In THE CROLLALANZAS my heroines live in three
different time periods and each of them faces different challenges as women of
their time. But they all have something in common too, including a song and a dark
secret in their past – a secret about which only one of them knows. Until the
other two read her diary…
Truzia
Venezia
1603
What
dreams may come.
♣
As
our mother washed my hair today, she remarked upon how different we, her three
daughters, have become. Viola is the quiet, elegant spider, spinning webs of
cunning. Francesca is the butterfly, pretty and delicate, flitting about with sunlight
on her wings. And I am “a grub, wriggling and blundering awkwardly about,
munching on leaves and causing squeals of horror” from anybody who suddenly
comes upon my mischief. She assures me that one day I shall be transformed,
that I shall not always be this plump, little grub worm. However, I have
discovered that grubs turn into beetles, and I am not certain that is better. I
should rather be a wasp, and sting people.
Our mother laughs
softly and then urges me to shut my eyes as she pours a jug of warm water over
my head. But I keep my eyes open and see my shadowy reflection swaying from
side to side in the basin of water, distorted and medusa-like.
I ponder this idea
of transformation, for I see it all around me, from the clouds that float
overhead, to the plants on our balcony and the maggots squirming inside the
dead pigeon I found at the foot of Signora Bianchi’s steps. Incidentally, I
warned the old crone that this is a bad omen, but she was not grateful for the
information and swept me away with her broom as if the dead bird was my fault.
In any case, everything in the world is capable of transformation. Even stone
and marble, which is made of other matter transformed over time, will crumble
and stain, changing its shape in centuries to come.
Nothing is gone
forever. It becomes one with the air, the ground or the water and then it is altered
again.
My mother hums as
she rubs my hair dry. I ask her why she never finishes her tune. And who is
Eileen?
She thinks for a
moment and then replies that she cannot remember how it ends, or where she
heard it, yet it remains lodged there in her mind and has become a part of her.
“Like the little
scar on my knee, where I fell when I was four,” she says. She barely knows it
is there anymore; she cannot feel it and she might, one day, forget how she
came by it. The mind is a peculiar vessel, which picks and chooses what it keeps
and what it spills. “My mother thought I was dead,” she says cheerfully. “But I
returned to her and opened my eyes. All I have now is that scar.”
The scar and the
song are just two of the many things, she says, that have shaped her into the
woman she is now— the scar marking her body, the song her soul…
*
* *
The day after their mother’s funeral, Truzia
waited until both her sisters had gone out on errands and then she donned her
cloak, put on her most determined expression, and traveled across the city to
the palazzo of Don Venturi. She had no earthly idea what would happen if she
was granted an audience with the old man, but this impulsiveness was common for
her. She had not yet out-grown that tendency to act first and think later.
All she knew with
any certainty, as she arrived at the entrance of his grand house, was that this
man must be convinced to let them stay where they had lived all their lives.
Once, apparently, he had loved their mother, so he must be a man of some
compassion, surely. If he knew that her daughters had nowhere else to go, he
would not take their home away and cast them out, would he? Don Venturi had
many houses. What did he need with this one? Perhaps his son made this decision
without the old man’s knowledge.
The family Venturi
were well known in Venice, for they had wealth, connections and consequence.
Few folk crossed swords with them, but the son was known to be wilder—
ambitious, as the consigliere had described him— a creature of the modern
world, who paid little respect to the traditions of old. He picked fights at
will, casting aside his father’s good reputation with as little care as he
would toss a bone from his plate.
When Truzia had
suggested to her sisters that they might, somehow, appeal to the patriarch of
the family, Viola had rolled her eyes wearily.
“You and your
flare for drama. This is not one of your overwrought tales of blood and
vengeance, girl.”
But Truzia could
not stand by and do nothing. Anger and injustice made her blood spit and
sizzle. Humility did not come naturally to her, but on this day she would make
an effort to beg, if need be.
