Published 'Ocular' 1994
Cramped up, squashed in and breathless,
The crowd are silent
Reading the poems of Baudelaire.
Suddenly, completely unpremeditated,
They lurch forward, in unison,
And sing the National Anthem.
It was almost midday, almost noon.
As three women entered the ancient schoolroom, they were surprised to find it covered in stones and lumps of larger rubble. A painting on the wall was the only decoration, depicting a ship in a storm. Nadine, as she peered closer at it, saw that the ship was called 'The Reyn-Bouwe' and was evidently sinking fast. She spelled out its name for the benefit of the other two.
"Who's the painter?" queried Patricia in a tone of disinterest. She half-thought that the ship's name was strange ... strangely familiar.
"Can't make out the signature."
The woman who had not yet spoken wore a soft horn hat and was heavily made-up with turquoise under-eyes, a parasol hanging from her limp arm.
"What a mess!" said Nadine, turning to survey the bestrewn floor. Patricia was admiring the marigold-window in the wall opposite to the painting: it slanted light through the dusty air.
"Denise, come here, though," urged Nadine to the nameless woman. Nadine was now turning over stones in the corner furthest from the window.
Denise, like the others, was mid-thirtyish and, although the most smartly dressed, looked the least attractive. Her hair was fastened with a butterfly clip, but wayward wisps seeped out like smoke.
One of the turned-over stones revealed a wriggling knot of unrecognisable insects, buzzing somewhat at the disturbance.
"Yuk!" Denise flinched, waving her parasol like a sword.
Patricia moved from the window—a little white flake clinging to her lower lip like a remnant of food—and stared uncomfortably at her two companions. She needed to speak but evidently was finding it a trifle difficult to make her mouth formulate the requisite words; she simply emitted embarrassing sucking noises.
"Yes?" said Nadine and the other woman almost in unison.
Patricia at last mustered the words to the front of her mouth: "I've just realised—the craft of our husband, it's called 'The Reyn-Bouwe'."
But the other two had not heard, since they were still preoccupied with the loathsome insects which had been discovered beneath the stones...
Today was sunne-stead.
Many gathered on the quays to view, through optic-scopes, the temporary fixity of the planet's heat source. The space-ships were moored to their pylons for the duration, safe and unseen. The Holy Stone had been cleared of tourists to allow the scientists to array telescopes and sextants upon its one natural tower. Other contraptions hung like intricate scaffolding from each cornerstone, giving the three women an impression of a clock-house turned inside out. They had indeed intended to view sunne-stead from the disused schoolroom rented solely for its marigold-window.
The moment came and went. The mighty star, rising from West to East, shuddered to a halt, poised in the white hell of the sky for what seemed an endless minute and, then, returned East to West. The three women had held hands in serenity and serendipity for hourfuls of such minutes, drawing as much spiritual significance as was possible into their communion: a frozen tableau, a mistress-piece. But, as the heat disappeared piecemeal from the day, as dusk met dawn in the same quarter of the sky, the alabaster skin crumbled to the floor. Upon darkness, the room would echo with the initial clumps of falling stones followed by the incremental clatter and final crescendo of collapsing masonry.
The night sky was a Queen Catherine Wheel of the world's interplanetary traffic, dodging in and out of the star-speckled wastes.
A solitary man climbed the tow-path of the city's central pylon from which several craft dangled like dead horses. He found the one he sought. The name 'Reyn-Bouwe' was painted in all-weather gloss on its side. He inserted his limbs into rigid leggings of the the contour-seat and launched himself towards the inner circles of the cosmos. Pulling and pushing at various levers and gloating over just as many dials, he discovered himself spinning like a dying fly towards an under-sky where the sunne was about to lift its screaming rim. Not being able to control the machine, its fuel burst out and flew into his face—like being sick on a funfair ride with someone else's sick.
The over-sky turned turtle below him and he was diving, nose down, towards the last zenith. Desperately struggling with the release harness in his seat, fumbling for the mercy-ejection device, he lurched, legless, between what he believed to be two sunnes in violent love with each other.
He was surely dead.
It was almost Midnight, almost Moon.
The last fragment crumbled to the floor. The marigold-window had been shattered by a shooting-star—or at least a crumb of one. A slick of slime slowly slewed across the surface of the painting from a cake of wrigglers nesting in its frame.
From stone to sunnes and back again, there were many other lives and lovers dodging death and damnation. And in the utter darkness of inner space, no woman now knew her own name—yet was there a vast face between the giant eyelights in the sky, with a mouth ... for eating ... for breathing ... for speaking ... for singing ... for kissing?
