Cassandra Voices

Category: Literature

  • Poem: Maldon days

    Maldon days

    hēt þā hyssa hwæne    hors forlǣtan,
    feorr āfȳsan,    and forð gangan,
    hicgan tō handum,    and tō hige gōdum.
    The Battle of Maldon (991 AD)

    Galvanized into action,   my companion horses neighed
    as they galloped to the woods,   riderless and rudderless.
    I turned back to my liege lord,   reluctant to retreat,
    but he waved me away from him,   although I was his steadfast steed
    who had taken him into battle boldly before   on many occasions.

    In the woods, we regrouped.   Ealdorman Byrhtnoth’s proud hawk
    circled and swooped overhead,   dismissed as we had been,
    uneasy as we were.   We faced out towards the riverbank,
    watching the fighting begin,   watching the ruthless invaders wreak havoc.
    We waited for the command to return   but it never came.

    I went down to the battlefield first,   saw my beloved ealdorman
    bristling with spears,   slaughtered alongside his faithful warriors.
    Leaving our heroes, our lords lying lifeless,   we trotted back to our stables,
    knowing that our return would herald the defeat,   set off the lamentations
    of the families left behind,   filling us all with sorrow for our great loss.

    Feature Image: Battle of Maldon plains.

  • JACK GILBERT WAS TOO HORNY TO BE A METAPHYSICAL POET

    JACK GILBERT WAS TOO HORNY TO BE A METAPHYSICAL POET
    not that sex and metaphysics cancel each other out—
    his was good news for Linda Gregg, until it wasn’t.
    Interviewer:
    Did you and Linda ever collaborate?
    JG:
    We were intertwined. We read each other’s poetry,
    appreciated each other’s poetry,
    discarded each other’s poetry.
    (Quick shout-out to the procreative urge.
    Are you gonna tell me the world doesn’t hinge
    and turn on it? I don’t think you are.)
    That desire is ungovernable produces—
    or should I say begets—fear. Also verse; some good,
    some not. Either way, learn to love that twinge
    in your loins. I don’t mean make it lord, I just mean
    bless it. Whatever else may be true,
    it has plans to prosper you, wants
    fruitfulness, wants multiplicity
    at least as much as God does,
    maybe more.
    I’ve inherited Jack and Linda’s lettered
    children. If you’re reading this,
    you have too.

  • The Dish Washer

    He put on the yellow marigolds with some difficulty, while at the same time remembering something a wise Roman stoic had once written that went ‘dig inside yourself. Inside there is a well of goodness ready to gush at any moment, if you keep digging,’ and wondered if he had learned the line while studying for his PHD. Perhaps it was earlier when he sat long evenings in the library at Senate House attempting to become a master of arts. He couldn’t quite remember. His past was becoming a single entity, where once it had been fractured. He had woken up early that extremely cold winter morning to become a dish washer, or kitchen porter as it was advertised, and he wondered as he battled through the arctic weather, what had become of his long and arduous education. All those hours worrying about exams, all those times revising, researching, reading and editing and now at the age of forty-three he had seventy-three pounds to his name. He poured the washing up liquid into the large metallic sink under the instruction of the young Romanian woman and turned on the hot tap. “The water must be hot” she informed him. He looked into the mountainous bubbles as they slowly rose in the basin and in them, saw a galaxy emerge. Bliss came over him when he thought he could kill boredom with his imagination alone, and the silence of the universe out-manoeuvred by a simple playfulness of mind.

    As he began to scrub the dirty dishes, he wondered what his thirty years of education had all been for. It couldn’t have been for the money. Like the pieces of paper tucked away in a draw in the old homestead, his past successes were quietly hidden now, to mention them a suggestion of either boastfulness or failure. The first pan he washed had burnt black crusts of pastry stuck along the sides and he began to scrub it with a wire brush. It was stubborn and he applied more washing up liquid, and gave some extra elbow grease to remove it, but the dark stain wouldn’t budge. Minutes rolled by to the sound of scrubbing. The steam from the hot water was like sweat on his face. The harder he worked the more intense his feelings of failure became. The failure of his life’s work up until that moment. Was he ‘better’ than this? Was he better than washing dishes for a living? Scrubbing dishes to make ends meet. He must be ‘better’ than this he thought, as he finally removed the last piece of caked in pastry, but he couldn’t exactly work out why.

    Minh, the old Vietnamese lady that had worked in the kitchen for many years, smiled at him as she passed to go about the morning chore of cutting the bread for that afternoon’s school lunch. Her smile brightened his spirits. Three more dirty trays arrived and he submerged them in the suds. As if stuck on a treadmill like a hamster in a wheel his thoughts returned to his predicament. Only a job and a place, that would certainly change in time, as all the times and places of his life had changed up until then. He remembered another thing the Roman stoic had said, about change being a constant of all life, and was contented.

    Maybe now, at his age, he should be making more money than he was. He never really cared about money if the truth be known. If he had enough, he had enough, and enough was enough. It was one of the reasonings in his life to which he stayed true. The main thing that he got out of his philosophical studies was the idea of becoming good. Then, being good, was the natural state. We shouldn’t be kind to others for our own sake but rather because being kind brings the universe, the whole, into alignment. He looked around at the clock on the wall and it was exactly noon. Then he did an hour’s worth of thinking and when he looked back up, it said four minutes past. ‘Most work is trading your life, or time, for money. Maybe the whole of nature is just hope, manifest’ he thought as he gazed down at the collapsing suds. His imagination had awakened in the uneventfulness of the morning. He felt the warlike silence.

    He emptied the sink and then spent a while picking the soggy pasta and vegetables from the plug hole and decanted them into a bin bag. Then back to the sink to refill it with soapy hot water. He looked up and out of the window, and saw a crisp blue winter sky. On the thin branches of a leafless tree, glistening crystal droplets of rain shone below the grey sky of the recent Atlantic storm and his work came to a discreet standstill. Two robin red breasts danced on a twig. Behind the January tree was a road and a queue of people, some with umbrella’s waiting in the flour mist, waiting for the bus that would take them away from this same old place. None of them had noticed the rain-dropped leaves in the downpour, each one a kind of planet, a world within worlds, making up the whole.

    There was an old cockney woman that worked in the kitchen that liked nothing more than power, driven on every morning, through every day, by the smallness of her sad world, butchering the language with her soulless rants and dull observations. She walked into the kitchen and ruined the moment for him by talking for twenty-two seconds about the steam that was coming from the oven. The words that came from her mouth had no value or interest to the dishwasher but it was important for her to hear her own voice to remind others that she was in charge. In charge of this small kitchen, and in charge of her small world. He didn’t attempt to say anything to her, but he thought it wouldn’t be a bad thing if she was kinder. More dirty plates were dropped with a clang into the soapy water which meant more work, which meant more money for him, even though he was being paid minimum wage, his presence alone was earning. ‘This is the way society says self-worth is achieved of course. That in some way or other life must me earned, it’s not good enough just being born. Born poor I mean.’ He thought.

