And at last, all that is left in my mind is an image of myself, sitting at a table before a vase of flowers. And the flowers seem to grow larger in my head and I can see their colours vividly – the dripping scarlet of the poppies, the wild gold of the dandelions – and then I feel a confusion, and I shift my gaze from the flowers to the table.
And then I glance around the kitchen and I think, I should put some fresh water in these flowers. They have been standing for days now.
And I stand up from the chair and I go over to the kitchen window and look out over the garden for Angela.
PART THREE
25
I remember, I say, and yet I forget.
I remember that once I was a flower, that once I was a drop of water in the river, that once I was the black soil on which I tread, that once the entire world was me, and then it fades. I forget. I forget.
This is how it must be, says the river. This is why you have come to me. You cannot carry the memories. Throw me your past. Throw me the flowers that you have picked and I will carry them away. You will be just a girl.
I am just a girl.
It is all you need to be.
I throw the flowers into the river, one by one. One by one they are carried away, dipping below the surface and up again, drifting downstream with the current until my hands are empty and the surface of the river is clear.
Throw me your flowers. Throw me your memories. Throw me your past. Throw me your sorrows and I will carry them away.
My hands are empty.
Your hands should always be empty. My waters are always clear. Whatever is given to me, I release. If you hold on to the memories of what you were, you will become something that you are not.
I don’t know what I am.
That is even more reason to hold on to nothing.
And what are you?
I am a river. I am eternal droplets of water. I am always changing and always constant. I can dry up and disappear and then be recreated from rain and continue on my path. I move forward.
And what am I?
You are the souls of all women. You are the world itself.
I am a girl.
You are every girl who has ever lived and ever will live.
Is that why I cannot understand?
You cannot understand because you do not see what is around you. You see only memories. Your world is full of shadows.
I was not always so sad.
You will not be when you wake up.
When will that be?
When you choose to.
I think I could be happy here. But the darkness...
That is why you have come to me. Release it all to me. Imagine it. Hold it. Release it.
I close my eyes, and all the souls of all women of all time are here with me. A cloud of laughter and movement, of yellow sunlight and grey tears. Let them be flowers, I think, and my arms are full of blossoms of all possible kinds – lilies, sunflowers, poppies, daisies, tulips, roses, lilac – and a flood of scent is all around me. There are so many flowers, I can barely hold them. I breathe in and I am carried into a cloud of memories all at once, into a millennia of lives, a perpetuity of the repeated circles of all women, creating and loving, receiving and desiring, remembering and sharing and dying.
Release them!
I take tiny steps to the edge of the river, bent down under the weight of the blossoms, and I lift the flowers up in my arms and throw them as far as I can into the water. They touch the surface of the river and spread out, covering the clearness with their bright colours. I feel an incredible desire to throw myself into the river after them, to disappear with them, but the river stops me.
This is not your path.
Let me go! I want to disappear! I want to be another voice among their voices! I want to disappear into the oblivion of all their memories.
Your voice is the only one now. You can open your eyes. You have seen what all the others are. You are alone.
I stand where I was, on the very edge of the river, my feet ready to lift me up and take me into the water.
It would be over, I say. It would be over. What a joy! There would be no need to go back, no need to return to a darkness that I did not create.
But you did create it, the river replies. It is your own darkness that awaits you. That is why you have to go back.
How can I do that? Why me, here, now? I could float away with the others. A single red flower.
I will not take you, says the river. You cannot go to the place where they are going. You have not lived your life.
I am a girl. I have lived.
Everything is ahead of you. You have an entire world to create.
I forget it.
I will remind you.
How?
Every time you come here, I will be waiting for you. Your mother will be here. Everything will remind you.
And when I have finished?
Then you can leave.
You give me your word?
I will take you there myself. When you have finished, I will take you anywhere you desire. I will take you to the others.
I would like that.
You can wake up now.
Yes, but first, wait. Let me forget. I am forgetting.
26
The night is clear above the white river and the moon, as always incomplete and always radiant, pours down her tears into the moving water. The river, always tears and always moonlight, accepts, moves, transforms. She is a white snake, coiling herself sensually across the black fields, waiting for her time.
This land is my body. In my hair are woven stars. This is my time, second after second. These are the moments of my childhood measured in tears of moonlight. In every way I know who I am, always a child and always here, the water of the river flowing through me and carrying everything that I am on, on, on.
Grandmother above pours down the light of the stars onto her daughter, whom she thinks she has failed. Lyuda, dreaming, sees before her a tunnel of silver leading out from the invisible walls of her sorrow. She struggles to stay in the darkness but her soul drifts easily into the passage and she moves in flowing starlight towards an opening ahead. As she steps out of the tunnel, her mother is there, arms open to receive her. Lyuda moves into her embrace. She is naked without her shadows; vulnerable, unsure, childlike. Grandmother wraps her green branches around her.
