We were at that age when the only history you have is your childhood. Everything really did feel as though it was new. We had lots of plans back then. Plans to make alcohol by fermenting doctored fruits under the bed, plans to form a band by only thinking of a cool band name that nobody has thought of, and plans to find the place, different from where we were, which would magically transform our lives, if only we could find it.
You had got a map of the country. It was a road map taken from your dad’s car. I don’t remember if it folded out to make a paper canopy or it just opened as a book, but I do remember the pin in your hand hovering over the map, circling a pale sheet with printed symbols and coloured lines with its sharp point facing down.
Where shall we go?
Let fate decide.
You closed your eyes and forced the pin down into the map.
Where is it?
Tiverton.
Where’s that?
It’s a town in Devon.
Never heard of it.
Shall I try again?
Yes.
Again you closed your eyes and the pin plunged into the paper.
It’s Tiverton again.
No.
Yes, I’m afraid so.
That can’t be right. You must be doing it on purpose.
No, seriously, it’s Tiverton.
I don’t believe it.
The pin decides.
I guess Tiverton it is then.
And Tiverton it was, but not for a while. We couldn’t drive; we were in college and lived with our parents. We hardly left the suburb we imagined we were stuck in. Still, from the moment that pin landed everything changed. Pock went the pin as it punctured the paper, and our minds expanded, the world opened up and we could see new horizons. Pock went the pin, a second time, and there was a new and different place we could measure up against all our disappointments, and put all our hope.
But years passed and we would see less and less of each other. Jobs, apartments, and partners got in the way. Then all the other requirements of being an adult followed. We had to stand on our own two feet and not in our dreams. When we did see each other and after the laundry lists of our lives were unravelled either one of us would say; we should have gone to Tiverton. We should have gone to Tiverton became a joke. It was a way of acknowledging we weren’t happy but at least we had our humour. It was like saying mustn’t grumble when maybe you should. It was said, more often than not, with a drink in our hands to toast our misfortune. By the time it stopped being a joke and I suggested that we should really go to Tiverton we were both in our early thirties.
At that age one of us had a car. It took three hours to get there and when you live in England a three-hour car journey seems like a long time. But going to Tiverton was possible because we decided to go, not because we couldn’t. The problem is I don’t remember what happened when we got there. I have vague recollections of rural landscapes, country roads and sunshine. The town was like any other unsurprising English place, which is then quickly forgotten. We expected the place to be unmemorable and unsurprising and this is what gave the original joke some weight.
I did have fantasies of Tiverton being some sort of Eden. All the residents standing in long lines on the side of the road, banners with our names on them welcoming us, and there would be smiles on all the faces, including our own. The crowds would cheer as we park the car and someone who looks like a mayor steps forward and says, finally you made it; we have been waiting a long time.
But that isn’t what happened.
We went to Tiverton, walked around, made a few sarcastic remarks and left. Even if the town was an Eden I doubt we would have noticed. It was already an unremarkable and unsurprising place in our heads. I guess that is what time does to people.
Christian Martius (2016)
