deeply. People didn’t notice his watching if he had something in front of him. He pushed pieces around on the board occasionally, playing a slow game against himself, but he was too tricky for his own good, and he kept losing track. 
He smiled each time he found himself outwitted; it didn’t bother him much. In fact, it made games like this possible, and it made good books just as good the tenth and twentieth times through, so there were advantages. What did bother him sometimes was that all the short-term things of life kept sliding away. It was hard to hold them in place, took too much effort to keep track of them all at once. The game he could let slide if he needed, while concentrating on other things: the long-term things, the things he refused to let slide away. And yet it seemed he couldn’t hold those either, really. Only in his memory.
Frowning at the checkerboard, he smoothed the creased cover of the paperback he had been reading. He wasn’t following it well. There was one phrase, though, strikingly ironic, stuck in his mind. The only thing he could actually recall from the book. Someone had said, lackadaisically, the only constant is change. That was it. Heraclitus! The book didn’t even know it, but five hundred years before Christ someone had already figured that one out. 
How on earth could he remember Heraclitus, and not his own telephone number? But telephones were useless extremities anyway: no one to call and no callers. Just one more thing to lose.
He supposed he must have finished the book already; the phrase sounded like the kind of thing someone would say at the end of a book, after tangled events had sorted themselves out only to reveal a lack of overall progress. The only constant is change... Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. Now what was that one? A poem, most likely: more shifting sand, difficult to hold on to for meaning. He hadn’t read any poetry for years; this must be another one of those illusory fragments that constantly resurfaced but resisted full recognition.
A middle-aged woman came down the stairs from the deck above wearing skin-colored shorts. It gave Georg a shock until he shifted his glasses higher on his nose and saw that they were in fact shorts. A brochure had warned of topless beaches the day before, and he supposed that, given this freedom, some enterprising individuals might not hesitate to advance the custom a step farther and forego bottoms. Georg had desperately hoped it wouldn’t become common practice while he was yet onboard the cruise ship. Why would anyone wear such clothing anyway?
“Don’t trip, John. These stairs are steep.” A small boy trailed the woman down the steps, rehearsing a crooked sneer he had learned and giggling at his own twisted features. He immediately tripped on the second step but caught himself on the railing just in time. The boy’s closely cropped blonde hair was spiked in front, but otherwise resembled Georg’s when he had been a boy. His shorts even looked a little like the old knickerbockers Georg had worn. He remembered that. So long ago, and he remembered it clearly still.

He stood on a train platform, one of the largest in Graz, scuffing his shoes and trying to inch closer to the platform edge where the tracks began and trains roared by. Finally his mother, with a soft cluck, took his hand and held it firmly. Her scratchy dark-green woolen skirt matched her funny little hat with the edges turned up, and her black handbag was primly tucked between her arm and her side, giving a resilient and formidable look to her figure. Her face, however, betrayed great love and kindness, with large eyes and soft, curved lips. 
So solid and full, once, but gone for a very long time now. Would there ever be a return, or was she gone like the rest, beyond recall from the haunting past? Things fall apart, all things change, and there is no return. There never has been. The only constant is change.
The train was twenty minutes late and counting. Young Georg had given up all hope after only ten, and now could barely remember who it was they were there to meet.
“Do the people spend the night here when trains are late, mother?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Georg. Only have patience and your father’s train will arrive soon.”
“And then the waiting will be done?”
“Certainly it will be done.”
“And can I have my knife back as soon as we get home?”
“Heavens, child, yes. When we get home you shall have your jack-knife again, only you must first promise to not be destructive with it.”
Wrinkling his nose and frowning, Georg tried to cross his eyes like a schoolmate had shown him earlier.
“Georg, stop that at once, the people will see you. If you do that enough you’ll turn out an ugly, wrinkly old man.” 
Little Georg waited until she was looking away up the track again before resuming his efforts.