“I did not mean to fail you,” she says, stroking her daughter’s head. A star falls from Lyuda’s hair and dissolves into the darkness around them. “I thought that you could find the way on your own.”
Lyuda smiles. “It is a dream,” she says. “A beautiful dream. Mother is here. I am so light, the air is so light.”
She wakes up.
T
A soft kiss on my forehead. Mother’s lips. Her hair hangs forward as she leans over me, and when I open my eyes I am in a cave of her falling hair, lit on each side by the sunshine coming through the window; a cavern of gold all around my face. I feel a rush of happiness, safety, love.
“Angela, little one,” Mother says. She is bending over me. Her pale brown eyes are looking into mine. She reaches down and kisses me gently on each cheek and then on the forehead. With her lips, and then with her warm fingers, she is wiping tears from my face.
“My little swallow,” she says. “Time to wake up.”
The cavern of gold shimmers around me and then Mother straightens up from over my bed and the cavern is gone. The sunshine from the window streams into my eyes and I feel again a rush of happiness.
“Mama!” I say. “I had a beautiful dream.”
“I know you were dreaming,” she says. Her voice is soft. “You were crying. That’s why I came to you. I woke you when you started crying.”
“But it was beautiful.”
“Sometimes it is like that.”
“I’ve forgotten what I was dreaming.”
“It’s gone now, little one. And it’s a lovely morning. Come and put some crumbs out for the bird.
And come and have breakfast. I’m making a picnic lunch so we can go to the woods. Or wherever you want.”
She walks to the bedroom door and from the doorframe she stops and looks back at me and smiles. Then she turns and goes into the kitchen.
The room is full of her love. It is such a warm, safe feeling that I don’t want to move. I lie with Mama’s kisses on my face and the golden trail of her hair where it touched my skin and the smell of her clean dress and I cannot imagine anything more lovely than how I am feeling now. I can hear Mama moving about in the kitchen, opening drawers and cupboards. I hear her pouring milk into a saucepan for the kasha, the porridge. I know that I could call to her right now and she would answer me. I could call out “Mamochka!” and she would come back into the doorway and smile at me again. Mamochka!
“It is time to get up,” I say to myself. I slide my legs to the edge of the bed and touch the floor with my toes. I stand up. The room is filled with flowers.
T
Grandmother sees me dancing along the riverbank towards her in the early sunshine, out of the glade of silver birch trees. I wave at her and then turn a pirouette, my white dress twirling around my body. I have picked a twig of silver birch covered in bright green leaves and I wave it in front of me as if I am bringing in the morning. The leaves catch the first pale rays of sunlight and hold them.
My body catches the first pale rays of sunlight and holds that light.
“Grandmother! Mama has come back!” I call across the river.
“She was drawn back by the rope,” she replies. “Her love for you wove into new strands and carried her here.”
A doubt comes to me.
“Has the rope grown back again?”
“The old strands are starting to come together,” Grandmother says. “But it has changed. There is hope. Your mother has seen there are different paths. She has understood the happiness that you bring. If she fights, then she can weave that happiness into the rope.”
“What can I do to help her?”
“Show her your world. Right now she is open to all the choices. Show her your world and perhaps she will understand it.”
“Yes, Grandmother, yes! I will try.”
Grandmother reaches out to her granddaughter, and she touches her head with the dry twigs of her fingers.
“Little swallow,” she says. “Beloved child.”
T
In the kitchen, Mother is stirring semolina in a room filled with sunshine. She turns off the stove and puts the wooden spoon down next to the pan. She picks up a jar of sour cream standing near the window, holds it up to the sunlight, and then pours it into the semolina.
The light catches the bright leaves of my birch twig and catches the white cream falling from the jar into the saucepan. Mother looks out of the morning window and remembers a little girl dancing in a summer dress and remembers herself with a red tulip and a mother weeping.
She smiles.
“Not any more,” she says, and she picks up her wooden spoon and stirs the cream.
T
Blink! My black eyes blink. The smell has changed again. The air is thick again. Heavy, not growing. Summer. I blink. I glance around over the edge of my nest. The same. Leaves, light, twigs, insects flying. Below, red flowers; around me, white flowers. Only the air has changed. It is better. It is like it used to be.
I hop up onto the edge of the nest. I glance back, turn my head around. Yes. My nest. I open my wings and concentrate, to sense where my flock is. They are here – I feel them all. They are close. It is time to find a mate. My nest is here. I am ready for a mate. I stretch out my wings as far as they will go and call out in a high, trilling song. A bird answers me – she is willing. I lift up from among the white flowers and I fly towards her call, through the familiar, insect-filled air to where she is waiting.
27
Lyuda finishes washing the dishes and hangs up the drying cloth on the small peg above the stove. She has cleaned the kitchen and the wooden chairs are balanced upside down on the table, next to a pile of clothes to be mended and a painted sewing box. The wet floor shines from mopping. Along the back wall is a row of plastic bowls and buckets, filled with water drawn from the well. She wipes her hands on her clean apron and looks critically around the kitchen. She nods.
