April - The Flood 12 страница

"How are you doing?" she asked me. "I haven't been around too much. There's been a lot going on."

I nodded and told her I was fine. We stood with our arms around one another of awhile while the scene around us unfolded, before I asked her, "What color?"

"What?"

"What color?" I repeated. "I want to know what hand prints are ours on the wall."

She smiled. "Should we get Gerard for this?"

I thought about it, then noticed that he was with Vivian and they were now kissing under a veil of orange and green mixing together, creating a mess of gray. I shook my head. "We already have our handprints, our colors. I want one with you."

She took a deep breath in and began to consider it. "It's a big task, Frank. You're not asking me to pick something easy now, are you?" She kissed my nose - the one place where I actually didn't have paint - and we began to look through the array before us. We eventually decided on purple. It was a secondary color, and that had been important to Jasmine. It was red and it was blue - the two of them, mixed together, and maybe with a bit of white. "I want to know that we came from two different substances, with maybe something else in there as well for influence. If we have to pick a color, I also want to know that we were once separate. But that together we make something unique."

I nodded, it sounded like a good idea to me. We took a side of the wall, near the bottom and relatively untouched. As people were in chaos and laughing all around us, we were calm and together. I helped Jasmine get onto her knees without losing her balance and then we both pressed our hands in the paint. We placed them gently on the wall, and when we backed away, they were there. They stared back at us; us in purple, us in handprints, us that were soon going to be turned into flowers. She made a pleased noise and then warped her arms around me again and left purple marks everywhere. We stayed together and watched the people that were still finishing up in the middle for a bit. I noticed Gerard and Vivian had their arms around each other too, and they were watching. Lydia was still doing tiny fingertip flower petals at the side in yellow, and Mikey and Alexa were letting their kids come in slowly and make their own mark. Noelle and Cassandra, who had been spending a majority of the time making out with one another as Hilda color bombed them, began to help the kids come forward. Cassandra was even holding Jonah now and helped lean him in so he could put his tiny handprint on the wall. His was green. Callie and Dean were at the back again, completely covered. They had done their part in the creation, sticking to the outside edges, and now they were more focused on each other. I noticed that they were holding hands now, blue and red coated hands, streaked with yellow and orange. Callie's bangs were completely caked with purple, but she smile and looked happy. Dean looked relaxed, too, not as on edge. The kids were no longer their responsibility, and it was time to focus on one another. The time and the rapidity of our movements as a group, now, were slowing.

"I want you to come to my next class with me," Jasmine stated suddenly. She looked up at me for approval. I had thought now that Hilda was in the picture, she would feel as if that was all she needed.

"Of course, of course. I want to come," I told her. As soon as I said the words, the huge flood of emotions I had been feeling about this came forward. I would finally get to go, get to see Jasmine in this new and scary environment, and actually support her. It was what I had wanted to for so long now, and what I had finally accepted as something I needed to do. I dipped my hand in the red paint, and asking quickly, placed it on her stomach. She placed her hand over mine. When I stood up, we kissed again, and then Gerard appeared. His hand was covered in yellow and he placed it over Jasmine's belly too. Jasmine grabbed the blue, and we were all there then. All of us. Primaries, making secondaries.

Jonah, now having finished his handprint, was passed off to his mother and began to gurgle.

"Do you know what this all reminds me of?" Alexa asked, focusing the group. All the kids were done now and the room had quieted significantly. People murmured, and Alexa smiled at Jonah as she answered. "The Tower of Babel."

"The Bruegel painting? How so?" Gerard asked curiously. "I'd say this is slightly more abstract."

"Well, yes, but the idea of it reminds of The Tower of Babel. The bible story," she corrected and a few people, including Hilda, groaned. "Don't worry, don't worry, I don't believe in the bible or that the stories really happened. But they feel real, don't they sometimes? Isn't that what really matters, the idea that creates the truth?" She looked over at Lydia, who nodded a slight approval.

Alexa went on with the story, telling us about how after the great flood the people decided that they wanted to build a tower high up to the sky so that they could talk to god. "But god didn't want them to do that, so he destroyed the tower and then divided the people by giving them each a different language to speak."

