Rene Houtrides

1)

She was awakened early by the sound of the sea’s cat-tongue lapping at the bowl of the land. She’d been traveling alone for a long time, taking her secret with her. And whatever fit in a small suitcase. It wasn’t what she had planned to be doing. But there it was. Like an unexpected power outage.

2)

She slipped into clothes and sandals and strolled to the tawny beach. Not more than fifty feet away. No one was around except for a father teaching his child to swim. Far. Deep. The man’s voice reassuring. She couldn’t recall who had taught her to swim. If anyone had. She might have just gotten in the water, somewhere, sometime, and figured it out as best she could. She was a poor swimmer.

3)

She stepped into the sea. Not chilly in this part of the world. The stones at the bottom were slick. She fell, waist high. Rose clumsily. Fell again. Repeat. Repeat. Waves. Waves. Swinging her.

4)

Soon, the father and child left. Toward the village. The father holding the child’s hand.

5)

She stayed. In the wet, so salty that treading water was scarcely necessary. An effortless hour passed. Then she turned to the shore. Toward dry soil, where the trees nodded in the wind. She didn’t have a towel. But the air was warm. Like the sea. Drops flowed the length of her body and onto the sand.

6)

A panel truck arrived, jangling on the one road. And stopped. The driver emerged, unhooked the chain that barred the tiny plaza. Drove through. Unloaded five propane cans in front of the still-closed solitary restaurant. Reversed his steps. He did not forget to replace the chain.

7)

Before driving off, the driver addressed her. A greeting in a language she did not know. So his words remained a secret. Like the one she carried with her. The secret even she could not define. It was the weightiest thing she carried. Her secret fit in the suitcase. Neatly. Folded in. Attached to a thread on that fraying yellow sweater. Back at the rented room. 

8)

There was zero she had to do. Nowhere to go. She returned to the room. The miniature refrigerator. Cheese. Bread in a paper bag on the table. She made cowboy coffee. Water boiling in the metal pot on the single electric ring. The pot removed. The grounds stirred in. The pause. She added a bit of cold water to sink the grounds. The slow pour to keep the grounds out of the drinking cup. The flavor in her mouth. Sour and good.

9)

The slow meal. Slow day. Slow thoughts. Slow secret, boiling. The secret’s grounds were sour, too, at the base of a container that had been taken off a fire many years ago. And, suddenly, the remembered taste of hard candy on a Christmas morning. Sweet, not sour.

10)

She read while she ate. She was halfway through a book about a war. She did not take a side. No preference. The sentences lifted themselves from the pages, floated through her brain, and departed. Someone was winning. Someone was losing. There was no logic. Just as her secret, the one she knew nothing (?) about, had no logic. It had arrived from? It wasn’t winning. It wasn’t losing. It just was.

11)

The village was coming to life. A hammer. Rhythmic. On a roof? On rock? On wood? Also, from a different direction, another person, scraping a shutter. She was certain it was a shutter. Scraping. To get the surface ready. Ready to paint. Brown paint. She was certain it was brown paint. She didn’t know why she was certain. She could picture the person. He was heavy. Wearing a baseball cap. She didn’t try to check what she imagined. She was already sure.

12)

Her secret made a noise of its own. It was being scoured away. A new color would be brushed on after the underside of the secret was revealed. It would all happen in a language she had never studied. That way she would be unable to tell it. Because the secret was meant to persist unsaid.

13)

The secret is why she had come here. To this tip of earth. That was the why. But the reason for the why had been kept from her. She had not chosen the why or the here. The here. Where she was incapable of uttering the simplest greeting. Or a farewell. Or anything in between those two things. She had merely arrived here. As if her journey was naturally meant.

14)

There was no reason to stay in the room. Instead, she opened the door. It fronted directly to the street. No intervening corridor. To the left, several locals were busily preparing the square for a wedding. Long tables. Chairs. Plates. Festive arrangements. A generous central space. For dancing.

15)

She had no business there. In the square. In the coming celebration. She turned right. Where a dusty path led the other away. The way she hadn’t yet gone. Tall hills. Sere. Unwelcoming. She selected that route.

16)

Insects chirruped everywhere. Invisible. Insistent. Hungry for one more minute. One more second. Some would live only a few hours. That was the amount given to them. No more. No matter how much they sang. That was a secret they did not suspect existed.

17)

The path was narrow. It led up. She didn’t know to where. But she went. It was difficult. Unstable terrain. Up. Hot. Up. Narrow. Up. Narrower. Up. Up. Up. She stumbled. Again and again. Like in the sea. She told herself to stumble toward the briars. Plants that no animal could eat. To stumble the other way would mean stumbling down. Down. A great distance. Unsurvivable. Whenever she did stagger and tried to steady herself, brambles pierced her hand. Still, that was better than the angle that led down. The death at the end of there.

18)

At the top of the footpath, there was a church. Ancient. Outside, a church bell. Hanging. She rang it.

19)

A blue door. A flimsy hook and eye securing it. She took that as permission to enter. Inside, empty. Barely large enough for a priest and two worshippers. Two chairs. Makeshift. But enough. Enough for a true devotee who might make the climb. The objects needed for prayer. Old. Makeshift. There was a slight smell. . .of a wet dog? There was no dog.  

20)

There had been no sign pointing to the church. Happenstance had brought her there. She paused. For a while. But even though she’d crossed the threshold, this was not for her. None of it for her. She did not forget to replace the hook.

21)

Past the church, no choice but down. Another trail. Its dangers similar to the way upward. She continued on that course. It led, by afternoon, to another beach. Deserted. No father was coaxing a child to lay, belly down, on the moving thing that lapped its tongue on the bowl of the land.

22)

Her secret had accompanied her. During the up. The down. The stumbling. The brambles. Always there. It was hers. In a way that the church was not. In a way that the local language was not. The secret was hers. Like her yellow sweater, with the unraveling sleeve. 

23)

She had an ambiguous memory of where the secret had begun. In a paper bag, in a box, in a room, in a house, in a forest, in a county, in a state, in a nation other than the one she was in now.

24)

The air around her filled with a dull fog. A hush. Out of which she believed she heard someone whistle for the dog. The dog that had left its smell in the church. She looked around. There was no dog. No one was whistling. 

25)

When the path bent, she could see the village she had set out from. Nestled between mountain and sea. A woman stood in the village. The woman was her. No. It could not be. She was here. Not there.

26)

A dog grazed against her clothing. She reached out. There was no dog.

27)

The sight of herself where she was not. A wet dog’s smell in an abandoned church. Someone whistling for the dog. The dog skimming past her leg. The taste of Christmas candy. Her senses gone haywire. Was she hallucinating?

28)

She headed toward herself. There. Toward the village. Where her secret was. In the suitcase. Next to the yellow sweater. In the strangers’ room she had rented. In the country that was not hers.   

29)

As she approached the village, she heard pouring rain. Nearby. Or was it cicadas? She couldn’t tell.

30)

She walked, her body dipping left and right. To and fro, with each stride. Sway and ebb. Wane and halt. A hovering. She was a void enclosed in a void. She’d been here for an eternity. In a fragile dream. Time’s clock ticking within her.