Arriving at the
door of the palazzo, she found the place eerily silent; the calm, as they say,
before the storm. The entrance was left untended, the door ajar, no guards in
her way, no servants to restrict her passage.
This should have
warned her that all was not well, but Truzia, on a mission, was not about to be
stopped, no matter how sizeable the omen.
She had not gone
more than six steps inside the building, when she heard a crash followed by a torrent
of screams. Panic rattled along the corridors and through the loggia, echoing
under the arches. After a stunned moment of uncertainty, Truzia looked down at
her feet and imagined a trickle of scarlet weeping between the mosaic tiles, creeping
toward her like a malevolent worm. She fled.
On her way back
down the steps, the breath skipping up her throat with every jolting foot-fall,
Truzia encountered another shock. First one sister and then the other, appeared
in her view. Both wore their black, hooded cloaks; both looked equally startled
to see her there too. Stumbling to a halt the three girls stared, pale and mute.
For that moment, they were frozen in time.
A summer rain had
begun to fall, slowly at first, nothing more than warm spittle. But suddenly
the heavens opened and they were caught in a downpour.
Truzia turned her
face up to it and felt the cooling rain on her eyelids.
Here comes the
rain again,
their mother had said just before she took her last breath, and in that moment
Truzia remembered it— the distant smile, the look of surprise and then the
stillness. Where had their darling mother gone? Was she happy now? Could she
see her daughters? Had she ever remembered the last notes of that tune she used
to hum?
Now they were here
without her, standing in the rain-washed via from which everybody else
had run for shelter. Their safe childhood was over.
The clattering
flood upon the stone woke Truzia from this strange daze. She opened her eyes,
pulled up her hood and ran after her sisters, the three soon moving as one,
merging with the shadows of summer evenfall and becoming just another shifting,
undefined layer within the greys and mauves of that spectral realm.
The sisters never
asked each other what they had been doing there in the Palazzo Venturi. They
set their cloaks and wet stockings to dry before the fire, and then ate their
supper with very little conversation, not even lighting a lantern, despite the
early darkness that had descended over the rooftops and bell-towers like a deep
bruise. After supper they bathed in the old tub before the glow of the fire,
taking turns in the water before it got cold. Then, since it was still raining
hard, Viola suggested they conserve candles and go to bed. It had been an
exhausting few days, she said, and they all needed their rest. For once, Truzia
did not argue about having no chance to write down her daily thoughts. In the sinister
shadows, with rain blowing against the shutters, the three sisters climbed into
bed, pulled up the counterpane and pretended to sleep.
“It could be the
work of an aggrieved servant, or some other enemy out for vengeance,” Viola
remarked the next morning, by which time the skies had cleared again, the sun
was out, and news of Girolamo Venturi’s murder was all over the district. It
could not be avoided when they strolled around the market, so she was forced to
make comment. It would, of course, have been odd if she said nothing. “Rich men
and their sons always have plenty of ill-wishers, who easily become
ill-doers.”
“It is shocking
and such a pity for a young man of promise, with so much in his favor, to have
his life cut short,” said Cesca, shaking her head. “All that potential
unfulfilled.”
“They say the lord
works in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform,” said Truzia, who could not
pretend to be sorry, even if she tried.
They never spoke to
anybody of having been there on that day or what they might have witnessed.
It was not many
days, however, before the tide of suspicion turned in their direction.
The consigliere of
Don Venturi was the first to point a finger at the sisters Crollalanza,
although he could only do so through his privy door, bellowing and groaning
between the sound of hefty explosions. “They fed me tainted wine and looked to
poison me. I would not put anything beyond those wretched creatures. All three
of them witches!”
Other voices were soon
raised to join his. Several folk had seen three figures, in mourning black, fleeing
Don Venturi’s palazzo on the day of the murder. From Lorenzo Geppi came tales
of the younger sister’s foul and violent temper. The eager neighborhood gossip,
Signora Bianchi— no doubt paid in good coin for her story— told of having
witnessed one of the sisters falling into a strange fit, needing the younger
girl to hold her down. Did they, like their mother, dabble in witchcraft?
