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twenty-five

    By the time I make it to the main square and the fountain, I’m listening to Thinking Out Loud by Ed Sheeran and the smile is still on my lips. So far all the songs have been of my liking, even those I’ve never heard before and the butterflies in my stomach have never leave either. I never thought I would get butterflies but here they are, fluttering and making me all giddy.

The main square is quite busy, people wandering or having a stroll, some of them jogging at this time, even with their dogs and it’s quite nice. It’s almost dark and the lights are on already and it looks really agreeable. I wonder who’ll come up to give me the last letter.

As I wait, I amuse myself by looking at all the passer-by people whilst the playlist carries on at the same time that H listens to it. The next song that comes is Hold You by Nina Nesbitt featuring Kodaline. I know because I look at the title on the MP3 player screen. I like the combination of voices and the rhythm, it is soothing and longing at the same time.

I’m getting into the song so I don’t notice a change in the scenery at first until more people are staring in confusion at the person pretending to dig a grave in the middle of the square, right in front of me, just two metres away, and then other two men talking to him. I pull down the headphones to listen to what is happening. One of the men is questioning the gravedigger.

“Whose was it?” he asks. He is tall and skinny and near thirty, with black hair and tan complexion.

“A whoreson mad fellow's it was: whose do you think it was?” the gravedigger replies.

“Nay, I know not,” replies the man and I’m sent off by their speech. It’s not only loud as for everyone to hear, but the language used is clearly something you find in a Shakespeare play.

“A pestilence on him for a mad rogue! a' poured a flagon of Rhenish on my head once. This same skull, sir, was Yorick's skull, the king's jester.”

“This?” the man questions further.

“E'en that,” confirms the gravedigger.

“Let me see.” The man then approaches even more and grabs the skull. “Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio:” he tells the other man, Horatio apparently. “A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen? Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come; make her laugh at that. Prithee, Horatio, tell me one thing.”

“What's that, my lord?” Horatio asks and I’m too dumbfounded by what’s happening to react and put the pieces together.

“Dost thou think Alexander looked o' this fashion i' the earth?”

“E'en so,” Horatio replies.

“And smelt so? pah!” the man exclaims putting down the skull with a funny grimace. The audience laughs and so do I, yet still taken aback for how familiar this scene is.

“E'en so, my lord.”

“To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander, till he find it stopping a bung-hole?”

Horatio replies, “'Twere to consider too curiously, to consider so.”

To what the man continues, “No, faith, not a jot; but to follow him thither with modesty enough, and likelihood to lead it: as thus: Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth into dust; the dust is earth; of earth we make loam; and why of that loam, whereto he was converted, might they not stop a beer-barrel? Imperious Caesar, dead and turn’d to clay, might stop a hole to keep the wind away; O, that that earth, which kept the world in awe, should patch a wall to expel the winter flaw! But soft” but soft! Aside: here comes the king.” They start to retreat with the other. His speech is unusual and all the people around have noticed this. They have moved aside, forming a circle around the people there, but from within them a small procession approaches the centre, where the other man was digging the grave, with what looks like a corpse wrapped in white sheets. The man who was speaking continues. “The queen, the courtiers: who is this they follow? And with such maimed rites? This doth betoken the corse they follow did with desperate hand Fordo its own life: 'twas of some estate. Couch we awhile, and mark.” Now the two men are hiding but still on sight for the people watching, me included.