"That's a terrible story," Gerard said. "It doesn't even make sense for this. That god wanted to tear people apart, and we're not doing that."

"Exactly! We always do the reverse, and it always comes out better," Alexa added.

Lydia began to speak up. "It applies now, for sure. I agree with Alexa. That god is cruel and malicious and he divided the people, but the people do not have to stay divided. People do not have to separate themselves from one another solely based on language or petty differences. We can put ourselves back together."

She walked forward suddenly and planted her hand back into the paint tray. She stood at the wall and then declared: "Somos separados por fronteiras e linguagens. Sofremos por medo do diferente, do desconhecido. Tudo que não é familiar causa estranhamento, e pode inspirar rejeição ou encantamento. Com as cores, entretanto, não há exclusividade. Elas são universais e nos unem sob o alento de um mesmo sentimento, um mesmo coração.
"O violeta é a cor da conexão. Ele abre uma ponte entre o nosso interior e a energia universal que passa por dentro de todos nós, que motiva os espíritos de todas as línguas e culturas. É a cor que une vocês dois, um ao outro. E a própria cor é uma união. O fruto do encontro de azul, que acalma a alenta, e vermelho, que acende paixão. E é isso que eu desejo a vocês dois, neste apartamento ou em qualquer outro ponto do mundo. Que sintam a paixão acendê-los por dentro, que mantenha o ardente encanto de vocês pela vida, mas que abra espaço para momentos nos quais vocês encontrem paz e quietude nos braços um do outro. Eu lhes desejo o desatino e o equilíbrio. Eu lhes desejo o violeta."
She slammed her hand into the wall, the slap of the paint resonating through the whole room. Then she looked back at us, and placed her arm on her hip. "I am putting that language back into this wall of Babel. Who is next?"
She said it like a challenge, like a way for us, if we hated that story so much, to rewrite it for our own future use. There was no point in complaining about something, chastising it or saying it was wrong, if you weren't going to fix it. Fix it or accept it, and then make something better out of it. It was something that Lydia had told Jasmine, right around the time when Jasmine was telling me all the things in her life that she couldn't break or fix or accept anymore. But she was learning, and now, this was an even better opportunity. It was quiet for a long time, and I began to wonder if anyone was ever going to step forward and do something.
Gerard, the bravest of us all, was next. "I'll go. Let me see f I just remember any of my French..." He dipped his hand in the color blue, and then thought hard. "Il n’est pas possible…Il n’est pas possible pour moi de déterminer le sens de la couleur bleu. Ça peut être la couleur d’un lac crystal, où, peut-être, la mer orageaux qui avale les navines entières; si tu—on—si on tombe…Si on s’est tombé sur un arbrisseau avec les fruits bleus, il est possible que les—qu’ils soient aussi bien être la belladonne comme les bleuets. La—le ciel s’est voilé en bleu avant que le soleil se lêve et peu avant que la tombe de la nuit. C’est la couleur, je pense, des débuts et des bouts. C’est la couleur—je suppose que c’est la couleur de chance. Il peut marquer la naissance—non, une rêveille, ou il peut être la marque de la mort, et je suppose—je suppose qui ce que je dis est que la bleu est autour de la possibilité, et pour moi, c’est…ça peut être la couleur de la fin de quelque chose, ou ça peut–Ça peut être la debut de Tout."

Then Mikey stepped forward. " Cae el cielo en el cielo. Diferentes matices de celeste chocan. Uno representa tu edén, el otro mi libertad. Se funde mi alma allí; tantos colores ocupan mi mente. Recuerdos de noches insomnes donde perdido por esta ciudad me aislaba de quién debía ser y me entregaba sin remordimiento a esa esencia que tanto añoraba. Bloques de reminiscencias, imágenes que me venden paz. Mi cielo cayendo nuevamente, llenándome de rocío y espesura, y así quiero vivir: en esta libertad en este mar de aguas claras, en la profundidad de una mirada. Este celeste corre por mis venas, se abomba en mis sienes, late. Y me hace vivir. Quiero ser del color del cielo, quiero caer en el sendero en el que encuentre tu risa, quiero huir de mi deber y entregarme al ser. Quiero que te fundas en mí- que adornes este firmamento con tu soltura, si no podemos ser reales, seamos la fantasía que te desborde."

