La Dame sans Camellias 5

ravijojla (53)in #experience • 6 years ago (edited)

Part Five:// White beginnings...happy endings?!

She had found the soft settle down of her body to her taste. It had reminded of the hard ploughing under the coarse palms of the country folk, the golden cropping of the young bride whose small child had been swayed in the tree crown above her head in the tied with rough strings woolen hammock, gently following the wind in the wheat fields. In more poetic days this settling had emerged like the meerschaum…ah, Lorelai…that slowly had been withdrawing from the surface of the wave, unaware of the dull pain after hitting the reefs…every time.

Of course, all this had to happen on full moon light only. She had kneaded the bread...with the flour from somebody else fields. Such a bread had to bear the taste laid in other soils. Not the ones in her land.

In the autumn the land had the warm ocher tint, and the soil had been crumbly. Beneath the first cooler raindrops, the clods had not gone dark black yet. In some of those dry county summers, these very fields had been unrecognizable in their ash burn colour and furrowed with tiny shallow cobwebs of dry cracks calling distinctively an old woman’s wrinkles to view. Arid, shriveled and unwatery awaiting revival in rain or quiet and calm death, inbred in desert wilderness before it turned into fine and dusty sand.

The fields had been plane and the rain might had not fallen yet. Last year the summer had been fresh and cool, the fish had prayed and the rains fell over the bathed wheat, young and green it swayed in a wide and endless sea on the weak wind. Gazing at this vast and dancing sea, and at the full corn tops of the crop, the reaching high tops of the empty ones made the wheat look like a field of men. The clever ones walking silently through life with their heavy mindful heads down and the lighter ones touching the skies with their foreheads, left on the wind to swirl them down their way. Thus the wheat resembled men and the men reminded of the vast wheat field from where the bread had to be baked.

Croppers

Those dog-days sun had been merciless to every blade of grass that had been dried, covered in smoked brown and faded in shrinking. The wells, then had past already lost their cold waters and the people had been thinking more and more about the local rituals to call the rain.

…The Butterfly dance hugged the air in its sad festiveness and bare feet girls in white robes of Slav priestess danced away a prayer for the rain. Dry county days. Non breathing nights.

And after all the bread – freshly baked. In a while the house would had filled up to the roof with the smell of any Come in, we are open! bakery from Provence to South Italy passing by the Mitropolias to sprinkle the thick scent of a French croissant morning. Smiling and kind to all new comers. Mia had been seated weary at the staircase to have her first sup of coffee and perhaps lit one of her 120‘s cigarettes. It all had looked like an early summer at the beginning of February. The snow had just started to melt and with somewhat enormous displeasure, and in a couple of turns the winter had to slightly stepped aside and drift to some other Where letting warmer days in.

"Maria-aaaa" a continuous voice had come down the bottom of the second floor of the house, in drawling and still sleepy manner – precisely right for the 8 o’clock in the morning. „Aaah, granny! Never getting my name right, but anyway...“ the young woman moved a lock of fallen over her eyes hair with a single blow of her mouth and had picked the thought of seeing the hairdresser from the floor of her mind. Mia had wiped hands in her rarely used apron and called back as in a habit "Coming." „Come up for a coffee, if you hadn't one yet. I had lighted the fire already...“, granny Rakica's words had rolled downstairs and hit the „Maria“ that she had become once she had started to live in this house. „Quite all right!“ and she had thought that her mother had to completely disagree with this charade of names, remembering the funny story back in the days of her birth. "Mom would not be pleased, mom loves my name." If to be the last who liked it.

Both Mia’s grandmothers had the same Cvetana name by accident. Both of them, in each time of their own, had recommended to her mother to give her child the name Cvetelina obviously being quite proud of their names. It had been only because of Mia's mother stubbornness that the Vrabnica red letter had not been a probable name day. Back in her childhood days Mia had been living with the sad notion that she had been the last on this Earth who had not had a name day. It had felt like they had forgotten to take her home from the nursery. Not fair at all with the countless children in her school who had constantly been bringing all kind of sweets and juices to celebrate their name days.

