April - The Flood 3 страница

She stopped talking suddenly, and her own breath caught in her throat she began to gesture towards the garden and the list of things that would be planted there. Her blue shirt was now looser and she didn't look pregnant anymore. But I knew. She began to speak with excited tones, looking at me and then back again.

"Hyacinth!" she shouted, and then repeated in a delicate quality: "You gave me hyacinths first a year ago; / They call me the hyacinth girl. / -- Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden, / Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not / Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither / Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, / Looking into the heart of light, the silence."

"What?" I wasn't sure if I had missed something in my day dream from before. She appeared to be quoting something, but I saw nothing around here or on the plaque that contained those words.

"Sorry," she apologized. "It's from The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot. It's one of the longest and most intricate poems I've ever read, and one of the most beautiful." She repeated the line again, smiling to herself. "We have hyacinth growing here! I'm going to have this poem in my head all day, and anytime I come out here to see if anything has bloomed."

I had never seen her get excited over a flower before. She had always expressed her hated of the standard dating ritual of bringing flowers, or candy, or stuffed animals so I was confused for a bit. But it wasn't about the flower, really. It was about the poetry, about the elusive landscape that was before here and now she could connect to. It was the hybrid of both her visions - the radical politics of guerilla gardening, and the English literature story-telling of poetry. The hyacinth made her understand where she was, it made her come home again. I suddenly turned my attention to the garden, looking for my own piece of art.

"Are there going to be sunflowers growing here?" I wondered. Jasmine began to peer with me and the pointed to the back. Though I silently hoped inwardly that she would, she did not start quoting any poems she knew about sunflowers. I was sure there had to be a million and I made a point to commit to memory my next task of finding them all.

"Yes," she declared. She pointed to the back again. "There is a trellis for them to grow on. So they can support their own weight as they begin to reach up. They won't be here for a while though, probably not until August or September."

I smiled, liking the sound of those dates. I reached my hand over her waist again, feeling the material of her shirt and knowing what was underneath. "That's fine," I told Jasmine. "I'm pretty sure I can wait. I don't think we have any place else to go."

We ordered pizza for dinner that night. There was still no power or electricity, and the water that ran in the taps was cold, so while Gerard and I broke out the candles, Jasmine drove out to a vegan pizza place and got her own, and got two cheese ones for Gerard and myself. The electricity people had assured us that it would go on tomorrow and the phone people said the same. We just had to bear it for a little while, and considering how tired we all were after our afternoon, it would be easy to spend the night in a deep sleep and have the morning come sooner.

We didn't talk much during dinner. Jasmine's attitude had significantly improved and she seemed to radiate life and energy the rest of the day. I wasn't sure if I was reading too much into the narrative that told me all pregnant women glowed, but there was something going on with Jasmine. After finding the garden, she had been able to establish herself in the scheme of things. Gerard and I, on the other hand, were still struggling to get our footing.

After eating, I had gone back to unpacking my room and getting the preliminary stuff ready (like washing) and then setting up what I would need for sure that night (like my bed, toiletries), but it didn't feel right yet. This was unlike any of the other times I had moved because nothing was predetermined. There was no atmosphere that I was familiar with yet, because this was a brand new house. I knew about the crowded warmth to Vivian's place because she had exuded her personality there; same with the old apartment that bled every color and every pleasure imaginable because Gerard had taken the time to experience and collect those there. Even the cool austerity of black and white prestige that Paris possessed was the way it was because Gerard had been there seven years before I came. No one was here before us and everyone was new to this entire experience. And it worried me, it felt hollow to me. In spite of the plan that Gerard and Jasmine had worked out, it seemed as if I had dropped my boxes wherever and was now unpacking and putting things wherever. I began to feel the same sensation that Jasmine had felt earlier that afternoon: the dread of normalcy. Even at Mikey's meticulously organized house, with their ridiculous image of a white heterosexual couple with biblical children there had been a distinct personality that ran alongside that first commentary. But there was nothing here; just a lot of boxes and scattered anxiety. Jasmine had found her ability to connect with something, but Gerard and I, I had noticed at dinner, remained quiet because we still had a long way to go ourselves.

We had nothing figured out yet, I told myself. We all had to start a story somewhere, and I tried to do it then in that room. It was all mine and I tried to look at it not as nothing, but as everything. Because it was empty of other origins, I could completely fill it with all that was me. It was hard at first, trying to wade through my stuff and decide what to put where. The dark room was the easiest to set up. I took out the stuff from the walk in closet, put in my materials, and began to figure out a system that I could hook up a light to. It was coming along, and it made me feel a lot better. Not only could I take photos again with the chance of developing them, but the room was now more mine. As much as I didn't want to repeat what Gerard and I had done in his apartment, I felt my mind wandering there. If this room could be everything I wanted it to be, why not paint everything? Why not get Jasmine involved as well?