“I do not like to
say so,” she murmured, with her eyes bulging and sweaty hands clasped under her
bosom, “but they are odd girls. There is nothing normal about the way they live,
or the way they have been raised. The things I’ve heard through that wall—”
As the local physician
pointed out, their mother had never abided by rules and laws. Indeed, she blatantly
mocked them at every opportunity, just as she had mocked him and his “scientific”
knowledge. This brazen confidence she passed on to her daughters, who thought
themselves too good for the company of honest boys. And what did anybody know
of them truly? Who was their father? How had their harlot mother come by
her proud manners, not to mention the books with which she unwisely let her
daughters educate themselves, and the ostentatious silks and brocades they wore
to parade about on market day? Further, Jacobella Jilani had been a shameless
wanton and a shrew, according to the parish priest, with whom she had
constantly clashed horns and offended, apparently, even in death.
Those three
opinionated sisters, already known to be eccentric and secretive, with no man to
keep them in order, could well be suspected of evil deeds. All the good their
mother had ever done in that community was now forgotten, or else the women she
had helped were too afraid to speak up on her daughters’ behalf. Many would not
care to admit they had ever needed or used her secretive services, of course.
But if any of the
sisters Crollalanza knew what had happened to Girolamo Venturi on that day of
blood and rain, they shared their knowledge with nobody— not even each other.
They kept their secret, forming an impenetrable wall of silence.
For all their
differences and squabbles, the sisters were now united against the world. If
one should be accused, then all three would stand together. It did not need to
be said. It was known.
♣
Briar
Oxfordshire, England
1882
Doubt that the sun
doth move.
“Your lady wife will be admitted as
a private patient, of course, Sir Milton. She will be well taken care of, with
the utmost confidentiality. I can arrange the necessary medical certificates,
leave it all to me. Put your mind at ease in the matter.”
“I trust you implicitly, Wilson, of
course. It is a weight off my mind. But I daresay, she will not be grateful.
Even after all this upset she has caused us. She will never go quietly or see
that all this is for her own good.”
“The female mind is a strange animal
at the best of times, sir. You must remember that she cannot help herself; she
cannot be held responsible for her actions. Women, you know, like little children,
cannot control their urges. They require the strictest boundaries and routines.
That is why we are here, to fix what is broken, to keep them upright and
sensible. She may not see that now, but she will come to understand eventually.”
“I hope so, Wilson. Her ladyship can be very stubborn, very difficult.”
“Oh, the staff at Belle Vista
Hospital are quite accustomed to handling troublesome patients. They have the
experience, knowledge and equipment to manage all manner of illnesses and temperaments.
I can assure you, there is nothing they have not already seen; nothing beyond
the realm of their experience.”
For some minutes the two male voices, stroking, flattering and reassuring
each other of their superiority, dominated the conversation. It was not until Briar
heard her aunt meekly venture, “But how can this malady— this Female Trouble—
be treated? Will my niece ever be cured?” that she realized her husband and the
doctor were not alone in the drawing room, conspiring in secret. Not that her
aunt would be of much assistance in preventing their plans. Elsa Beauchamp had
always taken comfort in her quiet, still place, seated behind whichever man she
imagined to be in charge of her at the time, never wanting to make her own
decisions or upset the calm waters. Which led to her being very disappointed
that her niece, orphaned and brought to live with her in adolescence, had not
acquired the same habits.
“The staff at Belle Vista use all the most modern methods, madam,” Doctor
Wilson gently assured her aunt. “I suppose she will be restrained, sedated with
paraldehyde in the beginning. Cold water baths and the like will follow, and be
of great help in the management of her distemper. As for a cure…well, who can
say? These things often take years to be resolved satisfactorily.”