“Paul! Paul, my hat. I’ve left it.”
A glowing young lady in blue and yellow slid to a stop on the polished deck, wavy hair blowing in the sea breeze. She pulled on the arm of a young man with slicked hair and a sweater, and spoke loudly.
“Back in the dining room! I left it on the hook near the door and I forgot to retrieve it.”
“Of course, darling. Wait right here, I’ll just fetch it and run right back.”
“Oh but Paul, if someone’s taken mother’s pearl pin from it, she’ll die. She’ll just die. And then I might also.”
“Just wait there, honey darling, I’ll see to it.”
“Yes Paul. I’ll wait here. Make sure about the pin, there could be any number of thieves running around!”
“Yes dear. Right back. Only don’t go anywhere!”
The young woman nervously tapped her pointy shoe against the foot of the railing near Georg’s table, and looked around. Her eyes skittered across the checkerboard and the funny old man with the wavy hair, and she chewed her lower lip gently. Then she began digging furiously in her purse.

Miriam glided along at Georg’s elbow, a picture of grace and loveliness. Her cream gown set off her pearl earrings nicely, and her short, dark hair was falling out of place just enough to lend her a comfortable air. She yawned hugely and covered her delicate mouth too late.
“Oh! Excuse me. Georg, darling, it’s been lovely. Simply lovely.”
“Yes,” Georg replied, halfway between doting and a sleepy daze, “wait here and I’ll hail a cab. You can sit on this sofa, but don’t fall asleep!” He grinned.
“Thank you, dear. I’m about to collapse, honestly.”
Leaving her resting on the entryway sofa, Georg trotted outside the bright hotel into the wet street and began waving. Three or four minutes later, taxi waiting, he dashed back inside, but the sofa was as empty as the rest of the vestibule. 
Gone, like everyone and everything else.  He had never been foolish enough to try to hold on to things, but surely people weren’t off limits? Where did she go, and where is she now? Why are there so many new people all around, but none of the old? The only constant is change, and that you cannot avoid.
Walking toward the inner doorway, Georg saw her across the mezzanine, deep in laughing conversation with one of the musicians. With a sigh, he trotted briskly inside again. Try to hold on. Wife of fifty years, and she never got any easier to keep track of.
 
“Excuse me, sir, you don’t have a phone I could borrow for a moment, do you? I’d like to call up to my room and see if my mother is there.”
Georg looked up at the girl in blue and yellow and blinked. She should wear cream, he thought. The blue and yellow was almost garish. If she liked the pearl hat pin so much, she should wear cream with it.
“No cell phone? That’s fine. I’m sorry, don’t worry about it. I’ll be okay. Thank you.”
She swept away down the deck and turned the corner toward the lower level stairs, still rummaging in her purse. Georg blinked a few more times and made another move with a checker, putting it in harm’s way from two directions. As soon as he saw the error, he pulled it back, looking for a better option. Mustn’t give over too easily to myself, he thought. There has to be a challenge. Change. Challenge. Change is the only constant. Otherwise things fall apart – something like that. Eternity is a child, a child playing checkers... 
Where did that come from?

At the sound of heavy footsteps, he turned and saw the skin-pants woman again, boy still in tow. 
“Tyler, hurry up! I told the girls to wait in our rooms, but if you dawdle any longer they’ll—Tyler, stop making that face, I’m not going to tell you again. Your face will stick like that if you keep it up!” 
The young man in the sweater came walking back from the dining room, empty-handed. He stopped where the girl had been, breathing heavily, and looked all around. Finally his eyes settled on Georg, who still had a finger on the imperiled checker. Wordlessly, Georg pointed his other finger toward the lower deck stairs, and with a brief smile at him the young man rolled his eyes and set off. 
From the deck below, Georg overheard a whining voice that carried shrilly on the salty air.
“Mom, can I puh-leeeze have my pirate sword back now? You said. You said I could have it back.”
“Only if you’ll promise to stop hitting your sister with it. Watch your step, these are steep stairs!”
Nudging the checker slowly over to a safer square, Georg took a drink, looked up at the sun, and smiled.


If you enjoyed this story, consider leaving a review and exploring Algor Dennison's other short work:
Santa Flies a Bushplane: A Christmas Revelation (writing as Lance Brodie)
Veteran of a Thousand Battles
A Darkened Landscape: a Western Horror Trilogy
Blinding Moon: a Werewolf Trilogy