The Kindness of Strangers

Hanging my head out of a porthole, podgy tears roly-polyed their way down my cheeks. I didn’t care that my scalp was prickling with cold, or that inside all my friends could see of me was my backside. What I did care about was making sure no-one witnessed the sadness erupting from somewhere deep inside me. And so it was, during a girls’ winter break to the sleepy French town of Charleville-Mézières, onboard this crammed barge-turned-bar, that I had a giant meltdown out of a porthole.

Things really weren’t going to plan. 

I was painfully single after an eight-year relationship came to an abrupt and entirely unforeseen (by me at least) halt. I hadn’t slept properly for weeks. I was living on a diet of peanut butter and marshmallows. And everyone around me was getting married or having babies or just… kissing. Meanwhile I was beginning everything, all over again. And I had no clue where to start. My tears tumbled.  

The carefree current of the River Meuse blurred beneath me. Ahead sat Charleville, in its calm, November meditation. It was once home to the nineteenth-century poet, Arthur Rimbaud, of ‘Je est un autre’ (‘I is an other’) fame. I shook away the melancholic wish that ‘Je’ was very much an 'autre’ right now, and instead dragged my thoughts to the only inspiring place I could think of – Charleville’s waffle van. Unapologetically plonked in the Place Ducale, the historical gem of a main square, each day we’d shiver our way past it, listening to the enticing sizzle of fresh batter, sniffing the waffles’ scent as golden as its buttery ingredients. The thought of later finally wrapping my tingling fingers around a warm, toasty gaufre soothed my soul.

I edged my way back through the porthole as elegantly as I could (which is, in fact, not at all). My friends looked at me with such love and sympathy that I thought I might burst out crying all over again. They weren’t the only ones to notice my face curdling with heartache. 

Tucked into the far corner was a waistcoat-wearing, bespectacled calligraphist. A man, perhaps in his seventies, much-admired in the area. His pen, a pirouetting extension of himself, had been dancing all evening. Slowly, he made his way over to me, and, uttering not a single word, handed me a piece of calligraphy so beautiful it made my soul soar. I translated the French in my head as I whispered the words on the page. 

Dans le noir nous verrons clair.

In the darkness we will see clearly.

Dans le labyrinth, nous trouverons la voie droite.

In the labyrinth we will find the right path.

This time, the tears spilling onto my cheeks weren’t of sadness. They were for the overwhelming kindness of this stranger. I looked up at him, and I knew. I knew that whenever life got tough I would think of this moment, of these words - and I’d remember that all is never lost.