Monday, January 31, 2005
The morning bore potential to totally f* up the day; luckily things took a surprising turn. I suppose it has been long since there was such sporadically consistent confusion and calm.
Storyteller
--------
There's a place called Corunna in northwest Spain, he had said. A place of rocks - geological delirium. Corunna is known for just two things: foul weather, it never stops raining, and its lighthouse built of granite in the Dark Ages. Local families call it 'the Tower of Caramel'. In this tower, the story goes, was housed a miraculous mirror that could reflect anything that happened anywhere in the world. The women of Corunna went to the mirror to see where their men were at any given moment, their hardships, dangers, births, deaths, marriages.
One Sunday a local man in a black suit went up to check on the woman he was meant to marry. Instead he found a young foreign woman with a strong jaw consulting the mirror - at the suggestion of the local tourist office - to discover the whereabouts of her always exuberant girlfriend who had neglected to leave a forwarding address. The Spaniard was about to go when he saw clearly in the mirror his fiancee in the arms of the mayor's son! Beside the bed lay a carafe of wine. As he stared his fiancee moved to be on top of the other. The Spaniard turned to the startled Australian. 'I'll kill them! Now!' He really meant it.
The no-nonsense Australian woman saw nothing in the mirror, not even a sign of her cheerful friend, and placed a soothing hand on his arm.
She was from Geelong. Always leaving or coming back, as if she was attached to a very long length of elastic. First it was Bali. After that, India. She went to London and came back. South America, too. Back to Europe, doing it on trains, before feeling the tug of home. On her return she would at once begin planning her next move.
To cut a long story short, he said, the young woman from Geelong and the Spaniard left the tower together, and were seen enjoying themselves in one of the cafes. She stayed on in Corunna. He came to her room. The dark sea that kept trying to squeeze in through the window and into her room, and the sounds of the seabirds and the foreign words outside, while inside this man with the blueish face gave her such solemn attention, his eyes and hands never stopping, combined with the energy of her youth to produce a sympathetic intensity - he had said - an intense spreading softness she had never experienced before.
In the room with him she measured her smooth good health and saw her life laid out ahead, sunlit, obeying the laws of perspective. Nevertheless, after a week she became restless again. In a mass of good-natured smiles she announced it was time for her to be leaving; the man showed his surprise by shouting at her. But she had decided, though when she looked back from the bus at his receding figure she felt confused and blew her nose.
In London at the most unexpected moments she saw the room in Corunna, which seemed from a distance to be jammed in at an angle among the black rocks. She kept seeing him across the room and close up. It was their room. He had a long face and hairs on his shoulders: she liked his solemn expression.
A person meets thousands of different people across a lifetime, a woman thousands of different men, of all shades. Even so, of the many people a person on average meets it is rare for one to fit almost immediately in harmony and general interest. For all the choices available the odds are enormous. The miracle is there to be grasped. Perhaps in unconscious recognition of this she had tugged both his ears early one morning in a rush of gaiety which he extended by making a great show of rolling on the floor in agony.
In London she realised she should never have left. At strange important moments a person is given one and only one chance; and that had been one.
It was raining in Corunna. She hurried along the streets and tried the cafes. All the men could do was shrug. She gave descriptions of him. All morning she sat with a hot chocolate at their usual table. On the third day she went up to the mirror to find his whereabouts. There was nothing. The mirror was black.
~Eucalyptus~ Murray Bail
What words..
Storyteller
--------
There's a place called Corunna in northwest Spain, he had said. A place of rocks - geological delirium. Corunna is known for just two things: foul weather, it never stops raining, and its lighthouse built of granite in the Dark Ages. Local families call it 'the Tower of Caramel'. In this tower, the story goes, was housed a miraculous mirror that could reflect anything that happened anywhere in the world. The women of Corunna went to the mirror to see where their men were at any given moment, their hardships, dangers, births, deaths, marriages.
One Sunday a local man in a black suit went up to check on the woman he was meant to marry. Instead he found a young foreign woman with a strong jaw consulting the mirror - at the suggestion of the local tourist office - to discover the whereabouts of her always exuberant girlfriend who had neglected to leave a forwarding address. The Spaniard was about to go when he saw clearly in the mirror his fiancee in the arms of the mayor's son! Beside the bed lay a carafe of wine. As he stared his fiancee moved to be on top of the other. The Spaniard turned to the startled Australian. 'I'll kill them! Now!' He really meant it.
The no-nonsense Australian woman saw nothing in the mirror, not even a sign of her cheerful friend, and placed a soothing hand on his arm.
She was from Geelong. Always leaving or coming back, as if she was attached to a very long length of elastic. First it was Bali. After that, India. She went to London and came back. South America, too. Back to Europe, doing it on trains, before feeling the tug of home. On her return she would at once begin planning her next move.
To cut a long story short, he said, the young woman from Geelong and the Spaniard left the tower together, and were seen enjoying themselves in one of the cafes. She stayed on in Corunna. He came to her room. The dark sea that kept trying to squeeze in through the window and into her room, and the sounds of the seabirds and the foreign words outside, while inside this man with the blueish face gave her such solemn attention, his eyes and hands never stopping, combined with the energy of her youth to produce a sympathetic intensity - he had said - an intense spreading softness she had never experienced before.
In the room with him she measured her smooth good health and saw her life laid out ahead, sunlit, obeying the laws of perspective. Nevertheless, after a week she became restless again. In a mass of good-natured smiles she announced it was time for her to be leaving; the man showed his surprise by shouting at her. But she had decided, though when she looked back from the bus at his receding figure she felt confused and blew her nose.
In London at the most unexpected moments she saw the room in Corunna, which seemed from a distance to be jammed in at an angle among the black rocks. She kept seeing him across the room and close up. It was their room. He had a long face and hairs on his shoulders: she liked his solemn expression.
A person meets thousands of different people across a lifetime, a woman thousands of different men, of all shades. Even so, of the many people a person on average meets it is rare for one to fit almost immediately in harmony and general interest. For all the choices available the odds are enormous. The miracle is there to be grasped. Perhaps in unconscious recognition of this she had tugged both his ears early one morning in a rush of gaiety which he extended by making a great show of rolling on the floor in agony.
In London she realised she should never have left. At strange important moments a person is given one and only one chance; and that had been one.
It was raining in Corunna. She hurried along the streets and tried the cafes. All the men could do was shrug. She gave descriptions of him. All morning she sat with a hot chocolate at their usual table. On the third day she went up to the mirror to find his whereabouts. There was nothing. The mirror was black.
~Eucalyptus~ Murray Bail
What words..
Comments:
Post a Comment
