Hugh Trenchard

To the chatter of voices, the whirr of wheels and the clangour of shifting gears, a group of some twenty cyclists approached the gypsy cyclist from behind. Like a single organic unit, the group drew up near him, amorphous at its edges, clinging and spreading, lengthening and congealing to the rolling topography of naked tarmac, broad and smooth.

Rarely troubled by passing vehicles in this remote region of the world, the aggregate veered wide of the gypsy cyclist, perhaps the first obstacle it had encountered for countless kilometers. By their colorful outfits, the striations in the muscles of their arms and shaven legs, this organism was composed of racing cyclists, mostly men, and a few women. As they passed, their speed was not significantly greater than his.

A voice from within the group lifted, “Hallo!”

“Jump on, if you want!” said another.

“Hell no!” cried another. “He’s got panniers on!”

“It doesn’t matter! He’s fine if he stays at the back,” retorted another.

Considering his mixed invitation, the gypsy cyclist eased his pace, preferring at first to see the pack grow smaller in the distance, then to maintain his own steady cadence in the silence of the desert air.

But there was a light but relentless head-crosswind, and hours of silence had weakened his vocal chords. Perhaps they will begin to atrophy if I do not use them soon, he thought. And indeed, the very sight of the peloton caused him to recall years long past when he raced in Belgium and France. I would bet anything, he thought, that I was as strong as any of the strongest riders among this group. In fact, panniers or not, I could still whip them up Mont Ventoux. Hell, I’d even carry their water bottles in my panniers.

With that very thought he found the pedals turning faster and the space between him and the rear of the pack diminishing. Quickly he was there and, sheltered from the wind, the pace was faster than when he was alone, but easier. Immediately he experienced an old familiar comfort among the group.

He pulled up beside the last rider. “Where are you headed?” he asked the man. Some grey in the man’s hair splayed out from beneath his helmet. The man’s legs, deeply tanned, turned the pedals over revealing every fatless muscle and thousands of hours of circular motion. He appeared as one who walked with a stoop and slightly crouched, as though every lifted step were a pedal thrust over the top, and every stride backward a pull on the pedal, around and back at the bottom. The gypsy cyclist had seen many like that in his time.

“Oh we are out for about 5 hours, easy, maybe a hard effort or two up the climbs,” he said. “One hundred miles or so. One more loop of the grasslands, over the volcano, and then we are headed home.”

“Are you racers?” Asked the gypsy cyclist.

“They are,” said the man, pointing to the riders ahead. “I used to be. That was twenty years ago, though. Well, I still race a bit now and again, but twenty years ago I used to ride the Pro Tours, just like these guys. There were days when I was halfway down a line of 200 riders that stretched out to the crack of doom, half a mile long. Yes, those days, when I was cross-eyed with agony, sucking air like a steam engine and blowing snot double-barreled, staring at a single point on the back of the guy in front of me while some drugged up strongman at the front drove the train at 60km/h on the flat.”

“Yes,” replied the gypsy cyclist. “There were races like that for me too.”

The man seemed not to hear the gypsy cyclist. “But one day after ten days straight of that agony, the hardest race I’d ever done, I found wings for the first ten mile climb and broke away and was two minutes up on the peloton. But unexpectedly, after the descent, and only 40 miles into the race, I began to weaken and the pack caught me. I could not hold the wheel of the last man in the peloton, and then another mile over a little hill it was over; my body gave out. It was the last stage. I stopped at the roadside and I threw my bike into a ravine. I thought I was the last rider, but I had destroyed the peloton on that climb, and there were at least fifty guys who rode by me as I stood at the roadside with my bike in the ravine.

“I quit racing for ten years and never spoke about that race, or bike racing at all, to a single soul. People begged me to explain: my team-mates, friends, my mother, the press. I would talk of other things, but I would turn away when they asked me about that race.”

The man paused, and shifted gears as a climb approached. “Ten years later,” he continued. “I hadn’t touched a bike, had not spoken a word about cycling. I was fat and out of shape. But one day I flew back to the country of that race, rented a car and drove to that ravine, and my bike was still there under a tree, the tires flat and all rusted red. I retrieved it and without oiling the chain or pumping the tires I rode it another hundred miles to the finish of that stage. And if my bike wasn’t there, I was going to drive the car into that same ravine and walk the rest of the way to the finish.”

The group began to ascend, and the gypsy cyclist was quickly aware of the ease of their pace compared to his. His breathing intensified, but he was keeping up. Besides, he thought, I’ve got panniers on.

The man continued. “Do you know the agony of quitting so near the end of the hardest thing you have ever done? I lived ten years with a bitterness and agony incalculably greater than all the hours of suffering I endured while on the bike. But one strange and amazing day, I realized that both these agonies were miniscule.

“One day – the very day before I flew back to find my bicycle – I saw an old man on a wheelboard, with half a body, his legs were gone. He looked like me, so much like me I can’t explain it. And when he looked into my eyes, I knew he saw that I looked like him. I was going to turn away; I couldn’t bear to see him. In fact I tried to turn away, but at that moment I was compelled to meet his gaze, and to look away was as if to deny my very existence. Likewise he stared at me. Then suddenly he shouted to me: “In all my life I have wished for only one thing!” that old man said. “More than to walk at night; more than the love of a woman; more than the friendships that I could never sustain for my bitterness. I wish only one thing! That I could have turned the pedals of a bicycle!”

Suddenly the speed picked up on the climb, and the gypsy cyclist could hold the pace no longer. “Have a great ride!” shouted the man, as he pulled away. The pack grew smaller in the distance; the man passed the other riders and, over the crest of the climb, the gypsy cyclist could see him disappear, ahead of the group.