Alexa smiled at him, and then kissed his cheek, before she stepped forward. She was quiet for a little while, drudging up and then revealing the origin of her slight accent. " Kolor zielony od zawsze uważany jest za symbol nadziei oraz spokoju. To pewnie dlatego stare tablice w szkołach są zielone – by dać uczniom nadzieję na zrozumienie kompletnie niezrozumiałego materiału. Zieleń odpręża, koi zmysły, a poza tym jest bardzo miła dla oka. Pomyślcie tylko, gdyby tak zebrać do kupy wszystkich tych zgorzkniałych osobników i pomalować ich na zielono, już nigdy więcej by nas nie denerwowali! Ponad to, trawiasty odcień zieleni kojarzy się z wiosną. Przyciąga on do siebie niczym magnes! Na koniec wypadałoby też dodać, że właśnie dzięki tej barwie wiemy, kiedy zaniechać jedzenia produktów białkowych, gdy jakikolwiek posiłek robi się zielony, nie zjadamy go. Kolor zielony inspiruje, powstało wiele pieśni i wierszy do niego nawiązujących, jak ten Kazimierza Wierzyńskiego; “Zielono mam w głowie i fiołki w niej kwitną, na klombach mych myśli sadzone za młodu, pod słońcem, co dało mi duszę błękitną i które mi świeci bez trosk i zachodu.” "

Hilda came barrelling up next, slamming her hand into the yellow tray and having it go everywhere. "Fuck yes," she declared, and then bellowed out. "Men vad spelar det för roll att alla står här och pratar? Jag förstår inte vad nån säger och ingen förstår vad jag säger; det är som att prata med sig själv. Vill man förena världen så måste alla lära sig samma språk, gärna engelska för min del, men är det någon som lyssnar eller förstår det? Eller hitta något att förena världen runt, som typ solen. En gång i tiden förenades människan kring eld. Vad ska det bli den här gången? Maskrosor eller smörblommor? Marabou mjölkchoklad? This is what I'm talking about," she went on, breaking the enchantment after her statement. "This is what we need. I knew I studied abroad for a reason."

It grew quite quiet after that, and for a moment I thought we were done until Callie finally worked up the nerve to step forward. The distant cousin was now erasing her boundaries as she illuminated something about herself: she knew Slovak. She dipped into orange and then said her passage softly. Vivian yelled, "Louder" at her, and then she started again: "Oranžová mi vždy pripomína západ slnka. Nie východ, pretože pri východe slnka je obloha žltá a ružová a bledomodrá, ale západ slnka. Je to akoby strechy domov horeli, viete? Všetko žiari, ale vy sa nebojíte, pretože to nie je skutočný oheň. Jediné, čo zničí, je deň."

After Callie, I looked at what had been done because I could not understand a word that had been said (except for maybe some of Mikey's statements, if I strained hard enough to remember the Spanish I had learned in high school). I saw that Lydia had used violet, Callie orange, Mikey had been light blue, merely a shade difference between his brother, Gerard, who had stuck with what he knew: dark blue, sacrébleu. Alexa had used green, like Jonah, and Hilda had used yellow. I began to add all of these signs and colors up, and Jasmine, who exchanged a look with me gleefully in the resounding silence, seemed to come to the same conclusion as myself.

"Is that it?" Jasmine asked. "We're so close to having all the colors of the rainbow used. There has to be one more person." We all looked around, wondering if anyone else knew enough of another language to step forward and say something. My eyes fell on Cassandra and she heaved an aggravated sigh.

"Okay. Fine." She stomped forward, grabbed the red, and then slammed her hand against the wall and spoke in Italian. I should have known; she played too many operas and classical composers on the piano to have escaped learning at least a little of the language. Her words came out slowly and methodically, but not because she was struggling. It was almost as if she had been thinking about them for quite some time. She looked at the ground, or at the paint, as she went on.

