Write the Day: World Tour

12.00 a.m. At least, according to my laptop it is 12.00 a.m. The plane has turned its lights off and the cabin is lit only by the small, vivid screens of those still awake. I do not know where we are or how long it is until we land. There is an error on the screen in front of me; the data is missing and has been replaced by double dashes. The flight map loads into a globe without a plane. We are nowhere. Or rather, we are somewhere beyond reach, floating above an ocean. The woman next to me has contorted herself on the seat and her feet are pushing into my thigh. We are flying backwards in time, and I know from the boarding pass that when we land, whenever that is, it will be again, 12.00 a.m.

—

Hours pass. Again it is 12.00 a.m. I am landing in Singapore. Its thick hot air suffocates me as I disembark. I am barely awake. I look down at my boarding pass and try to match it with the signs around me. Following the signs I step onto a train. I stand at the window and catch a glimpse of the city behind the glow of my reflection. I see the freeway extending beneath me into the black lip of a horizon. Then, nothing. When the train stops, I start to run. At the gate a woman gestures towards me. I realise it is my colleague. In my disorientation her face is unfamiliar. She says that she will see me in Geneva, though that is not where the plane is going, but for a moment, I am unsure. Where am I? Where am I going?

I board the second plane and take a capsule of melatonin. We are headed east, pushing again backwards in time, but I hope to spend those illogical hours dreaming. On the tarmac, I finish On the Calculation of Volume I, which is about a peculiar form of time travel – a same day, looping over and over. In that one day the protagonist carves a life, carves paths that become themselves a small world. My path through my day, 8 July 2026, must first be hacked out through the dim and elusive forest of sleep.

When I wake, my laptop says it is midday. But my phone says it is morning. And the screen in front of me says it is still night. The plane is immersed in darkness. It is night. Time splutters backwards. A medic is called over the intercom and a group of people crowd over a small bright place across the aisle. As I wait outside an occupied bathroom, an air hostess beside me anxiously spills sachet after sachet of sugar into a cup of apple juice.

When I am not sleeping, I watch Exit 8, a Japanese film that coils around itself, like On the Calculation of Volume I, like this night I am living in. When I am sleeping, I do not dream. When I wake it is morning European time, and I find to my surprise that I am holding a toothbrush, one of the cheap ones they gave out for free in the bathroom. I must have extracted it from my pocket when I slept, and held it like a charm, to ward off dreams. The plane is descending. I read the old Szalay book All That Man Is as we fall upon Europe.

—

Zurich. The airport is cavernous and full of sharp, precise architecture. The heat that greets me as I step off the plane is passive, unlike Singapore’s asphyxiation. I look at my boarding pass and try to match it with the signs. I am late for my third plane. One of the digital boards tells me, A67. I don’t record it; I just place it there in my head and hope it stays, A67. A67. It’s about 8.00 a.m. Swiss time, I think. A train takes me towards Terminal A. There is a bottleneck at immigration, and everyone is stressed: all our connecting flights are dangerously imminent. A67, I repeat to myself. But the certainty leaks away from the number. I wish I had written it down.

Once I get let out of the bottleneck, I start running. The airport, with my ears blocked from the altitude, is very quiet. As I run, I think of the protagonist in Exit 8 who also runs, down those endless repeated corridors cloaked in a similar silence. We have the same diegetic soundtrack: the squeaking of our shoes and the arrhythm of our breaths and the silence. I run past all the chocolate and champagne bars, pushing through that silence, towards Terminal A, towards 67, hoping I have remembered the correct number but not quite knowing. I reach the gate. It is empty. The sign reads Geneva. It is correct. I am let through onto the plane. I am handed a small square of Swiss chocolate.

In the Szalay book I am reading, a man arrives at Geneva airport, and he drives into France, ‘hairpinning up the side of the valley. On the other side, mountains soak up what is left of the sunlight.’

—

Geneva airport. I no longer know what time it is, though I am surrounded by posters of beautiful Swiss watches. I go to the counter with the laminated sign bearing my company’s name. I am headed to a work retreat. A bespectacled man in a polo shirt takes my luggage and ushers me into a black Porsche. His name is Louie. The long drive to Chamonix is spent in a dull silence, though halfway through Louie fiddles with the radio and the car whistles out a small stream of French pop music. I feel more and more like a Szalay character. Everything here mild and opaque and strange. Why am I being driven in a Porsche, from Geneva to Chamonix, France?