“I have changed,” said the woman in an elegant black dress. In the warm summer evening she stood with a man, also well dressed, near balustrades that lined granite stairs upward to an auditorium, framed by pillars, Parthenon in grandiosity. Pale blue doors were open and a timid light touched tentatively the night air, then lept joyfully outward, scattered and disappeared into the evening. Sounds of a chorus drifted from somewhere in the bowels of the auditorium.

Occasionally patrons entered and exited the open doors, sillouetted by the cat-footed light from within. Outside, the streets were quiet, but orbs of glowing streetlamps illuminated passersby, some of whom paused momentarily, like the gypsy cyclist did, to listen to the chorus and its rousing passages.

“Yes, I have changed, Tom,” continued the woman. “Can’t you see how the lines in my face tell the stories of all the changes in my life?” she asked.

“No,” replied the man. “I look at the lines on an old man’s face and I see nothing but an old man. But when I see you, I see nothing but the young woman I saw when I first met her twenty years ago. Do you see? The lines themselves are meaningless to me.”

The gypsy cyclist felt compelled to turn his attention from the cascading harmonies to the conversation nearby. He lifted a hand to feel for creases in his own face, exaggerated perhaps in recent days by the sun and the fatigue of long days in the saddle.

“Thank you, Tom. That was a nice thing to say. But I look at you and I see in every line the days when you were alone, the stresses of your work, the worries your children caused you, the death of your parents, but most of all the years when you did not have me.”

“Yes,” he said. “Those years were difficult ones. You were off and away to find the changes you say you’ve been through now, while I waited for you. Have you really changed? I cannot read it in your face. Like I say, I see only the same woman I met twenty years ago.”

“Yes, Tom. I can see those lines in my own face, they are there, as anyone can tell. Tell me about those years, Tom. Why have you been so blind? Why did you love me all those years? And why can you not see that I have changed?”

“It is simple,” replied the man. “We have been apart and you do not know where I have been. Well, in those years, I traveled the world and saw birth and death and suffering. I saw starving orphans and bodies in the streets, disfigured children in sweatshops, women ravaged, and corruption everywhere.” The man paused, turned to look away; he momentarily met the eyes of the gypsy cyclist.

He returned his gaze to the woman. “And to slow the deepening of the trenches in my own face, there was a vision of you that lit every corner and crevice and dark shadow that blended into night all the things that I saw. Your visage has preserved me and for that I dare not profess to have changed, as you have. Twenty five more years will pass, my dear, and should one wrinkle in your face appear, then all the world will crash upon me and obliterate me. For me, perhaps I have changed, but I cannot know. For you, perhaps you too have changed, but I cannot see. But, if you must, I will gaze upon your perfect face and believe your every word.”

The gypsy cyclist again felt the lines in his face. As he moved his hands he became intensely aware that there was no reflection and no one near to proclaim the sunburn and the hollows of his cheeks, the stinging in his eyes for his fatigue. Yes, he thought, there are wrinkles here. I have changed, I do not deny.

The gypsy cyclist turned his attention to the resounding harmonies.

“Look,” said the stooped old man, holding out a shiny gold coin to the gypsy cyclist’s nose. In the afternoon and the wilting tropical humidity the man was dressed only in a soiled serape that covered his waist. Under one hand was a wooden cane, rotting and weak at its knots; the coin in the other. “This is for you,” he said. “I am a beggar, as you see. This coin of gold was given to me by a kind young man who once passed by. I am told it is two-ounces.”

The gypsy cyclist, hungry from riding the morning long and dressed in torn shorts and his jersey moist with sweat, looked at the man. “Oh, no thank you,” he said. “Thank you for your offer, but I haven’t any need for money. I am hungry, but I will find food soon enough.”

The ailing man found the energy to smile, his hand still held out. “Ah, but you do not understand,” he said. “You see, it is not charity I offer to you, but rather I ask you for your charity, the charity you can give to me by accepting my gift. I offer this to you and pretend that you are more tired and hungry than me – although it is true that I am hungry, that much I do not pretend. And though I imagine your gnawing hunger, if you are charitable, you will allow me to pretend these things. But know too, that I do not pretend to see clearly in your eyes the transience of your life and how lost you are.”

He continued. “This too I do not pretend: I know with certainty that these street corners will witness my last hours; I can feel that moment deeply within all the fibres beneath this sagging skin that you can see. And, when I look at you, I know there is no certainty in the hand of yours that waves away the coin I offer you, nor is there certainty in those eyes that look inward seeking experiences of your past – those experiences you can barely remember while you traipse these streets full of beggars, of which I am just one of thousands – those experiences that raise themselves from their tombstones and counsel you to refuse my offer, saying to you that you must refuse because you are not a beggar like me.”

The gypsy cyclist could neither move nor avert his gaze, nor refuse to hear the old man. The man continued. “Look at me, beggar man with your bicycle, bereft of certainty. Look at me and look into the eyes of a man who has killed many men to save his own life and the lives of others. Do you not think I know about charity? Do you not think I understand the nature of certainty? For every exotic corner of this world that you have traveled, you, I can see, have lived without certainty.” He paused, and the two locked their gaze.

The old man continued, “Look at me, beggar man,” he said. “It is every metre of open road and every hour of uncertainty for which you must now take this coin. You are a beggar man like me and all the men and women and children on these street corners, but you are not a liar. Therefore take from me my gift to you. Should you wait for it, and return here tomorrow, then I will not be here to offer it.”

With a compulsion he only barely understood, the gypsy cyclist reached out his hand. He accepted the coin.