"Non è strano come nessuno possa rinunciare ai colori? Per quanto la nostra percezione di essi vari, ci sono tutti indispensabili; tanto che persino la loro assenza, a modo suo, diventa un tono necessario del niente. Credo che il rosso sia un emblema del carattere dei colori, anche nelle sue infinite sfumature mantiene sempre il suo tratto fondamentale: l’irruenza e l’inevitabilità. Nel suo spettro sono comprese contraddizioni intrinseche, ossimori morali e discordanze che il nostro sistema nervoso cattura solo in parte. Come può il colore del sangue che sgorga conciliarsi con un’impressione sottopelle (infusaci all’alba dei tempi)? Forse è proprio questo conflitto endemico che ci spinge ad associare il rosso alle passioni. Un flusso anarco-adrenalinico fino alla punta delle dita. Un colore primario per un bisogno primario. Autarchico ma non autonomo; irrequieto nelle sue potenzialità inespresse, costantemente teso verso le tinte fosche del viola e quelle incomprensibili dell’arancione. Cassandra vedeva il rosso nelle sue visioni e non fu creduta: il sangue sommerse la reggia di Agamennone. Ora posso immergere la mano in questo colore senza la frenesia di doverlo lavare via per vergogna o rimorso. Per me il rosso è l’inequivocabile segnale di due guance accaldate; l’imposizione periodica della pubertà, affrettata e scortese. Una goccia di tempera caduta dalla tavolozza di mia madre che si confonde in un riccio fuori posto, avviluppato al manico di un pennello come una fiamma ardente. Il rosso delle rose che ho sempre ammirato da lontano, ricevendone solo di rosa. Mi piace pensare che nei toni avvolgenti dei miei sogni sia racchiuso qualcosa di diverso in cui credere."

For those of us who knew languages, we had played our part, but for those of us who only knew the other language of our body, it was our turn to contribute. All at once, the rest of us leaned forward and covered our hands in paint one last time to add another brick into this wall of the tower. We gave our divided silence back to the tower of Babel and decided to build up our own selves together, not to God, but for one another. We remained whole, together, and trying to desperately connect again. This is where we all lived now, I told myself. Even when this all would be done, and people would eventually get ready to go home and change back into their street clothing and wash up their children, I knew they were still going to be here. They had helped us reach this height that night, and we would always remember them.

Gerard and I stayed in the room to clean up, while everyone else organized themselves to leave. I began put away the paint and take away the sheets, while Gerard kept one shade of green out so he could add stems to the flowers and grass blades. He got to the purple handprints of Jasmine and I and smiled as he connected them to the earth on the painting. He worked away contentedly as I began to peel up newspapers. Jasmine had taken over the downstairs duties; she was seeing everyone out the door and then cleaning the kitchen, while Gerard and I stayed up here and sorted through the mess. I was exhausted, but so was everyone else involved and most conversations tapered off. I couldn't even imagine the position that Alexa and Mikey were in now, having to clean all their kids off now before shovelling them into bed. It was going to be a lazy day tomorrow for everyone, just to recover from all the energy and excitement. The party had gone well; it was definitely not like any other normal house party anyone had even been to, and Hilda had made sure to emphasize this point several times over. "Mission accomplished, you guys," she smiled and gave thumbs up as she left, and while I smiled and returned her gesture, I was relieved she was not staying the night.

I was peeling up one of the newspapers when something caught my attention. It was a large, what looked to be classified, but then when I looked closer, it was an obituary. I had picked it up because the person in the photo looked vaguely familiar. It was hard to tell with the grainy newsprint and the paint everywhere. But the name was still attached, and when I read it over, I nearly threw it across the room. It was Vera Nestor. I closed my eyes, thought of animal crackers and pottery, and how I would escape from Sam and Travis in her classroom afterschool. According to this paper, she, like Sam, was dead too.

" Fuck," I exclaimed.