Lush slopes weave in and out of the horizon. Louie hands me a charger and a bottle of water. I listen to Rome, the live National album, and the mountains grow majestic to sounds of Berninger’s emotional roar. After a while, the forestry around us gives way to sharp, white alpine structures. Beastly. I feel a strong desire already to flee the alps. I think about going to some town, not too far away, when I arrive.

—

Chamonix, France. 12.00 p.m., halfway now. The concierge at the hotel is unable to locate my name, until he realises that I’m part of the company. ‘Oh,’ he says, in a thick but indiscernible accent. ‘You’re part of the group.’ ‘Yes,’ I say. I have decided to go to Annecy, a town about an hour away. I research how to get to there. It is difficult but possible; the buses are few and far between. At the bus stop, I wander around in the heat, confused. I consult some Americans, who shrug and tell me they booked online. I run towards a driver and beg him for a ticket. I say I don’t have internet. He stands around, unsure, but after ten minutes of ponderous silence, as the departure time grows near, he takes my travel card and inputs its details in his own phone, buying a ticket for me.

—

At Annecy I visit two bakeries. I walk to the lake and look at the blue. I feel as if I am inside a Las Vegas resort, the town threaded by canals splitting colourful antique buildings. Quickly time passes, and I go back to the bus station, following the signs.

—

Back in Chamonix my colleague P sends us a pin on a map, so I thread slowly towards it through the alleys. A beautiful walk: from every angle mountains overwhelm the sky. When I reach the dot on the map, I find my colleagues sitting street-side at a large table, a few drinks in. I take a seat and waving a waiter over, order an IPA. I drink it quickly, trading stories. I tell everyone that I came here in a Porsche, and they react with satisfying envy – they came here in a shuttle. It is unclear why I got a Porsche. I meet a lawyer from Singapore and shake his hand. ‘I was just there, fifteen hours ago!’ I exclaim. The number is made up. I don’t know how deep I am into this day, not at all.

The smokers of the group reveal themselves, tapping cigarettes on the other end of the table. Someone pays – an extraordinary bill, a couple hundred euros. As we get up to leave, a glass falls onto the ground and shatters.

—

The next restaurant is only a five-minute walk away. Our company has set up an open bar. The whole room is filled with colleagues I do not know. Just like me, they all flew here today from around the world. I drift to the nearest table and pick up a glass of champagne. Then I move onto red wine, then I move onto white. I source a beer. I gain enough courage to talk to strangers. I target the Americans: I talk to a summer associate from Silicon Valley, I talk to associates from LA and New York. I dip outside and lean against a railing gazing out at the mountains, now splendid in the dusk. I watch my colleagues smoke. I am surrounded by foreigners – someone from Berlin, someone from Munich… I notice people getting drunker. People are swaying, their lids growing heavy and their words slurred. But I feel sharp. I notice a cigarette between my fingers. I tap it on an ashtray nearby. It is getting dark now.

We walk back to our hotel. The drinks are free here, or someone has put down a card. Either way I do not spend a single cent. I find a glass of something and submerge myself in the crowd. We are out on a balcony, and it becomes fully night. Figures in the dark with strange accents. I finish my drink and am handed a beer. I talk to a couple from New York who promise to take me out if I ever end up there. I do not remember them now, their names or anything about them. On the way back from the bathroom I find myself in an unfamiliar bar, completely disoriented. Yet a colleague standing there greets me and hands me another drink.

Labyrinthine hotel. The night is smeared into a blur. I blink and I am sitting on a couch near the lobby, there is a glass in my hand, and strangers are sitting opposite me explaining something endlessly complicated. I text N: ‘An American is explaining the most difficult matter.’ It does not occur to me to try to understand it. I can only catch words appearing and disappearing. The only person I know at the table, O, leaves for a smoke. I do not feel he is coming back. I sit there, confused, surrounded by strangers, in France, and the day clicks once, and then it disappears.

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Inspired by a long passage in The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing, and by the great diarists of literature, Write the Day invites writers to document a single day in their lives, from waking to sleeping, capturing as faithfully as possible all that passes through their minds and senses. Sign up to our newsletter to receive this and other online series in your inbox.

Series illustration by Ben Juers.