“Sometimes they never are,” Briar’s husband added hastily. “We must face
the possibility of leaving her there indefinitely. I am sorry for it, but there
you are, Elsa. These tragedies happen, and life must go on. We will visit, of
course. When time allows. Although, I daresay, our presence might only set her
progress back.”
“She will be committed into the care of the strongest, most capable hands
at Belle Vista, Mrs. Beauchamp.”
“Well…I suppose you know what is right for her, gentlemen. Certainly, I
tried everything to correct her when she lived in my house, but she wore me— a
poor, tired widow with the most wretched nerves— quite to shreds. I promised my
dear brother, on his deathbed, that I would take his only child under my roof
and raise her to be a proper lady. But I had no idea then of the challenges I
would face. Oh, that artistic temperament she got from her mother’s side of the
family! I thought that being married would calm her down, give her something
with which to occupy her mind.”
Oh, it had, Briar mused as she silently slipped into her coat. Married
life had caused her to imagine all sorts of new uses for fire irons and a coal
scuttle. Mostly involving the back of her husband’s head and the cleft between
his buttocks.
Interesting though that they thought her mad. No doubt many folk had been
labelled thus in times gone by, simply because they held a differing opinion to
that of somebody influential. The Greek astrologer, Aristarchus, who first
dared suggest the earth revolved around the sun, rather than vice versa, must
have been widely ridiculed by his neighbors and was probably not invited to
many parties.
“I cannot help but think I should have done more for my niece. That I am,
somehow, to blame for how she has turned out.”
“You will never hear a word of reproach from me, madam, despite the fact
that I was misled before the marriage. I see you must have been desperate and
perhaps it was not intentional, so, as a Christian gentleman I forgive you for
pushing her into my hands. Now, as Doctor Wilson says, these things are always
best managed swiftly and discretely. The sooner we have her removed from the
house, the sooner she can begin her recovery.”
“Indeed. The patient can be taken directly via carriage. I will escort
her later today myself, Mrs. Beauchamp.”
They did all but chink glasses in celebration of this scheme to be rid of
her.
Standing behind the drawing room door, listening through it, Briar felt
no surprise, only anger. Even that was mild, distant. Her fires had burned
themselves out it seemed and now merely smoldered.
“You mentioned to me, Mrs. Beauchamp, the matter of foreign blood, on her
maternal grandmother’s side.”
“Nothing of any record, you understand, merely an old rumor within the
family, Doctor.” Her aunt stammered over this half-confession. She was very probably
clutching at the pearls around her slender throat. “Not the sort of thing one
talks about in polite society.”
“Italian, so I understand, on her mother’s side,” Milton grumbled. “And who
knows what else?”
“Ah. That would explain much,” the doctor replied gravely.
With brisk, surprisingly steady and capable fingers, the madwoman of
their discussion, standing in the hall and unobserved by them, finished
buttoning her coat.
“Where is the patient now?”
“I thought it best to let her rest, Wilson. I slipped some laudanum into
her cocoa.”
A sleeping draft that now dried in the soil of a drooping aspidistra on
the landing. If she could take that poor plant with her, she would.
“My poor niece.” Her aunt sniveled wetly, probably into a tiny, crumpled
lace handkerchief dotted with Attar of Roses. “She’s always been…rather
difficult. But this latest troubling, shameful incident—”
“Ah, yes. The Countess of Levesey’s portrait. I hear several ladies
fainted in shock at the unveiling and had to be revived with smelling salts.”
“The Countess took to her bed and cancelled all her social events for at
least a month.”
“As you can appreciate, doctor, we really cannot ignore my wife’s mental
infirmity any longer,” said Milton. “For the good of all, she must be put away.
It was good of you to come so quickly.”
Briar pulled on her gloves.
“And you say that she had no explanation for the portrait?”
“None that any sane person would offer.”
“My niece would only say that her art shows truth, Doctor Wilson; that
she does not believe in deception.”
“Extraordinary.”
