Not going back
Fiction
The email’s subject line read “Invitation.” It announced a gathering to celebrate the 50th anniversary of my school-leaving examination. I felt a surge of excitement at the prospect of seeing how the 19-year-olds I once knew—with whom I had shared the boredom of lessons, the panic of exams, the vague misery of adolescence—had turned into men and women in their late 60s. I had not seen any of them for half a century.
A dozen of my former classmates had been meeting every five years but I had never considered joining them. One would call to tell me about the reunion, and I remember feeling relieved I did not have to invent an excuse: I always had prior commitments that made travel impossible. I left the country soon after university and had not returned except for my parents’ funerals, 20 years apart. I bear no hostility toward the place but had not felt especially connected to it either. I’m one of those people who have never experienced homesickness.
My decision to leave Croatia, made when I was still a teenager, had been shaped by my mother’s treatment of me, although not because I needed to escape her long silences, which made me feel like a ghost in our home. They had taught me something more enduring: that I could never become the person she wanted me to be. Leaving was not flight but recognition. I needed to free myself from expectations rooted as much in class and culture as in family. I knew I would have to fashion myself elsewhere.
But the invitation to mark the 50th anniversary of our baccalaureate was a landmark. Given our age, there could not be many more reunions to come. I decided I would attend.
Later that day, energized by the thought, I swam vigorously in the village pool a few kilometres from our house in France’s Deux-Sèvres, my body cutting through the water while my mind rehearsed the meeting. I pictured the old school, a sprawling Austro-Hungarian building with a grim art-deco façade, and imagined us gathering on the semicircular steps outside, eyeing one another with tentative curiosity. Is that her? Has he really changed that much? At this age, perhaps more than any other, one takes stock of one’s life. However disappointing the balance sheet, it can usually be improved by comparison with others who appear to have done less well.
The plan was to visit our former classroom, exchange memories, meet the current principal—our teachers were either dead or too frail—then go to a nearby Italian restaurant. I had already checked that it could cater to vegans.
And yet, when I replied to the woman who had contacted me, I wrote that I would try to come but other commitments made it unlikely. Yes, there were other plans but the trip was far from impossible. I had arranged a holiday in Burgundy with my husband and, before that, a short trip to Paris for a medical appointment. The timing of the invitation surprised me. I had expected the reunion to take place in the autumn, although June was the month of our examination. Traveling to my country of birth for two or three days just before our holiday seemed inconvenient, even though I would already be in Paris, with several daily flights to Zagreb. My contact wrote back saying that she was looking forward to seeing me. Please try, she added. It’s been so long.
Looking back, I still wonder what prevented me from telling her I was coming. I was eager to go. What unconscious impulse created the space where I could hesitate and change my mind?
On the eve of our trip to Paris, we were invited to a friend’s house for dinner, where I mentioned, almost in passing, my fantasy of gathering together in one room all the people who still occupy a place in my memory, the living and dead alike. We would sit in a circle and take turns describing what had happened to us since we lost contact. To my surprise, everyone at the table had an opinion.
A woman I had never met before said the idea reminded her of a magazine question about which famous people, dead or alive, one would invite to a dinner party. Another guest said he could not see the point. He felt no curiosity about people who were no longer part of his life, not even those he had loved or lived with. The only reason to contact them, he said, would be to resume a relationship.
Someone else suggested that my fantasy was typical of writers: a way of mining other people’s lives for their own material. Writers were selfish, she said; they plunder from friends and acquaintances alike. They ought to carry a warning label: I am dangerous. Keep away.
Another guest proposed a more charitable explanation. Perhaps I was still searching for my identity, looking back in order to understand who I was and where I belonged. That looking back, he said, involved defining myself in relation to other people from my past.
There was something to that.