    Then he thought back on his education and experienced a sublime uplift when he reasoned that learning in and of itself can never be a waste of time, but then his gladness abated as he considered the other side of the coin. What if, like those that had been brought up in religious cults, an entire life of thoughts could be wasted. If the truth lay south and you walked north for 84 years where would that leave you on your death bed? Lost, presumably, but perhaps happy and content. Perhaps not. He considered different belief systems in the world. The only wisdom he could glean was to avoid dogmatism at all costs, and to cast doubt on certainty. And then he thought that must be easier said than done when he thought about the importance of conviction, and the humiliations it is heir to. To work, to seek meaning for a lifetime, in a lifetime, and then have it robbed at the finish line may be too much to bear. Maybe Epicurus was right, in the end. Also, maybe hedonism has a value. To dance, to sing and play was good, and better than the opposite. He saw a side-burned face in the suds, ‘lose your sense of humour and you’re fucked’ came the Burslem voice from the sink water. His memory played games again. And then from nowhere the voice of Jeffrey Bernard on Desert Island Discs. Dying, and with the cigarette smoke almost travelling with the radio waves saying to the interviewer ‘to me Mozart is divinity’ and then pressed by her on the regrets he had now he faced death he replied matter-of-factly ‘I wish I had been a better person. It’s as simple as that.’ The dishwasher thought there was a beauty in this acknowledgment, in the recognition of the fact.

    The dishwasher began to dream of the mountains of Scotland where he had once lived, and where he had felt, once upon a time, a thousand years pass in the afternoon rays. Memory, and dreams of a future past, vied together as if they were one entity. Why do we have to earn what we never chose? Born and demanded to work. He thought. It was a melancholy meditation. He thought ‘If life is a competition, then maybe we are just cunts, to use the proper Saxon vernacular’. For the rich to stay rich the poor must be poor, this was the application of pure logic to him, a revelation in its simplicity. It’s matter-of-factness. What if everybody was rich? What if there was no-one to wash the dishes? What then? The old cockney lady continued talking because it was something to do, but at the end of her soul destroying jabbering’s she said something that interested him very much, when she described how when she was growing up in the east end of London it was ordained in her community not to get above yourself and say or act as though you are better than anyone else, ‘because you are not.’ He witnessed a different, more humane side to her. He mulled over her wisdom, intrigued by her comment, until only a few minutes later when she described her joy as she waved her flag on the Mall up at the balcony where Prince Andrew and ‘their highnesses’ stood and waved back. His democratic socialism and her monarchism were spiritually incompatible. He began to load up the plastic tray with cups and turned on the machine once more. To the dishwasher, her way of thinking was more toilsome even than the constant repetition of washing dishes. As the machine came on, the noise allowed him to think for a moment. It didn’t matter how many material things he had. How much money. What mattered was what was felt, what was thought, what could be imagined, what could be created, out of thin air. He looked up and saw that Minh was smiling to herself as she thought a happy thought, not knowing anybody was watching.

    The following morning, he arrived to work early and felt content working for a while alone, preparing for the day. That was a good time of the morning, full of potential. The dishwasher tingled with dreaming. Or was he a philosopher? With his mind and hands at work simultaneously he could be both. The plump old Cockney woman barged into the kitchen fifteen minutes late for work just as he was thinking about definitions of love, and to placate her anger at being late, began to talk at him in a loud condescending voice about the floor not being mopped. He said he would do it calmly with his body language saying ‘if you would politely leave me be.’ He remembered the word ‘Ataraxia’ which can mean ‘freedom from disturbance’. She continued talking loudly and when she said ‘we was’ for the third time he drifted off into an internal debate and wondered how many people in England who disliked foreigners and foreign languages as she did, and said so, understood that their handle on the English language was ungood. He felt certain if he brought the subject to light he would be hated for it. He would be damned as a language snob or worse, a snob. He said nothing. He thought the language of accents reflect souls in their own ways. The accent reflects belonging. ‘People who change their accents no longer wish to belong. The new tribe outweighs the old.’ He thought. He wondered about the imagination and whether it is built from the world we see, the world we experience, or is it born from something separate, like the unconscious mind being born from ancestral dreams. He had looked into Buddhism and concluded he didn’t want to free his mind of thought. Also, he didn’t want to reach Nirvana because he felt from there, there was nowhere else to go. The trick of life was to keep on learning, imagining, until all faculties are lost. A huge pile of plates came in after lunchtime and this was the signal to keep his head down working, until he clocked off at 4.30pm. He had a take away that night as he had become sick of the sight of unclean plates, and the endless necessity of washing them.

    He went home to his bedsit with his fish and chips in a bag and sat down in front of the TV with a six pack of beers and a packet of cigarettes. ‘No point working if you can’t enjoy it’ was the persistent thought he had on leaving his places of work. For relaxation he played computer scrabble as a form of meditation but he found writing, the thing he dreamed of doing, difficult, and rewarding only very occasionally. He would sometimes strum away at the acoustic guitar in the corner of the room which he had had since university. It brought back good memories, just being there. All the dreams he had when he was a young man were now living memory, the whistle blown on stardom, but then he concluded his youth was hard enough without the added complication of fame. He had been friends with a man at university that had been desperate for musical stardom, and years later he had heard through the grapevine that the man had taken his own life by throwing himself into the Thames. He wondered whether the suicide and the reality of unfilled dreams were interconnected and concluded that they probably were. The sad thought was silenced by the cracking open of a can of cold lager. Television, which was once the drug of the nation, had been replaced by the internet, almost overnight, or at least while no-one was looking, but he was hanging on by his remote. He went to bed half tipsy, taking care what he wished for.

    Early the next morning he was on his way to work when he saw the crowd at the bus stop gathering around someone on the floor, there was an obvious commotion. He went over to see if he could be of any help and when he leaned over the shoulders to see what was going on he saw Minh, the old Vietnamese lady he worked with, lying on the floor clutching her heart. The sight of her suffering made him panic and worry deeply. He told everyone he was her colleague and then asked if someone had called an ambulance to which they replied they had and it would be there any minute now. He leant down as she opened her eyes and she registered his presence with a smile. He smiled back. Then she closed her eyes and the hand on her heart relaxed as if she was falling asleep. He called out to her but she made no reply. In this moment the paramedics arrived with the whirring of sirens and took over. Very shortly afterwards she was on a stretcher being carried into the ambulance. He explained he was her colleague and asked if he could accompany them to hospital. They said yes. As they left, he turned around and the assembled crowd reminded him of a herd of wildebeest that look on as one of their own is devoured by a lion. He wondered what the Roman stoic would have thought and concluded it would probably be, ‘this is the way of thing’s’ or words to that effect.

    At the hospital he was told the sad news that Minh, the kind Vietnamese lady that he worked with had died. He travelled back to the school kitchen where they worked by foot. Everything on the walk took on a new state of life. The glittering frost now had the soul of symphonies, the barren trees proof of nature’s fight, the foggy veil of the sun emanating a magical winter light away above the horizon. He walked through the kitchen door with the sorrow in his face reflecting the sad news he had to tell and was greeted by the plump old cockney lady who in a loud voice said to him before he had a chance to speak ‘what time do you call this you caaant!’ He looked her in the eye. ‘Minh is dead, and so are you, to me.’ He tossed his apron back on the pile. She looked shocked but instantly refused to apologise. The dishwasher looked at her and said ‘I was wondering if I was better than this job. No, I don’t think so. But I am better than being bullied by you. Dig?”

