A Fine Passage by France Daigle Page B

him that air currents ought to have the right to their proper identities, as do deserts, mountain ranges, and water currents. Why, indeed, should air currents deserve less recognition than those of water? Why not a Mistral and a Chinook, since we have the Agulhas and South Equatorial streams? Undeniable evidence that we treat wind with contempt: the monsoon stream — the only aquatic current not capitalized — is named after a wind current. Surely this can’t be right? The man who shows no sign of reading adjusts his seat back, but without closing his eyes to sleep. At most, he hopes to be able to think differently.
    Just how many major wind currents sweep across the surface of the globe? Four? Eight? A dozen? And why refuse the jet stream — a unique natural phenomenon, as far he knows — its capital letters? The man who shows no sign of reading glances up the aisle towards the front of the airplane. The passengers are quiet, and there are no on-flight personnel in sight. He toys with the idea of making his way up to the cockpit to ask the pilots if airplanes fly above or below the wind currents, but considering the surrounding torpor, this or any other sort of initiative seems impossible. A real Wednesday. Not quite death, but almost.
    Knocking on the door, Hans felt something odd, a sort of premonition. “Of course. I’m sorry. I thought it was Friday. My mistake.”
    The woman looked him up and down.
    â€œNo, don’t apologize. There’s no mistake. The study of weekdays and their passage is an inexact science. As far as you’re concerned, it’s obviously Friday. I can see that. But what can I do? I have no choice but to follow the human timetable. Though, I admit, it doesn’t always suit me either.”
    Hans was not expecting such a thorough explanation for what he considered merely absent-mindedness on his part.
    â€œWhat people refer to as absent-mindedness doesn’t exist.”
    Could this woman also read his mind? Hans wanted to be rid of this bizarre feeling, but, off balance, he wasn’t even sure how to raise the subject of tomorrow.
    â€œFine. In any case, I’ll come back . . . uh, tomorrow?”
    â€œThat’s right. Tomorrow.”
    And without further ado, the woman closed the door.
    Once, when they were famished after making love, the man who showed no sign of reading made sandwiches, which they began to eat in silence. Probably it was an ambiguous silence. And though she hesitated, in the end she had not been able to resist asking.
    â€œWhat are you thinking?”
    At the time, she still expected his answers to be tinged with sweetness.
    â€œI was thinking of salt. I’m sure I put enough, but I don’t taste it at all. I wonder if salt loses its taste, goes stale over time.”
    She was stunned; they finished their snack in silence.
    Several rows behind, in a seat by the other side of the sky, Carmen is also looking through the porthole. Beside her, Terry is engrossed in an American bestseller he picked up at the airport.
    â€œThe thing I enjoyed about smoking was that feeling you got, maybe twenty-odd times a day, that you were coming to the end of something.”
    Terry stops reading.
    â€œHmm . . . I’m sure I know just what you mean, I do.”
    Carmen and Terry quit smoking two weeks ago.
    â€œIt’s not so bad, though, eh?”
    â€œIt’s bad enough.”
    But the man who shows no sign of reading is not always preoccupied by such superficial considerations as the freshness of salt or the status of air currents in the minds of professors of geography and orthography. Often he thinks of nothing in particular, finds himself unable to take hold of any specific thing in life’s continuous flow of events. In his life’s flow, that is. Of these past few months in particular, he has retained very little. Except for that Gabriel Pierné score,
Prelude and Fughetta for Wind Septet
, which fell