“My wife likes to cause a stir, doctor. There was absolutely no reason
for her to paint the countess with two heads and not a stitch of respectable
clothing. She knew how it would be received.”
“But if she did it deliberately,” said her aunt, “is it truly lunacy?”
“Elsa, your niece is insane and a danger to herself. The doctor has
examined her and confirmed it. There is nothing more that we can do for her.
This behavior has been tolerated long enough— we have all been patient, more
than generous— and when you gave her over to me, she became my responsibility,
my burden, my property.”
“Of…of course.”
“I mean to say, there is a dashed limit to what a man must put up with from
his wife.” He cleared his throat. “I have my re-election to consider, and there
have been rumblings within the Party.”
“Naturally. I did not mean to question your wisdom. I am quite sure you
have my niece’s well-being at heart, Sir Milton.”
“She has embarrassed me— us— for the last time.”
Briar checked her appearance in the hall mirror above the little console
table. For a mad woman she looked well, she mused. Color in her cheeks, bright
and focused eyes, steady lips and a proudly held chin. She would not look that
way for long, once the good staff of Belle Vista “Hospital” got their hands on
her.
“Another glass of sherry, doctor?”
“Ah, well…don’t mind if I do. Since the patient still sleeps.”
The “patient” picked up the hatbox in which she had packed her essentials.
“Tell me,” she heard the doctor ask cautiously, “one does not like to
pry, or repeat prurient speculation…but, is it true, that there might have been
a murderess in the family?”
She walked swiftly and silently to the door. There,
she paused a moment, looking back and glancing up the stairs. The sullen
housemaid— hired by Milton soon after their wedding just to spy on her— was still
thumping about in the attic, searching for a travelling trunk in which to pack Briar’s
belongings for her trip to the asylum. There was nobody, therefore, to
apprehend her. Quickly she set down her hatbox and returned up the stairs, carefully
avoiding the steps that creaked, to retrieve the sadly drooping potted plant. She
would not leave it behind to be thrown out. This plant had been one of her few
allies in married life, a confidant that kept her darkest secrets within its
leaves. No wonder they shriveled and curled downward, taking on the weight of
her sorrows.
Having made this rescue, tucking the plant under one arm, she hurried
back down the stairs, again on tip toe. She picked up the hatbox, opened the
front door and left her old life behind forever.
Escape was that easy in the end.
The garden gate squeaked, as she knew it would, and the people inside
might hear it, but they would not equate the sound with Briar leaving the
house. They thought her well out of it, unconscious in her bed upstairs, and
they were too busy celebrating their own cleverness.
Several thousand times, during the course of her marriage, she had heard
that squeak as Milton came and went on his very carefully regulated routine.
And every time she heard it, her tooth ached. Eventually, she had realized the
pain was caused by grinding her teeth, because she had known when to expect the
sound of the gate opening and her body tensed accordingly in readiness. All of
her parts tightened with frustration: her jaw, her brow, her stomach, her
fists.
Well, no more.
This was the last time she would hear that dreadful squeak.
She let the gate clang shut behind her— something she knew Milton hated.
It began to rain, and she had no umbrella. No room to carry one. But she
walked on with a quick and resolute step, for the rain had never bothered her. Most
of the time she was too hot in any case, her insides a seething cauldron of
stifled fury, and the rain— god bless it— cooled her down.
She had reached the end of the road and crossed toward the coaching inn
on the corner when she suddenly heard music playing and a voice singing. For a
moment she paused, wondering where it came from. She’d never before heard the
like of it.
Who was Eileen? Well, she had the good sense not to come when she was
summoned so rudely.
Briar walked on.
♣
Julie
Present
Day
For
those who love, time is eternal.
I woke to the
sound of Truzia banging on the pipes again.