    “Go on then. Do one, get aaaat!” She said loudly and waved him towards the door. He turned to leave and saw the large pile of washing she would have to do if the agency didn’t have anyone. They probably did though. There are always people who have to work for poor wages. That provides the surplus, but I suppose that’s a story for another time. He hadn’t lasted long in the job as dishwasher. ‘I can’t be having that’, he thought as he closed the door behind him and walked out into the freezing day. He carried on down the icy sludge path to freedom and recalled the Roman stoic, ‘Pain is neither unendurable or unending, as long as you remember its limits and do not exaggerate it in your imagination’. Jobless for the foreseeable, again, he was hit by the thought that his life could be ten or a hundred times more fulfilled, joyful and meaningful as someone who earned ten or a hundred, or a million times more than himself, if he had the right frame of mind.  It was the destiny of the dishwasher to live in his imagination, and his imagination didn’t pay by the hour.

    Feature Image: Gillian Gamboa

  • Poem: Discovery

    Discovery

    Discovery are coloured dark deep red.
    I heard one falling as I brushed the tree —
    a startled bird troubling bushy leaves —
    but with more plummet, accelerated

    power, crimson sinker parting waves of green,
    descending progeny, seeds sheathed in a cream
    flesh, webs of genes cradling what could be,
    bound for the food waste bin, sequence

    on sequence of supercoiled code unread.
    But another journey took place instead
    ascent through sound, to ears, into words
    as you can almost taste that zingy first
    apple of the season, sharp on your tongue,
    sweet on your lips, parted and showing crimson.

  • Poem: And Me

    And Me

    Naked for you, beneath
    some moon somewhere, which sounds
    like an ending, unless you begin
    with it. White as a page, as a unicorn’s
    horn, some skin—all of mine. So stare
    down—star-down is how I want to lay
    with you. Come further up. Go
    further in. Night is falling with us.
    Night, the witch’s sweet-tooth craving—
    she can’t stop biting it, can’t stop licking
    out the hours. Don’t think about that
    just now. Don’t watch her. Watch me.

    Feature Image: Two Nudes in a Forest, Frida Kahlo 1939

  • Psychopomp

    The magic place lay under a blanket of snow. On the ridge of the park he walked, a silhouette shifting, hunched and thoughtful under night. The lone trudging figure, wearing a long black wool coat and a brown fedora, moved carefully through the virgin white crunch towards the warren of streets by the Thames. He paused and felt the cold wind on his face as the panorama light of London grew before him. The city had grown to block out the starlight. Everything was quiet. The park was locked but he had jumped the fence and wandered in the snow past the general’s statue that stands watch over the sleeping city. He had something particular in mind. This would be the night of his death. Above the bridge, watching the river, the angel quietly waited.

    His thoughts were closing in on him, condensing the entire galaxy into his field of vision. Every sinew, every hair on his legs and arms, his liver and his feet, his knees, his fingertips, and his nose, were simply a mortal vehicle for his thoughts. A carriage for his soul, for his fleeting being, anchored in evermore. The falling snow was now resting on him, but he was happy to let it settle, comforted by the nature’s way. He had spent most of that day walking the city streets, seeking aloneness among the architecture. He could ignore himself in the crowd. He thought to himself “The London crowd will only end when mankind ends. Maybe that’s why it can be so pitiless.” The blizzard had arrived hand in hand with sundown and the snowfall continued into the night. It sought the soul that cannot flee, that will not hide. It sought the lone figure, who’s spirit was in rebellion. He had decided to murder the endless voice in his head. It was however indecision itself that had brought him to this sad moment.

    London was keeping him alive like a patient on a drip. The breathing history of the buildings, the ancient lineaments that welcome each generation, giving the children clues as what to do next, held him in its familiar embrace. The ghosts that had built it had walked him home many times. Now they had fallen as silent as the snow. He looked out at the skyline and registered how it had changed so dramatically within his short lifetime. The glass towers becoming a money made monolith before his eyes, but somehow lacking Manhattans punch. The lack of stone in the shining spectacle reminded the man of the impermanence of glass and metal. Not like good old St Paul’s cathedral, smiling in the vista. He looked ahead down the pavement and saw that the white drift was untouched.

    He looked at his phone. One twenty-three in the morning. Maybe no-one had been here. He looked back and saw the single line of footprints he had made being slowly erased by the blizzard. He looked around. There was no-one. He suddenly felt the familiar loneliness, that old dog, the pang of memory. It was the city itself. Empty as the soul of sorrow. Every single generation now gone, every one up until these last living three, vanished, returned to oblivion. He looked up at the snowfall in the lamplight and it eased his troubled mind. He had wanted to die. Not now though, not in that moment, registering the long-forgotten struggles, the long-forgotten victories of the unremembered ones that had brought him here, to this moment. Mesmerized, he stood still for a while. London lay before him like an eternal thing. That night the falling snow was beautiful, and he stayed long enough to understand.

    There was one place open. A private party in someone’s house going late into the night. The house stood on the edge of the river with a Christmas tree of white twinkling lights in the window. There were cheerful voices inside, warm in the snowy night. It was a birthday. The stranger wearing the brown fedora and the long coat opened the door and the patrons registered his presence with a dart of the eyes in the candle light. Dancing between the chattering voices was music. The beautiful sound of violins. He sat down in a black leather chair and closed his eyes. He started wondering about music. Music the liberator, the soul of dreams, emancipator of captives, of slaves, uplifter of the downhearted. He wondered whether music was evidence of something unique in us. Music, sorrow and saviour. Creator of dark and light. The meaning of barren planets. The fertile spirit of the wasteland. Crying tears of sorrow and tears of joy. It is both winning and losing. It is hope. It is delight. It is anger tamed. It is dancing. It is the life in the smile, somehow surviving the death of the world.

    Above the bridge the statue of the angel with its wings set to heaven watched the Thames flowing, waiting in silence under the falling snow. ‘It has the power to make you brave enough to die.’ He thought ‘Who masters who? The music or the musician?” The lone figure walked out onto the street and lighting a cigarette looked up at the sky as if it was watching him. When the cigarette was done and the cold of the snow had been felt, he re-entered in search of one more drink. He sat back in the chair with another glass of Jameson. The people at the party knew him but he didn’t know them, because he had garnered some fame. He regretted not being inconspicuous in the world. ‘It would have helped my art if I was unknown’ he thought to the point of melancholy. He had been drinking whiskey heavily the night before and it had burnt his brain-peace. When he slowly opened his eyes that morning, registering the havoc lonely rocking and rolling can have, and not just on the liver, he realised his mind-zone was also faltering. Between his brain and his mind he now found himself floating. It had taken him the whole day to recover from the hangover. He had laid in the single bed long enough for it to become uncomfortable. He got up, washed his face only, lit a cigarette and looked out of the window into the pale winter glow of the street and remembered he was young enough. Life took on new meaning, a subtle charge of being, without foreboding or fear. Someone offered him a line of cocaine on a recently microwaved plate. The crisp twenty-pound note bit gently into his nostril as he breathed the powder up his nose feeling slightly invigorated against his drunkenness. He smiled as he handed the plate and note back, but stayed seated as if the party was a film and he was in the theatre just to watch.

