“WALLFLOWER”
Arafinte © 2009
It had been nearly 35 years since I had been in Corsica, and though elsewhere on this rugged little island much had changed, in this area on the West side of the Cape time seemed to have stood still. Dry stone houses, some in good repair and inhabited by people, some minus roofs and windows and home to various small birds and rodents, all gave a pleasantly eerie and sleepy feeling to the little hamlets that nestled here and there amongst the steep mountain sides, like ancient gnarled hands trying patiently to cling to a forgotten age. Narrow winding roads switched back and forth between terraces of meagre gardens and chestnut trees while goats fed obsessively on anything not protected by desperate fences. Now and then a rooster would tell all the world how very important something was, but who was listening? Old women dressed head to toe in thick black wool toted impossible bundles of firewood down narrow dirt paths, their wide feet plopping along like old cats meandering home to rest. Men in baggy pants and small caps stood in the doorways of dingy cafes, clutching glasses of wine and puffing distant stares with their Gitanes and Gauloise.
I enjoyed walking these tiny roads now as much as I had in my youth. Back then I had been in love with a French woman of dizzying beauty fifteen years my senior. Fifteen years that could have been a thousand for the distance between us in knowledge of life and how to live it. I had been so tragically naive and she so elegant and wise. My heart could still recall the pain of unfulfilled yearning as I now placed one foot in front of the other and ascended yet another steep bend to look out at last upon a little valley, greener than the rest for some reason, almost an oasis in this otherwise dry and rocky landscape. At the far end was a tiny village of perhaps no more than a dozen houses. The road ended there, I knew, and tonight I planned to lay my head to rest at the humble bed-and-breakfast I had booked over three months ago. A week here in peace and solitude would do me a world of good. I would dine on fresh fish and lamb, I would drink the local wine, and I would go for long walks on the mountain paths which laced upwards and over the crest of this peninsula, there to dwindle Eastwards down the more gentle and less windswept slopes that fell once again into the soft Mediterranean blue.
As I ambled more slowly now on level ground, letting my heart and lungs adjust to an easier pace, I passed by one of the many springs that dot this part of the world. Ages ago someone had driven a metal pipe deep into the hillside to channel what nature had brought to the surface for us to drink, and then someone else had constructed a high stone vault around the end of the pipe and added the face of a mermaid, from whose mouth the cool water now flowed. Wives would wash their laundry in the stone basins here and the men would quench long thirsts on their way home from town. Birds would perch above in thickets of bramble and wait their turn while young boys would splash delighted screaming girls who would then race home to tell their knowing mothers. Future husbands, those, unless the girls should be so lucky to attract the eye of a more prominent man from the city. Bastia, city of pirates, across the ridge and many kilometres to the South. The men there were rascals all, their furtive minds set on larceny of the heart in order that they might know the pleasure of the loins.
I stopped to drink. The water was icy cold and my common sense warned me to temper my slake before I felt pain, yet so delicious was this nectar after the long trek up here that I ignored the first warning and gulped greedily, soon regretting my weakness and trying to laugh as I stood upright and massaged my temples. As the temporary headache subsided I was about to bend to drink again, this time more patiently, when I noticed the painting on the back of the stone vault. Was this here when I had first visited this place decades ago? I did not remember. The image appeared almost as if a sepia photograph had been somehow developed onto the yellow plaster. It was a woman’s face, beautiful, dark and mysterious with great sad eyes. Or were they laughing? It was hard to tell. The full light of day did not reach back into this recess of some fifteen feet, and so I had to strain to see more clearly, allowing my eyes to acclimatize to the dimness. Then I got the idea to take the flashlight out of my pack.
As soon as the white LEDs shone forth onto the painting it vanished!
I was shaken. Was the painting real?
