The third. The sun sneezed.
The train from Frankfurt, where I had the seat number thirteen, didn’t come to the station in Strasbourg. The announcement of the train approaching gleamed several times on the board and disappeared. Where the train had gone is still unknown. Among those who were really interested in this was the one who was vainly waiting for me on the empty platform and me, myself.
I probably stayed in the world because I was peacefully going to Strasbourg by bus at that time. Now I can confess, back then I simply had forgotten that I had to transfer from plane to train according to the tickets. I went habitually to the bus as I’m used to doing for thirteen years. But I still cannot explain why my last name was enrolled in the list of expected passengers in the bus driver’s laptop. And he, an old friend, nodded at me: “Bonjour, I haven’t seen you for a month! Take your seat and give me my hat”. Don’t ask me… Where had my train gone? Was I in its compartment? Where had I gone in its seventh wagon, seat number thirteen? Who was I? Where am I now? I didn’t go mad. It happens since the time when I nearly got drowned.
The sky in those times was utterly high and it was supported by the immense trees to prevent it from spattering on the people’s heads. Forest flowers gathered above my head, crystal and emerald silently plashed in the rivers. My mother went swimming in these clear waters at the dawn and then she washed clothes in the tub which she brought in the basket. In such a stem weaved basket which was called, who knows why, “kosholka”. I was sitting nearby, observing fat fish which glared at me on its turn. Soon, I stretched my arms towards them and touched their silver salient sides. Thin stems of tape grass and kelp waggled around me, hornworts rushed upwards. Sun disk was blurred through the water thickness and resembled a curly sunflower head and mum’s head was a little bit wavy – it waggled near the sun. Mother disturbed my sun from the top, flapping in the water white linen, the fish got scared, scattered and then returned to me. All of a sudden all this beauty mixed, bubbled, foamed – everything was destroyed, I was caught and dragged upwards. Mother held me, wet, and cried: “How couldn’t I see! God, how couldn’t I see!”
And then we went home. Mother sobbed from time to time.
And I thought – hmm what exactly the girl had been dragged from the bottom. Why? Who am I now? And who is left with my fish there and who will take care of them and read their stories on the thin fish lips which murmured soundlessly?
Later on, I’d learnt swimming but, for some reason, under the water. On the water, it didn’t work out on a spot…
That’s it. Who of us and how had arrived in Strasbourg this time – unknown. And dived into its waters. The Ill river flows hectically. From the bird’s flight it’s muddy and heavy, but inside it’s warm, soft and pleasant. People are the same. When you look closely at them you see through this muddy cover how they amuse with their fishes which tickle their hearts.
From the inside, all people are the same – warm. They have to constantly refill the reserves of joy and fun because these volatile substances evaporate instantly. When empty, people become spiky, cover with poisonous swellings, they have fangs – be ready for the tribulation, war, epidemic, flood or fire or a simple nasty row. And you can’t but put out the fire with something exceptionally happy and beautiful or with music and dance. So, talking about calm and happiness, raise from the bottom, carefully moving the fins not to disturb the silt.
From the bank, through the open doors, I saw a big dark-skinned lady who was eating a big cake with a big spoon and laughing all the time. Next to the table a tall old man was sitting and giggling, chucking, trying to hold with his both hands a cup, in which the cocoa threatened to overflow its banks and splash his white collar. The old man was amused by this even more than by that one who made jokes at the very beginning – a Chinese barman. He jumped between the tables, pretending to be a monkey, screamed a song into an empty glass as into microphone, served ordered dishes and only once brought a mug of beer to an old lady instead of the cup of tea. And lightning fast, having sung quint septacord, he grabbed the mug from her white parchment hands and replaced it with the cup, so she couldn’t even spot it.