"What's going on?" Alexa asked. She had been coming up the stairs to say goodnight to us separately, but now rushed over to me. I gave her the newspaper to read and she asked if I had known the woman.

"She was my high school art teacher. She used to talk to me after class. We... we just got along," I had wanted to include the part about eating animal crackers, but I held back. It made me feel foolish.

"Oh honey, I'm sorry," she oozed, and hugged me. Mikey appeared from the stairs as well, and overhearing the last bit of conversation, touched my shoulder. I was feeling better until Alexa, just like her, had to add. "I want you to feel better, but please be careful now. Deaths come in threes."

"No, they do not," Gerard called out from his painting job. He looked at me sympathetically, to say that he was with me, but not to worry. I nodded, but I did not keep my gaze long with him.

Lydia had now come up the stairs and Alexa turned to her, hoping to seek validation. Lydia had paused with her coat done up to the top button, her bag with her trashed clothing weighing down her one shoulder. She considered her options, looking from me to the mural, and then back again.

"She is right to say something about this. One death makes us start to pay attention to the others around us, so it makes it feel like they come in threes. One death affects us all. That is a simple fact." She waited, wondering if Gerard would counter her. He was painting, but from his unpleased expression on his face I could tell he was still listening. She went on. "It would be foolish of me to not consider death in my line of work. I bring life into the world, so I must be connected with when it goes out as well. I must."

"You're not going to tell me what there's this ultimate balance that we must uphold, are you? That one death will lead to one life being born? Because I can quote statistics that our population is rising. I don't think that argument holds any weight," Gerard quipped. He wasn't being mean, per se, he was testing her. He usually tried to avoid statistic, and medical facts, unless he could make them beautiful. He wanted to see what she would do with that challenge, if she could spin the same art from science. She smiled, because, in her own way, I saw that she was testing him too.

"No. I'm not going to tell you that. But we see what we want to see in this world, so a lot of the time, this balance appears to be what really happens. What I think is that there is a collective current of death that runs through each one of us. We all know someone who has died, and for that moment, we feel death too. It's a collective memory, something that we all share and tap into. We all have the same hurts, the same pains, and sorrows. But also the same joys as well. At least," she added, giving Gerard a small wink. "It feels that way to me. We all bleed and laugh."

He didn't have anything to say back to her; it was a good thing too, because she began to head for the door. Mikey and Alexa wanted to get going as well, so I said I would take them all downstairs.

"You all right, Gerard?" I asked before I headed down. He nodded and went back to his paintings. He was quiet, but he was not one to lie about his state, so I took his word for it and went down.

It felt like I would be hugging people forever and I was glad that Jasmine was no longer doing this alone. Callie and Dean left holding hands, Mikey and Alexa piled sleeping and paint covered children into a car, Vivian kissed me - something she had never done - as she left, and Noelle and Cassandra waved goodbye. Jasmine went outside to talk to Hilda some more before she took off on her bike, and I thought everyone else had left. I was about to go up the stairs when I realized that Lydia had been sitting in the kitchen. She rose when she saw me, and I realized she had been waiting this whole time.

"Did you need something?" I asked her. "We can call you a cab if you want?"

"No, I'm fine. I just wanted to thank you personally for a good time." She smiled. It was a rare thing, and I always forgot it until she did it. She smiled with her eyes, that was how I knew it was genuine. She spoke with her body, I realized. That was why she moved so slow, so deliberately. That was part of the communication. She went on, touching one of my hands. She was warm, as if energy was radiating through her. "You're a good man, Frank. Jasmine had told me you were and she tends to know truth, but I wanted to make sure of that. I am glad I came."

I smiled, feeling awkward under her words. She was being so forward, and we had not spent much time together this evening. But I would be going to those classes soon, I reminded myself. I had to get to know her. "Thank you."

"You know," she began again. "I meant what I said before. Alexa is discounted a lot of the time, and sometimes she should be. Clapping isn't going to solve anything. But, please do not discount me. Take care of one another, okay, Frank?"

I nodded, and promised her I would.

"Especially him," she added and motioned to the upstairs, where Gerard still was.

