Brown
Brackish Water
She
tossed the sheet and blanket back across the bed, swung her legs off
the mattress, put her feet on the floor. Rain seemed to hammer at the
roof, wind chimes sounding their dings and tings and thumps and
knocks, the hum and whistle of gusts under the eaves. Sitting round
shouldered on the edge of the mattress, hunched up, hands on knees,
she closed her eyes against the dizziness, felt the sharp sudden pain
from her thumb joint. She clasped her hands and massaged the round
ball of her thumb.
Blowing
a gale. And what's that for wind speed? Admiral fellow, did the chart
for wind speed and sea state. A real frog strangler. Gully washer.
"What time is it?" she said. The luminescent numbers of the
clock on her nightstand were a blur. "Put your eyes on, old
woman." Slippers. Robe.
Mori
wearing her ragged old bamboo hat walking the woods in the rain.
Soaked to the skin. Was she fifty? Just a child. Fairly old though
for the 15th century. And blind. Off on her own. Returning to
Shiomachi. Waiting for the tide. "How did she manage?"
Elizabeth
sat listening to the rain and the chimes. Standing, she tottered on
bare feet across the room to her desk. Lit a sandlewood pillar
candle, short and squat. Lowered herself into her chair. Sighed. A
block of cedar weighted the Mori manuscript. Her feet cold. Poor
circulation to the extremities these days. So where are my ...
"I
should read the end again. The style is off putting." A bad
translation? Too literal Grace had said. The Japanese had a good deal
more fluidity. "My Japanese is not quite up to snuff. Get a
sense of what she means, though. Ah, well. "It is what it is."
Mekura
no Geisha no Monogatari. Tales of a Blind Geisha.
Travel diary, more like. She shuffled paper, found her place, and
read:
We met after the accident. The other
singers and I were in the little temple on the hillside. We heard a
loud crack, a thump and distinct groan. Ikkyu san had been raking the
path down the hillside below the temple. The poor man was felled by a
falling limb, and was badly bruised. Perhaps a bone in his back was
cracked. We bathed him. One of the ladies applied her moxa treatment
to his shoulder. He was all skin and bones. A small man, we carried
him to his room on a shutter, the Abbot chattering like a frightened
bird as he shuffled alongside.
When the other ladies left to return
to Kyoto, I stayed on. He was not helpless, but more nearly hapless.
He talked in his sleep. Mumbled. Was embarrassed by his nakedness in
the bath. Better when he started writing again. The way he would
squat down and peer closely at his stone as he mixed his ink. His
brushes were rather worn. But how deftly he wielded them. Strong bold
characters. His strength returned, his confidence. That square, stern
face with a grin waiting behind a glare ...
We would travel to Kyoto soon, he
said. If the soldiers would allow it. We would be companions
apparently. A given in Ikkyu's mind. In two days, he said, the rain
will stop. When the fog moves through the valley from the lake, we
will follow the fog down the river. And so we did.
They
had walked the road this morning, Bess and Grace, following the
little creek through the swale of drifted sand to sit in a hollow in
the lee of driftwood and flotsam, the detritus washed ashore by the
ineluctable tides. Fog hung off-shore, not effected by the wind
streaming around the distant headland. Gulls and terns looped the
eddies, squawking.
"You
read Micki's story then?" Elizabeth had asked. She wore a
sunbleached, wide brimmed straw hat that tied loosely beneath her
chin.
"I
did. Fairly well written. Short, and the ending comes a bit
abruptly, but good enough, all in all. Was it autobiography? Was she
a photographer, too?"
Ebb
tide. Elizabeth watched the efforts of the waves as they swirled up
the beach. "Her mother was. Or pretended to be. She wasn't. I
think it was merely subterfuge. She had a dance instructor who gave
her the vapors. Him, I think."
The
vapors, thought Grace, really? "But the nudity was her theme,
wasn't it? Weston did many nudes."
"Yes.
Ostensibly the nudity." Elizabeth raised her index finger and
wagged it at Grace. "But there is abuse lurking behind it all,
Grace. Mustn't miss that bit. And sex. Sex and violence. Always
that."