She finds the
bathroom plumbing more fascinating than anything else about my life, it seems. In
her time, hot and cold running water inside a building happened only by act of
god or deliberate menace, and there was no such thing as a flushing toilet. There
were no alarm clocks either, only cockerels, who crowed with renewed astonishment
every morning, as soon as they glimpsed the yolk of sunrise spilled through a
crack over the horizon. No sound louder than thunder came from the skies above;
no manmade machine soiled the quality of this air we need to breathe; no news could
travel faster than a horse. Days passed without a “weekend” in which to “lie-in”;
no electric light filled rooms to forcibly extend working hours within them.
There was only the meagre glow of candles, which, unless one was rich, must be
conserved, not squandered.
People, she reminds
me, were in better touch with nature and its rhythms. There was no putting-off,
lazing about and promising to do tomorrow, or in three days, what could be done
efficiently today, while the sun shone. Folk made the most of their waking
hours, for they did not expect to live eighty years, or even forty. Life had
its proper pace, she boasts.
“Ah,” say I, “it
just didn’t have clean drinking water and an efficient, sanitary sewage removal
system. Otherwise, apart from poor hygiene, cruelty for entertainment, and the inequality
of human and civil rights, I’m sure it must have been perfect.”
Truzia, like the plumbing
she loves to play upon, runs up and down the walls of this house. On sunny days
I hear her laughter in the birdsong at my bedroom window. On rainy mornings I
hear her whisper in the soft pizzle of drips that fall between the cross-beams
of the pergola, to pool upon the shadowy, uneven flagstone path below. Sometimes
her fingertip leaves a swirl in the crema of my coffee, or, from another room,
I am distracted by the gentle ‘tink’ of thorny stems moving about in a vase, as
she rearranges the bouquet to her exacting standards. Once, for just a
flickering moment, I saw wet footprints on the tiled floor in the passage that
was once a butler’s pantry— those of a woman and her pet pig. Yes, her pig. It
is the least questionable thing in all this; the least improbable.
People would say
it’s all in my head.
An explanation more
comforting. For them, anyway. Because it’s not their head.
In the shadows of the
garden wall Truzia shares with me her “Thought for the Day”— her “Pensiero
del Giorno”. Now they have become my ponderings too.
For example: we
never know how much time our flame has left to burn. It could be years, months,
weeks. Hours. It could be less than a handful of minutes. Yet we seldom put our
time to good use. We rarely appreciate the true worth in our being. Instead we
save our love, our forgiveness, our best, for another day that may never come.
As she lectures
me, I groan and curl up tighter. Of course, it’s just my luck that the ghost
haunting me can’t just go “boo”, throw a few things around, possess an ugly
plastic doll and be done with it. All I want is a comfortable, quiet place to be
alone. My pleasures in life are a warm cardy, a cappuccino, a chocolate hob-nob
and a good book. I am neither complicated nor particularly courageous, unless I
am forced to be— and then you can be sure I’ll complain about it.
Can she not find a
better, more bold, outraged and rebellious ear to stir with these
contemplations?
But no, she
chooses me. She runs through the maze of my mind during the twilight, when my senses
should be resting and the volume of the world around me turned down low. There
is no button, no remote to control my ghost.
Come play with me, she whispers.
She haunts me with
her favorite tune, “Come on Eileen.”
In Truzia’s time the idea of music traveling over invisible airwaves
would have been considered witchcraft. Now, of course, we know differently. We
have harnessed a power that they did not know existed. What else have we yet to
learn about?
Could it be that she travelled over the airwaves too? And that song
travelled back and forth with her?
Maybe I’m just a bit crazy.
There are things
she seems to know about me already. Is she, somehow, connected to me? I am not
aware of any Italians in the family. Although I am inordinately fond of
tiramisu and a good antipasto.
Or would she haunt
anybody who came here?
I am, after all,
only a holiday guest on this lovely, peaceful, willow-flanked island off the Surrey
bank of the river Thames. There are no other homes here, and no other people,
just an abandoned watermill, a boathouse and a jetty.
