Bee-Eater: A Brief Novella

This was a glamorous, wicked and graceful time that could destroy you while you slept and dreamt of places far away. Dreams were the only thing that could ever hope to hold this world together, and if we’re lucky, perhaps there will be a dream to end all dreaming, and while a world like that seems cold at first, I could find it an immensely satisfying place to reside.

Ever lost in my thoughts, I left the world behind during a war that should have cracked my head open and imposed itself upon my mind completely. I, who lived through until its bloody completion, moving from one place to another and finally settling in San Francisco, had no idea why it was being fought in the first place. I must admit, I am selfish, and that must have been the reason why the only thing I can remember about the war is the way it sounded. Sometimes I closed my eyes for entire days and just listened to the obscenely beautiful sounds produced from crumbling buildings or fractured flames that flickered on my small television screen, and that spoke in whispers that sounded of silence as they devoured anything they brushed against. Other times I wouldn’t speak either, I would limit myself to the complex deluge of sound that could wrap itself around me and hold me in a crisp cocoon in which I learnt more about the world than anywhere else. I wonder what could be accomplished if some people, those who are used to thoughtlessly wasting words on things that don’t matter, just silenced themselves and let the world rush and weave around them like a macramé of the crystal water.

I never had much to say, and there was nothing much to be said about me. I entered this world like many, as a bloody mess that screamed in horrified shock at the seriousness of the world they were thrown so carelessly into. I was given a name, as most children are, and that name was Rachelle.  Its only purpose was to distinguish me from other children whose forlorn and unnerved demeanours matched mine to the point of making us nearly impossible to tell apart. I like the sound of it though, and I am not embarrassed to be associated with it. My surname is Lithgow, after my mother who once made a terrible mistake. My father is gone and his whereabouts have been unknown to me for the 19 years I have existed, though I believe that he is still cubicle mouse trapped in a maze of disorganised buildings in the most incomprehensible sector of Tokyo. My mother tells me he is professional, American and has no soul.

I do not like many people. I suppose it’s not that we’re incompatible, just that we have nothing to say to each other.  I once had a roommate to share the small apartment that was the first, a cheapest, place I could fine in San Francisco. She was a vocalist like me, and we lived together in relative harmony in a tiny flat located in the farthest reaches of West London and we sang together in multiple choirs. Her name…I do not remember. It was something drippingly average that made a sound that was like black pudding being run over slowly by a small, lightweight, and sickeningly yellow French car. She was completely crazy, to be perfectly honest. She only knew me by my face, and went around looking for things that were always hovering quietly behind her. I myself could hear them fluttering on wings of thin iridescence that sounded like the quiet, nonchalant crinkle of discarded inspiration. She would have found them had she closed her eyes and listened. I was sad for her and sometimes I would tell her to shut her eyes and sing to them but she always laughed, a small quick laugh that could have simply been an exaggerated inhale, and told me that what she was searching for was only attracted to wasted time and beautiful eyes. I suppose the relentless pursuit for this enigmatic organism that was always within her grasp, but so far away as well, destroyed her as she hanged herself about eleven months after I first met her. I found her in the closet, looking no different than she had in life; her stunning eyes wide open and her hard, convex Roman features looked over my shoulder in a mixture of expectancy and awe. I guessed she had finally found what she was looking for, though the search had taken her far from the places most people would think to look. Though, out of concern for sanitation, her serene but empty body was taken away, I can still feel her abandoned dreams tapping me on the shoulder every once in a while to see if I can remember them, and maybe even call them by name once in a while.

I still live in that apartment. My roommate did not seem to have anyone to miss her and therefore remained insignificantly on this earth, most unpretentiously, as a vacant room, a pile of strange clothing and a bright white Koi fish on the kitchen table named £121.00 (Assuming that the conspicuous red label pasted sloppily to the bottom of his bowl is his name…I like to think it is as it gives the creature a redeemable sense of material worth.) who spends his entire existence swimming aimlessly in circles as if in utter disbelief of its surroundings. He always gazed through the thick glass surrounding his pathetic three-gallon “pond” (It was really more of an abnormally large coffee pot) at me with a look of unmitigated betrayal, as if he was never supposed to be there.  I never liked going into her room, and I have ventured in there only once to retrieve her cell phone that was buzzing insistently, harking the news of the arrival of a single lonely voicemail from a cheerful, self-righteous travel agent who promised her an extravagant journey, by Qantas Air, for equally extravagant prices. I threw it out the 4^th story window, as the buzzing was exasperating after eleven consecutive hours. The room itself smelled of cheap perfume, new shoes and spilt nail polish. I never staged another expedition into that sticky chasm ever again and left it, like I had left many things before in my life, as it was.

