Robin Sommers
HAIL
Hailstones
are falling on the roof, Andrea muttered, turning over on the rumpled
sheets that should have been laundered days ago. Pret put his hand on her head like a cap.
You're
musing again. You've left me and gone
off again.
They weren't consciously listening to
the occasional rattle of gunfire in the distance, not even when it was in the
lane beneath their window, far up on the topmost fifth floor. The shutters had been closed for so long the
inside of their flat was permanently evening.
They slept when there was no more light and later they could feel the
sweat running between them when they came together. Passion was saved for the light -- the last
light or the first, although sometimes they forgot which it was and were surprised
when night didn't ensue for the perfect sleep after pleasure. Their cigarettes had run out and they
remarked on the damage it had done to their lovemaking, but, after awhile, even
that didn't matter. Pret would sit in the
rocking chair by the shuttered window and pretend to smoke, his hand languidly
passing from his mouth to a semi-outstretched, debonair bent arm. The verses would come out of his mouth on the
warm smoke of his imagination and hover in the air over the bed, beguiling
Andrea who felt the words fall lightly on her naked breasts, stimulating them
like light kisses, so the nipples drew erect.
She envied his effortless production of marvels -- she knew his poems
were better than hers and it galled her.
She wanted to make the same splendid leaps -- the startling comparisons
-- the alliterated swoops that actually meant something fine and genuine in
spite of the poetic conventions. Her
envy created desire in the depths of her womb and she would gasp when the poem
was finished and rise and straddle him on the rocking chair.
She swiveled her head and kissed his
hand, letting each finger lie between her lips for a moment, and then pushing
it gently aside for the next one.
I
don't think those are hailstones, Pret said. I think
they're bullets or shrapnel or something.
He began to sing just as the hail
began falling again. It was a
meaningless song that seemed to be in a real language -- perhaps Portuguese --
but was not. It was in a language that
would no longer exist when the shutters had been opened, and then they would no
longer be there. They knew this, indeed,
but it didn't matter, at least not as much as what they might find tonight in
words of poems they would surely compose.
Andrea rose and went to the sink in
the corner and cut up an apple, one of the many they had brought with
them. When the apples were gone, there were tins and tins of food
left by her parents when they had fled town.
She could hardly remember her parents.
She wondered if she could sketch their faces if she tried, but she
thought not. They were a part of the
past and it, and the future, simply did not exist. It was strange how exhilarating this thought
was -- perfect freedom. Maybe that's the
kind of freedom a quick death gives people, she thought. She did not want to say this to Pret, though
-- it was something she thought outside the room.
She began to sing, a kind of lament, a
kind of fada, inspired by the faux-Portuguese.
It took her over and she even forgot Pret for awhile. He had been her audience -- a perfect one --
but now that didn't seem important. The
song absorbed her and it was absorbed into her and shaped a moment of
personality that astonished her. This is
what we live in hope of, she thought. This
sort of instant.
When she turned with the apple in her
hand he raised his arm in a kind of salute.
He had known, of course, that an achievement had been reached. She sat down on the bed next to where he lay
and fed him the apple, piece by piece, as though each one were a perfect gift.
She wondered that they had not
quarrelled. Perhaps it was the fear that
there was nobody else but them and a quarrel could become the world. A larger quarrel had become the world already
and that was what they had escaped by climbing to her parents' flat and pulling
the shutters. They had met at the cafe where students met and talked about
philosophy. Pret was passionate about
philosophy, but it was poetry that seduced him and enticed him away even from
philosophy. They had begun talking to
each other in a kind of poetic shorthand, partly made up of allusions to poems
everyone they knew was reading. Then they
began going further afield, to Baudelaire particularly, and it was then they
had left and gone into the darkened park and made love on the ground beneath a
large elm tree. The roots hurt her back
but she was even more worried about policemen who patrolled the park at night
and knew all the places to look for couples.
Their friends talked more and more
about politics and terrorism but she and Pret would break away and walk by the
river that charmed them even though its banks were concrete. The lights of the city never went out
completely and they would sit close to the water and bend over and look at themselves.
I
was Narcissus, for awhile, Pret had said.
But it was lonely.
Yes,
so was I, but the sex isn't very good.
Is
it better now?
She had laughed and bitten his ear,
but not very hard. His wavy hair hung
down around his ears and over the back of his collar. He always wore an Oxford-cloth shirt with a
button-down collar, open at the neck.
His face was usually rough since he shaved only every other day. But now he hadn't shaved in a week -- there
was no soap and the water in the shower had dwindled to a slow drip.
Do you think anymore about philosophy? Andrea asked when he had finished the apple.
Always
-- it's inside my poems. Rather it's
around them -- it holds them together.
She wondered if that's what hers were
lacking. She wished she could only love
his poetry and not also envy him for it.
Perhaps love and envy are not at odds, she hoped, but she felt a pang of
self-deception.