“It hasn’t been this clean since Mama was alive,” she says to herself.
She goes out onto the kitchen step and looks down into her garden. The lilac is still in bloom, but fading now into cones of pale brown. A bed of sky-blue periwinkle flowers has sprung up near the gate. The grasses need to be cut down.
Over the fence, she sees Kolya bent over, digging next to his shed at the bottom of the garden. He glances up and raises his hand in salute.
Taking the garden fork to the potato patch, Lyuda digs for the new potatoes, wriggling the prongs until she can feel the roots catching. She gathers a pile of the black, oval shapes and then scoops them into her apron.
At the top of the garden, Kolya is waiting for her by the fence.
“Lyudmilla Hrihorivna.”
“Kolya.”
“You’re looking very pretty today.”
Lyuda looks down at her apron full of potatoes. She waves the fork at him. “Kolya, I’m busy.”
“I brought you something.”
“I don’t need anything.”
“I didn’t say you needed something.” Kolya coughs, and runs his fingers through his hair. He bends down and brings a long, dead rabbit up from behind the fence, clasping it by its feet with his red-knuckled hands. He holds it up for her to see.
“Look!” he says. “It’s the biggest one I’ve got. I killed it this morning. It’s a present.”
Lyuda looks at the rabbit dangling from his hands. It has become a joke between them, over the years; Kolya offering her rabbits and words of advice and help with the house and garden. And all she has taken has been the bottles of samohon.
She thinks of all the other things that have been offered to her. The times when Sveta tried to come and talk. The friends of her mother’s from the village. Her friends from school. She refused everything. It was easier to say no than to tell them about the place she was in; the fog of darkness that was pulling her always down, down, down. The fact that she had to struggle to take every breath, so that the darkness would not carry her into itself. The fact that every day just waking and cooking and making sure that Angela was alive was the most appalling struggle. She hadn’t been able to accept any of their help.
But now, something is different. She sees the kindness in Kolya’s eyes. He has brought her this rabbit. It is a gift.
She looks at him, the rabbit in his hands. His sunburned, lined face. The silver bristles.
“You were a friend of my mother?” she asks.
Kolya nods towards the garden.
“I used to play under that tree with your mother,” he says, “when we were your little girl’s age. She was my friend. Zorya. Your grandfather didn’t like me much, though.” He chuckles, showing gold teeth. He holds out the rabbit again.
“Take it, Lyudichka. Take it. It’s only a rabbit.”
Lyuda feels something pulling inside her. She resists it. She looks at the rabbit. She struggles for a moment, and then sets her face. She nods.
“Yes,” she says. “It would be perfect for Angela. I can cook it tonight.”
Kolya passes the rabbit over the fence and she grasps it in the middle. She lays it on top of the potatoes and strokes the grey fur with one finger. Her hand is shaking.
“Your mother used to keep rabbits, you know?” says Kolya. He coughs again. “I could repair those old cages of yours.” He nods towards the pile of rusted hutches stacked against the side of the outhouse. “It would only take an afternoon. I’d have them ready for you. Help you get started with the rabbits. Your girl would like it.”
Lyuda turns to the hutches. “I remember. I could keep them again. It would be easy, wouldn’t it?”
“Of course it wou
ld.”
“And you could help me repair the hutches? They might need new wire.”
“If I can’t, I’ll build you some new ones. Give you my word on it. Next thing, you’ll be keeping chickens and a goat. Find a new man while you’re at it.” He turns his head to the side, draws phlegm into his mouth and spits onto the ground.
Lyuda looks again at the rabbit in her apron. She shakes her head.
“Kolya, thank you. I’m going to go and marinate it.”
She turns towards the kitchen.
“I’ll leave some samohon for you later,” Kolya calls after her. He scratches his chin with one hand and watches as she goes into the house, and then he turns and starts walking back down the garden to his shed and his spade.
In the kitchen, Lyuda lays the rabbit down on the table and tips the potatoes from her apron into a plastic bowl. She lifts a water container onto the sideboard and washes the potatoes, scrubbing them with a small brush and checking each one as she plucks it out, white and fresh from the water. When she has finished, she tosses them into a clean saucepan and rinses her fingers in the water.
She hears a small noise and looks towards the window. A bird is perched on the sill, eating the crumbs that Angela has sprinkled. It pecks its head downwards and then throws it back, pauses, and pecks down once again. Lyuda glances over to the kitchen table and sees the rabbit there. She runs through what she will need for the marinade and for a sauce. Herbs, vinegar, water, sour cream. She closes her eyes for a moment while she is thinking, and the sunshine drifts through the morning window over her and over the bird, and something changes in her body, something touches her skin, and her mouth turns upwards with the smallest movement, and now, without thinking, with nothing moving around her but the air and the sunshine and a distant song, she is smiling.
The Woman Behind The Waterfall Page 15