Читать книгу WASH ME ON HOME, MAMA - Pete Najarian - Страница 10

MARIAN

Everyone has a rhythm and the need of finding it, so that all together we may improvise with the great dance of the universe, music instead of noise. The morning begins with the rooster, rattle of bamboo in the breeze, someone’s step-step off to work down the dark stairs, coughs and groans, and a child yelling. In the bathroom a powerful shit mixes with the sweet mint of toothpaste. The air is filled with the aftermath of dreams, cold draughts from the world of night. The long corridor and the stairs down to the kitchen become a tunnel to the day. The same kitchen as last night’s dinner but now a different light streams across the table. She would sit down and eat but for the cigarette butts, banana peel, half-eaten food, spilled milk, and the noise growing louder and louder inside her head. She balanced herself carefully so that the thin pin inside her head•that held everything together would not slip out and make her fly wildly around the room like a panicked bird. She walked across the dew-wet quiet of the garden and over to her garage where she could be alone. Albinoni on the stereo and she went about watering her plants, her long purple and violet caftan in a slow dance from maidenhair to asparagus ferns to simple wandering Jew, all her melancholy irrelevant to the green silence of their peace, oblivious to everything but the mystery of new leaves. She smiled from deep inside the convent of her dreams. Her life: for ever longing. Like the deer, symbol of longevity, long-lasting and yet never filled, always moving, looking for home. She heard her self in music, the deep reed and light step of strings, seeking to fill the space beyond like undulating curls of incense in the home coming light through the woven curtain. Music, or painting and the time inside a canvas, forever pulsing, lambent upon the areas of darkness, time as seen by light or was it light itself that mysteriously moved in measure, was time light and light time in the faces and landscapes of her private museum? Play its theme upon the loom and do not think, but shuttle and pedal as if playing keys, fingering the bright wool in counterpoint to breath and memory. There are no answers, only needs: to be, to fill, make hole, consummate. But not to talk about, her own private wilderness, entering it like Sacajawea leading two men up river, father and brother into the green mystery of her secret treasures, the deep seclusion of fern and moss, soft rain from the compassionate sky, earth fed by paternal clouds, grey to form green, father on top of mother, fecund love. From inside the window she watched the light through the avocado tree accompanied by the forest lullaby of far eastern music, the morning of the world. Oh her world is rich here inside her womb, her loom room overflowing with colors like stained glass. Come and see, come play with her and and she may open if you are gentle the door to her … home, what happened to it? Is it this now, with delicate china and cockroaches and a courtyard of marigolds and garbage? How could she make it glimmer and reflect the dreams of her yearning? Home, yes, but oh could it not be more of a temple than a fort?

For Sam however, all that mattered was that his wife Marian love him. “Please love me,” he wanted to say. Instead he said, “Okay, we’ll move in and have separate rooms.” It was either this or separate apartments. But after so many years he couldn’t let go of her, nor could she tear herself away from him. It took several months before she finally moved into her own room.