Dancing two-step, he jumped past me to the kitchen. But I didn’t call him because just from my place a big procession of women with drums was well seen. They were all of the different colour, small and bigger. The woman in her finest feather pushed the most prominent drum in front of her, harsher than her, almost of her height. The woman had to beat its head with a sledgehammer which he held in a dough hand moving it to keep the balance while walking along the street. It seemed that they were swimming crawl with a drum. I left those three dying from laughter – at least not the worst option to end up – and joined this drum gang. They were headed by the guy who looked like a red cat. He wagged his moustache as if chasing a mouse. He led them somewhere where they would stop and with a swing of their sticks blow the mind of the whole city out.
But the most status place on the square was occupied. Women with their leader stepped aside respectfully under the huge tree to wait for this touching choir to stop its singing. On the stairs of the city hall, people stood as if they had been gathered here for the first time and by accident.
An accidental old lady in the tights with purple dahlias was insecure in them as if the wind ripped off her skirt and she did nothing but tilt her head with sparse hairs back, squinting, sing her “la bémol” as if she didn’t notice anything.
Next to her – a plump Korean in a cheap checked shirt that wasn’t fit on his stomach and that’s why he’s hiding this embarrassing moment with a sheet music.
On the other side a girl-goth in black, tens of piercings in her black lip.
Don’t understand how she had sung her smooth note with this perforated mouth.
She’s bony, perhaps, she didn’t eat anything in public because those piercings would stick in each fork and this noise would make everyone mad. But you couldn’t call her a sociopath – the goth stood voluntarily in this group and watched the diligent attentively. That was a middle-aged elegant man in a lilac cashmere pullover, nice and enlightened from the first glance, perhaps pleasant to touch like that cashmere (the goth seemed to be thinking about this tensely). The dirigent smiled sunnily to his group and made his hypnotic movements of the hand better than a psychiatrist. And these voices twisted in a transparent fabric. The happy voices… Especially the old man’s voice who looked like a goat in a washed out bandana – he was peeping into the sheet music of his pale neighbour-nymph in a transparent dress-tulle under which it seemed that she didn’t exist or she was transparent as well.
Suddenly a teenager with a huge backpack cycled past me and crossed out the picture painted above. His backpack pulsated with a monotonous rhythm as if something had broken inside. Maybe it was an old tape recorder taken from the ancestors. The boy cycled on the way to the place where something was happening what could be taken as a code of happiness in this Strasbourg comics about happiness.
“Yolia yosaba voliba makashi. Yolia yosaba boliba makashi”, was heard there to the sound of the tom-toms.
Five Africans weaved with bright feather and rags somehow gathered all loners from this block. Loners looked like absolute albinos on the background of these powerful leaders – someone hastily painted oneself, especially a woman in ripped jeans, obviously in her mid-fifties, stuck in the rebel youth.
She painted wild pattern on her cheeks and tightened long grey hair with a rope – and wildly twitched her body along the “Yolia yosaba voliba makashi” being inside the body of the African panther in her mind. That panther, a friend of leaders, came out of the entrance, saw such a mess – gave a fluttered look, twisted the body with her scarf, as a bandage at home, sighed like a hot stove – and… And then I have to think well how to describe this lustful soft and carnal movement of its gigantic springy hips… Maybe the words won’t express this… I think that from this movement children appear in the world on their own without any other influence.
A man in a wheelchair-throne had been drinking a beverage from a big bottle, on the look at her, froze with a bottle half-way to his mouth. His head was near to fall – the way he was dancing. The beverage was pouring on the humble and dissatisfied dog tied to the chair. And here the tired wife of a disabled man, as well, apparently, stuck in this composition for a lifetime, suddenly quietly took a step, adjusted to that, in the tattered pants, and convulsively vibrated along with her, as if she jumped out into another dimension.
Let the scientist talk about another dimension. I put a full stop. The end. No. “The happy end”.
This time I came back to the train. Seat number thirteen. Wagon number seven.
The bus driver took away his hat from my seat. And someone sat.
In the Ile river, something splashed gently. In a distant river, fat fish pinched tape grass. And then receded upwards to tickle the blurred sunflower. The sun sneezed.
Olga Gerasymyuk