large rectangular hole he had dug into the dark soft earth of the riverbank. A rook wearing spectacles on his beak and a pale flowing robe over his black feathers read from a long scroll of paper while a lark gazed steadily at an open book that rested on a pedestal. The next scene depicted a strange and upsetting bird she did not recognize with a brown, oblong box strapped to his back. This was followed by a chicken and a wren carrying the box down a distant, winding road. The last was a decal Sylvia had looked at only once, for the normally expressionless faces of the birds were now filled with grief. An extraordinary dove in the foreground hung her head and allowed her tears to fall into the cavity the owl had created.
Until those paper decals resting inside a child’s album, those birds, that riverbank, Sylvia had remained uninterested in the stories her parents had tried to tell her, not understanding the idea of sequence, believing all living things were as attached to their singularity as she was to hers. She had looked at picturebooks, of course – mostly those that concerned animals – but the images in those books had seemed to her to be self-contained, static: a horse in a field, a spider on a web – nothing that suggested one scene related to another. Now, quite suddenly, she had come to understand that the blood dripping from the robin’s neck and the flight of the departing sparrow were connected, and that from this blood, this flight, came both spontaneous events and planned ceremonies, though she wouldn’t have known the words for such things at the time. And she had understood as well, that from such a chain of images, from action and reaction, there came the depth of feeling that was portrayed on the final illustration. A suggestion of this feeling seemed to be moving out from the page and into her own mind in the same way that, in winter, something her parents called electricity sparked from her sweater onto her skin when she was dressing.
Years later, as a young adult, she had come across the poem: the words that interpreted those images that she had so carefully examined, then shunned. One verse stayed with her always.
Who’ll be the chief mourner?
I, said the Dove, I’ll mourn for my love
I’ll be the chief mourner.
J erome leaned against the door frame, the large orange cat in his arms. Mira was bent over the sink washing her face. He knew she had not registered his proximity, was not aware of his gaze. How lovely the back of her neck was; how lovely, and how vulnerable. And this ordinary, daily gesture, this lifting of a drenched cloth up to the face with both hands, the water falling like rain through the slim, brown fingers, how oddly it suggested weeping, mimicked grief. When she was finished she looked at herself in the mirror, staring it would seem into her own eyes as if to find the answer to a question there, while the liquid chugged slowly down the old drain. What did she see? he wondered. Beauty, or some minor imperfection he had never glimpsed? He thought that he was likely in love with her, but he also knew that at moments like this she could almost be unknown to him. She turned finally, met his gaze, then approached and punched him gently on the shoulder as she walked out of the bathroom. “You’re just like Swimmer,” she said, “so quiet I hardly know you’re there.”
That night before going to sleep, Jerome looked at Mira’s profile, the black fringe of lashes, the jewel in her nose, blue now in the light from the computer screen. It was never, he thought, fully dark in this room. He rolled over on his back and examined the ceiling. “This woman,” he said, “she seems so… troubled… not shell-shocked exactly, but wounded somehow.”
“She lost her lover, Jerome, no wonder she’s wounded.” Mira ran her hand over her eyes, trying to fight sleep.
“How do you know they were lovers? And anyway, it’s something else I’m picking up, or at least something
Until those paper decals resting inside a child’s album, those birds, that riverbank, Sylvia had remained uninterested in the stories her parents had tried to tell her, not understanding the idea of sequence, believing all living things were as attached to their singularity as she was to hers. She had looked at picturebooks, of course – mostly those that concerned animals – but the images in those books had seemed to her to be self-contained, static: a horse in a field, a spider on a web – nothing that suggested one scene related to another. Now, quite suddenly, she had come to understand that the blood dripping from the robin’s neck and the flight of the departing sparrow were connected, and that from this blood, this flight, came both spontaneous events and planned ceremonies, though she wouldn’t have known the words for such things at the time. And she had understood as well, that from such a chain of images, from action and reaction, there came the depth of feeling that was portrayed on the final illustration. A suggestion of this feeling seemed to be moving out from the page and into her own mind in the same way that, in winter, something her parents called electricity sparked from her sweater onto her skin when she was dressing.
Years later, as a young adult, she had come across the poem: the words that interpreted those images that she had so carefully examined, then shunned. One verse stayed with her always.
Who’ll be the chief mourner?
I, said the Dove, I’ll mourn for my love
I’ll be the chief mourner.
J erome leaned against the door frame, the large orange cat in his arms. Mira was bent over the sink washing her face. He knew she had not registered his proximity, was not aware of his gaze. How lovely the back of her neck was; how lovely, and how vulnerable. And this ordinary, daily gesture, this lifting of a drenched cloth up to the face with both hands, the water falling like rain through the slim, brown fingers, how oddly it suggested weeping, mimicked grief. When she was finished she looked at herself in the mirror, staring it would seem into her own eyes as if to find the answer to a question there, while the liquid chugged slowly down the old drain. What did she see? he wondered. Beauty, or some minor imperfection he had never glimpsed? He thought that he was likely in love with her, but he also knew that at moments like this she could almost be unknown to him. She turned finally, met his gaze, then approached and punched him gently on the shoulder as she walked out of the bathroom. “You’re just like Swimmer,” she said, “so quiet I hardly know you’re there.”
That night before going to sleep, Jerome looked at Mira’s profile, the black fringe of lashes, the jewel in her nose, blue now in the light from the computer screen. It was never, he thought, fully dark in this room. He rolled over on his back and examined the ceiling. “This woman,” he said, “she seems so… troubled… not shell-shocked exactly, but wounded somehow.”
“She lost her lover, Jerome, no wonder she’s wounded.” Mira ran her hand over her eyes, trying to fight sleep.
“How do you know they were lovers? And anyway, it’s something else I’m picking up, or at least something
Similar Books