The thing is, when
I first knew I’d won the prize of this holiday at Threavewode House, I had an
idea that I would learn about somebody else entirely: Briar Lockwood, the
nineteenth century artist who, so it is claimed, spent time here once, hiding
from relatives who wanted to shut her away in a lunatic asylum. For years I’ve been
fascinated by her work and her mysterious, somewhat scandalous life.
But now that I’m
here, it is Truzia who steals my attention. I wonder if she ever haunted Briar
too. Does she know what happened to the reclusive, elusive Miss Lockwood—buried,
according to her gravestone, in 1940, and yet last seen, by me, striding
through a pub beer-garden, while “Come on Eileen” bounced out of the juke box and
through an open door in the summer of 1982?
Oh, yes, I can
describe the dead woman clearly. She wore a long, burgundy coat with a black
lambswool collar, and an ebony straw bonnet with a small veil. In one hand she
carried a hatbox, while within the crook of her other arm she cradled a potted
aspidistra with mournfully drooping leaves. At first, I assumed she must have
wandered away from a theatre rehearsal— there were always plenty of performing
arts going on in the city center in summer. But she paused and looked directly
at me for a moment, her eyes narrowed against the sunlight, and I saw that,
although there was a warm breeze on that day, her skirt and the few loose waves
of hair falling against her coat collar were still, and damp with rain. She
tilted her head, as if in uncertain acknowledgement, and then, in a rather
disappointingly-classic ghost move, she disappeared through a wisteria-clad
stone wall, on the other side of which was a grassy slope and, some way below
that, a disused railway line.
Since nobody else
had seen the woman and I, at the time, did not believe in the supernatural, I
concluded the cider was stronger than I expected.
Later, I came to
think that the woman with hatbox and the aspidistra was a trick of the
sunlight, her shape made visible by chance in that moment— like a cobweb that
is completely invisible to the eye, until the sun catches its threads at a
certain angle, or else a cold, foggy morning reveals the slumbering trap in all
its silver, filigree glory.
She looked a
little bit like me. Something about the eyes, perhaps. Could that be the reason why she had seemed to
recognize me too for that brief moment of illumination, when her image of gossamer
strands was caught, web-like, between the branches of time?
The old swing in
the garden lets out a low whine, and the window drifts open a further inch,
welcoming the chalky fragrance of lavender and, with a flutter of sun-basted,
clotted-cream wings, a late season butterfly. I like to sit here at this window
and daydream, but on this sweet, mellow day at summer’s end, I sense her
anxiety and impatience. I understand it, for I’ve always felt peculiar tentacles
of foreboding lurking in wait behind a bright, blue-sky afternoon. I prefer
rain. Light, soft rain, though— not ferocious, stormy gales of it.
Truzia would chuckle
at that too, for she is a tempest, much stronger and far more daring than me.
I’m a mere drizzle by comparison.
That is what comes
of living a soft, pampered life in this easy, wasteful century, with all at your
fingertips,
she tells me. You have a button to press for anything and everything and
nothing. Your parts grow rusty from lack of use.
“Rude,” I say.
Down— or rather,
up— through that invisible funnel, comes her disjointed laughter, the soundwaves
oscillating wildly. You know nothing of living. Of what is important. You
forgot how to breathe. You fear everything.
Today we live our
life via machines, according to Truzia. We do not experience the world for ourselves.
We are brave only when hidden behind our screens and we can make no decision
without the words appearing on them to lead us. Microchips— the faceless advertisers,
megalomaniacs, and multi-billion-dollar corporations talking through them,
secreted behind them— tell us what to eat and when; they tell us what to wear
and buy, what to watch, what to hear, what to believe. They tell us what we
should feel, manipulating our every waking moment, and yet we never know who
‘they’ truly are. If we met them in real life, face to face, would we like them?
Would we invite
them into our homes? Entrust them with our secrets? We do all that with the
touch of a finger.
