《Stories Weekly》Stories Weekly : LA PETENERA 2. The Flower's Tale
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The night grew thicker around the campfire, as Ansa readied himself for his story. Chivo, aside, panted and moaned like a crowd waiting for the actors to come on the stage. William Bolt remained quiet throughout, but glanced sometimes at Chivo in the dim firelight, and in that wavering light of the fire, his strange neigbour's image mingled sometimes with that of his goat - two horns grew from his forehead into the dark, and he seemed only half-human. Bolt shook his head to ward off the vision, and looked again at Ansa, who stared into the fire. 'I ...', he began, but stopped, and sighed. This hard, mute guide suddenly looked like a child almost, searching for a difficult word. Then he spoke very quickly. 'I'm not sure how to begin but I know that everything began with her beauty - that it is all about her beauty. Right, Chivo ?' Chivo nodded forcefully. 'She was not always beautiful. It happened to her. But she was always pretty, like a little girl can be, yes. In those times, blue was still her colour. She enchanted the village with her plays. I remember she had a way of walking that made everyone laugh except for her mother : you'd see her barge through the domain's door in large strides, waving her arms around, or she would lunge right in the middle of the adult's conversation and ask loud questions. She was full of life and surprises like a cat, and Kitty became her nickname all around. In her freedom, she did not know or care about the family's troubles. If her family had not been noble, they would have been rich - they owned a quarry, and from the white stone they made all their wealth, and cared for a domain, with servants and horses. But they were noble, and so their wealth paled near the vineyards and large stables of the other families. Kitty's father worked with the stonecutters. Her mother sometimes mended dresses. Often they dreamed about palaces. One day in her thirteenth year, Kitty’s door flung open as it always did. She was on her way to the forest nearby, the ancient evergreen forest always wet with dew, where fairies are found. But as she began to run, something hit her stomach and stopped her right in the hallway. She was bleeding for the first time. She went back to her room and locked the door. Her mother had taught her nothing. Even on that day she did not help her, averted her eyes - and instead prayed that she would not grow into a woman too soon. Her father, embarrassed, left her alone. This was that, and nothing else happened, and not a word was said. Her beauty grew more intense every day. Her large strides lost their childlike innocence. One would stare at the flowing robe to catch a glimpse of her leg. Her hair, always loose since early childhood, now provoked. Yet she refused to stand still, and tie her hair, and spend more time home away from the sun. The first incident came on the first day of that summer. Again she tried to reach her forest, to be alone and play. As she neared the wood's entrance, something grabbed her arm from behind. It was an old man from the village, whose days as stonecutter were long past. They were alone now and out of reach. He held on her arm while reciting in a shaky voice the old verses : You are as a sparrow, Walking up the hill With your hips swaying so ... She screamed. The woodcutters nearby heard it, and removed him from her - his belt loose already. He had done her no real harm ; she was shaking all the way home. Her father was a lord, but not a powerful one. When the old man's children argued for him on account of his madness, he let him go with a simple beating. Her daughter, on the other hand, was scolded, and grounded, barred from going to the forest ever again. Days and nights passed and nothing changed. She was asleep. She lived in grey, for the first time, and lost her smile. Summer passed, and Fall came with the wind. In the Fall, she began to notice a boy at her window. He would come by and, from a safe distance, watch her, scribbling on a piece of paper. Other times he would simply read - for he was a teacher's son and had access to his father's books. In her head she called her the reading boy, or the little poet. The boy had seen her once when she was walking with her mother to his village, just nearby. For weeks he had mustered his courage. Now he dared. And all his bravery was just this : looking at her, and writing poems about her, or pretending to write them, by her window. But she would not look back, not often enough, not nearly enough. After a while Kitty could not do anything without feeling his gaze one her. She went outside for the first time in weeks, just to avoid him. She opened her door - quietly - and went up the hill. But everywhere she turned, here he was in her footsteps, clumsily hiding behind white walls and orange trees. After a few hours of this, Kitty stopped, and stomped the ground, and turned back, facing him. She yelled at his red face some of the insults the stonecutters used. She walked up to him, eyes closed to focus on her voice, and shouted in his face. The little reader gasped in shock, and ran away, sobbing as he ran, holding his