ALONE

by TAMIR 

Snow is a testament to the persistence of logarithmic expansion. The weight of a snowflake is like a memory - zero to nothing when measured singly - but a community of either is a weighty matter indeed. Try digging your way from under it; you’ll see. Thoughts such as these rummaged around Ethan’s head as he tried to keep focused on repairing the rug in his upstate New York 10 by 10-foot bungalow in the woods. His attention shifted to the icicles forming outside his frosted window.

 

He had been living here alone for four years, his marriage still a vivid memory. Why did she marry him, he wondered. He was such a quiet brooding man, and she was a lively hot Italian beauty with a laugh that made even inanimate objects smile. He peered with detachment at his unused organ, which had lain fallow for years as useless as a fire poker in the desert. They had been married for one week when she left him.

 

He had met her in Turkey. He was on his way back from India, and she was belly dancing at the fancy Kervansaray Hotel. She had studied belly dance in Milan with a fire- eating asthmatic circus dancer from Austria and referred to her finger cymbals as he did  - the zils. She could create wicked rhythms with those same zils, enticing the drummers to heated hard-core Turkish Karsilama 9 beat rhythm that drew rounds of applause. She then threw her head back in a massive smile that clearly beamed: Aren’t I wonderful? And I did this just for you! Accompanied by a deep bow. Pomposity and fake modesty exquisitely gift-wrapped.

She wiggled into his dreams and he wondered how to get her attention. Should he stand at the door and ask for her autograph? Buy her flowers? How does one approach a dancing beauty? He went back eleven times hesitating and unsure. Then one night he pulled out his flute in the adjacent alley and started playing.

“Bella, bella!” she exclaimed. “You make la vita bella.”

That was her name, Bella and that she was, beautiful. Dazzled, he ventured:

“May I walk you home?”

 

“Si, si.” He could hardly believe he was walking beside her. She welcomed his shy ways and timid side-glances. She knew all about direct ravishing and frontal assault, she confided in him much later. This gentle American with his graceful aquiline nose appealed to her nourish-the-underdog instinct. It seemed all the cats in the neighborhood were waiting for her as she pulled out morsels of food. Cheese, butter and fish wrapped in napkins she had pilfered from the hotel. In addition to three bottles of milk and six cans of tuna stashed in her large bag, which she distributed lovingly in all the crevices of the alley. Each crevice housed another household of starving sickly kittens. They cowered at every sound, but when she drew near, they relaxed and waited for the tidbits she so lavishly fed them. I would gladly incarnate as a Turkish cat, he thought, to be stroked by that hand I would give it all up. And that he did, obliging her every whim. Heads turned as they paraded the stores with her arm draped over his shoulder. He bought her bags and earrings, Pashmina shawls and silk pantaloons, embroidered suzanee vests and velvet pillows with circling dervishes, their arms open wide with skirts billowing and hands cupped to eternity. I feel like that, I am the dancing lover; I am the mad moth to her blazing glory. Her fire would singe his wings and burn him to ashes, but he evicted that thought from the happy domain of his heart.

Hand in hand, they roamed the covered bazaar with its ancient fountains and painted domed roof. They went to the spice bazaar, following the trail of saffron and breathing in the pungent aroma of spices and herbs. The roof of their small hotel in the Sultan Ahmet area over-looked the Miramar Sea, the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque. The cry of the muezzins from all four corners was not quite synchronized, so that echo upon echo of “Allah Hu Akbar” reverberated from the surrounding sky. It was like being inside a bell that trembled with the call to prayer and clanked its plea up the windy stairs of the onrushing night. Moslems were always calling on each other to coagulate into a tight brotherhood of prostration. The call, stitched into the fabric of life, jolts one to mindful remembrance of God. There’s a rhythm to the day, punctuated five times by that loud cry from every minaret, dominating the length and breadth of the country.

He pricked his finger with the thick rug needle when a loud noise outside startled his reverie. Lex, his only neighbor now, who lived two miles away, was tinkering with his junk cars and one of them backfired. In this silent valley blanketed in snow, any sound carried and popped right into his ear. Lex was a sider by profession, but Ethan thought of him as the sideman from Mars, because he always sided with whatever political slant the conversation took. He had no opinions or ideas he could call his own, even his wife belonged to every man in the county. He was quite drunk when he confided in Ethan that once, while banging on the side of a building, he saw the owner wildly riding a woman. “Pardon me,” he muttered, averting his gaze in embarrassment as he climbed down the ladder, not seeing or not wanting to see, that his client was banging his wife. The bright red scarf always wound around his neck placed him from Mars.