Most dangerous of
all, we let them tell us what to fear, just to save us the trouble of raising
our eyes from the screen, to stop us from seeing and doing and thinking for
ourselves. We are sloths, moving about with our heads permanently bowed, our
spines curved. Like carcasses swinging from butchers’ hooks. Flesh coats, empty
of breath and spirit already.
“Well, aren’t you
cheerful,” I say. And then I remind her that we have indoor plumbing, tampons
and penicillin. Good grief, that must count for something.
But Truzia is saddened
and frustrated by what she sees, because we take for granted the opportunities and
advantages she could only dream about, and we squander them. Through laziness
and the distraction of mundane habits, we have set ourselves back. We waste
hours watching gossiping, shrieking “harridans”— as she calls them— who travel
in groups across our tv screens, cavorting drunkenly in tight dresses and public
places, doing nothing that comes to any good, worth or even point. We listen as
the loud, rich and narcissistic debate among themselves on how to spend our hard-earned
coin and what to do with our bodies, while the world crumbles into ruin
and extinction around us. We celebrate the pitifully undone, the riotously
inept, the vacantly pretty and the barely sentient, who achieve notice, not by
saving life, caring for those in need, or overcoming great adversity, but by exhibiting
their privy parts.
My ghost does not
hold back on her opinions.
Come play with me, her voice throbs
with urgency. I will show you how to live. How to breathe.
“But look,” I say,
“sunlight shows up all the smudges on these windows— fingertip smears and little
clouds left by the exhale of carbon dioxide. See, I know how to breathe, so
there! Proof!”
Call that a
breath? It’s a little puff of nothing and gone already. Come play with me.
“Come where? If
you are in my head, it might not be wise to follow you there.” I know the state
of my own mind; there are cones, police tape and potholes all over the place.
But she persists,
like a fly by my ear. What do you have to fear?
I huddle inside my
cardigan, arms folded. I fear the great unknown that lies ahead.
You did not know
what waited ahead of you when you were born; when you took your first breath
outside the womb.
Consequently, as
would any baby with good sense, I screamed my head off. Besides, that was
different. “I had no choice then,” I whisper.
How do you know
what you had then? Do you remember anything that came before?
“Well, no, of
course not. There was nothing, was there?”
She is
uncharacteristically silent for a moment. I sense she’s disappointed.
Finally, she says,
Then what do you have to fear?
“Fine. I’ll play your game, if it will
keep you quiet a while. I’ll close my eyes and count to a hundred. Ready or
not, here I come.”
A dark-haired girl
already runs ahead of me, through the narrow avenues of a boxwood hedge maze,
her laughter soft and husky. Now, recruited as her play mate, an ally in this
mischief, I give chase around the corners. Puffs of excited breath cloud the
air before me, for it is no longer summer, but a frosty day, crisp and shimmering
with silver. A cold blade of winter cleaves the skin from my face. I feel
dense, evergreen foliage ruffling against my fingertips. My heart bumps along like
a big drum, broken free from its straps to roll away, over the edge of a rocky promontory,
spinning in uncontrolled speed to both its doom and its freedom.
The maze walls are
high and thick, but I see a dash of oxblood red as the cheeky tongue of her
skirt disappears around another corner, licking frost from the tight branches
and leaving them in a quiver. Here there are lacy cobwebs cast among the
leaves, some like tiny sailor’s hammocks, and others spun wider, showy as peacock’s
tails in this wintry landscape. I smell bonfire and the river and damp woodchips.
I have no idea where I’m going, but that is part of the thrill and I do not
look back.
Like her, I am
young again, and adventure lies ahead of us, our story yet to be written on the
next clear page.
And I know now that nothing is gone forever.
* * *
Read more about
the heroines of The House of Crollalanza HERE NOW!
(Images used here: Book cover, courtesy of Twisted E-Publishing; Jeune Fille au Livre, by Pietro Rotari 1750-1762; Portrait of Miss Lloyd by James Tissot 1876; and two photos of my mother, Doreen, as a girl c. 1940.)