I suddenly began to get excited about my idea. I finished up what I was doing with my clothing in dressers and then headed up the stairs to see if I could catch Gerard in a bit of a down period so he could come and help me. Even if he was busy with what he wanted, I could at least borrow his paints and start a first coat. I was walking so fast up the stairs that I almost didn't hear the conversation between the two of them at first.

Gerard was in his room, but Jasmine was also with him. His bed lay to the side of the door, against one of the walls, and Jasmine was in the other corner of the room. She was sitting down tentatively on a stool and Gerard was at the window. I thought he may have been cleaning it off, but he kept looking up and down again and I realized he was setting up the bookshelf right there. I paused, feeling a little bad for eaves-dropping. I hadn't even heard Jasmine climb up the middle staircase near my room to get to the top floor. I didn't know if this was a conversation that I was allowed to access, or if I should back down slowly and respect their privacy. I leaned forward, not going inside the room yet, but letting my curiosity get the better of me.

"It's five parts and it's one of the longest and most obscure poems in English literature. He makes a lot of allusions, some academic, artistic, and others personal. He also speaks in several different languages throughout the work, too," Jasmine was informing Gerard.

"Oh yes, I know that poem. And that poet, too, I do believe. He did The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock. That one mentions a lot of art, which was one of the reasons he drew me in to begin with. 'In the room the women come and go, talking of Michelangelo'. "

"Yes! That's him. I love that poem, too," Jasmine agreed. Her voice was smiling again, I could tell. I didn't know very many poets, other than the ones that Gerard or Jasmine had told me about in the past. I realized that the only people I knew who talked of poets were the two in that room right then. That was what Gerard had been doing; unpacking his bookshelf, but also going through the poetry books he loved and showing them to Jasmine. They were sharing words like he and I had shared art, like Jasmine and I had shared the in-between space of the two. She told him more about the origins of The Wasteland and then doubled back to our own life, and how it intertwined with verse. She told him about the garden we had and how there would be hyacinth's growing there at some point.

"And sunflowers, too," she added, and I could feel the smile on Gerard's face, though his body was still obscured from me through the doors. I waited, but no one divulged any poems on sunflowers.

I wanted to step in at that point, to announce myself, and I started to walk up the stairs the rest of the way. The door was partly open. Surely if they wanted privacy, they would have shut it all the way? But I stopped just before the door, because now Gerard had begun to recite something. He stood looking out the window, his face fragmented by the glow of the setting sun.

"World world world, I sit in my room, imagine the future, sunlight falls on Paris..." he trailed off. He rubbed his head and then went to his bookshelf. "Do you know this poem? It's by Allen Ginsberg and called Europe! Europe!?"

Jasmine shook her head. Gerard grabbed an orange book from the shelf, The Collected Works of Allen Ginsberg, and began to flip through it hurriedly. When he found it, he then opened up the page, placing it on top of the bookshelf in front of the window. He started again, but noticing that Jasmine was still sitting, he called her over to read with him. "Your voice is far more beautiful and delicate than my own," he told her. "I would love to hear you speak this with me. It would be an honor to do this together."

I heard the shuffling of Jasmine moving, but I could not see her face and she said nothing in return to his comment. I opened the bedroom door more, and though it creaked, they didn't turn around. I wanted to tell them I was there, but I had honestly forgotten I was even present. The two of them filled up the room. They had started to recite again, and I was swept up into it all. They said it out the window, towards the setting sun, their backs to me.