    Next came the green faerie. He looked into the glass of absinthe as if it was a beautiful painting and as he lifted the glass to his mouth he thought of her. How could he not? As it hit his throat and he swallowed, all he heard was music in his head, above the chattering of the kitchen party. The white lights of the Christmas tree made his eyes glow. He suddenly felt at home in his wanderings for the first time that day. He drank another whiskey back and sighed a great sigh of relief. It took him a minute to adjust to its potency. He realised he was drunk and experiencing a curdling head rush, so he stood up out of the leather chair and walked slowly and deliberately, giving accidently the false impression he was sober. A sudden rush of energy came over him, like the surge of a cold shower. He thanked the strangers who implored him to stay so they could indulge in his celebrity, bade them farewell and exited the place in favour of the snowy streets. The sweet noise of the party evaporated on the lane. It was the middle of the night and he was alone again. Still darkness. The angel watched the river from high up on her perch.

    He trudged on through the thick snow. The labyrinth of London was not unfriendly. He made his way forward, trudging through the whirling white, back towards the heart of the city. Now the thing that tormented him didn’t need to be killed. It had gone into hiding. The strong drinks he had consumed were coursing through his veins, but the falling snow had begun to retreat, its diminished ferocity had tempered his awe. His mind returned to its once contented state. It wrapped itself around his body again until he could feel no cold, and see only the hollow of the night.

    The lone figure had walked nearly a mile when he looked up and saw a police car with its main lights off, driving slowly alongside him. Annoyance, followed by a dim throng of adrenaline. Could be fun to run. He avoided eye contact with the passing car. He noticed a taxi cab on the other side of the road. The man waved him in and the snow fell from him as he sat down in the car and closed the door. He smiled to see the police lights disappear down the road and gently kneaded the bag of powder in his coat pocket. He said ‘Shaftesbury Avenue’ and the car began to move. He rested his head back and watched as the snowy city passed him by, knowing for sure, for certain if he lived, that some years from now he would only be able to remember glimpses of this undiluted beauty. How can someone remember their exact sequence of thoughts when so much time has passed? Memory is an image in which sometimes lives a feeling. He conceived again his plan. Perhaps the end of pain approached, the end of suffering for good. He began to tremble.

    Thoughts of Soho re-emerged in his mind’s eye. That’s where the lonely people go. That was his tribe. He thanked the driver and got out and saw he wasn’t the only one lost. He walked past prostitutes who beckoned him to join. It was a potent mix, desire and loneliness. Perhaps the most potent. Disregarding humiliation, the cause of almost all violence, his temptation was reflected in his change of pace. He carried on with the melting appearance of a fake smile. One of the prostitutes dressed in a skirt of red leather asked for a cigarette. He spontaneously turned around and handed her one. The lack of mercy and compassion in her eyes chilled his spirit more than any winter night. He sensed something wicked deep inside her, but then thought it was only himself, reflected. He concluded as he turned and walked away toward the river that she had killed more innocence than most. ‘Good old London. It is beautiful in the snowfall.’ He thought. Sometimes people have been able to achieve this rarity, to build an environment that reflects their imagination. As the white haciendas of Andalusia are built for the sun, so London is built for the people now forgotten, the barely remembered past of the world, and its unintelligible, mysterious future. The lone figure had bitten and hit himself countless times and cried bitter tears deep into the night. Now he understood why. Now his life was nearly over, in ruins, he finally understood what his tears had meant. They were what he was destined to become. And how he had been ordained to die, by his own soul. He turned and walked down elegant sideroads to the river.

    He looked down an empty street and saw no one. Then, from behind the corner at the end of the block he saw the head of a stag, with large antlers, slowly emerge around the street corner. The large, strange eyes stared straight at him. He blinked to awaken himself, to catch his senses. It was obviously a prop, being worn by a man. But the man was obscured by the wall. Then the arm and hand appeared, a long black arm with hoofs for hands rested on the wall, but still the weird head, motionless, stared out at him.

    “What?” He thought. Only questions, only surprise. It offered no immediate threat, but its rareness induced fear. The strange looking animal head stared at the lone figure, immovable and unflinching. They stood there staring at each other for long drawn-out seconds. Then slowly, the stag’s head with its large black eyes retreated back behind the wall leaving the lone figure totally alone. In the unexplainable moment it began to snow again. He quickly span around to see if anyone was there, if anyone had seen what he had just seen, but there was no one. Only the snow, falling from the night.

    He took a half-drunk miniature bottle of whiskey from the deep pocket of his coat and drank it back, skilfully opening his gullet to allow the fiery liquid to pass. The aftershock nauseated him so he washed it down with a quick cigarette and walked away from the other worldly scene with a quick pace, rolling his ankle on the snowy cobbles as he went. He stood still in the falling snow, unable to detect any psychodelia within or without his senses. He made his way quickly to the river.

    Soon he reached the dark brooding swirls of the Thames and it seemed to him that the river itself was dancing. He looked over the iron railing. The Thames devoured the snowfall as if it had dominion over the sky. In the near distance was the bridge, devoid of all movement. With clumsy drunken movements he climbed up on the wall and as he stood up, he realised his feet had fissured the untouched, untainted snow. He stood there alone and looked out at the old magnificent buildings on the other side of the river. There was no-one there, no-one to tell him to get down. But a part of his soul wanted to die. A great part. He was unexpectedly reminded of the beauty that humankind holds in its hand, but the boundlessness of its potential was somehow being blocked out like starlight behind the blackness of clouds. London was singing. The falling snow was obscured by the black river night. He looked at the distant bridge and saw the angel. There it was, made of stone, waiting still.

    And then, from on top of the bridge, the stags head slowly ascended above the grey brick wall. The lone figure rubbed his eyes. The weird stag was up on the bridge staring down at him. How he had got there so quickly the lone figure didn’t understand. His breath was swallowed up by the adrenaline rush of fear. His footing felt unsteady on the snow-covered wall and he had the sudden sensation he was about to fall, fall, fall down into the dark river. The wind and snow took up and blew the lone figure’s hat clean off his head. He wobbled as he quickly stretched for it but it had gone into the babbling darkness below. He caught sight of it in the light of a street lamp, right way up, riding the white washing waves of the river. It sank beneath the gloom. He sighed sadly to see it drown, like departing an old trusted friend forever. He looked up and the stag was still there on the bridge staring down at him, with those strange, dark eyes. The wind stormed in and blew his hair up into his face, but now he only had the will to let it do its work. Staring through the swirl he saw the stag looking directly at him, motionless in the blizzard. Then the arms of the stag man raised and his hands rested on the antlers but still those black eyes were fixed, penetrating the stormy night. The lone figure, terrified, looked down at the river and heard the sound of the rushing waves calling.