“It‘s there,” he claimed, “because my grandmother told me that a covered neck would keep a person warm AND immune from being hurt in love.“

He believed her, foolish man. Actually, the real reason was the prolific hair growth on his neck, outnumbering even his wife’s lovers. The hair, she said, made him look like a Neanderthal, so he kept it hidden, like everything else, but he liked to talk to Ethan.

It was easy to mock Lex, Ethan thought, because only by comparison was his bad luck worse than his own. At forty-six what did he have to show for himself? A couple of hundred in the bank, a broken bungalow door, broken memories and now a broken bamboo flute. He had left it outside and when the heavy tree fell in the snowstorm, it splintered. At least the electricity didn’t go out, he thought wryly, but then again, there was no electricity   in his bungalow. There was no phone either. Since he didn’t want to talk to anyone, it made no difference. He was mostly silent and only left to get necessities and pick up rug work, using few words in all his interactions.

Bella, by contrast, had the gift of the gab, her father named her Hedda Gabber. She loved to talk, amusing Ethan with anecdotes of her childhood. When she was three, she used to chatter away for hours on end. Once, a tape recorder was left running, capturing her little girl voice chirping happily. At bedtime, she just wouldn’t stop talking. Her parents brought in the tape recorder to play some soothing ocean sounds, but it was her chatter and she listened attentively. From then on, every night they played ‘my talky tape’ as she called it. Hers was the only voice that could silence the patter and lull her to asleep. Nothing changed as she flowered into womanhood, she loved to talk and the sound of her voice brought pleasure to others as well. Within minutes she would strike up a conversation with anyone, whether or not they shared a common language. Perfect strangers would reveal such intimacies, he would blush, but Bella seemed to encourage those intimate exchanges. Once in the park, an old Palestinian woman sat next to Bella who smiled at her encouragingly. The woman talked non-stop for twenty-five minutes as Bella continued to smile and nod silently. Then the woman stood up, embraced her warmly, thanked her repeatedly and gave her a mint plant. The woman and Bella were both crying, even though the entire monologue had been in Arabic, which Bella did not understand. Ethan believed that a Trappist monk would break his vow of silence if she were within earshot, and every other vow as well to snuggle under the mountain of hair that avalanched down her back.

Their second visit to Turkey was completely different. Try as they might, she could not conceive. They had heard of a gynecologist in Leipzig, who specialized in fertility treatment. However, there was a risk of blindness involved, since her eyesight was poor. The good doctor refused to proceed with the treatment, because of the risk. To her it was no risk but a necessity.

“Please let’s just adopt,” he insisted.

“No, I have to have my own bambino. If you were woman, you understand. I be blind I still love, even more.”

“This is madness! Why risk so much?” he protested.
“I must have baby, not God will stop me, I gamble my eyes” she snapped then burst into tears.

They fought and argued but it was no use. She could shout louder, bang doors harder and be as melodramatic as an opera diva hitting high C. Motherhood became her mission and raison d’être.

“I know doctor in Turkey, who make treatment even with plenty risk.”

“Bella, you are everything to me, I don’t need more.”

“You see, I give you plenty bambini and we say Grazie a Dio.”

The Turkish doctor consented, then warned her of the possible consequences, ticking off each hurdle, like reading the riot act. She happily agreed. Their sex life took an absurd turn. All their money had been spent on doctors’ fees. They could not afford a hotel, so they stayed in the car and had sex in the back seat.

 “One more time, I just saw two birds mating, now they are singing, that is good omen, we must do it now,” she begged.

Somehow, through their multiple awkward back seat copulation and the treatment, they were pregnant. He felt like he was carrying the load too. She threw up in the morning with huge moaning gasps and then laughed happily.   

 “I am mother of twins,” she announced. The tests confirmed this. They found cheap rooms in Izmit. A week before she was due, to the utter shock of the civil clerk at the marriage license bureau, and the disapproving glance of Ataturk who presided every procedure, though fifty years dead, they got married.

“I want small wedding but big family,” she announced.