World world world

I sit in my room

imagine the future

sunlight falls on Paris

I am alone there is no

one whose love is perfect

man has been mad man's

love is not perfect I

have not wept enough

my breast will be heavy

till death the cities

are specters of cranks

of war the cites are

work & brick & iron &

smoke of furnace of

selfhood makes tearless

eyes red in London but

no eye meets the sun

Flashed out of sky

hits Lord Beaverbrook's

white modern solid

paper building leaned

into London's street to

bear last yellow beams

old ladies absently gaze

thru fog toward heaven

poor pots on windowsills

snake flowers to street

Trafalgar's fountains splash

on noon-warmed pigeons

Myself beaming in ecstatic

Wilderness on St. Paul's dome

Seeing the light on London

or here on a bed in Paris

sunglow through the high

window on plaster walls

Meek crowd underground

saints perish creeps

streetwomen meet lacklove

under gaslamp and neon

no woman in house loves

husband in flower unity

nor boy loves boy soft

fire in breast politics

electricity scares downtown

radio screams for money

police light on TV screens

laughs at dim lamps in

empty rooms tanks crash

thru bombshell no dream

of man's joy is made movie

think factory pushes junk

autos tin dreams of Eros

mind eats its flesh in

geekish starvation and no

man's fuck is holy for

man's work is most war

Bony China hungers brain

wash over power dam and

America hides mad meat

in refrigerator Britain

cooks Jerusalem too long

France eats oil and dead

Salad arms & legs in Africa

Loudmouth devours Arabia

negro and white warring

against the golden nuptial

Russia manufacture feeds

millions but no drunk can

dream Mayakovsky's suicide

rainbow over machinery

and backtack to the sun

I lie in bed in Europe

alone in old red under

wear symbolic of desire

for union of immortality

but man's love's not perfect

in February it rains

as once for Baudelaire

one hundred years ago

planes roar in the air

cars race thru streets

I know where they go

to death but that is OK

it is that death comes

before life that no man

has loved perfectly no one

gets bliss in time new

mankind is not born that

I weep for this antiquity

and herald the new Millennium

for I saw the Atlantic sun

rayed down from a vast cloud

at Dover on the sea cliffs

tanker size of ant heaved

up on ocean under shining

cloud and seagull flying

thru sun light's endless

ladders streaming in Eternity

to ants in the myriad fields

of England to the fun flowers

bent up to eat infinities

minute gold dolphins leaping

thru Mediterranean rainbow

White smoke and steam in Andes

Asia's rivers glittering

blind poets deep in lone

Apollonic radiance on hillsides

littered with empty tombs

It was one of the most beautiful things I had ever heard. I stood in the doorway, mesmerized. I had never heard poetry like that before; so sudden, so raw, so reflective and all at once. I was used to the French symbolists, and though they had the same type of bodily fascination that this Ginsberg piece had, it was always so restrained. Their stanzas were standard, so ordered and precise. This was all over the place, lacking punctuation that disappeared into the air. I didn't see what it looked like on the page, but Gerard and Jasmine had read it between them in a blur, in several deep and shallow breaths. It felt like life itself was being created between them, as if it was a life force between them. They had said the last word together - tombs - and though it connoted death, it had been utterly beautiful. It wasn't a poem about death then, it was about the life that came before the death, about the act of reading it, the important of the words, before it all got to the end. Before it all came into darkness. There was a candle in the room with them, but the darkness was slowly happening all around us, as the sky through the small triangular window became orange, pink, and then dark blue. In a few more breaths, it would be gone. The candle flickered.

I realized I had walked in on a very intimate moment. I felt slightly bad, like a voyeur who had just watched two people he knew have sex and didn't stop himself. That poem was something so much more to them. It was clear from my vantage point that poem had meant everything to them. Gerard put his arm around Jasmine's waist and Jasmine leaned her head on his shoulder.

"How do you now so much about poetry? I thought you just did art," she asked curiously. "I know Ginsberg fairly well and I had never heard this before. Why is it not more famous? This is so much better than America. "

Gerard shrugged. "I do not know, my dear. People are foolish sometimes and they don't see the beauty that is in front of them. But I should know about poetry, especially if I am to call myself an artist. Poetry is painting. I'm fairly certain it was Da Vinci who said that all painting was silent poetry, and all poetry was a painting out loud. Together, they are beautiful. Like two people who are together, beautiful things can happen between them. These are the reasons to stay alive, sometimes. Poetry helps me when I just don't want to paint."

All Jasmine did was nod. Suddenly Gerard turned his head and kissed her on the crown of her head. It was a caring gesture, but his eyes had been closed and he lingered there. It didn't last too long, and when he did open his eyes again, he noticed me standing in the doorway. He was surprised, but not angry. He welcomed me inside.

"That was really beautiful, you two," I said, feeling genuinely moved. They still had their arms around one another; after he had kissed her head, Jasmine had put her arm around the small of his back. Now that their bodies were turned away from the window to face me, they turned towards one another, face to face, their arms on one another's waists in a hug. Their torsos and hips were pressed together, a close gesture, an intimate one. Jasmine smiled at me and she looked ridiculously happy. She was glowing in the candlelight and she breathed a content sigh as she laid her head on Gerard's chest, and he put his hand on the back of her neck, under her hair. He ran his hands through her hair, and she closed her eyes. When he found the gold necklace that she sometimes wore, he fingered it in his hands, and kissing the top of her head again, removed it.