    And then, he heard music rising. The melody exploded through the curtain. His soul began to shine. Hiding in the visible, the music burst in colours, lighting the lone figure’s eyes like underwater lamplight reaching the surface of a lake. The music. The beautiful music. The lone figure wept. He remembered kindness. Through his tears he saw his hat re-emerge on the surface. The dream world came back to him. The world of imagination. He looked up and there was the stag man, now standing up on the wall of the bridge. He suddenly felt frightened to see the pagan thing. The stag man stood still, looking straight at him. A feeling came over the lone figure to jump down off the wall. But he stayed. It was as if he was beckoning the strange apparition to make the first move. The cold wind whipped up. The adrenaline surging through the lone figure’s body kept him warm enough. Then the man on the bridge took off the stag’s head and stared down at him. ‘It can’t be’ said the lone figure out loud as he looked at the man. ‘No! It can’t be!!’ He screamed at the night. It was his own face up on the bridge, staring down at himself. Tears burnt through the freezing air. The stag man smiled and dived off the high bridge with a look of joy on his face, down into the Thames and under he went. The lone figure could feel his heart beating fast as he looked at the place where the stag man had landed. It was time. His pain would soon end, and his joy. Heaven and hell waited in the waves. He leapt from the wall into the mist, with his arms stretched out in front of him, his hands hitting the ice-cold water first. Unwatched by any living soul, the lamplit murk of the river consumed them both. They were seen no more. High above, the stone angel watched the scene, her tears made of rain, her open wings gathering the falling snow.

    Feature Image: Marina Azzaro 

  • Poem: ‘No animals died’

    No animals died

    Our research on toads and carabids
    considered predator and prey.
    Japanese toads and bombardier beetles
    were ‘introduced’, let’s say.
    The relationships were explosive –
    but complied with current laws.
    We intend to show you footage.
    Please, hold your applause.

    Our methodology? Each beetle placed
    in tongue’s reach of a toad.
    Each swallowed.
    Chemical explosions soon showed
    toads bulging, swelling,
    changing shape –
    till finally, through emesis,
    they let their prey escape.

    Our results? All beetles were ejected –
    and survived. No toads died.
    We timed explosions, measured vomit,
    observed from every side.
    We’ve now described how toxic creatures
    can avoid digestion.
    Ah yes sir, at the back there,
    do you have a question?


    Reference
    Sugiura, S., Sato, T. 2018 Successful escape of bombardier beetles from predator digestive systems. Biol.Lett. 14: 20170647. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2017.0647

    Feature Image: Japanese Common Toad by Yasunori Koide.

  • Indiana Jones on a Kharkiv Bus

    Marina and I wait for a bus, and when it comes, we squeeze our way into it, blending in with a crowd that pushes and carries us like a wave into the sea. I say “squeeze”. This is literally what it feels like – something very familiar to me and, at the same time, almost forgotten, because this happened every morning in my childhood when I rode trolleybus number…Oh my, I wish I could remember the number of that trolley bus I used to ride every morning to my kindergarten, with my father holding my hand while the crowd carried us along. I both remember it and don’t remember it because, although it happened every morning back then, it never happened once my childhood was over. I told Marina what it used to be like, who is so squeezed from all sides. There’s no need for her feet to touch the floor – the crowd holds her so well. And while I am squeezed between a plump young man in uniform, Marina is squeezed between me, on one side, and, on the other, the crowd of people that keeps growing every second. Still more people enter the bus, until finally, the door closes—a miracle—and the closing door pushes everyone even further in.

    An old woman behind the plump young man in uniform, to whom I will refer as “soldier” for short, says, in a chastising tone that older women in Ukraine and other post-Soviet countries often use: “Muzhchina, you swerve me. Stop swerving me!”

    It sounds funny to me because I never heard the Russian verb she uses, “kolyshete,” used this way means “push” and, as far as I know, it is not a transitive verb, that is, it is not usually followed by an object, which, in this case, is “menia” (me).  The old lady’s complaint is just her way of saying a simple thing: “Sir, you are pushing me”. It sounds funny but I tell myself I should be careful saying “funny” about anyone’s speech here, after all, what do I know about funny, I, who had left the Soviet Union so long ago and whose ancestors lived in Ukraine when none of the people alive here had even been born. Whether funny or not, I tell myself to remember the old woman’s use of “kolyshete”– not so much because I want to use it myself but because I like colorful expressions, and hearing it from the old lady on this crowded bus seems like a find I should treasure.

    Muzhchina, i.e., the soldier she addresses, says, “Lady, it is not I swerving you! People, she says I’m swerving her! But it is not I who is swerving her! It is my bulletproof jacket! I would never swerve anyone alive!”

    He pauses, unzips a mini sack with a little carry-on pharmacy he carries on top of his bulletproof jacket, takes out a small set of medical wound dressings, and pushes it into my closed hand: “A gift for you, Indiana Jones!”

    I say, “Indiana Jones… Is that because of my hat?”

    “The lady is from America,” Marina says. I am getting used to this explanation of my presence in Ukraine, because even though I don’t feel like a foreigner here, it helps making my Russian-only speech, which might have been perceived as unpatriotic otherwise, (or for that matter the strangeness of my Indiana Jones hat) seem fine.

    “True, the lady is from America,” I say about myself, “but the hat is actually from Australia, where no one thought of it as an Indiana Jones hat.”

    I take off my hat to show its underside to the soldier. “See, what it says here? I point at a tag: Designed in Australia.”

    He doesn’t react to my mention of Australia but nods when I say “America,” and at the end confirms: “Indiana Jones, yes.”

    Again, he unzips his portable pharmacy and takes out a little present for me. This time it’s a small rolled-up package of gauze. “No, no,” I say with more conviction than before, “You need it much more than I do! Please keep it!”

    “Indiana Jones,” says the soldier in all seriousness. “This is for you. Do not reject it. I imbibed a little more than necessary last night, but it doesn’t change the fact that this humble medical gift is all I can offer you. In honor of Indiana Jones movies, which I loved so much in the days of yore.”

    He pushes the small package of gauze into my hand, and I must accept it, if only out of politeness.

    “Well, thank you,” I say. “Not that I ever thought of myself as a replica of Indiana Jones…”

    The old woman who complained about the soldier swerving her is now immersed in light – her toothless smile lights up her face, and every wrinkle on her face seems to exude light. I say ‘quite a sight’ to myself, considering that we are squeezed in the back of the bus like chopped-up herring in a tin can.

    I say, “Really, I don’t want it.”

    I give the small rolled-up package back to the soldier: “Not because I dare to refuse the honor of the gift, but because you need it much more than I do. In fact,” I say, “One day, your life may depend on having it. Which is why it would be wrong of me to accept it.”

    “No, Indiana Jones, it is my gift for you. I would have given you a gun, but this is all I can give you right now.”

    Marina says it’s time for us to get off, and I’m getting ready to make my uneasy way towards the door. Luckily, most people standing between us and the door get off at the same stop, and right before Marina and I leave, I try to push the gauze and the wound dressing into the soldier’s hand again. Still, he’s adamant: he closes his hand into a fist so no gifts can be returned, and that is that. The door shuts behind us, and the bus is gone, and along with it, the plump soldier with the little pharmacy sack on his chest and the old woman with wrinkles that exude light.

    I say, “Wasn’t it funny, being called Indiana Jones because of my hat?”

