The Flickering Street Lamp

Figure origin: Google search

They were fighting more than usual lately, or perhaps fighting had just become usual, he thought, as they walked home from the opera house along the dark side street. There was no moon, and in the darkness the houses loomed huge and unfamiliar. There were no street lamps save an old one far, far ahead, flickering feebly on and off in the distance. It was snowing and very cold. She squeezed her hand tighter on the straps of her cello case. He was trotted a few metres behind her, shivering.

“You know it’s all going to be fine,” he ventured, and took off his coat to put over her shoulders.

The girl stopped in the middle of the path and looked toward the faint lamplight ahead. The boy stopped behind her. She pulled the coat tighter around her figure. “I really don’t. I’m cold. I wish your jacket was thicker.”

“Can we maybe go to the mall and buy a thicker jacket?”

He stared at her blanched face. “Not now. You must be tired after performing. Besides, the malls are closed.”

She was walking again, and he followed.

“Remember the thick sweaters that Mama made for us?”

“How can I forget?”

“You can’t feel the wind at all when you’re wearing one of them.”

“No.”

She almost tripped over the accumulating snow. He hastened to steady her.

“I want to work in the opera house. I can become famous.”

His head jerked up. “No! Not after what that bastard of an owner demanded from you.”

“The pay would’ve been great. Much better than the salary of an orchestra accompanist.”

“We don’t need too much money. We’ve done that for the past years and we were all fine. Mama would die in shame if you agree to work directly under that thing.”

She sneezed. The old lamp ahead was flickering more intensely now.

“How much longer do you think Mama can stay with us?”

He rubbed his hands against the edge of his thin shirt and looked down. “I don’t know.”

“Mama will be able to knit big, fat sweaters for us again if I sing in the opera house and become a star, right?”

“Right.”

“Mama will be able to sit upright with us in a well-lit room at a nice, round table and drink warm eggnog again if I sing in the opera house and become a star, right?”

“Right.”

“Mama will be standing and waiting for us everyday under that old lamp–just like the old days when the lamp never flickered–that is, if I sing in the opera house and become a star, right?”

“Right,” his lips were quavering from the cold.

“I’m going to talk to him tomorrow.” She nodded to herself and kept staring at the flickering street lamp. He grabbed her by the wrist and forced her to stop again in the path. “Not a chance!”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not right.”

She turned away from him and looked again toward the old lamp far, far away, now turning on and off in a spasmodic fit. “It’s going to be dark soon.”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t like darkness.”

“Yeah.”

The lamp light was more and more feeble and she squinted to see the light. “I don’t even like that lamp anymore. It used to give off such a steady, warm light, and under it Mama would pat our heads and wipe our brows and serve us dinner. I can’t stand it, this unsteadiness now. I’m going to talk to him tomorrow, and I’ll become a star and have a good salary, and Mama will get away from that bed and sit at our round table with us and taste the best dishes in the world, and Papa will come back to live with us and all four of us will eat under a warm yellow light, and I’ll have this old lamp fixed so that it doesn’t flicker anymore, and we’ll have all the jackets and instruments and jewellery that we want, and we can travel around the world with Mama and Papa, and Mama and Papa will never fight again!”

“You are not going to speak to that man about anything.” he replied. The light in the ancient lamp suddenly died, and darkness engulfed the two as more snow was dumped from the heavens.

“See, you can’t fix this lamp anymore because it’s too old.” He said, “They go away when they get old, even if you talk to that man and become a star and have stellar salary.”

She looked at her feet because she didn’t know where else to look any more.

“I’ll take care of Mama, so don’t you worry about anything. If Mama leaves, I’ll still be here. We’ll live on our own and we can manage. Trust me.”

“How can I trust you? It’s so cold and dark and I want light.”

He took out a box of matches from his shirt pocket and lit one. She shielded it from the wind with her hands and watched as it burned and faded again into the darkness.

He said to her, “I have light. I’ll find logs eventually, and then we can make a big, bright, warm bonfire of our own.”

She said nothing. He began to trot again through the heavy snow and, once he saw that she was not following, stopped and whispered to her, “Come on.”

She took a few large steps to catch up. Slowly, she put her arm around him.