papers tight. But then ... then she took pity. There, you'll see who she was. She took pity, and followed the follower. She followed him from afar, up the trail that went to his village nearby. She hid behind walls and trees too - only he did not notice her, his sight blurred with tears. Right at the entrance of the village, the boy grew uneasy. He hid in the corners, and looked both way before entering a street. The sun cast hard shadows into which he stood until he felt it was safe to go. Then he stepped in the main road. On both sides, older boys appeared. They had knives and clubs, and looked straight at the boy. Closing in on him, they spoke words of honour, debt, and punishment. That was the usual language of violence in the country. It still is. Surely that little poet, clumsy as he was, had fallen prey to the older boy's games. When the band reached the boy, Kitty stepped in. Seeing her, they parted naturally as she walked right in the middle of their group. Most had never seen her, and admired her features. Her curls beat against her temples as she moved her gaze from one to the other. Then she began casting her stonecutter's curses. Her voice, though loud, shook with fear. She planted her feet into the ground and raised her small nose upwards, hands on her hips. to give herself an air of strength. She could not hear her own voice under the heartbeat. Yes, in the end she managed to repel them. None could hurt a woman - except for those cursed women who had no brother, father or husband. It was they that they feared, through Kitty - that unknown mass of grown men with knives coming at night to rob them from their beds and hang them. And so they fled, and the boy was protected, from then on, by enormous fear. I tell you this, to show you how much she hated violence. How far removed she was from the violence that grasped onto her like a shadow, as dark as her beauty was bright. From then on, the little reader fell hopelessly in love. * Kitty said goodbye, and ran back home. But when she opened the door to her room, there was a woman sitting in her bed. The strange woman looked at her and smiled. She was a gipsy, and wore rich Egyptian silks woven with suns and moons, gold and silver threads. There was red on her cheeks, and black kohl around the eyes. Bracelets, rings, and earrings rung when she moved. She saw Kitty, and gave her the smile that women give to girls. "You are very pretty. You will break hearts, you know ?" It was a common phrase of the region. Yet when she said it, in her neutral, slightly foreign accent, it seemed to be an omen, and the girl shivered. The door opened, and Kitty's father and mother appeared. They were anxious, as if their daughter, not knowing that she was sick, had just met her doctor. With unusually gentle voices, they invited the woman and Kitty to enter the father's study. Passing by the dining room Kitty noticed that all the servants, usually busy at this hour, were gone, and all the blinds closed. The house was empty and cold. 'Do you remember Ignacio ?', asked her mother. 'You have seen him sometimes, yes ?' The girl nodded. 'Oh he looks like a prince now. Father Anselmo is all praise about him. He is wise, and strong. They say he is the best of the families ...' Kitty's father, usually quiet when his wife spoke, interrupted. ' Yes. Honest, straightforward - a man as I like. And he is an heir to his family’s domain. 'Why do you talk about him ?' Kitty had understood. She had understood as soon as she had seen the gipsy woman, there to bless the coming alliance with a good omen. She hated how her parents spoke, as if she had to be comforted and eased into marriage. Even now her father stuttered to announce what must have been his plan for a year, if not more. 'His father and I have decided that you would marry. With your agreement of course ! But the lad is lovable. Handsome, intelligent. And you understand what it could mean for the family - how happy it would make your mother and I. But these things are outside of our control. And that is why we brought here Signora Sabicas - for guidance.' In the study there was, on a round table, a wheel with twelve spokes, a deck of cards, and threads of several colours - red, blue, and white. The parents and Signora Sabicas all sat, and Kitty's mother gently gestured towards a fourth chair. Kitty felt like the young horse that's driven into training for the first time. Soon, she thought, I'll feel the reins tighten around my mouth. Yet she sat. She loved her parents. Sabicas took out a wheel, divided by black lines into twelve sections - on each section was a strange symbol. She tied strings from one section to another, and then spun the wheel - once for every year of Kitty's life. After sixteen turns she stopped. The ropes had mingled together in strange shapes. "In your sixteenth year ... here." She drew some lines in red ink, and others in blue ink, following the tangled ropes, then removed the ropes, to leave a strange drawing of lines going from section to section, with a sun and a moon near the center. 'Everything changes here. When the sun crosses your House of love.' 'A mariage, certainly ! Is the mariage good ?', her mother cried out. The gipsy did not answer at first, but looked at Kitty, with a very slight, ironic smile. 