Though I am a vocalist by trade, working at as many places as I can with no hesitations or reservations, I do not make enough money to exist with, so I am forced to wait tables at a quiet little restaurant inexplicably named “The Rusty Nail.” this name originated from and who the sick person was who thought that a flaky coating of iron oxide laced with tetanus sounded appetizing I will never know. I speculate that it was an artist, like me, who twisted words around in their mouth and spit them out, thinking they had created something beautiful. However, this establishment is one of the only constants in my life, and I cling on to it as if the world was spinning wildly into space and this place was the only thing that stood still. The food was never good, but the people…some were the most interesting I have ever known.

There was one person, an ancient, sad-faced, hulking man whose name was Ivan Lyakhov. (He made sure to introduce himself to me enthusiastically.) I noticed him outside at first and I made sure that he knew he was welcome in the restaurant. He told me, in a thick Russian accent, that he was watching the stars and that tonight they promised to tell him enthralling stories, though he knew that the talk was simply a maskerovka that hid their true intentions. When I questioned what these were he smiled at me in a despondent manner and mumbled something about the Romanovs. Later that evening he came inside and ordered an olive. He told me he was going to die soon and the last thing he wanted to consume before his journey was something that, to him, symbolized peace. I told him frankly that if he was planning on hanging himself he should know that at the moment of death the bladder and the bowels releases their contents, so there really was no point in consuming anything. He grinned at me again, a monstrously disturbing grimace and shook his head slowly. Not that kind of die, he reassured me. Needless to say, I was slightly concerned and I pressed him for details. He looked away quickly and started counting stars. He sang things to them in a low, gravelly voice and I left him hesitantly as he lost himself in thought. He fell asleep, I believe it was sleep, as his chest rose rhythmically and his breathing was heavy and dark, and when he woke up he wanted wine. When I brought it to him he pressed eleven deeply tarnished kopeks into my palm and told me softly,

“Thank you. That was a lovely death. I heard the stars much clearer and you know what they told me?”

“I don’t know.” I replied. Somewhere inside of me my heart felt incomplete because I was deaf to these voices, which seemed, in that moment, vitally important.

“Vmeste tesno, a vroz' skushno. Together, it's cramped; apart, it's boring. They would know wouldn’t they? They’re funny, no?” He shook his head, laughing quietly to himself, and walked out, muttering to himself and watching the first rays of the traitorous sun drown the other stars in a vicious maelstrom and, one by one, devour them leisurely until it was the biggest in the sky.

“This one,” He yelled to me as he stumbled aggressively into a scrappy white Volga that was parked horizontally in a vertical parking space and indicated wildly to the sun, “This one doesn’t talk. He doesn’t even sing, the bastard. The little stars, they say he’s forgotten how.”

 There was one other person who I distinctively remember, one who I wish I had kept in contact with, or at least traded numbers with. She was a petite dancer who couldn’t have been aged more than 14. She arrived at 3:00 in the morning when darkness still hung dangerously low, as if attached to fraying ropes, in the sky. There was no one else in the restaurant and when she invited me to sit with her I quickly obliged, out of both concern and curiosity. She told me she was born in Nicosia but had lived in places all across Europe and Asia. She had an accent that could almost have been Indian but writhed and frothed so much that I suspected Turkish and French influence. Her voice was soft, almost a murmur that got trapped in the blades of the ceiling fan or caught in the sound of a squeaky dishwasher. I had to speak much quieter and move much slower and more carefully, setting down her hot chocolate on the wooden table as if it was made of the thinnest ice, in order to hear her. She was not beautiful; her body showed the most brutally honest erosion that intense dancing wore upon a young frame. However, she moved with stuttering, adamantine grace that was bitingly cold but exquisite like a glacial stream and when she smiled her entire face sparkled was a silvery luminescence that made the entire restaurant glow. She said her name was Arietta but I heard a slight pause before she gave it, which led me to believe this was not true. I started to introduce myself but she began saying things to me, things I did not understand, in her gossamer, windy voice. I was not even sure she was speaking English.

“I feel as if I am lost.” She finally spoke something that I could understand. I nodded slowly and compassionately, this time with actual feeling associated with my movement. I had spent the last 10 minutes smiling, pursing my lips, and uttering ambiguous sounds that could be interpreted as affirmatives, negatives or just mere acknowledgements. “No, really, I have no idea where I am. I feel like I am fading away.” She said this, surprisingly, in a relatively reflective tone that did not sound, in the least, unhappy. Just speculative. I told her she looked fine.

“No.” She said in an even quieter voice that broke off suddenly. “I would like an egg please.” She finally said after a strange silence. I smiled at her in a bright, mechanical way and slowly went into the kitchen to fetch a hard-boiled egg. I turned around to look at her as I went, feeling an almost protective passion for her. I took out a dozen pearly white eggs and chose one that I thought was the freshest, put it in a bowl and went back out to her. I was greeted with a burst of harsh light from the rising sun, tinted a sickly pink. As I squinted through the rays I saw that she had almost completely disappeared. The only thing that was left of her was a restless solitude that rose out of her seat and an empty space that throbbed in synchrony with the blurry stains of daylight that pirouetted madly in circles around the room.