The sound irreconcilability to the abundance of iniquities in life had come across Mia's path when she had been introduced to Grandpa Grantzy. He used to be one of Mia's mom patients. They used to pay a visit every weekend and Aunt Pavla would had already served classy desserts and some tea. In Mia's memories these visits had been equal to the tea ceremonies at the Queen, when they would serve cheese and cucumber sandwiches along the refreshing black tea.

The old house had made the perfect mise-en-scene for the guests. Grandpa Grantzy had been from the financial world of his time, in a possession of vast library, where not even a book had contained the word Grandmother to be embroidered on his wife’s lapels. And this word had been disparingly skipped in Aunt Pavla’s society of housewives with always arranged hair, neatly polished nails and light make-up, set to look a part with the robe they would wear at home. Alike the body itself that had the home robe on, the carpets in the house had been as thick and fleecy as they had insisted to invite the feet to sink completely being the first thing to be done when stepping on them.

The library had taken major part of the living room, the thick curtains had been there not to allow street dust and noises to disturb the repose ruling over the shelves and the leather covered books all in good condition to the very last of them. It had been in one of those books of distant publishing date on the top, that the good old men, gone long time now, had succeeded to find Mia’s name day. The day had been of those March had taken out from its sleeves shuffled and laid in front of the amused faces of the crowd that had already grown along with piercing frosty wind and ice.

Antique books

The scent outside had been fresh and played with the birds’ chirping spreading cheerful mirth over the town’s church domes. The Danube had been carrying along the heavy snow from many countries as a tail on his flow. The white sheets had been given out for everybody to make their brand new landscapes. That day tea and sweets had been served for the guests. The doorbell had rung and the air introduced Grandpa Grantzy’s goddaughter Maria and her mother into the room. They had brought a box of the special name day’s edition chocolates and Mia had sunk in sore thoughts on the matter and how it had been possible at all that such a life inequity had remained unnoticed, where life inequities had been supposed to be remarked for mending.

„You are not allowed to frown, my dear. Come on, cast a smile of yours that make the dimples glow on your cheeks to make yo so beautiful.“The old man had put the palm of his hand running down Mia's head and heard her silent voice. „I don't have a name day.“ And if it hadn't happen soon that somebody had appeared and found one for her, if not – to invent one for her Mia might had fallen to peaces and burst in tears. „Aham, but such disgrace is quite impossible, you see. You have one, of course – give me some time to see when this day of yours fall to this year's calendar.“ Grandpa Grantzy had taken his steps to the higher shelves, with his fingers placed thoughtfully on his chin he had reached out his right hand for a brown leather book in metal edges. “Here is for us to look in“ he had humbled in his beard. He had grown back to the time of his younger days, stopped somewhere at his mid 50's, his hair had returned its natural color and looked longer now to flatter the posture of a knight of the Arthur's round table, Mia had read about in the foreign languages class. Here it is! a sharp thunder like voice had torn the curtain in the hall. He had to be a knight after all. Mia's face had been glimmering under hundred beautiful suns as the old men said: My fair lady, your name day is on the 22 of July every year ever since the beginning of time and calendars. The day of Mary Magdalene. The sweet Mary.“

The old man had been smiling triumphantly over the pages and over his invisible enemy, who had locked people's name days until the day old Grandpa Grantzy's finger hadn't pierced the line in the book as if St. George himself had pierced the heart of the dragon... The sound of some church bell had shaken the domes and brought Mia back to present days. This place had been entirely new to her. Secrets had been tucked not yet revealed in almost every street. Possibilities and chances had been introduced to her with the flick of a major-domo’s wrist – kind smiles here and there, glances and hidden desires of the flesh. Pleasant and boring at the same time. But of course, she had been the new face to this town and they both had grown certain interest toward each other. Mia and this place. She had gone upstairs for another cup of coffee at the fireplace.