Moss

Moss

Near the end of August, along the narrow alleyway that ran behind our flat, the moss started to blossom. People talk about flowers being in bloom. As moss is spore-based, blooming and blossoming is out of the question. Maybe unfurling is a better word. People talk about emerald moss, lush carpets of the stuff in ancient forests, piling up around the bases of tree trunks, but always inert, always silent and thick.

We’d moved in recently. I went out into that alleyway to smoke after a few drinks on the weekend. Also, unlike most flowers, moss doesn’t bring up strong associations. There is no national moss. The colour of it under the LED streetlights reminded me of something primal, something strong in that deep green turning to black.

I remember being struck by the beauty of the orchids in the local arboretum, opposite the university where we worked, but the moss captured a different kind of appreciation for me. While the orchids had a hothouse vitality, that searing display of colour that punctured the air and left you with no doubts, the moss held secrets in those long, fizzing nights, soaking up the fumes of my cigarettes and the dusting of rain that blew into the alley without complaint. The arboretum was a place of almost painful beauty, the paths thronged every lunchtime with students and retirees walking in neat little pairs, with their parasols and wide hats. In the alley I almost never saw another soul, only heard the chatter of their radios and TVs high above me. There was little reason to be out there, I suppose – there wasn’t enough space to store anything and the trash was collected from the front of the flats. In any case I started to see that little alleyway with the moss running alongside it as my own personal kingdom.

My trips out there started short, businesslike. A place to get some fresh air, to sober up a little in the drizzle before retreating to my drinks and my music. I started to stay out there longer, dawdling after I finished my cigarette, just watching the thin needles of rain soak into the moss. It seemed to endlessly absorb the stuff, drizzle or downpour, no matter, as if it was metres thick. Several times I saw a man pass by the entrance to the alleyway: very old, tanned sinew and skin, wearing a puffy vest, always carrying a collapsed stack of cardboard boxes under his arm. His name was Diego, I found out later. He collected refuse for recycling and had a daughter in America. Sometimes, if he noticed me, he’d give a brief nod, before going back to his task of moving around those flattened boxes, which he did all night. He must have been eighty.

One evening, I was coming home and saw him standing at the entrance to the alleyway, looking in, not moving. Was he also admiring the moss? Did he used to sit in the alley and enjoy watching the rain sluice down from the corrugated roof into the moss, before my arrival to the neighbourhood? Maybe he still did. After all, he kept irregular hours. There was nothing stopping him from taking a post there during the day, while I worked. I would have had no idea.

*

In the second weekend of August, the promised summer finally arrived. When I stepped out into the alleyway for a smoke, the night dry as kindling, the moss had begun to dessicate. Yellow and orange patches were spreading across the mass. It was retreating into itself, waiting for better days. All that water it had inhaled over the last month was nowhere to be seen. Nor was the smoke I’d blown over it, or for that matter anything else. Diego was playing opera music on his radio, lugging his cargo around, when I he stopped and clicked his tongue at me. I turned, feeling guilty for some reason, like I’d taken his reserved seat on a train.

“Watch out for that moss,” he said. “When it dries out it starts to blossom.”

“Moss doesn’t blossom,” I said, perhaps more harshly than I anticipated. Normally we were perfectly polite to each other, but my unearned guilt made me bristle. “Everyone knows that.”

Diego shrugged. “Alright.”

When he hobbled away I turned back to the moss. It has lost some of it’s luster, true, and I had recently vowed to cut down on my smoking after I got a sharp pain in my chest from running for the bus. So I didn’t go out there for a few days. Whenever I wanted to take a break in the evenings, I’d instead leave through the front door, walk to the trunk road and watch the LCD signs twinkle above the scooter repair places and 24-hour convenience stores. Get a diet soda or something. It wasn’t the same, but when you get older your realise you can’t go back to how your body used to handle things. That’s over.

All of this is to say that I wasn’t present for any day-to-day transformations the moss was going through. When I finally broke my streak the next week (coincidentally a cloudfront had just broken over the city, a freak one, bringing a torrent) I crept out into the alleyway like a thief. Diego was there, stroking the moss, which was no longer a mound of green, gently undulating like a set of miniature hills. It was all kinds of colours now, none of them good or healthy. In it’s quest for water it had sent towering feelers upwards, great coiling structures as long as my forearm which reminded me of tentacles, although they didn’t writhe, or move much at all without Diego’s help. He was passing his hands gently between the feelers, cardboard boxes tucked between his legs so they wouldn’t get wet on the ground. He wasn’t surprised or embarrassed to see me.

“You’ve got to coax them a bit. The blossoms.”

I didn’t want to repeat myself from our last conversation, so instead I said:

“Won’t the rain do that for you?”

He smiled.

“Partway. But it needs a special touch.”

I felt a bit ridiculous standing out there with him. It felt illicit, made worse by his apparent lack of shame, his bizarre explanation. I wanted to get a closer look. Hell, I wanted to touch them too. But I mumbled my excuses and retreated back inside.

I was still thinking about it the next morning, after some strange and dripping dreams. The tarmac was dry; the storm of last night had fizzled out, broken apart by the victorious sun. Even the gutters were bone-dry. Any hint that the moss had been behaving strangely, to say nothing of Diego, was gone. All that greeted me in the alley was a rusty mat of fibres, looking like the pelt of some ancient animal. For some reason, I felt the need to put my hand against it, to push into it. All that greeted me was a faint wheeze, a puff of spores that made me cough. After that, I decided to head to the arboretum in my lunch break despite the heat, swigging all the while a large bottle of water, hoping to wash down whatever bits of the moss that still clung to my throat.

I didn’t see Diego again for a while. A cleaning crew removed the moss one night, figuring it was a pile of gardening refuse, leaving a smooth concrete incline where it had once sat. It must have only been an inch deep, at most. One night, on my way to the convenience store, I saw an ambulance pulling up in our street. I got closer and saw a pair of paramedics pulling a trolley out from the complex where Diego lived. He was lying on it, thin as a rake, his eyes closed. I’m not sure if he was dead. His hands were darker than the rest of his body, almost grey, and his fingers were black, as if burnt. Later, an inspector knocked on my door as I was drinking. He asked me if I’d known Diego.

“Not very well,” I answered, truthfully. And that seemed to be good enough for him. I didn’t hear back. The moss never grew back on that smooth slope of concrete in my alleyway, and I quit smoking.