"Yeah, of course," I said right away. Why wouldn't I take care of Gerard? We had already promised it to one another, I didn't need anyone else to enforce that. My answered seemed to satisfy her now and she let go of my hand. She began to walk towards the door and then looked up at the doorframe and around some of the rooms, as if this was the first time she was really seeing the place. "This is a good house. Enjoy each other inside of it."

"Of course," was all I said back, still unsure of her underlying purpose. She smiled again, and that was it. She was gone.

Soon, Hilda got on her bike again and drove off and when Jasmine came back inside again, the house felt safe. Secure. Gerard wandered downstairs as well and we all breathed a sigh of relief. We were alone, and this place now felt like our house more than ever. Gerard moved over to where I was at the table, and touched my back to give me a comforting rub after the shock I had just had. We both ended up laughing because there was not a surface of one another we could touch that wasn't absolutely covered in paint.

"You look ridiculous," he said, and then kissed my nose. Jasmine walked over to us declared that no, she definitely looked the most ridiculous. She lifted up her dress to show her exposed belly and we all saw our handprints staring back at us.

"I hope this comes off or I will have a lot to explain to the ultrasound technician."

We laughed for a bit, and I put my hand over my print. Gerard did the same, and then Jasmine followed. We hugged, and draped our exhausted bodies against one another, taking a moment to relax. It had been a long night, and it still wasn't over yet. Now we had to clean up.

We put away what we could in the fridge, and put the dirty dishes in water to soak. It was pointless to even try and wash them, because we would just shed paint everywhere. It seemed like anyplace we moved, the powder stuff would fall off of us like dandruff or the acrylic would harden and then break away. We decided to take a shower to try and clean ourselves off first, before we even attempt anything else. We walked to my floor and shed our clothing in front of the mural. I was tempted to break out the paints again, to get paint on the rest of our bodies, but it was too late. We had used up too much energy with the actual painting itself. Instead, we shed our clothes and put our mouths where there was no paint, kissing the skin that had been ignored, making art in another form. Realizing we were still shedding our painted skin, we decided to move together and clean ourselves off.

Inside the bath tub with the shower nozzle, it was cramped, but it worked. At first, there had been no sexual intention in all of us getting into the shower together. We were there merely for another set of eyes. Jasmine had to help me get my face free of paint, and I washed her hair while she got the marks off Gerard's backs, and then he got ours. We would switch position with one another, going back and forth under the water stream or stuck at the back where it was colder. When all the paint was gone, we huddled our bodies together for warmth and then stepped out of the stream and dried one another off. I stepped down onto my knees as I dried Jasmine's legs and then Gerard's. I lingered with the towel between their inner thighs and I felt the urge to use my tongue and expunge the water from them that way.

I stood back from the two of them, and we all merely nodded. We remembered before, and wanted to preserve it. But his wasn't going to happen tonight, as much as we wanted it to. We stood and pressed our bodies together, now cleaned and renewed, before we headed out of the bathroom.

We stopped in front of the mural once again, gazing up at it. It was utterly fucking gorgeous and such a mess. I wanted to go around right then and begin to label who had done what, so that I would never forget, but I pushed the thought away. I knew, even then, that half the fun of this piece was going to be the act of remembering. If we could not do that, even in spite of our promises, we would create the story again. We would bring the people back and have them remember what they had done and what they had said and why they had done it that way. This was why we had made it a collaboration in the first place, so it could continue to be and always would be. This was our brightly colored and completely chaotic collective act of remembering - and forgetting.

We turned from the mural and looked at one another, feeling satisfied. We had done a lot of work tonight, and we were done. I touched the back of Jasmine neck and she smiled while Gerard kissed my forehead. We joined hands, and then, in a flurry of emotion, we ran into my bedroom like little kids. We laughed and kissed and jumped as we sprang through the doorway. We were so strong, so passionate, it was hard to fathom that anything could be wrong here. That there had been that dreadful feeling from before, the soucouyant. Maybe our painting and love making had gotten rid of it. Yeah, I told myself, stifling a giggle, that was probably it.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14