Sleeping Beauty
(excerpt)
THE GATE
It was as if she
were blind. Her eyes could see nothing but white. There was nowhere
to go, no there to head toward or flee from, no sense of being in a
place. Looking down she saw her legs dissolving in the white mist.
She raised her hands in front of her eyes. Which direction should she
head? The question made her laugh.
She heard
something, something faint. Water. A trickle of water. But from
where? The sound appeared to be coming from some place deep inside
her head, growing louder and louder. The trickle grew into a roar
until she could stand it no longer, falling to her knees, and crying
out, as the roar seemed to explode from her head.
The pain was
gone. The sound of running water appeared before her. As the mist
began to thin she could make out the faint outline of a brook. She
moved forward toward the brook, making out the wispy outline of an
opposite shore. Stones were so laid in the brook as to allow one to
cross. The water was shallow and slow moving. She put her foot on the
first rock. It tilted slightly but held firm. She moved forward.
The opposite
shore was no different in appearance from the bank she had just
departed, no different except for an old man sitting on a wooden
milking stool, fishing. He was an odd-looking fellow with his mop of
thick white hair, stubby white goatee and Bavarian mountain climbing
gear. She approached him cautiously and introduced herself.
The old man did
not respond and, thinking him deaf, she stepped around and into his
field of vision and spoke again.
“I’ve just
arrived by plane,” she said, speaking loudly, enunciating each
syllable distinctly.
The old man
turned, almost tumbling off the stool that he balanced precariously
upon. He looked up at her with anger in his chocolate eyes.
“You’ll
frighten the damn fish off!” he shrieked, spittle spraying out of
his mouth.
She said. “I’m
lost. I’ve come to find my grandfather and I’m...” The old man
barked, “Is he lost?”
“No, I don’t
think so. I want to find him. I believe he’s living in a village in
these parts. Could you give me directions? I would be awfully
grateful.”
“How
grateful?” the old man glowered, the chocolate of his eyes melting
as they fondled the girl’s figure.
“Well, I...”
the girl stumbled.
The old man
shook his head in disgust and muttered something inaudible under his
breath.
“Sir...” she
pleaded.
The old man
looked up at her, and then spat into the river.
“I should have
stayed on the ferry. At least I had the company of the dog.”
Putting down his
pole, the old man rubbed his neck.
The girl pleaded
once again. “If you could just give me directions to the village.”
“Any direction
but the direction you came from should do,” the old man grumbled as
he picked up his pole and returned to his fishing. “Thank you,”
the girl smiled, and then hesitatingly moved on.
Out of the fog
the rough outline of buildings began to assemble in detail. The mist
that she had been walking through seemed to give off its own light so
that one could almost have believed it was midday. Now that the mist
was rising, darkness replaced it as if night were another type of
fog. Looking down the girl noticed that she was walking on
cobblestones.
A man appeared
on the road ahead. He was busy repairing the road, lifting the round
bread shaped cobblestones with the use of a long metal bar and
tossing them onto a pile. Some of the cobblestones had cracked open
like eggs, their yoke spewing out over the pile. The man was singing
in a tongue she didn’t recognize. So involved was the man with his
work that he did not hear the girl approach.
“Good
morning,” she said.
He looked up at
her, startled, his hands trembling, a quiver in his voice.
“Excuse me?”
the girl smiled apologetically. “I didn’t mean to alarm you. I
just wanted to enquire if this was the way to the village.”
The man shook
his head and stared at the girl in silence for a few more moments
before the terror began to lift from his eyes. He smiled and then
laughed. He laughed so hard, tears came into his eyes and holding his
stomach he was forced to take a seat on the pile of stones. The girl
remained still, silenced by his reaction. When he had regained his
wits, he pointed the girl in the direction she should follow. She
moved on.
Buildings began
to appear along the way. They were strange structures, almost organic
in their design. The houses were huddled very closely together so
that there were no lanes or alleys separating them. And they were
bent, hanging over the street like trees over a well-worn path. The
tops of the buildings almost touched at places giving the street the
appearance of a tunnel. Flags hung periodically from the houses on
either side of the street though it was still too dark to make out
what was written on them.
All of the
houses were boarded up with shutters, The doors of the houses were
very short, so short that one had to conclude that either the
residents were very short or it was the custom of the village to
enter a building bent
over at the waist. As for the street itself, it
rolled up and
down, twisted and turned like a river in a deep sleep. Occasionally
there were street lamps fastened to the sides of houses casting
strange willowy shadows across the cobblestones. In between the
lamps, the street seemed to fall off into pools of darkness. There
were narrow sidewalks on the street; so narrow in places that one was
forced to walk on the street itself. Occasionally there were bars
that resembled handles, jutting out from the walls of the buildings.
The only sound to be heard on the street was the clap of the girl’s
feet on the cobblestones. The silence was broken by an ambulance
siren or what she took for an ambulance siren for she saw no
ambulance. She breathed a sigh of relief; silence made her feel
vulnerable.
A black cat
crossed her path. It stopped and looked at her. All she could see
were its green flickering eyes as it moved across the cobblestones.
Under a street lamp she noticed that it wasn’t black at all, but
copper in color. The creature moved slowly down the street until it
reached a ladder that was leaning against a house which the cat
nimbly climbed until she disappeared into an open second floor
window.
By now the mist
had almost vanished. Looking up between the rooftops at the stars,
she found the big dipper. Sunlight poured out of it, down the
darkened sky and over a great golden statue on a church steeple. As
the street turned she lost sight of the statue. Ahead of her she
heard laughter and singing.
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