The Hakkapirelli Life
by Kjetil Jansen
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Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3 |
part 2
Around the drains, surplus water formed welcome carpets as tourists sieved into St. Marcus Church at chain-gang speed. Marie chose a caffè lungo, the first of the day, and brioche with jelly, the first, second, and third. The outside tables of competing establishments made patterns that made her feel comfortable and relaxed. On Canal Grande parked gondolas rolled the waves of passing vaporetti, their bough clefs mourning all the great, dead composers.
She leafed through Corriere della Sera and Il Gazzettino and sighed. Venice again, this depopulating backwater town. She should be in Rome or, better still, Milan. Oh well. Another year, another calendar. Tuesday. What palazzo? She checked her planner. Foscari. Every Italian name sounds like champagne. Photo guy wants sunset and Gothic arcades. She twitched in her chair. Still he did all this misplaced intensity; she ought to replace him.
The campanile bells began counting. Dear me. By now, Elfish needs to be up and in tartan, if taking a dip in Garda Lake before missions take control is a reality. She should be right here. I have grown addicted to Scottish breakfast cursing. Last night in Verona, watching Aida on the old gladiator arena had been cozy, with no chance for Elfish to stage-dive. She had done exactly that when they saw Goblin in concert, a razor blade through the air as if she wanted to break the hands in the mosh pit eager to catch her. Perhaps it was her way to conquer the worst-case scenario flashes you inevitably get when you move down the catwalk.
She looked through her purse. Wrapped in its plastic, a tiny candle was included in the opera ticket. A reminder from the time the venue had to be illuminated with audience support. I guess Elfish ate hers. It felt poignant somehow, having this keepsake. Who had paid for the tickets? DG? Maybelline?
She settled her check, the waiter politely divulging his recognition. The hotel was a short walk away. By Canal Grande, a newsstand. Fresh fashion magazines. She did a front cover headcount. Marie 4, Elfish 2, Others 1. In your faces! To celebrate, let’s go to the bar where they invented that drink. The Fellini? Watch Elfish chatting up men, see them nod to everything she says — her latest schtick was to be a flat-earth believer — while they pay. Elfish, who had left Aberdeen at seventeen to march into the Vogue London office and say she liked their magazine and wanted to be in it. In a rare pensive moment, she had told her she had left a child behind and how her whirlwind life and achievements proved her decision to be the right one.
Crossing Pont del Vin something caught the corner of her eye. A gondola, abandoned and drifting. A red gondola. She wanted to walk faster but found herself slowing down.
“Marie.”
She tried not to look. Around her, the walkway was almost choked, but no one reacted to the voice. The gondola moved closer, facing her bough first, the red in every variation. Blotched and uneven, a skinless swan.
“Marie, where are you headed?”
The voice seemed to emanate from the clef. Calm as a newsreader, a bit reedy, as from a radio next door. On the inside, she stuttered, but she managed to get the words out. “Who are you? Am I dying? Are you Death?”
“Death. Life. I am neither. I am In-between.”
“Am I dreaming?”
“Dreams led you to me.”
“Is this Limbo?”
“Limbo salsa whiskey tango foxtrot.”
Right. Marie felt a bit calmer. She was obviously dreaming. The gondola moved as close as it could. “Sorry about that. You all ask such questions. This is a realm between worlds, but it is not your Limbo. It is what it is. The question is: Do you want your life back?”
“My life?”
“In-between you seem to be everything from nine to twenty-nine. In real life you are a seventy-six year-old woman with no close relatives bar a nearly infirm brother living in Spain. You had a child, but it was stillborn.”
“Jonas.”
She noticed a lack of sounds. The canal emptying; a few people still on the move, vanishing around corners and not replaced. Life was deserting her.
“Devastated, you decided to not try again. Your husband said fine and left you three years later for another woman. They had four children, in your mind the last two to spite you.”
“They gave the first two names beginning with J. I didn’t like that. All four turned out healthy. I am happy for them.”
“As you say. Currently you are in hospital on life support. The latest corona virus mutation. During thirty days of coma, you have been resurrected twice, if you get better, they will remove your spleen. You already have severe diabetes, and your fingers are turning black.”
A low mist was rolling in. “What are my options?”
“Life on earth or In-between.”
“When I die, where do I go? Is In-between still an option?”
“It depends. Look, I will not lie. I am long out of the loop. I really have no clue. You know, perhaps I should name myself Limbo. It has a better ring to it.”
“Can I die here? What about my other, she dies, right? Peacefully?”
The gondola moved a little, as if amused. The canal had turned into a mirror and the vessel made no waves and cast no shadow. “Her death will be good. No, you don’t die. I mean, I will feed on your soul, but I am getting better at it. You will hardly notice me. Then again, you brought the void.”
The void, she thought, realizing it meant the surrounding mist. “I brought that?”
“When you long sleepers escape from your comatose nightmares, you start with an emptiness that your mind turns bright. This mist soothes you before you start to build a world. You would be surprised how many of you succumb to the same void, exhausted by your fantasies and struggling to accept this state of being as reality, preferring to think about it as an extended dream where anything goes and not as something final. And when you enter the void for a second time, it is irreversible. I would not be in the position to offer you anything, had you done that. I don’t mind. I feed anyway.”
“I don’t understand. I felt real. I was happy.”
“The subconscious works in mysterious ways. Look at your world. You have an invisible manservant, companions confined to a video shack, a model colleague you pretend is equal to you while you always have the upper hand, and you just had to throw her a troubled past. A little soul-searching. Yes, I can see you tumble.”
Marie stared hard into the mist. “I will not tumble.”
“Sounds like someone has made her choice. Good girl!”
