They are supposed to be creating an appraisal of Hopkins’ The Leaden Echo. Some actually look like they are thinking. Supply teacher Miss Alba, at someone’s service, staring blankly, slow motion, at this class of seventeen year olds, at closer inspection, you might notice, staring at one of the class of seventeen year olds in particular, at The Pretty Girl. Miss Alba, at your service, daydreaming through the tired hours.
A May sun shines through the windows onto the faces and chests of girls struggling with the concept of ageing when they are still young enough to know they are ageless, immortal, still young enough not to even care about the decadence of beauty, The Beauty of Decadence. Who can blame them, really? I stare, surreptitiously I hope, at The Pretty Girl. Jone. Jone Johnson does think. I can see it in her eyes, fluttering, trembling eyelashes. I can see it in the way she moves. I can see the concentration written on her face. I face the group. The Pretty Girl is over there on my left, about fifteen feet away. Shadows add contours to the breathing swell of her adolescent breasts under the loose u shape of her low cut top wide on her shoulders. Shadows on breasts and as she writes and moves her left arm, without giving conscious thought to the movement, under her breasts, parallel to the edge of the desk, to tickle a rib or ease an elastic or metal support from an uncomfortable place, so her breasts change shape, swelling slightly under a silky black bra. I can trace the lacy top edge curving, nothing changes too much really, though I amplify this delicacy I daydream of touching to animate my future nostalgia for this all too brief moment.
So, from a prudent distance, I hope, I dreamt my fingers on those curves, I dreamt them where the curve of her breast lifts the silvery black strap of her bra from her skin until it flows over her collarbone, her right collarbone, it shines, strap and its shadow on skin slightly shivering, slightly trembling and so light from the window in front of her behind my back plays across her chest, over the swell of her breasts breathing lifts and darkens then lightens the shadow and I daydream of tracing the route of that shadow with my tongue down to the faintly lighter, more diffused shadow cast by the low neckline of her summer top these shadows a sweet curve across her right breast, umbra and penumbra sweep gently up to the dark line cast by strap at radiant collarbone waterfall a young and delicate mole to provide a modicum of surface reference, Ophelia slowly surfacing in the midst of an ocean to sing above the highlight of her right collarbone another mole a little to the right as I watch enraptured, on her neck, and I daydream my finger on it, my tongue licking away the tears I cry on her shoulder, ear on her breast hearing her heartbeat and I dream of drowning in her umbra and penumbra, and I scream and rant and sob and curse that perfect skin, these perfect shadows, this perfect musky scented flesh, this perfect concentration, this perfect thought, because so much beauty has such a short lifespan. I curse myself hoarse, but, of course, in my daydream, so, from a prudent distance I undress beauty, I daydream of the beast in me, who slowly pushes a fine kitchen knife into her breast, heartbeat boom boom, front door between her ribs, boom boom to say hello to her heart. Aüstein messer rostfrei, not the most direct route, true, but the most picturesque, I daydream the kind of thought you have when something dear is so near but yet, for ninety nine point nine percent of the human virus, so illicit. I daydream the kind of thought you daydream when you are living an instant of perfect ennui in this tired universe.
Peter put the book he had just finished reading down on the bedside table, sat up in bed and leaned across his sleeping girlfriend, who, irony of the moment, was called Alba too, to Alba’s table and picked up a pencil, Jone’s pencil. He then took up the paperback again, opened it and wrote a note, as was his custom, on the back of the embossed cover. “Page 109- on beauty, on an obsession with beauty” was added to, “Page 59- youth/humanity i.e. The human VIRUS”, was added to, “Page 62-72- ecstasy/language, the body as vehicle.”
I lay down in bed with the closed book on my chest and the room was screamingly grey and tatty and ordinary for that instant of adjustment from book to real life and it was just at that realization that I, me, Peter, understood that no book, no film, nor any other artistic creation was any more interesting than the world I lived in, but just more creatively described than any tale I could ever aspire to put into words or images “....in this tired universe.”
No comments:
Post a Comment