I was not jealous. I couldn't even fathom what jealousy felt like in that moment. I had freaked out when Gerard had been with Vivian; I knew it was logically fine if he did that, since he could not cheat in our relationship since it was not a game, but I had not wanted to witness it. And the anger had still vexed me. But this was completely different. I wanted to be in that room with them because I could feel the love that was happening, the tension, the energy. I could feel it coming off of both of them, coming through the poem, and then dropping itself into this room. I had originally come for paint, but I had a feeling this was going to be a different type of art that was going to be produced from the poem.

Gerard told me where the paint was, pointing vaguely to a box. He unlinked from Jasmine and went over to show me, but still kept one of her hands in his own. I moved closer to them as he showed me, so all of our bodies were close together. Gerard stood up from the box of paint, but did not hand me anything. We all looked at one another for the longest time, waiting to see what would happen next.

I kissed Gerard first. Just a small peck on the lips and he kissed back just as quickly. I did the same to Jasmine, who was caught a bit off guard, but kissed back quickly. I broke the staring that had begun again, by saying I would set up a candle so we could have more light. I went over to the bed and placed one on the nightstand close by and surveyed the bed. The bottom sheet was there, but it wasn't on the mattress yet. I leaned over and began to fix that, and then I turned around. Gerard still stood with Jasmine and she was looking at him intently. He leaned down, very cautiously, and with his eyes open until he was just above her lips. Then he waited. She nodded and then met his mouth. I walked over to the two of them, who had begun to kiss with a little more intensity, and Gerard put his hand on my chest. He reached it around to my back and pulled me closer.

And that's when I knew. This was going to actually happen.

He broke away from Jasmine for a second and I grabbed one of her arms, so I could look at her closer. I wanted to see if she was as okay with this as I was, and I wanted to see it from her. I knew from Gerard's touch on my back what he was okay with doing this, but Jasmine was more complex in terms of her feelings and emotions. I needed to see her eyes. She kissed me first and I swore I could taste Gerard on her mouth. I broke the kiss and put our foreheads together. I wrapped my arms around her back and I looked at her. She smiled. "Yeah," she whispered in my ear. "It's okay, Frank. More than okay. I'm safe."

I nodded and kissed her again. She bit my lip just as I broke away and turned to Gerard, who had unbuttoned a bit of his shirt. He went over to me and took my shirt off, and I began to touch his back. He went over to Jasmine again, but only kissed her once before whispering something in her ear, biting the tip of her lobe as he backed away and waited for her response. She nodded and then waited for him to approach. He began to unbutton her shirt; that was when my heart really started to pound.

It couldn't believe that this was about to happen to us, and yet, at the same time, I was relieved. This needed to happen. We weren't fulfilling some strange fantasy that we had when we were younger, we weren't fucking each other's brains out because we could, and we definitely weren't trying to do the most daring act possible. This was what just made sense to us. This was how we were going to express our love at that particular moment. Gerard and Jasmine had been getting closer and closer; he was going to draw her nude at some point, but in order to really see her, he needed to be with her. He needed to touch her, to feel her, and to know what she was like. Who knew how long they had been bonding over poetry before I got there, and how many other instances like the one with Europe! Europe! had happened before, without me witnessing it? It occurred to me that I was so limited, that I was missing a piece of this story, but I was also so happy that I could have seen what I did see, and now we were all privy to that same sensation, that emotion. It was beautiful, and wonderful, and it was all that he was to me. Now she would understand. I could give her everything like I had before, but so could Gerard. We all loved each other; it was as simple as that, and now we were trying to show it all to one another.

I was still awkward, a little, though. I didn't know where to go or what to do, and I did feel like a voyeur a lot of the time. I was watching it all unfold and sometimes would get touched, sometimes I would be the more active participant, but a lot of the time I was watching. I was there, holding hands or kissing whatever I could find, rubbing backs or thighs. I was there because I needed to be. Because I was as much a part of this as they were.

Gerard unbuttoned Jasmine's shirt and then gradually helped her take it off. He laid it by the chair in the corner and then, when he came back, he slowly spun her around. He touched her hair for a long time before undoing the clasp on her bra and letting it fall to the floor. He didn't turn her around again. Instead, he linked his arms around the front of her and undid the fly on her pants from there. She turned and sat on the bed, looking at both of us. She motioned for me to come and sit down with her too. I walked over there but she began to take my pants off before I got onto the bed. I was already shirtless, Jasmine was naked now, and Gerard was unbuttoning his shirt in the background. Jasmine pushed my pants, then my boxers, down and held me in her hand. She touched the tip with her thumb and placed me in her mouth until Gerard came up behind me and started to run his fingers up and down my back. Jasmine took me out of her mouth and, standing up again, began to kiss Gerard. He leaned around my body, and rubbed against me as the two of them kissed. His shirt was unbuttoned but still hung on his shoulders. While he and Jasmine continued to kiss, I took off the rest of his clothing. Now, we were all naked, and we all got into the bed.