The first post I accepted after earning my PhD in England was a university lectureship in Nigeria, mainly because I had imagined I could make it my homeland. Seconds before my plane touched down in Lagos, I understood my self-deception. Like many people, I had fallen for the myth that everyone needs to belong to a nation in order to know who they are. Ever since, my sense of identity has been fluid, mostly linked to art and literature, the only two areas that matter in my universe. The people I would have gathered at my fantasy dinner would have shared those passions.
The dinner host, who knew me as well as anyone, expanded on her other guest’s idea . Each of those people, she said, the quick and the dead, real and fictional, would have contributed to my sense of who I was. The gathered would have been an international bunch enhancing my feeling of being a citizen of the world. Seeing them all in one place, she said, would have helped me feel complete which, in turn, would improve my self-confidence, a virtue usually in short supply. You are always comparing yourself to others, she said. You are not jealous of professional success but you are relentlessly hard on yourself. It is as if you are trying to persuade yourself that you have not completely failed. She reminded me how, on our walks in the park, I read the dates on memorial benches and become anxious when I realize I am older than the person being commemorated, as if I were living on borrowed time.
I smiled and shrugged, my mind on the planned meeting with my former classmates. To what extent did they make me? How much did they contribute to my sense of being different, being the other? I used to dream of the unknown elsewhere, while they felt firmly rooted to Croatia. I wondered whether the years living outside the country of my birth, my being older and slightly more at ease with myself and the world, would make me feel more or less out of place, more or less awkward in their company.
I worked out the timetable for the coming week. It was possible to meet my classmates and return a couple of days before our holiday. There were suitable flights in both directions and short-term studio apartments within walking distance of the school. I could already imagine myself in their spare, white interiors. I rang my brother. Our relationship, while courteous, is distant because we are both aware that we are very different. We do not share the same passions. He is a lawyer and I couldn’t imagine him trying to live in a foreign language or dedicating his life to an activity that doesn’t make money. He said he could collect me from the airport, recently rebuilt, he added. I was looking forward to seeing him, his daughter, her toddler and his new partner. I planned to ask about the political situation, of which I knew nothing, and determined not to express an opinion. I knew from past experience that my views would be angrily dismissed as coming from someone “who doesn’t live here and doesn’t understand.” Still, it would be nice to see him after so long.
Another possibility contributed to the excitement: I would be able revisit the galleries where I had spent much of my free time as a student. There was also the prospect of seeing the Museum of Broken Relationships, which I had wanted to visit for some time. Everything seemed easy enough to arrange. Since there was no urgency, I told myself I would book the flights the next day.
I woke during the night and could not fall asleep again. My half-conscious mind began to question the decision I believed I had made. What was the point of traveling at such an inconvenient moment to meet a group of old people? The thought startled me. They were my age. Like most people, I thought of myself as younger than I am. When I catch sight of myself in a mirror, I feel tempted to paraphrase George Oppen: What a strange thing to happen to a little girl.
Why did I want to see these people? We had little in common at school. I had always been the odd one out. While the girls admired football players and pop stars, I loved a poet who had died almost half a century before I was born. I couldn’t tell anyone about my visits to his grave, red roses in hand. None of my former classmates were artists, the people with whom I usually feel at ease. Most had become doctors. Being the daughter of one, and having known quite a few, I have found them, apart from rare exceptions, anything but inspiring.
There was also the question of language. I had barely spoken Croatian since leaving. I think in English with the occasional intrusion of French. I would understand my classmates without difficulty but speaking would require a level of concentration that would surely soon give way to English phrases slipping in unbidden. For my father’s funeral, I had written my speech in English before translating it. Once, in a bank, I was told that I spoke well, although with an English accent. My former classmates might laugh at me or take me for someone pretentious.
I spoke to my husband about my doubts. He asked why I wanted to go at all given my list of reservations.
There was my brother, I said. His family. And yet I sensed no particular eagerness on his part. As days passed and I failed to confirm my plans, I half-expected him to call and ask whether everything was in order. He did not.
But there was that new museum. I checked the opening hours. Oh no! It was temporarily closed for renovation.