    Marina says that the soldier was sincere. She uses the word “iskrenniy”: he earnestly wanted to give me these things, and he meant well, so I shouldn’t hold this Indiana Jones thing against him.

    “I know he meant well,” I say. “I just thought these medical supplies should have stayed in his little pharmacy bag. He needs them more than I do.”

    “Well,” she walks ahead, showing me the way to go. “He did say that he had imbibed more than usual the night before. Although I still think it was very touching…the way he was so happy to see his Indiana Jones on this crowded bus.”

    We walk some more toward Drobitsky Yar, the Holocaust Memorial just outside of Kharkiv, the goal of our trip, when Marina says, “Here’s a checkpoint. I hope you have your passport with you.”

    I reassure her, “Don’t worry. I have two, which is more than enough for one checkpoint.”

    ____________________

    FOOTNOTES

    1Muzhchina – a male.  “[…] you swerve me!” is a literal translation of “Мужчина, вы меня колышeте!” (romanized: Muzhchina, vy menya kolyshete”).

     

  • Poem: Vincent in Hiroshima

    Vincent in Hiroshima
    “A work of art is a corner of creation viewed through a temperament.”—Emile Zola

    I.

    Daubigny’s Garden, a late
    masterpiece of Vincent van Gogh,
    painted in July 1890 (the same month he died),
    now hangs in Hiroshima. Talk about
    ghosts of the blast. Beauty clings
    to Horror, and still clings, even when
    it let’s go; just as we suspected:
    Siamese twins.

    II.

    Glimmer at the edge of fog.
    Sphinx at sunset, red paws.
    Oval flocks of moons while drunk.
    A bow of measure in a coffee spoon.
    The way her delicate lips pucker
    while thinking of yesterdays
    you never entered. 

    III.

    Back to Vincent in Hiroshima.
    Back to the gravity of collage. How each day
    slips into the groove of whirling
    months. How the garden

    swirls with flowers and a church
    tower in his final summer. How
    Vincent’s last words were:
    “I wish it were all over now.”

    How the true page is never printed. How
    the puzzle we call history shrinks
    as the world grows into one
    piece of a larger puzzle.

    Feature Image: Vincent Van Gogh’s ‘Daubigny’s Garden’

  • Small Horses

    The big man tugged the brim of his hat and spoke gently to the camera as though a guest had newly arrived at his door.

    “Evenin’ folks. I’m here to tell you about my new picture, The Train Robbers, with a little lady you might have heard of by the name of Ann Margaret.” He inclined his head in a manner familiar to audiences who might, in that gesture, recall the earnest frontier wisdom for which his characters were renowned. “I think you’ll like it. It’s an old-fashioned Western with lots of action and—”

    “Cut!” the director yelled.

    The big man’s eyes narrowed and his throaty voice rose to a tattered yelp.

    “Well, what’s the matter now?”

    “Sorry, sir,” the director hesitated. “They’d prefer we didn’t use the term ‘old-fashioned’ anymore. They think it’ll drive away the younger audience.”

    “Who thinks?”

    A pinkish glow glazed the young director’s cheeks.

    “The marketing department.” His fingers played nervously by an earlobe. “The studio’s marketing department.”

    “Marketing department?” The big man exclaimed, his voice cracking under the incredulity. “Hell, anyone driven away by that nonsense can stay away, far as I’m concerned. I guess they’d rather we dump our regular audience and bring in a bunch of hippies instead. That it?”

    “I don’t know, sir, but that’s the direction I was given. I’m just doing my job. How about we take five while Howard works up the changes for you?”

    The big man’s eyebrows dwelled over a long cautious stare, then he suddenly released a brittle chuckle and slapped his own thigh.

    “Well, hell, you work that in there, Howard,” he cried. “You work it all the way in there while I go parlay with our noble representative of the honorable fourth estate.”

    He scurried sideways through a cloud of fussing assistants and technicians and crossed the dusty yard to a pair of canvas chairs which sat in the oblong shadow of a large parasol. The reporter, a young man with a vaguely tormented expression, lounged inattentively over the side of one of the chairs. When he saw the big man approaching, he yanked his legs aboard, drew his fingers from his beatnik beard and lurched upright, composing a large notebook on his lap as his pen made a nervous vigil over a fresh page.

    The big man sat heavily into his chair with a long, wayward grunt. He snatched a drink from the small table beside him and the ice cubes tinkled against the glass as he raised it to his lips. He took a long sideways look at the young reporter.

    “Where were we?” he said, when he’d taken a messy sup.

    “We were talking about your acting method.”

    A stern look waved the lines above the man’s brows and an unamused fissure cleaved his mouth into a half-smile.

    “You were talking about that,” he said, “not me. There’s no method. I’m myself, on purpose. It’s not much of a trick but it’s all the trick I got.”

    “Do you think that’s enough these days with people like Voight, Hoffman—”

    “It’s plenty enough,” the man snapped. “I suppose you think all this method-acting hooey is for the benefit of the audience. It’s not, you know. It’s just vanity. These modern actors feel like they gotta show the audience that they’re suffering for their art and I guess the only way they know how to do that is to sob right into the camera. The thing they miss is that heroes were never meant to be like normal folks. The whole point of heroes is to be better than normal folks and, in my book, better means better. Not darker. Or sadder. Or dirtier, either. Not shooting people in the back like you see in all these Spaghetti Westerns. Not doing drugs or whatever else you see these days. We ought to be setting an example for people. Showing them what real courage is. That’s why people come to my pictures. That’s why they been coming to my pictures for thirty years and that’s why they’ll still be coming to my pictures in a hundred years when all these fancy dan tricks is gone the way of the dodo.”

    “You seem very confident of your enduring legacy.”

    The big man gave a crippled, sorrowful laugh, “Well, I guess I am. Faith don’t cost much this side of life but, even so, it’s in surprisingly short supply.”

    The reporter bobbed excitedly and attacked the page with his pen.

    “That’s good.”

    “People need heroes they can rely on. These anti-heroes, as you guys call them, that’s just a fad the public will get tired of eventually. And, when they do, they’ll come looking for real heroes again.”

    “So, I take it you didn’t like The Wild Bunch?”

    “No sir, I didn’t. Bad guys pretending to be good guys.”

    “But can’t a person be both? Can’t a person be more than just good or evil?”

    “No sir, they can’t. They gotta pick a side and stick with it. It’s thinking like yours got the world in the upside-down mess it’s in. Men dressed like women and women dressed like men. Fellas that are supposed to be heroes blubbing about the place like sissies. People with no right to it demanding an audience’s respect. I’m no expert on scripture but I remember somewhere in there a warning against those who would try to put darkness for light and light for darkness.”

    “If you want to talk about scripture, what about Saint Paul on the road to Damascus? Wasn’t that a case of darkness turning into light.”

    The big man gave a creaking chuckle.

    “Well son, you be sure to let me know when we get another case like that one.”

    A few shouts came from the set and they both looked up and spent a few moments watching the buildup of activity there.

    “You got one more question, kid.”

    “You going to the Oscars tonight, sir? Who do you think will win for Best Actor?”

    The big man made a distasteful face.