Seven days later, when she went into labor, the twins popped out like little cucumbers slithering into life with as much noise as their mother. He realized family life was going to be a noisy cacophony. It seemed her smile was even wider, draping her tired face with maternal pride. Aren’t I wonderful? And I did this just for you; it beamed as she bowed her head to the two hairy ones at her breasts. His arms grew wider to embrace his beloved trio, to encompass all this beauty, Bella belissima.

That never came about.

The next day he took a bus trip, to retrieve his passport, which he had left in a gas station. In his absence, the earthquake hit Izmit, the epicenter. The house was demolished. His babies were gone; his bride gone, his life was blown apart. Why hadn’t he stayed by her side? Why had he gone to pick up his passport? What port could he pass over to now, except to join her? He had to get out. No flights were leaving and no bodies going with him, alive or dead. For five days he wandered the sad Istanbul streets in shock like everyone else; the aftermath was everywhere. Shops were closed; people spoke in whispers. He checked into a cheap deserted hotel. The elevators were a hazard and could not be used, and so he climbed the dark stairs. All the shafts, the walls, windows and doors were shaky and insecure, just like his mind. When he showered, the valves came off; the water scalded him and the mirror shattered on the floor. He waded through the broken glass, cutting his feet and collapsed on the bed. His heart plummeted into the bottomless morass of grief, falling further because of the dizzy heights it had just inhabited. It was Krystal Nacht of the soul – his inner vessel could not contain so much grief and splintered into writhing daggers of pain. It was the middle of August, yet icicles formed in his blood making it hard to breathe.

“I’m all tied up in grief

Yet another sorrow is added…”

He stamped Rumi’s words with a meaning all his own.

Finally, the airports were open and the last of the rescue dogs, mostly German Shepherds were departing, and the search for live bodies stopped. Those dogs looked so intelligent, so powerful, couldn’t they find her? As he watched them leave, he thought how different they were from the mangy skinny dogs that staggered around the airport begging for food, for water, for love. One rickety dog with crooked legs howled with jealousy as the owner of a well-fed beloved pet wagged its tail and was kissed by its doting mistress. He remembered how Bella dropped her bags and ran into the airport to get some food. She went through the security check point and submitted to being searched five times, each time carrying out hot dogs, water, a blanket she bought and whatever paper cups she could scrounge. She stood near that lame dog trickling water into his surprised mouth, muttering reassuring words that the dog took in with a mixture of suspicion and awe, ready to escape at any moment.

“Mio bel caro cagnolone.” How could one not love her?
    
That was then. Now, he dragged his feet and kept his gaze on the dirty floor. Eighteen thousand dead all told, and three of them limbs from himself. He boarded the plane an emotional amputee.

But even ‘that’ was another then. Now, in the real now, he could hear mice scratching, crawling around the insulation in the walls. He never harmed them. Each mouse was a family member and he knew that if one went out foraging for food, his sibling, progeny, or mate was awaiting his return. Besides, mice looked at you, and what kind of heartless person would hurt a being that could watch you? We have to watch over each other, or else watch out! We’re back to random acts of cruel Nature that bereft us of our innate ability to be the chosen species capable of conscious love.

He bent his head to the Gabbeh rug and proceeded to re-weave the gaping hole, fixing the torn patches. Rug repair demanded focus and patience, but the simple design of the Gabbeh soothed his nerves and evoked the story he was mending of two songbirds forever chirping on a tree.

What was the nomadic tribal Iranian woman thinking as her hands tied the rough knots? Were those birds an omen for her? What was the story she was imbuing into the rug with her wild spirit, like Bella, who was now part of his soul fabric, smiling in his memory?

Her smile, that one luminous six-sided perfect snowflake, dissolved the weight he had been shouldering since that day-of-rubble.

“How light I feel,” he said aloud as he stepped into the flutter of flakes shimmying around him like a white cyclone. From this point on, he knew he would be the silent center of all the swirling. He watched the glittering downpour as it shimmered in the light. Her massive smile circled the house and all the trees reached out their arms, dancing their white dance around him. Through it, God said:

“Aren’t I wonderful? And this is all for you.”

He threw his head back, opened his arms wide and yelled back,

“Bella, Bella, La vita e’ veramente Bella!”

And meant it.

 

- . -

For TAMIR's web site:
www.rumi-wayoftheheart.com