I immediately switched off the flashlight and waited. With a strange mixture of disbelief and hope I stared agape as the painting gradually began to reveal itself once again, almost as if it was coming out from within the rock. Her face was so lovely, her mouth seemingly on the brink of smiling, teasing me. Her left hand was encased in what looked like tattered black gossamer which mingled with coy grace into her raven tresses, a dark copse of hidden secrets far too rich to understand. Dizziness began to engulf my mental focus and vision as I continued to gaze. The sound of birds chirping madly behind me seemed far more distant than the few feet I reasoned it to be. I was slipping out of consciousness into dream, yet I was standing upright, both feet firmly on the stone floor below. The sound of the water gurgling from the little spring wavered on and off, warbled and trilled, and then became so loud that it hurt my ears. I tried to reach to cover them but could not move my arms. The gentle light from outside mirrored and danced off the surface of the water in the stone basin in front of the spring, and I thought I could hear within the quivering light the sound of laughing voices. Or was it one voice? Her voice?
“So, my little wanderer, you have come back to me at last. I told you that you would, but I also told you to forget that I told you and to remember to forget that you had ever seen me. But now you are here again and I want you to come inside with me again, just as you did years ago.” Her voice was like bubbles of mischievous jokes tickling my mind. I had the uncontrollable urge to laugh and was surprised that I could hear myself chuckling while still remaining paralyzed.
“Come inside the wall, my little wanderer. Come to me. Come to me!” And I could not resist. I was at once helpless and afraid, enraptured and thrilled. I wanted to walk into to wall, to join her, but I also wanted to turn and run. As if completely unaffected by this contradiction, my legs moved me forward in a rather jerky and unnatural gait, much as one would expect someone to walk if they were pretending to be a robot. I felt my temperature rising and noticed beads of sweat beginning to drip down my face. I could even smell my own body odour as I plodded forward, a madly perspiring zombie about to merge headlong with ancient stone.
“You tried to do this before, didn’t you? You tried to run, but you could not. Do you remember now?” And she laughed like shimmering happy thunder in my head, a singular shattering aria of terrible sweetness and frightening lust. Yes, lust. Lust so strong it was almost unfeasible to behold. I knew I was being drawn into her carnal embrace once more as I watched the last thoughts of escape slip away, only to be replaced by ridiculous raging desire as it filled my entire body and soul. I no longer wanted to run away. I wanted to plunge forward into her realm, into her lightning embrace, to be struck mute by her words, blind by her eyes. No longer caring about anything at all except to go to her, I stumbled into the shallow stone basin and took no notice whatsoever of the chill water that danced and bubbled around my shins. It was effervescing and glowing with a light of it’s own, a deep turquoise blue, and the sound of singing angels roiled within it as if such mellifluous turmoil was her blood, gushing forth from the tiny spring as might passion gush forth from a long denied heart on the very threshold of final romance.
I reached the end of the basin and moved into the rock. It was cool and inviting, a welcome relief from the heat in my veins. I could feel her taking hold of my hands, pulling me inwards, deep, deep inside the stone where she lived. She had looked almost shy when I first saw her face a few minutes ago, ....... a few decades ago, ....... but now she was smiling with unabashed craving, her lips shivering with anticipation, her eyes flashing with wild ravenous hunger. In an instant I was within her full grasp and felt myself grasping back, clawing and digging with my fingers to feel her torrid flesh, aching with all my might to be swallowed whole by her insatiable mind. I was hers now. I knew it and cared not about anything else.
Outside and old man stopped to quench his thirst and noticed the backpack leaning against the side of the stone basin. Had she caught another one? Deciding against drinking too much from the ageless spring, the old man shuffled back along the road towards the little village at the end of the valley. His wife would have his supper for him and afterwards they would roast a few chestnuts for dessert. As he walked slowly in the afternoon heat he thought back to the time he had imagined he had seen a face, the face of a beautiful woman, in the stone wall at the back of the arched vault where the spring was hidden from the light of the sun and the moon. The legend that men in these parts told was that the vault had been built to protect the spring from the sun, because it’s light would sap the magic that it’s waters contained. The legend that the women told was that the vault had been built to keep the moonlight from mingling with the waters as they first shot forth from the rock, lest that water become a potion of love and lust so powerful that none could withstand it’s flavour and remain in the world of daylight. The water was the blood of an ancient sprite, said the women, and that sprite never forgot the essence of a man’s hopeless infatuation once she had tasted it.
“La Violacciocca”, they called her. “The Wallflower”.