    “Well, Olivier is a fine actor. I suppose I wouldn’t be too upset if he won.”

    “What about Brando? His performance in The Godfather is surely deserving of an Oscar, wouldn’t you say?”

    “No, son, I wouldn’t say. Too showy. Stuffing all that junk in his cheeks. All vanity and, I guess you know now, I can’t abide vanity,” he made a point of looking at the young man’s beard, “in anyone.”

    “Can’t you even admit that the movie itself is a modern masterpiece?”

    “No, sir, I can’t. If you ask me, that picture is nothing but modern un-American garbage.”

    “But surely,” the reporter started but the big man stood up and raised a meaty palm.

    “Maybe you should interview Brando. He’ll tell you exactly what you want to hear.”

    The young man frowned and the big man leaned over him, tilting his hat up his forehead.

    “I guess you’d prefer it I came off my horse like old Saul,” he said with a short chuckle and staggered back to the set, leaving the young reporter chewing his pen silently.

    The young man stood up, put away his notes and wandered over to a young lady who was smoking a cigarette in the shade of a long silver trailer.

    “Can you spare a cigarette, honey?”

    She looked at him and her lips formed a brief pout of distaste but, after a few seconds, she yanked a corner of her lip into a dazed smile and held out a long cigarette.

    “Here you go, Daddy-o.”

    When he’d lit his cigarette, he leaned against the trailer and nodded his head in the direction of the renewed activity.

    “So, what’s he like to work with?”

    “The living legend?”

    “Yes.”

    She looked him up and down.

    “Off the record?”

    “Sure,” he said, clutching the cigarette between his teeth as he dived into his bag for his notepad and pen.

    She pursed her lips carefully and blew a long thin plume of smoke toward the subject of their discourse.

    “He’s a royal pain in the ass.”

     

    *          *          *          *          *

     

    “No, dammit!” the big man said with a hoarse growl, flinging a despairing arm at the apprentice wrangler. “It’s still too tall. We’re shooting a promo here, son. You’re gonna want to get his head in the frame, otherwise people will think someone sawed a foot off me or I’m standing in a trench.”

    The apprentice wrangler, a kid no more than nineteen, opened his mouth to say something but the man wasn’t waiting for an answer.

    “Take it back and bring me another,” he said and wafted the air between them with the back of his hand.

    This was the third horse he’d returned, each with the same fatigued gesture, like an imperfectly cooked steak being waved back to the kitchen.

    The young wrangler grimaced and nervously tightened his grip around the reins. Mr. Mitchell, the head wrangler, had told him to keep it simple and to bring him one of the Quarter horses. He stepped apart from the horse, looking up at it and across its felted light brown flanks as though re-evaluating its suitability for himself.

    Between horses, the big man had dragged his canvas chair out from beneath the large white parasol and into the light. Now, as he watched the kid conduct his silent inspection, he lay back into the seat and stretched his long limbs into the warming midday sun. The man measured the moment with a throaty chuckle before taking himself slowly out of the chair. He removed his hat and slapped it once against his right thigh before refitting it and taking his famous lopsided stride over to where the kid stood, awaiting his approach with visible concern.

    The AD stepped beside the kid, pulled his white baseball cap over his eyes and tugged at his greying beard, offering a physical demonstration of his concern.

    “We can work around this,” he said. “A wide shot from further back. Then you’ll have everybody in the frame.”

    The big man shook his head and his eyes crinkled in a stern smile.

    “Hell, Bob, we’ll look like ants. You want folks to have to guess who the hell is in the picture?” He pointed at the kid. “You telling me we ain’t got one regular sized horse in that whole remuda back there?”

    He started walking in the direction the kid had come from.

    The director joined the AD and the kid beside the horse.

    “Where are you going?” the director called.

    “I’m going to pick myself out a normal-sized horse. You stay here and take five or six or whatever you guys call it these days.”

    The big man followed the track around past a set of worn outhouses to a series of fresh-boarded corrals. The kid followed at a short distance and watched the man let himself into a large pen with about a dozen horses in two groups, stepping nervously in opposite corners.

    The man noticed the kid and gestured to a cream and brown colt in the nearest corner.

    “What about that little Paint Horse?”

    “Oh, not Bobbin, sir. He’s mighty ornery. We only got him around for a special show that needs a bad-tempered ride. I wouldn’t recommend using him for this type of show, sir”

    “Well,” the man said, “I reckon I can handle him.”

    He strolled slowly over to the horse and carefully patted its flanks and head, whispering and clucking to the animal as he stepped closer.

    The horse turned one side of his head to look at the man. The large eye, wet and brown, studied him.

    “You know me, don’t you?” the man said, easing his hand across the thick mane and patting the horse’s neck softly.

    He was about to chide the kid for his foolishness, when the horse suddenly bucked hard, slamming him against the fence and he lost consciousness.

     

    *          *          *          *          *

     

    “What the hell you let him in there for?”

    “I’m sorry sir. He said the other horses was too big.”

    “Too big? They’re always too big. Is he riding them or are they riding him?”

    The boy gestured to the big man.

    “He just moved.”

    The big man opened his eyes. He was lying on a bed in the silver trailer. The kid was pressing a damp cloth to his head. A dull ache sat just above his eyes.

    A grey-haired man with a long black moustache in a dark suit stood over him, looking concerned.

    “You okay?”

    The big man sat up. He took the damp cloth from the kid and pressed it to the ache above his eyes.

    “I’ll live, I guess.”

    “You remember anything?”

    “I remember a little horse kicking the shit outta me.”

    “That’s Bobbin. He’s the devil himself if he don’t know you. Raúl had no business letting you go in there.”

    “I’ll live,” the man said and made to stand up.

    The grey-haired man put a hand on his chest to keep him gently on the bed.

    “You best take it easy sir. You had a sizeable bump. Doctor needs to check you out. Anyways, they told everyone to go home.”

    “Go home? You sure?”

    “Well, pretty certain. They’re all clearing out for the day.”

    He stared at the big man.

    “You recognize me?”

    “Sure I do. You’re Mitchell, the head wrangler, but,” he gestured at his own outfit—jeans, boots, spurs and all—then at the grey-haired man’s smart suit and tie, “there’s something wrong with this picture, cowboy.”

    “I had to attend a funeral,” the grey-haired man said, inspecting himself self-consciously.

    “Well,” the big man said, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

    “Thanks.”

    The big man rose to his feet.

    “I gotta get myself into one of them suits too, so I can attend the 45th Academy Awards. I got a thing I gotta do there.”

    “You sure you’re up for all that, sir?”

    The big man loosened a soft chuckle that scraped through the relative quiet of the trailer.

    “I guess I’m pretty certain,” he said.

     

    *          *          *          *          *

     

    The little hippy girl in the Red Indian getup walked slowly to the stage. She looked Apache. Chiricahua or maybe Western Apache. Jet black hair swung at her waist. A tan beaded dress. He’d killed lots of Apaches in his movies. No women, of course, though he’d probably widowed plenty.

    For a second, he wondered if he was seeing things.

