Conclusions

radio: . . . garrison already decimated by the Vietcong, who lost 115 of their men . . .
woman: It’s awful, isn’t it, it’s so anonymous.
man: What is?
woman: They say 115 guerillas, yet it doesn’t mean anything, because we don’t know anything about these men, who they are, whether they love a woman, or have children, if they prefer the cinema to the theatre. We know nothing. They just say . . . 115 dead.

                                                                                             —Jean-Luc Godard, Pierrot le Fou

It was like any other postcard, brief and handwritten briskly. It described something that had caught the writer's eye, something that had reminded her of her childhood, something that she wanted to share with someone who was part of that childhood. I found it while clearing his table, stained by water and decay in the box under the table.

I did not know who he was, the man who used to sit at the table. I did not know if the postcard was intended for him, if he enjoyed his work, how long he had been doing what he did, who he stayed with, what he liked to do on his weekends; nothing. I knew he liked his sauces, from the hoard of rectangular packets of ketchup, barbecue, chilli, mustard and every other imaginable kind of sauces I found in a plastic bag in the drawer. That and the postcard. Other than that, it was like every other table I cleared, with the colorful array of pliers, screwdrivers, spanners and soldering machines, all untouched since the day he was told his service was surplus to their requirements and had to leave right away, with barely enough time to grab what was his. 

It was as if a story had stopped dead, incomplete and unexpected, and I had come to pick up the pieces.