There was a long moment where we all half laid in the bed and looked at everyone else. There was so much skin, so much space to touch. Vast canvases and valleys and mountains and ridges lay all around us, enticing us, and telling us they were ready. Gerard was the first to begin touching someone else, and curled his finger around Jasmine's ear, touching her hair. Jasmine was in the middle, Gerard was on the side closest to the floor, and I was on the side farther from him, near the wall. When he touched Jasmine, I began to touch her stomach, her stomach that now I could see was rising a little bit. I kissed down from the peak in her breasts to her navel, to her vulva and teased my tongue in and out. Gerard began to finger me as I went down on her and this position lasted for some time. Jasmine touched my shoulders, wanting someone to meet her face. I replaced my mouth with my hand, and came to her side. I wiped my face before I began to kiss her again. Gerard began to touch my dick, and Jasmine began to touch his, and before long, we were touching everything on everyone. Everyone was getting licked, petted, or just pressed up against. I sometimes became aware of myself and thoughts would crop into my head like "oh my god I am in a threesome" but I pushed all the negative connotations outside of myself. This just made sense. I was sick of people telling us what to do. This was our house now, we owned it, and we were going to do what we wanted to inside of it.

Soon, Gerard lowered himself over Jasmine. She opened her legs to accommodate him, but he didn't go inside. He kissed her forehead, her neck, and her mouth before asking, "Are you okay?"

My heart ached. It was the only time during that entire act where I felt something partly negative, and it was only painful because it was so real. Gerard was asking Jasmine if she was okay, if she wanted to change her mind and get out of this, in the exact same way he had asked me seven years ago.

"Yes, I'm fine," she said. She looked at him, then me, and smiled. I lay beside her and leaned over to kiss her, just as Gerard was positioning himself. When he went into her, Jasmine bit my lip, and I backed away a bit. I let the two of them have their moment, and touched myself next to them on the bed. Jasmine would occasionally reach a hand out and grasp me, in addition to Gerard, but the two of them were together in their own little world for quite some time. He would often lean down and whisper into her ear, and I wondered if he was reciting poetry to her. She would whisper back, too, and I knew they were creating something bigger than themselves.

Gerard pulled out of Jasmine when he realized he couldn't keep going. He was having more difficulty maintaining himself, even in heated moments like this. Jasmine was red in the face and breathing heavily, but fine. As Gerard and I began to explore one another more, Jasmine used her hand and took on the position that I had been in before. I fingered Gerard to see if it would help him to keep it up, and we progressed together now. I entered him, and he held onto to Jasmine's hand as I went in and out, and sporadically, they exchanged small kisses and the same whispering in the ear.

Gerard didn’t orgasm, but that was completely beside the point. When it was all over and we were too tired to continue, we pulled the blanket over ourselves. This time, I was in the middle, and Jasmine was to my side. We were still naked and even though the act was over with, I still replayed those images in my mind. We looked around at one another and seemed to realize the gravity of what we had done, but we started to laugh instead of wallowing. There was nothing to wallow for. We kissed one another again and debated having a shower, but then going up and down too many stairs was too much for the first night, and the water was cold still. We said it was the technicalities that kept us from showering, but I realized it was probably because we never wanted to leave the bed.

In spite of having our own separate rooms, we were going to sleep in the same bed, tonight. Jasmine got up to blow out the candles since she was at the edge. I could see the moonlight coming through the window as she walked around the room in her bare feet. Her belly was even more prominent. She seemed like a character in a book, a far away illustration, cast across the black, white, and yellow lights. And then, as she blew out the final candle, everything was in darkness. The lack of power and utilities, the tiny room at the top of our house, and our three naked bodies in bed together made us all step back through into another world. It was foreign to us, but now so familiar. We could see it and feel it and touch it in the dark. Gerard had said it ended in darkness, but it also began in darkness too. That was what Alexa had said, and I fully comprehended its meaning. As Jasmine slid back in the bed and put her arm on me, and I felt Gerard on the other side, I knew. It began and it ended in darkness. This was our poem, and it was our tomb.

In the morning, when we all got up, we didn't talk about it. We all got into our clothing again and went down to the kitchen to get the leftover pizza for our breakfast. Jasmine volunteered to go and get groceries and run other errands while Gerard and I stayed here to clean, unpack boxes, and wait for the utility people to show up. We divided and got on with our day.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14