breathtaking.
* * *
On a brilliant sunlit morning, I shoot the next arrow. The curve of its fletching sings in the vibrant air as it flies out over my path of hard stone, which rises into the distant hills.
With each step I seem to climb out of the past, lift away from the flat gravity of waiting. From now on, memories will only flow forwards and await my arrival, the way it happens in dreams, where they give continuity and momentum. In the same way, the arrows went before to sense the void, taste its colour and name its happenstance. She had written my understanding of this high in the continual pathway. What waited in my dreams to resume the path will be explained to me between the flights of the arrows. My walking between them will unravel the knowledge, while my feet erase the path of all arrivals.
* * *
Stout yeoman Mutter pulled the gate closed on his Sunday morning duties in 4 Kühler Brunnen. He turned the key in the heavy lock which jarred against its closure, causing him to totter in the street. A tarry, wet cigar, chewed into the corner of his badly shaven mouth, accentuated his shallow breath in the cold air. He was returning home to the rich, swollen musk of his wife’s lunch, and his attention was slurred between last night’s schnapps and the saturated sleep that wallowed on the other side of the thick food of the afternoon; perhaps that is why the lock wasn’t quite properly engaged and he fumbled the keys, dropping them into the icy mire.
‘Good morning, Sigmund,’ fluttered a voice above his mittened stooping. He groaned himself into an upright attention to respond to the shining woman smiling over his moleskin hump. Her height was accentuated by the full-length beige winter coat that glowed around her, her radiance framed by a brightly patterned scarf which held a wide-brimmed hat over stacked curls of auburn hair. Her green eyes shone with a strength that was uncomfortable.
‘Good morning Mistress Tulp, a fine, cold day.’
For a moment they were suspended between gestures. The street became narrow as it rose, funnelling from a broad hip for carriages into a stilted neck of roofs, the chimneys crooked and attempting to mimic the calligraphy of trees, burnt black against the madder sky. High in the nape of the street was a clock, unworking and roughly painted out, an act of erasure which had no story. Like its blind face, the meeting below seemed equally gagged.
‘How is Deacon Tulp?’ Mutter blurted out, with a barked volume that disclosed his need for departure.
‘My father is well,’ she said kindly, knowing that she could play with this stupid man’s inferiority. A fierce gust of wind wrestled in from the cathedral square and paused her calculated sport, agitating the heavy door just enough for her to see that it was unlocked.
‘Do give my regards and affection to your wife and the little ones,’ she piped. He blinked clumsily at her, not quite believing the ease of his escape. ‘And do tell her not to worry about the lateness of the rent; my father understands that things are hard at this time of year.’
This sent him scurrying away, stuttering his beaten hat against his flaky head with felicitation for all of her kin. She was left in the empty, windblown street with her excitement distinctly rattling in the mouth of the half-open lock.
Mutter’s main task was looking after the house and the horses, beasts that he and his family had the use of when not ferrying crates from locations across the city to the cellars below and vice versa.
Each week he collected a numbered crate from a warehouse an hour’s drive away, brought it to the house and exchanged it for the previous week’s used one. He had no idea what was inside the beautifully made, simple wooden boxes, and he did not care. Such was his temperament; it was fiercely consistent, as it had been with his father and hopefully with his sons. It wasn’t his or their concern to pry into the business that had kept them
* * *
On a brilliant sunlit morning, I shoot the next arrow. The curve of its fletching sings in the vibrant air as it flies out over my path of hard stone, which rises into the distant hills.
With each step I seem to climb out of the past, lift away from the flat gravity of waiting. From now on, memories will only flow forwards and await my arrival, the way it happens in dreams, where they give continuity and momentum. In the same way, the arrows went before to sense the void, taste its colour and name its happenstance. She had written my understanding of this high in the continual pathway. What waited in my dreams to resume the path will be explained to me between the flights of the arrows. My walking between them will unravel the knowledge, while my feet erase the path of all arrivals.
* * *
Stout yeoman Mutter pulled the gate closed on his Sunday morning duties in 4 Kühler Brunnen. He turned the key in the heavy lock which jarred against its closure, causing him to totter in the street. A tarry, wet cigar, chewed into the corner of his badly shaven mouth, accentuated his shallow breath in the cold air. He was returning home to the rich, swollen musk of his wife’s lunch, and his attention was slurred between last night’s schnapps and the saturated sleep that wallowed on the other side of the thick food of the afternoon; perhaps that is why the lock wasn’t quite properly engaged and he fumbled the keys, dropping them into the icy mire.
‘Good morning, Sigmund,’ fluttered a voice above his mittened stooping. He groaned himself into an upright attention to respond to the shining woman smiling over his moleskin hump. Her height was accentuated by the full-length beige winter coat that glowed around her, her radiance framed by a brightly patterned scarf which held a wide-brimmed hat over stacked curls of auburn hair. Her green eyes shone with a strength that was uncomfortable.
‘Good morning Mistress Tulp, a fine, cold day.’
For a moment they were suspended between gestures. The street became narrow as it rose, funnelling from a broad hip for carriages into a stilted neck of roofs, the chimneys crooked and attempting to mimic the calligraphy of trees, burnt black against the madder sky. High in the nape of the street was a clock, unworking and roughly painted out, an act of erasure which had no story. Like its blind face, the meeting below seemed equally gagged.
‘How is Deacon Tulp?’ Mutter blurted out, with a barked volume that disclosed his need for departure.
‘My father is well,’ she said kindly, knowing that she could play with this stupid man’s inferiority. A fierce gust of wind wrestled in from the cathedral square and paused her calculated sport, agitating the heavy door just enough for her to see that it was unlocked.
‘Do give my regards and affection to your wife and the little ones,’ she piped. He blinked clumsily at her, not quite believing the ease of his escape. ‘And do tell her not to worry about the lateness of the rent; my father understands that things are hard at this time of year.’
This sent him scurrying away, stuttering his beaten hat against his flaky head with felicitation for all of her kin. She was left in the empty, windblown street with her excitement distinctly rattling in the mouth of the half-open lock.
Mutter’s main task was looking after the house and the horses, beasts that he and his family had the use of when not ferrying crates from locations across the city to the cellars below and vice versa.
Each week he collected a numbered crate from a warehouse an hour’s drive away, brought it to the house and exchanged it for the previous week’s used one. He had no idea what was inside the beautifully made, simple wooden boxes, and he did not care. Such was his temperament; it was fiercely consistent, as it had been with his father and hopefully with his sons. It wasn’t his or their concern to pry into the business that had kept them
Similar Books