    He was in the wings, getting ready for his bit when he saw the little Indian girl come up—almost float up—to receive the award and it was as though an invisible thread drew him to her. He moved closer to the stage, between a group of heavy-set security men. He was sweating heavy and breathing hard as she commenced her speech about Native Americans and respect, love and generosity, but then she said something about declining the award and booing broke out on the main floor.

    She looked so small and scared flanked by those two giant props of the Oscar statuette and she glanced nervously toward the wings, where he stood, and hesitated in her speech. The large sheet containing her speech quivered in her grasp and her sad little mouth saddened further.

    He moved toward her and one of the security guards, a dark-haired, squat fellow, placed a thick hand on his shoulder and pinched the flesh there urgently.

    The big man was listening to the speech. He absently shrugged the man’s hand away but another security man tugged at his elbow from behind and a taller, blonde haired security man stood beside him and tried for his other elbow.

    “Sir, you’d better stay here.”

    “And you’d better leave off,” the big man croaked as he yanked his elbows away. He tried to take another step but a fourth, a fifth then a sixth security man barred his path.

    “Sorry sir but we can’t let you do that?”

    “Do what?” the big man said with a grimace. “I’m just trying to talk to her.”

    “I’m sorry sir. We can’t allow that right now.”

    “It’s not your business,” the big man said but when he looked back at the stage the little Indian girl had vanished like a heat mirage in the desert.

    The band struck up and the audience applauded and, soon after, he found himself being introduced and he made his own speech and the filming wrapped up, but he kept thinking about the little Indian girl mirage he’d seen.

    When the ceremony was over, the stars mingled in small careful groups along political and historical and status lines. He kept an eye out for a reoccurrence of the Indian girl mirage. He didn’t see her again but, talking to other guests, he learned she wasn’t a mirage. She’d really been on stage. She’d really spoken those words. She’d really stood there, hands quivering lightly, while the audience heckled and booed her.

    He excused himself and waved for his personal driver, a quick, bright-eyed, sharp-faced man in his late twenties with slicked-back hair and a reluctant smile.

    “Get me into Brando’s party,” the big man said. “I don’t care how you do it.”

    His driver returned twenty minutes later.

    “You’re in,” he said.

    They drove to Mulholland Drive. He gave a lift to a couple of young up-and-coming actresses whose names he didn’t know and he couldn’t remember when they told him but who giggled and chatted carelessly the whole way to the Santa Monica Mountains. They all entered the large Spanish-style house together and the actresses’ laughter and general gaiety covered his entrance better than any gunpowder keg had in his pictures.

    The party was in full swing. People were drinking and shouting and laughing; little dabs of mirthful giggles and loud uncontrolled splashes of laughter as though emptied from a fire bucket. A haze of marijuana smoke clutched his nostrils as he wandered through the different rooms.

    A five-piece jazz band occupied a corner of the large open-plan living room and the lead singer, a tall, dark, graceful lady swirled effortlessly around a microphone stand, launching a series of winsome pleas into the warm night. On the other side of the house, by the pool, a keyboardist, guitarist and another singer performed a selection of modern hits. This singer—a pale, willowy fellow—decanted his soul into each song, almost collapsing into the outro before seemingly renewing his vigor for the next number.

    As the big man moved through the house the sound of one or other band would dominate and, each time, the conquered song would idle sedately into the background only to re-emerge moments later when he crossed some invisible threshold. As he made his way up the wide circular stairs, the two sounds grappled in the air around him, locked in close combat.

    A large dimly lit room of cushions and candelabras opened onto a long veranda. He picked a path through cushions and half-seen bodies which writhed with the apocalyptic fervor of drunken ardor.

    A set of thin white curtains floated across the wide doorway and the night air parted them just enough for him to see her standing on the balcony, looking out at the city lights in the distance.

    He approached cautiously. She was alone.

    “I heard your speech,” he said softly and she weaved back in surprise.

    He raised his hands.

    “I’m sorry, miss. I didn’t mean to startle you. I just wanted to speak to you, if that’s okay.”

    She looked at him for a long moment and eventually nodded slowly.

    He pointed to a metal table and chairs nearby.

    “Do you mind if we sit, miss?”

    She glanced about uncertainly then shook her head quickly. He pulled a chair out and gestured her into it before taking the seat opposite her.

    “You mind if I smoke,” he said, smiling. “I smoke when I’m nervous.”

    “No, it’s fine.”

    He smiled as he took out a pack of cigarettes then, smiling again, he offered her one, which she took, and he lit both their cigarettes with a light snap of his lighter.

    Out on the veranda, the modern music dominated again. The band were playing a song he’d never heard before called Peaceful Easy Feeling and the people around the pool below and the singer all swayed as if caught in the same mellow current.

    “This is nice,” he said.

    “Yes,” she replied, smiling timidly. Her dark eyes glittered in the light from half-a-dozen ornate lamps which stood at intervals along the balcony.

    He pulled his chair closer.

    “I heard your speech earlier,” he said.

    “Yes,” she said, her eyes staring unabashedly into his, “but did you see it?”

    “See it?”

    Her voice took on a dreamlike quality.

    “Did you see the oppression of the weak? The bloody war against nature? The long veil of hypocrisy that hangs over this nation? The thousands of bones lying unburied on the prairies?”

    He moved excitedly toward her, their faces inches apart.

    “I saw,” he said. “I saw all of it and I felt all of it, as though you were speaking just to me, directly into my brain.”

    “In a way, I was. I’ve seen all your pictures. I know you better than any man.”

    He frowned sadly.

    “You saw only a shadow of me in those movies. The shameful shadow of delusion. I decided today, I’ll never make another of those pictures. I’m done with that life. Do you believe me?”

    She smiled tenderly.

    “I believe we can be whoever and whatever we want to be, if we want it hard enough.”

    “I do want it. Truly, I do. It’s not something I thought about before today but so much has changed in this day. This morning I was an adolescent, knit in kin and afraid of the universe, and tonight I am become a man. The old me skulked in the shadows of that curtain, hiding in the wings, but then, bathed in your radiant candor I was baptized into the world and here I am.”

    Her eyes were aflame now. The music rose below them but neither of them heard it anymore.

    “I was drawn to you,” he said. “Like I’ve never been drawn to another. Like a celestial body stranded millennia in the cold immensity of space, suddenly feeling an urgent tug from somewhere in the vast emptiness. When those people started booing, I wanted to rush to your side. To be there with you.”

    “You did?”

    He stubbed out his cigarette and took her hand.

    “Yes, I did.”

    “And they stopped you?”

    “They tried to, but they can’t stop me now. Here I am. I want to be with you now, if I can. I can’t explain but something happened to me when I heard your speech. The scales fell from my eyes, and I suddenly saw the world, cold and hard, through your eyes. All the needless slaughter and butchery. All the lies and deceit. All the self-deceit. A world bereft of love or generosity waiting to be stocked. By us.”

    She urgently extinguished her own cigarette and placed her hand on his and their fingers intertwined.

    “I want that too,” she said and they stared long and hard into each other’s eyes, cataloguing the thousand mysteries there, counting each glimmer of light like beautiful little fireworks being tracked across the sky.

    An apprehensive cough came from behind them. They turned and his driver was there.

    “Your wife’s here,” the driver said.

    “Oh yeah,” the big man said. “Shit.”