'Do you know how much they pay me, poor girl ?' her eyes seemed to say. 'The mariage is excellent. But the wheel only reveals the House at stake, and the Moment of Opportunity. It's the cards that guide a soul through that time' 'Wait, what about the next year on your wheel ?' Now Kitty's mother, who always claim to hate witchery and strange practices, had grown excited and trusting - for it was wonders and miracles that made her faithful, and nothing else. Sabicas smiled at the mother's ignorance. 'I never reveal anything beyond the first year. That, we never do. But I see power, wealth, and much love around you, Kitty.' The cards were drawn. With the left hand only. There was much mystery there, and beautiful drawings on those long tarot cards. But Kitty did not care for what happened. Something had been bargained for and came to be, that was all. The cards again disclosed riches, power, and love - it did not matter to her. Yet is seemed that Sabicas, just before she left, told her one thing that her parents had not paid for. She knelt to her level, and looked into Kitty's eyes. 'What I revealed is not God's will, or your fate, but the opportunity that will come to pass. There is a door. What you do with it - that is yours to bear.' And then she left, and night arose. There was a silence that came to the house, for no one there could sleep, and the servants were gone. The parents in their apparent clumsiness still knew their daughter, had felt year after year the fire of her personnality growing, eclipsing even theirs, for they were tame, and secure in their small domain. If it weren't for sudden dreams of riches, if it weren't for the envy of their neighbours, they would have been at peace. Now they dared. And did not know what would happen. There was a timid knock on their door. 'Come in, Kitty.' Kitty came in. She saw her parents lying together as always, lit by their candles, each his own. She saw them as happy as ever, together. Against all the other voices inside her, screaming to her to run in the forest and never come back, she felt a hope, a small hope that she would also find that same togetherness in a shared bed, and that that would be a good life. 'I agree. I will meet with Ignacio'. Kitty's mother opened her arms, and her father let out his joy. Kitty climbed in the bed. When she felt their arms on her, all she could think about was the old man's hands, and her fear. * A year passed in anticipation. Kitty spent less and less time playing. Without the noise of friends, the street died. They too had grown. Even the little reader, absorbed in his studies, was hardly ever seen. Yet when he did appear, he always left on the windowsill a poem - and it always spoke of love and faraway places. Ashamed, Kitty’s father began a year-long comedy. Any difficulty at work became 'a curse' and 'a pain in his stomach', his clients were cruel, his workers ungrateful, and most of his evenings were spent in his study, bent over his desk or smoking by the window. Only when there was talk of the mariage, of his soon to be married daughter, was there a blaze of hope in his eye, and laughter at the diner table. Seeing this, Kitty's heart would warm again to the perspective of meeting Ignacio who, though he lived nearby, she had met but once. Of their meeting, little can be said. He was cold and distant, but not unkind. He seemed pleased to settle the matter of mariage, and to have a beautiful wife. He concealed his own fear behind that air he had learned from his father, when he watched him buy horses. 'Never let your face btray your excitement', he used to say, 'or the price doubles'. In a way, Ignacio's coldness comforted Kitty, who feared more than anything to be forced, kissed against her will, or loved with a false passion. They met quickly, with the families around them, and promised to each other on the spot. Yet in all this Kitty saw a possibility, that she dreamed maybe, of happiness with Ignacio. Over the years, it would maybe settle into a good thing. There she caught herself wondering about her sun and sky, and the truth of what Sabicas had predicted. News of the oncoming wedding spread quickly. It made boys and men sigh. 'The first beauty of the region is taken, lads !' 'Who's the most beautiful one after her ? Ah, the second in line is so far from the first ...' The news reached the little reader, who had never stopped reading and would, soon, enter his studies in Cordoba. From then on he changed. Nightmares haunted him ; he was seen walking about town at night like a stray dog ; he raved at the sky. He dreamed of her. He dreamed of taking her away, with the power of his love - and she would be glad o be taken away, and welcome her with open arms, she who entertained a secret love for him, as he for her, since the day when she saved him from certain death. Thus was the drama that filled his head. He wrote letters he never sent. He schemed an elopement, horses by her window, and a life in Madrid maybe. She looked for him in her window, she read the poems, and wondered, and hoped to be taken away, this was certain. The little reader was right, in a sense. She did look forward to seeing him, and reading his