The airline sent reminders warning that seats were disappearing. They were not. The same flights remained available. All that was missing were my credit card details. My suitcase, meanwhile, was packed.
More time passed and my emotions assumed a state of disarray. My enthusiasm for the trip remained but so did my anxiety. I began to dread the idea of walking the streets of the city where I had grown up feeling lonely and uncomfortable in my perceived eccentricity. Planning the journey revived the unease of those years, when I had lived in the shadow of my mother’s silences. When she had disapproved of something I had done, she would ignore my presence for weeks. The silence was painful, oppressive. I felt as though I were inhabiting the empty spaces of a De Chirico painting, perhaps “The Anxious Journey” (1913), in which repeated archways are painted in dark colours, framing a distant railway engine with smoke billowing. No human figure, no animal or plant is in sight. The desolation and bleakness of the landscape are unsettling.
Later, when I discovered Edward Hopper, I learned to value silence differently, as a space that encourages thought and creativity. The loneliness imposed on me became the solitude I eventually recognized as necessary. Once I left home and the country, my relationship with my mother improved but the memory of those silences remained. Planning the trip made them palpable again. I told myself that facing the city of my adolescence might help me confront those old fears. They were no more than demons, after all.
On the morning of our departure for Paris, my husband said there was still time to book the flight. It would mean that he would return alone to our French village while I travelled on to Zagreb. I said no. I had already unpacked my suitcase. It could easily be repacked but I felt paralysed. I wanted to go. I did not want to go.
In Paris, he repeated that there was still time. I checked the flights. The same seats were available. But Zagreb was experiencing extreme heat and I had brought no suitable clothes. The thought of arriving ill-prepared felt oddly decisive.
We returned home. There was no longer any possibility of changing my mind. The week of hesitation had exhausted me.
Two days later, I received an email from the woman who had organized the reunion. Only 12 people had attended, as one of the regulars had died a few months earlier. She attached photographs of the group standing on the steps of our former school. I barely recognized them at first. She identified each person and added brief updates about their lives. They had decided to meet annually, she wrote, aware that the group would only grow smaller.
There would be another reunion the following June.
Looking at the photographs, I wondered how different I might have been had I not left Croatia. I might have mellowed. Time might have softened my awkwardness. I might have fitted in. The thought did not convince me. Even then, as I knew very well, I had been ill-suited to belonging.
One of my former classmates, I learned, had published a book. I looked it up and felt unexpected relief on discovering it was the only one, a compilation of lectures. I kept returning to the photographs. Most of the faces were unhealthily overweight and appeared older than I felt myself to be.
I am not unaware of how ungracious such comparison might sound. If there is any mitigation, it lies in knowing myself. My Latin teacher used to remind us that the greatest failing was ignorance of the self: Nosce te ipsum, she would say, as we sat in silence, uncertain of what she meant. Now I know that what stopped me from traveling may have been the unspoken fear that returning would force me to question the central decision that has defined my life. The excitement I felt on receiving the invitation may have had less to do with my former classmates than my desire for confirmation that leaving had been the right choice.
I have marked the week of the next reunion in my diary. Whether I will attend remains uncertain. The decision to leave was made long ago. Everything that followed, including this hesitation, belongs to its afterlife.
Born in Zagreb, Vesna Main has lived most of her life in Britain. With a degree in comparative literature and a PhD in Elizabethan drama, she has worked as a lecturer in literature. Now a fiction writer, her publications are published include Temptation, a short story collection (Salt, 2018) and Good Day?, a novel in dialogue (Salt, 2019) that was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize. Her other novels are Only A Lodger… And Hardly That (Seagull Books, 2020) and Waiting for A Party (Salt, 2024). Two of her stories have been published in Best British Short Stories (Salt 2017, 2019); many others have appeared in journals in print and online. Vesna divides her time between London and rural France.
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Nicely done. The decision to stay or go, haunts everyone of us who have left, and some of those who stayed.