The third person, Emma, was a particularly close friend of mine... actually, maybe that's incorrect. I didn't know her very well at all, but after I met her, it seemed as if I would always seek out her company over anyone else's. She was the first person I remember truly knowing when I first moved to the city, and the last person I mention because of the lasting impression she left on me. She had stumbled, drunk, into the restaurant at 3:00 am, with a broken heel and a bloody nose. I cleaned her up quickly, and when she left, her number has stayed on the table, ingrained into a napkin with blue ink. Nobody likes to be alone but I never tried to become anything more than an acquaintance with the people who inhabited my blurry dreamscape of a world. I suppose I was being foresighted, never allowing disappointment even the barest of thresholds. But Emma, she was different. She offered me catalytic comfort and I'd spend many nights with her, walking around San Francisco in our knock-off heels while smoking, talking, laughing, and sometimes just reading the same meretricious advert and challenging each other to make as many four letter words out of the cloying catch-phrases. She frightened me a bit, but it was an exotic and exciting breed of fear that kept me continuously chasing after it. She was beautiful in an untouchable way; a poisoned apple that's dripping red skin suggested both a delicious interior but a sinister kick that would ruin you if you allowed yourself even the smallest of tastes. We talked about everything, nothing that mattered you understand, just things we always wondered about.

"What happens when you fall while dreaming?" I would ask Emma, taking a sip of my sloppily spiked Coke that was dripping down the sides and catching the light of the midnight neon.

"You could wake up." She took the Coke out of my hands and took a deep sip." You could fall to your death. “She answered distantly as she threw the empty can into the street, reflecting the mist that rose out of the manholes in the depths of her dark eyes. “You could fly." She looked at me, relishing the thought as she rose clumsily from the bus stop bench, straightening the besequined cocktail dress that hung awkwardly from her skinny shoulders. "What do you think Rachelle? Should we fly or will we fall?" She laughed. It sounded like she was crying though, emotion bubbling forth with such staggering energy that made me want to kiss her.

Did I love her? It didn't matter to me that she was a woman. She whistled when she was sad, she could look so alive even while doing the most mundane of tasks. The other day I helped her clean out her apartment, a chiasmic hole in Chinatown that held more strange, perplexing and glamorous things than I had ever seen. Even my trip to Jakarta the year before paled in comparison to what she had accumulated here.

"Look at this old thing," she sighed, holding up a lonely looking, but no less exquisite, chopstick I had just uncovered from behind her gas stove. Its gilded pattern was fading away in the ancient jade. She suddenly burst into tears but as I tried to calm her, she pulled back. Usually when confronted with someone who is crying, one would expect the noble thing to do would be to comfort her. However, when that person is trying hard to hide their tears...is the noble thing to do is to pretend not to notice them? I looked away; such emotion was beyond my comprehension. She met my eyes and smiled, tears cascading down her cheeks. "Don't worry about me, something was caught in my eyes." She carefully wiped her heavily powdered lids with a tissue. Indeed something was caught in her eyes, I saw myself in them. I looked lonelier than ever before, but somehow I looked happier as well. Emma carefully twisted the lone chopstick into her hair and admired herself in a dusty mirror. She turned to me for approval.

"You look pretty." I said slowly, wanting nothing more than for her to hold my gaze for 10,000 years. She laughed, dismissing my compliment easily.

"Take it Rachelle, what am I supposed to do with it?" She grinned and slipped me the meaningless stick as carefully as if it were her heart.

It was unfortunate, that year, when Emma left San Francisco to "experience the world." Those were her very words. The day at the airport, as she leapt out of my red Sedan, she looked more distant than ever. She begged me to walk her to the terminal, her ebullient joy was so vivaciously channeled that I was afraid she would break her ankle as she almost charged into the airport in her scarlet espadrilles. She was talking, saying so many things that all I heard was noise. She would laugh if she heard me say that.

"All anyone hears is noise!" She'd smile, kicking her long legs up onto the ripped seats of one of those red trolleys running up and down my city.

I watched her from a spectator’s seat, hanging back into the crowd of those leaving and those left behind. The last image I saw of her was her turning her head around, swinging her radiant black hair in the air, looking for me in the maelstrom of people. She blew me a kiss and shouted out a good-bye of some kind. Then she was gone, leaving nothing but heavy, disconsolate silence in my entire being.

And so what did I have left? It seemed as if it was all pointless in the end. No matter how many people I loved, they all drifted in and out of my life as if made of tissue that caught any breeze that passed. But then again, maybe what I searched for wasn’t meaning. Meaning has never played a defining role in my life. Ever since the war that had no name, and most likely never will, threw me into a red city with a Rusty Nail, I lost hold of meaning, which dissolved into an abstract and unimportant factor, dripping slowly through my hands. All I have now is what I am, defined through these people’s presence and so I am what they are and all that is left is pieces of people that I fit into my heart like a puzzle made of pieces that may not originally have belonged together; a chaotic ensemble of singers who, though different in so many ways, could all sing together and sound as if they were the world.