poems, for they were well-written, and she wanted someone, some friend in her life, to confide in. If he had only asked, he would have known. Yet it was in darkness that he made his love grow. Soon in his nights of revelry she appeared to him in visions, his lady of glory, setting the night afire, there to bring him upwards to heavens ... In his poems she appeared again and again an orange flower, a dove taking flight, burning candle whose flame, like the moth, he would catch, a golden key to a palace of many rooms, or a bolt of lightning. You should know that I have read these poems, since. I had met the man, once, and ate with him. He led the conversation on to honour, and the shortness of life. I asked him, what is the most important thing to him, saying that, to me, it was to abide by God’s will. He looked into my eyes, almost with pity, and softly said ‘God, God is a dream’. I was hurt and could not understand. I asked him what the most important thing was, then, to him. ‘Love’, he answered, so sweetly that he made me doubt my own choice. Doubtless, he was a kind, fascinating man, and whoever, up there, had chosen him for this role in our play had done well to choose him.’ There, Ansa spat in the fire. Chivo had been more or less quiet, except for the tale of the old man’s ambush, where he yelped and panted. Bolt could not believe his luck. The tale was already alive with all its details. Where was Ansa, himself, in all of this ? How many witnesses had he interrogated, how many years had he spent obsessed with this girl ? The work had been done for him entirely, he only had to take notes and his book would be ready. Ansa took a sip from his flask, and resumed his story, looking in the fire. ‘The eve of the wedding finally came. Here, I will relate something I do not believe - something I cannot believe. But the student, the little reader, when we interrogated him, repeated this tale again and again as if it was of great importance. He was tortured. I saw it. And still he held on to this thing as if it was the truth.’ Chivo almost growled with excitement there. ‘Oh, you still believe it was real, don’t you ?’, asked Ansa. ‘The truth entirely’, Chivo answered. ‘More certain of it I could not be’. ‘Then I will tell it as it was told by the man himself, on the night of his death. ‘It was midnight, on the eve of the wedding. The cowardly poet had let his plans of elopement wither. Now it would soon be too late. For weeks he had not even come to her window, for fear of being seen by one of Ignacio’s. But now the bottle had given him some measure of courage, and he decided to go to her, and take her away. A rare drizzle of rain had made the night glisten, but now no wind blew, and the stars hung above the black grass. The man reached the crossroad, where the trail parted in three smaller trails leading to the domains of the other families. There, in the middle of the crossroad, a merchant stood with his cart. Yes, at this hour. He was a merchant of flowers and those flowers he had woven in its hair, belt, and pockets. His cart was filled with deep-hued flowers from all the world, and though some were familiar to the poet, most were as strange to him, in shape and colours, as are chinese fireworks and the northern lights. The poet would have avoided this strange merchant, if not for that question he threw in the night. ’Do you love her ?!’ The poet froze, and turned to the man. ‘No man runs like you do, at this time, without love in his heart. And no man in love refuses a flower.’ The lover stood at a distance, and did not trust the man. ‘It is night. I have never seen you here.’, he said. ‘Night ? Where there is night now, there was day but a few hours ago, and there will be day on the morrow. The hours change, not the man. What you would buy from me then, you can buy now. What matters is : Do you love her ?’ The lover limped up to the merchant. ‘Yes’ he whispered. ‘Ah ! A good man, lover’s champion, good. Are your intentions pure ?’ The wretched poet did not hesitate for one moment. ‘Yes.’ ‘Even better. Sorry I asked - but one cannot be sure of anything these days. Let me see ... white wouldn’t do no ... and a rose if far too common for the one you love ...’ ‘You speak as if you know her’ ‘Ah, but I know her through you. Here. These three, together, these are the ones you seek. With these her love will come to you. This, I swear.’ The lover reached for his purse. ‘Pay me ? At this hour ? No. Marry the girl. Invite me to the wedding, and let me preside over a table. That would be payment enough.’ Something in the air that night - that is what the lover said when he was tortured - made him believe that there was more at play than a merchant making up tales to sell flowers. Some strange magic in the night, some power in this man. When he took the flowers - three simple paeonias, pink and white - he felt certain of his plan, he saw again his Lady with opened arms, and for the first time felt true courage. He would save him from them as she saved him. The poet took the trail to her family’s domain. When he stopped and turned to the crossroad again, to thank the merchant, he was gone, with his cart and his lantern.’
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