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A tree stands beside a country road.
The tree is severely leaf-challenged.
A rather shabby man in a bowler hat is sitting under that even shabbier tree.
He (the man not the tree) tugs at one of his boots, unsuccessfully. It seems it contains a pebble.
He pauses, then tries again, only harder. He's trying for a hard reboot. Defeated he slumps against the tree saying in typical French disgust "Rien à faire.¹"
A second man, somewhat (if only slightly) less shabby but also bowler-hatted joins him, saying "I'm beginning to come round to that opinion.
"All my life I've tried to put it from me, saying, 'be reasonable, you haven't yet "tried everything'. And I resumed the struggle."
He (the second man, not the first...nor the tree, at least as far as we can tell) takes a moment to brood, musing on the struggle. Turning to the first man he adds "So there you are again."
"Am I" he responds gloomily.
And from the other "I'm glad to see you back. I thought you were gone for ever."
And very slightly more gloomily "Me too."
And so the conversation continues amicably, if slightly depressingly.
"Together again at last! We'll have to celebrate this. But how?" There is a longish pause "Get up till I embrace you."
There's an irritated response "Not now! Not now!"
Offended by the rejection "May one enquire where His Highness spent the night?"
"In a ditch."
Admiringly. "A ditch! Where?"
Vaguely pointing away from the tree. "Over there."
"And they didn't beat you?"
"Beat me? Certainly they beat me."
"The same lot as usual?"
"The same? I don't know."
"When I think of it. . . all these years... but for me... where would you be... ?"
That goes unanswered, but for a period of silence.
Eventually, the first man gets his boot off and pours out a veritable gravel pit of stones.
Their conversation then continues.
They discuss an absent friend in a very “when shall we three meet again in lightning thunder or in rain” way, with a side offering of “bubble, bubble, toilet trouble” thrown in for good measure, complaining how he is always late and keeps sending those damned boys with messages and excuses.
After they've been going on like this for a while, a third man approaches (not The Third Man, from that movie, you know, played by Orson Welles, but just a third man). Seeing him they leap up and approach him. The second man running and the first hobbling as he tries to put his boot back on.
"Hi!" they cry, more or less in unison, "How are you? It seems like we've been waiting for ever! Though actually you're here much sooner than we expected."
They walk off, arm in arm chatting, now happily, leaving the poor tree alone.
Waiting.
Waiting endlessly for someone or something.
Sadly, it drops its last remaining leaves.
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Notes:
1 Any resemblance between this essay and Samuel Beckett's 'En Attendant Godot' (or even the same author's 'Waiting for Godot') is simply an amazingly amazing mere coincidence, and no plagiarism was either intended nor performed. So there!!
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