Hiraeth (Welsh) – a homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for lost places of your past.
Prologue: Lost in Translation
Toronto, October 2009
They cut off his hair.
True, he looks different in other ways too. Older. Paler. All suited up. She's never seen him with a tie before. He's lost weight - all skin and bones, he is, and for a moment she catches herself worrying for his health. It startles her. She didn't think she'd still be capable of caring about his wellbeing – not any more, not after all these years. Yet here she is, suddenly alarmed, wondering if he might be sick.
It's a sensation she's almost forgotten, and feeling it again makes her itch. She wants it to stop.
No matter how much he has changed, however, it's the hair that makes the biggest difference. He always had it reaching his shoulders. With his head shorn like this, his face looks too long, his nose too big, his lips too thick, the angles of his cheekbones too sharp. His ears are sticking out. He's ugly, she realizes for the first time. He's all crooked lines and mismatched parts, he is ugly, he looks grotesque.
Like a monster.
He opens his mouth to speak, but it's not his voice that she hears. An interpreter speaks over him instead: a woman, her tone flat and professional. The interpreter chooses her words carefully. She sounds impersonal - too measured, too calm, her sentences reasonable and too well formed.
He never spoke like that.
Rey takes the remote and shuts down the television.
"Hey," Poe protests, "I was watching that!"
She wants to tell him to fuck off. She wants to crack a joke – it's a perfect opportunity for a witty one-liner. That's what a movie character would do, and all her life she's been feeling as if she were trapped in a godawful Oscar bait drama. But all of a sudden there's a lump in her throat, and she realizes that if she speaks back, she'll begin to cry.
No tears, she tells herself. It's been too much time. It won't bring anyone any good. Calm down. Breathe.
"Hey," Poe says, his voice much gentler. "Do you feel alright?"
She sits on the couch clutching the remote, and it takes her a moment to focus. Something akin to anger rises in her chest: she doesn't understand why she feels so confused. It's not supposed to be like this. She never thought she'd need so much willpower to remind herself of the simplest things: her life is normal now. She is in her own home, far and away. She is no longer a teenager.
She is no longer in love.
She wonders if she's ever been, since that man she's just seen on TV looks nothing like the ghost she cannot get rid of.
Poe slides closer to her on the couch, careful, unsure if he's supposed to give her space or offer comfort. He clears his throat.
"Are you alright?" he repeats.
"No," she says, and it is a relief to say it out loud. "No, I'm not."
Poe slowly nods.
"I understand," he says solemnly, his eyes a tad too kind, and all of a sudden there is a feeling of dread blooming in her stomach: he knows.
Yet as he continues to speak, he reveals his own demons.
"I understand. All that fighting and sacrifice, and in the end, we end up here." He gestures vaguely at their garden, where the Canadian fall is coloring the trees in a deep shade of red they never saw back in their home country. "I cannot even turn off the fucking translation on TV."
Poe bites his lip – whatever he's about to say, it's been tormenting him for a while. He struggles to find the right words.
"We've won, Rey," he concludes. "But it feels like defeat."
Unexpectedly, she smiles.
That's exactly the word she's been looking for: defeat. She should feel triumphant, she knows. They did win. And yet seeing even a glimpse of that goddamn trial, seeing him aged and withered and hairless, it leaves an aftertaste so bitter she could vomit.
Uninvited images suddenly invade her mind. The mole above his eyebrows. The thickness of his hair, the smell of it unwashed. The feeling of his large fingers tracing her spine. His tooth marks on her skin. How tickled pink he'd become whenever he'd make her happy. How he used to smile – gawky and shy, yet so sweet, nothing like the villain the press made him out to be.
But he was a villain, Rey knows. There's no other way to say it.
"You are correct: this is defeat," she tells her husband as she begins to sob.
She cannot remember the last time she cried. It's not a pretty sight: there's mucus running from her nose, and she makes foul hiccupping noises she cannot control.
Fuck.
She lets out a heavy sigh that comes across as a shriek, and finally gathers the courage to articulate a truth she did not want to face.
"There'll never be justice."