Gee - The Blue: Short Stories

T he woman had lived through the longest day, which was boiling hot, in the city, pressing and sieving her into tiny pieces. She had five children; they all needed something, though the elder ones were at university.

Mum!

Mum!

Mum!

Mum!

MU-U-M!!

Sorry, she said, Sorry.

She worked in a dry cleaners, cleaning other peoples clothes. That day, two of the machines had broken down. She had lost three ties and an expensive jacket. A woman came in and said she was a thief. A man had called her an idiot.

Sorry, she said. Sorry, sir.

The air was dry and chemical. She wished she could wash the clothes in the river. She and her mother used to do that together.

At three, the woman cleared up to go home. Cleaning other peoples clothes made her dirty; she itched from the solvents; she smelled of sweat. She pulled a white hair from her dark cotton shirt. Now she must go home and cook for her husband.

The traffic was a solid wall of metal. In her own metal box it got hotter and hotter. She hung one arm outside the open window. Then she saw a man in the car alongside, making obscene gestures and grinning at her. She drew in her arm and closed the window, but she heard him yell Bloody women drivers!

Sorry, she muttered, feeling small and frightened.

But then something inside her began to expand. Something like a distant pool of blue water. She heard the traffic horns, the revving engines, the man who thought she was a bloody woman, but inside her head there was a great pool of quiet. She drove off the road and left her car.

She began to walk down the familiar track. All her life she had been too busy, she hadnt come here since she was a girl, but her feet remembered the way to go.

A beggar sat by a baking wall. Give me money, rich woman, he said, reproachfully.

The woman had worked all day for almost nothing.

No, she said. No, sorry.

She kept on walking; he shouted after her. A cloud of blue butterflies drifted towards her across the dry fields, and danced alongside her, so she could no longer see his small cross shape.

A little further on, by a ruined temple, a gang of teenagers were howling with laughter. They had painted slogans on the walls. Have you got the time, old woman? they shouted. Tell us the time! They pulled at her wrist. They didnt want the time, they wanted to hurt her.

No, she said. No, sorry. A butterfly was spread where her watch had once been.

Now the track led on past the elaborate back gardens of the large new houses that faced the sea. People had erected gates and fences where she had once wandered with a troupe of goats. A uniformed man with a revolver suddenly stepped out from behind a hedge.

What are you doing here? he asked. His dark glasses bored into the hole in her sleeve, scraped up and down the dust on her legs. We dont want beggars here, woman. Get back where you belong, pauper.

No, she said, No, sorry, and the cloud of butterflies bobbed up around his head, making him shudder and flap his arms, while she slipped past him, on down the path.

A tiny snicket led off to the right past a sweet-scented patch of reseda blossoms. She remembered, with a pang, her mothers grave. Her mother lay waiting in the little cemetery, pleading for something that life had not given her. Her thirsty voice whispered Please, daughter. But how could she make things right for her mother? How could she ever bring enough flowers? The cemetery lay in the wrong direction. No, she said. Sorry, dear one. She picked a tiny spire of sweet reseda, and the hot wind carried it towards her mother.

The last part of the track was beyond the arch of the new white university. She was proud that her elder children went there. An ancient scholar sat bowed to the ground, reading a heavy tome, in the shade of the arch. He wrinkled up his eyes at her, over gold glasses.

Where are you going, young woman? he asked. This place is only for those who love learning.

My children love learning, the woman replied.

Where are your books? he insisted, sharply. None of the unlearned come through here. Go back home and study, young woman.

No, she said. No, sorry, and two of the butterflies flew from her shoulders and landed, one each, on his spectacle lenses, so he could no longer peer at her.

In the distance, under a spreading tree, her elder children were debating with others. Usually they only saw her in the kitchen. They spotted her just as she was leaving the campus and heading on down towards the wide white sand.

Mum, they called, astonished. Mum! MU-UM! Where are you going?

Her heart tugged and pulled, but the core of her was deep blue certainty, an ocean of water.

Nowhere, she whispered. Sorry, children, and the butterflies swarmed into a flickering, glistening veil of blue air that hid her from sight. She was alone; all the voices faded.

She padded across the blazing sand. Glad, glad: everything was glad. She knew she could only bear it for a few seconds, but a few seconds would be enough. She took off her clothes. In the distance, people shouted. But the butterflies covered every inch of her body, floating up like blue steam as she slipped into the water. Cool, edgeless, it became her skin. A blue cloud hung on the blue sea wind. She was invisible. She was her soul. Mysterious, liquid, endless, whole.

W hen Boris had only been with her a month, he came in from the garden holding a rose, a dark red complicated knot of velvet. Bowing slightly, he placed it in her fingers. Broke in accident, he explained (he was repointing the brick at the back). It was her own rose he was offering her with that graceful, cavalier flourish. Put in water, Emma, please.

Beautiful, Boris, she said, inhaling deeply, once, then again. The scent of the rose was so intense it shocked her, made her throat catch and her eyes prickle, as if life was suddenly all around her, as if she was breathing for the first time in years. Emma had hay fever, and avoided flowers. So beautiful, I shall write about it. (She wrote novels, which had never been published, but she had a study, and told people she wrote.)

I am artist, said Boris, grinning at her with self-deprecating, dark-eyed charm. His teeth were very white, but one was chipped; he had a handsome, cherubic face. I am artist, you see, Emma. I am artist like you. He jabbed his brown finger towards her, laughing. I make beautiful house for you.

Wonderful, Boris. Thank you. But really I just need the tiles laying out in squares. One black, one white, and so on.

Emma, I like you very much. I make you a beautiful floor, it is my present to you. He bowed extravagantly, a knight. How old was he? Forty, fifty? I am artist, Emma, he continued, showing her a piece of paper on which he had sketched an elaborate black and white design. You dont want one square two square one square two square, black, white, same thing always. Very boring. No good!

She took the paper from him, folded it narrowly, and slipped it back into the pocket of his jacket. Thats just what I do want. Black, white, black, white. Like a chessboard. Simple. The tiles are in the garage. Now, I must go and work.

Boris smiled at her forgivingly. Yes, you do your work, Emma, you write your books, beautiful. I like this very much, to work for an artist, like me.

The rose was lovely, though slightly battered. She kissed it lightly before throwing it away.

Hes impossible, she complained lazily to her husband as they lay in bed with their books, looking at Edward over her glasses, his familiar pinched profile in the cool blue room. She wanted to tell him, she wanted to tell someone, that Boris had given her a rose. Impossible. Edward? Im talking to you.