Grace
nodded her understanding. "And is sexuality inherent in the
nudity or not?"
"That
is the question. She was, or pretended to be, rather uninhibited."
"If
a pretense, nudity is difficult to bring off. There is always a
stiffness."
Elizabeth
patted Grace's knee. "No pretense with you, child. You walk
about here naked as a jaybird like it's your natural state. Quite
lovely. Not the least bit awkward."
"But
Micki?"
"All
for show I'm afraid."
"And
the story?"
"An
attempt to reconcile the conflict? Or should we say 'conflicts'?"
They
sat and watched pipers and killdeers play the loops of tide, feeding.
"Bernard
says that when planing a piece of wood, the plane will jump and
chatter when pushing against the grain. People are like that, he
thinks. Probably most people."
Elizabeth
smiled. "Bernar-d said
that? Not just another pretty face then?"
"Sailor's face. Ruddy and
weathered."
"And he weathered his storm, did
he?"
Grace squinted against the sunlight
looking out to sea. "They are still afloat, yes. A bit battered.
There's a Coast Guard station near Eureka. Making for there."
Further up the beach, near the point,
a group of children filed noisily onto the beach.
"I do hope he's all right,"
Elizabeth said, patting the young woman's arm.
Micki's Story
The clutter of the studio made her
uneasy. She wished to straighten and dust. The books and folders were
all in disarray. Photographs. An old pizza box. He had forbidden her
to touch anything. This wasn’t her place, he said. It was his.
Leave things be.
He had pushed books and papers aside
to open the slender volume of black and white photographs. Simple it
was; yet elegant. Just as the photographs were. Dancers. All nudes,
or mostly so. Not erotica. Curves and shadows.
“They don’t say anything,” she
said.
“Listen harder.”
“O cute. There’s no context here.
Just pictures.”
“Photographs. Context all
inclusive.”
“What? Like paintings?”
“Yes.”
“Abstracts, smear of paint and an
onion skin. That sort of thing?”
“Yes.”
“They don’t say anything either.
The nudes like the morgue on TV. They make me shiver.”
“Corpses?”
“Look at this one.”
They looked. The silence grew slowly
palpable. She fidgeted at the buttons of her blouse. Her frazzled
auburn hair framed a pale face, green eyes. An image of some too thin
young girl surreptitiously picking at her wedged leotard made him
smile. He shifted his weight away from her. His hands found the
pockets of his coat.
“Is it erotic? Do you think? Men see
things different,” she said.
She over bit her bottom lip and tilted
her head towards him. Her hand touched his arm.
“She’s a little thin. Do I look
like that? What do you think? Is she sexy?”
“Umm. If you want it to be.”
“That’s no answer.”
“Well, it’s not about sex. Not in
the conventional sense.”
“Everything’s about sex. Or money.
So nudes sell. Western makes money. That it?”
“Weston.”
“Whatever.”
“No.”
“No what?”
“It’s not about money.”
“I give up. So then what is it
about?”
“Who’s on first.”
“What?”
“Nope. He’s on second.”
“Who’s on second?”
“Nope. Who’s on first.”
“Well, who is?”
“Exactly.”
He was laughing then and shaking his
head. She turned to face him, and slapped him open handed on the
shoulder.
“Aren’t we the superior one.”
“Come on," he said, "let’s
get started. You've got kinks in your number to work out."
She frowned and slumped.
He slapped her on the buttocks. "Move
it Tumblelina."
She cursed. Closed her eyes and moved
to the center of the room.
It was raining again, streams of water
slithering through the window grime.
Elizabeth
dozed at her desk with her head cradled on her folded arms. She had
elbowed her glasses to the floor. On the bookshelf across the end
wall, the flame of the scented candled flickered. The hard rain had
passed and drizzle now eddied about the house with the wind
lessening, becoming flukey, undecided. As her lower back tightened,
the sharp sciatic pain would soon waken her. She slept on fitfully,
dreaming of a flooded, mud covered town with listless souls wandering
through abandoned buildings kneedeep in brown, brackish water.
No comments:
Post a Comment