The gondola gave a nod and with a sound of paper ripping apart it switched from red to black in a matter of seconds. A gondolier, resting on her oar, looked questioningly at her. Marie excused herself and walked on. People flowed to meet her through the last wisps of mist.
At the hotel, Elfish was in the shower, singing at the top of her voice. The remote, the one that followed them around and never worked, Marie fumbled it to the floor, and Elfish stopped singing. Trembling, Marie got out and back on the walkway, not facing anyone or anything before the brick wall of the campanile. It was the very spot where she had come out seven years before. She pressed play.
“How was Italy?”
“It was naething...”
“Shall we go on with the movie?”
“No, I have to go. Girls, have you ever been outside this place?”
“Who would want to.”
“Outside?”
“Well. I’ll see you later then.”
“Of course!”
“Take care now!”
“Bye!”
* * *
Marie felt a little better when she got out of the cab. She was home. After it drove away, she removed the tire marks and restored the field of bluebells they had flattened. My false and real beautiful world. She had always suspected the falsehood part. Or had she? It is true, sometimes denial is bliss. She walked among the flowers, stocked her cupboards and fridge, freshened up the milk and made a stack of pancakes ready before she got through the door. With sour cream and blueberry jam. She skipped sunset, switched off the sun and went to bed, sleeping before her head touched the pillow.
She made her morning on the balcony. She remembered no brother. No birth. No Jonas. For a brief moment she had touched her other’s mind, a surface touch, not deep enough to know if she has an opinion about this. She herself had folders in her mind with labels such as Family, Childhood and School, but the files were incomplete. Sunspots on water, bouncing castles, frosted birthday cakes, but always alone. Invisible parents.
Feeling down again, she found the Verona candle and unwrapped it, felt it against her chin. Verdi swelled up and saturated her brain. She stood up and looked down the impossible cliff. Chalk, as in Denmark or at Dover. A shiver of reminiscence, perhaps imagined, but she felt a connection. Cliff, house, beach, slide. I am both my own person and an avatar in an idealized world. My whirlwind days are over. For now. By keeping my homestead going, I honor her memory. Is she dead yet?
Three days later, while carrying the mattress and cooler to the beach, she felt a slight pain on her calf. A burning sensation. Pain was new to her. She retraced her steps. She had made a stop in the garden to pick gooseberries. Stinging nettles were skulking inside the bush..
She went inside, seething with rage. Weeds! I will not allow it! This is my garden! She unpacked the bag before storming out. A whole row of them, behind the bush. Why didn’t I notice? Avoiding the leaves, she unrooted them. Where to throw them, maybe they have spurs.
She walked to the edge of her property and froze. Her darling bluebells had turned to ash. Some were still standing like souvenirs of Pompeii. A myriad of star-shaped green patterns stood in their place. Thistles! She threw the nettles at them. When they landed, she noticed a yellow nail: a beak. A dead blackbird. Feathers scattered.
She drew nearer: a thump, another blackbird, dead on impact. She heard a shriek, a third bird, a magpie. She tried with all her might to save it, but its wings were both wrong, not only fractured, but smashed to smithereens. She carried it outside the cliff and let it go. It felt more merciful that way, even as it continued to caw until it didn’t.
She braced herself for more, the now silent landscape pregnant with calamity. The flowers, some nondescript bushes, a large oak on the hillside. With the faintest of sighs, the ash sculptures disintegrated. No earth tremble, no movement, no mist. Only the veil of morning. Still, someone or something was watching her.
“Who goes there?” A shot into nothing.
* * *
She ran herself a bath to keep from shaking. The next five days she stayed inside. Fluffy kept her good company. She found solace in routine but felt drowsy and lethargic, with no urge to analyze the situation. Her world building consumed all her energy.
She slept a lot, half waiting to dream of hospital corridors, even to wake up in a hospital bed. Yet her dreams were about Elfish on the catwalk, tripping, falling, most often into a crowd she herself was a part of, a crowd sometimes shocked, occasionally laughing.
The sixth morning. A rousing shower, hard as hail. A visit to the laundry hamper. She sampled some clothes and smelled them. As suspected, she didn’t need to do any washing. Never had. Why do I keep limiting myself with redundant and silly tasks? I could pick up my friends and live on a tropical island. For a moment she was jubilant, but her high frightened her sober, a panic attack in camouflage. The girls were designed to stay put. A sudden trip would harm them.
Reluctantly, she opened the front door. A well of flowers and berries. She felt her new thoughts of leaving conjure with her love for this place. After this is secured, I am free to roam the world. She walked the ambling path. No weeds. Marigolds. Buttercups. Mushrooms, yellow chantarelles. Fried, they are delicious. She looked eastwards at the sun and felt a twinge. A bit strange. The flowers were not pointed in its direction. They were all pointed at her. She had to admit it was a bit flattering.
She walked toward the stable. The door was slightly ajar, creating a black shadow rectangle. In one sweep, another jubilation gone. She stared at the beckoning shadow as a whiff of stale air found her. Sweet and metallic, a sense of something inside. Something beyond repair. She cursed herself. Her isolation and naïve belief in her powers had cost her dearly. Had taken another life.
She tried, but couldn’t stand to look inside, to confirm the obvious. She found herself retreating, bumping into a sunflower. It fell to the ground with a snap, broken in half, the stem strangely jagged and flaked. She examined it. Hard. Made of plastic. She tried the next one. And another. All fakes. The one on the ground had turned to look at her. A tremble. She could hear stones crashing into the sea. The house began to shift.
She is coming. My other. Grief is for later, she had to get away. Give her this, start again. She headed for the slide. The water had turned dark. That couldn’t be helped. At least there was a lot of it, stone cold. She fought the stream to see where she was going, felt on her back the sections going swiftly by, ticking of her progress, at first calming her, but there was also increasing pain.
Copyright © 2022 by Kjetil Jansen