The poem she wrote then was about how
loving him made her feel she was perfect but then her envy stared her in the
face and she knew it was far from true -- in fact, love had made her more
imperfect. She didn't read this poem to
him. She wanted him to think she loved
him perfectly although she doubted he loved her perfectly.
She began another, honest poem about
how love had made her more imperfect.
You're
more poetic than I will ever be," he had said in the early hours that morning.
Of
course, I'm a woman.
That's
exactly what I meant," he had said very soberly, as though it were a
significant truth he had finally grasped.
And then he held her very hard against his chest -- too hard, but she
didn't complain because she felt vulnerable.
He said he wondered that they had
not become bored, but he stopped wondering and wrote a splendid poem about
peaches and punting on a river. It was
lazy and flowed evenly like a quiet
stream, she said.
You're right and I do feel lazy, he agreed.
I never felt lazy until I met you,
he added and threw her shirt at her. She
hadn't worn anything for days -- she seemed to have forgotten that she ever
had. She had learnt to take care not to
spill hot tea on herself. There wasn't
any left now. They were suspended in time as people are who are waiting for something
-- something to happen that will set life in motion again. When bombing could be heard at night they did
not open the heavy shades and sometimes it drew them together in desire, in
transforming themselves into dawn they hadn't seen for weeks -- or was it
months now? It couldn't be -- there was
still food, although it was becoming hard to prepare a proper meal. Pret prided
himself on devising a new and original dish each day when it was his turn to
cook. She had fallen back to omelets
alternating with pancakes. And something
had to be done to find water.
The hail came
again the night they spoke about love
poems.
There is no other kind -- all poems are
about love, he pronounced a bit contentiously.
What about war? -- and death?
-- and nature?"
They're about love of war and death -- and
nature --
Nobody loves war, she objected forcefully.
Everybody loves war --
Nobody loves death --
We are all in love with death -- poets more
than anyone else --
Poets love life.
And death.
That's just because thinking of death makes
one love life more.
That's a trick -- it depends on a verbal
ploy to prove the opposite of anything.
And then there is the 'little death' --
That I am in love with --
So am I --
There was a
rumbling above them on the lead roof, and they froze for a moment.
What could it be?
Pigeons.
It's too loud for pigeons.
Storks.
Yes, storks.
But it wasn't
storks. Gunfire was now far away when
they could hear it at all -- as though it were in the mountains to the east.
When
the heavy bombardments began Pret was sitting crosslegged in the corner on a
cushion, dressed only in satin tights. He shut his eyes when the bombs
hit. They shook the building and made
them feel the building would shoot up like a rocket into the sky. When she
started to go to the window and peek out, he had shouted No!
It startled her -- she'd
never heard him shout and his voice had
a coarse barbarity.
Why would
anyone wear satin tights? They make you look like a rajah.
I am a rajah.
She began to giggle and that made him laugh
-- a low self-conscious chuckle without real humor.
There was an explosion so strong she sat
down against the wall and braced her back against it. She tipped her head off the wall and squeezed
her eyes shut, alarmed by possible vibrations conveyed to them. But it was the sound vibrations against her
ears that caused her to yelp and cover them with her fists, pushing hard down
against them. The pain in her ears frightened her. What if her hearing should be damaged?
Across the room Pret looked detached --
smiling at a private joke perhaps. He
seemed to be part of the pain in her ears.
When the pain was gone, which surely it must be soon, everything would
be the same again.As Pret went out the door that led to the toilet in the hall,
he didn't flinch at a crash on the roof.
How odd, she thought. How unfair.
The storks
have flown away again -- had you noticed? Pret asked as he came back. The bombing had just stopped.
She put on her jeans
and sweater and sat in the old chair by the shuttered window and wrote down a
title: "Storks."
Do storks' knees bend backwards?
I don't think so -- I don't think I know.
Never mind.
It was the best
she had written -- she could imagine storks swirling above the building, unable
to settle on their nest because it had been destroyed by hailstones -- they
were disoriented by the hail and the gunfire in the distance -- had their eggs been
destroyed? -- finally one of them lit next to the chimney to make sure --
everything was gone -- all the potential they had worked for.
She took the poem
over by the window to read it again in the dim light -- was it early morning or
late afternoon? -- the sound of the storks' wings reached her from far away --
from their flight to Egypt which had begun early. She added these lines and then drew a line
through them -- ending with the empty potential of reproducing themselves.
She didn't show
it to him although he walked over to the window to join her. .He was curious; it
had taken a short, intense period to write it and he had scrupulously avoided
interrupting her work -- an unspoken courtesy they accorded one another . She
loved it -- whenever she re-read it, it shone like the forgotten sun -- but she
didn't share it with him. That made her
uncomfortable so she said, It's not quite
finished yet. I want to finish it before
I read it to you.
But she knew it
was finished and that she would never read it to him. She saw in his eyes that he did not believe
her. The silken cords between them had
begun to stretch.
That night the
hail began again. They lay next to each
other without touching.