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The Paper Fan and the Red Silk Scarf
She met him one day when there was still
innocence in the morning markets of Les Halles in Paris
and mystery in the stars. It was at a bookstore,
one late afternoon in June. She was a cellist and was
standing in the music section looking at a biography of
Pablo Casals. It was humid and perspiration was
collecting at her neck - black jet hair was in a chignon
and she wore a traditional Chinese teal blue silk dress.
She was fanning herself with a paper fan her mother had
sent her from home. There were two pheasants, one blue
and one orange painted on the fan. There was also a poem
written in Chinese that translated:
beside the bamboo
trees
two birds drink the
moonlight
falling in love
Standing next to her was a gentleman in a
black turtleneck, black trousers and a red silk scarf.
He was rustling through some sheet music. He was quite
tall, broad shouldered and his hair was in a black
afro. They were edging towards each other slowly -
without being aware of it, edging with a kind of honesty
that only their bodies know and there was about her the
scent of gardenia. In her handbag was a bar of soap
elegantly wrapped, embossed with a delicate lace
pattern. It was a gift from the first violinist this
morning after rehearsal. She was surprised - astonished
even. She blushed when he gave it to her - saying that
the scent was delicate and strong like her playing the
cello. There was never anything tentative about her
playing and nothing tentative about her beauty.
The black man with the red silk scarf
regarded her fanning. A strong scent of sandalwood
permeated from him. Gardenia and sandalwood - together
an aura of lust or something like lust, perhaps
something more like desire and desire isn’t lust at
all…desire has a depth beyond the wanting of skin
....desire wants touch, wants deeper, wants longer than
a moment.
As the man was studying the sheet music, one
of Chopin’s Etudes slipped from his hands, floating to
the floor, floating past her thigh, down the length of
her blue silk sheath, his eyes seeing the paper floating
past the hem of her dress, down past the line of her
calves and slim ankles, landing near the heel of her
elegant black shoes. Bending over to pick up the sheet
of music, his red silk scarf snagged the corner of her
fan.
“Forgive me mademoiselle. I am so clumsy,”
he said in a husky voice excited by the closeness of his
eyes to her breast where the fan had stopped moving the
scent of gardenia. She looked down at this rich head of
hair, brushing against her arm as he tried to detach his
scarf from her fan. The scent of sandalwood and
gardenia, his red silk scarf, caught on her paper fan,
her silk dress, his full black afro, the slender ebony
fingers of a pianist picking up the single white sheet
of one of Chopin Etudes, her ankles, his lips close to
her breast, the closeness of Parisian summer air in
Sylvia Beaches’ “Shakespeare and Company” bookstore,
the worn oak floors, the place where Zelda and Scott,
and James and Nora and Alice and Gertrude and Caresse
and Harry, passioned. It was all of a moment , was of a
time within a moment, time outside of any boundaries,
time in the scent of Paris and desire and the meeting of
paper fan and a red silk scarf, of a yearning without
completion, a moment of a meeting...just a moment...or a
beginning....
*
Years later when life had filled the spaces
between them with births and deaths and celebrations and
funerals, with regrets and requests, when the big
booming voice of what had been wished for was left
empty, the whole, the hole full of emptiness scorched
both their hearts and taught them bitter lessons that
became more bitter as they refused to see what they had
done and hadn’t done. To look into the eye of one’s own
blindness and not see.....how much time with its
translucent begging is left waiting, if time can wait
anywhere for anyone at all. The sense of their lives
lived dauntingly, carelessly as though there would be
enough time for it all...to learn what had to be
learned, see what had to be seen, love the way love
should love...all nearly wasted or drained or
gone....How much happens in those first seconds of a
meeting, how much is begun, a weaving of kind, habit and
desire, desire still cloaked in a glance or a brush
against a sleeve...the red silk scarf and the paper
fan...the scent of things, the sense of things not
revealed, still hidden beneath skins, secreted in blood
and memory and wanting. And the end of things lies
waiting patiently for its time.
*
It was white, the room they made love in -
or was it sex - they made sex in the white room in the
bed with white linen sheets and six pillows and the
constancy of lilacs sweeping white and purple across the
windows that had snowed silence during that long winter.
Purple lilacs, royal deep purple, sat on the dresser in
the blue blown glass bowl. The mirror reflected their
bodies moving across the late afternoon into early
evening - under the eaves of the late morning afternoon,
stolen from the week. The room whispered dancing shadows
by candlelight. The night tables were filled with
different size candles - burning lower into evening as
glasses were emptied and refilled, emptied and refilled
with more red wine. After making love or sex - with
words and without words in a language more trusting than
vocabulary - in a language of tongues and tasting - in a
language of skin and touch, in a language of clear
desire long into evening, something took over the room.
It was more than the candles burning low, the ones they
had placed along the windowsill and the French doors
that opened out onto the harbor. There was something so
powerful it had climbed into their very cells. It was as
though a force had entered their pores, maybe even their
souls.
Then there was a reprieve for dinner of
pistachio crusted salmon and an endive, goat cheese and
walnut salad and a baguette and more wine and the
fireplace lighting the robed bodies while they were
eating. Later moving back into the white room - candles
now lighting the windowsills - the scent of lilacs and
sex steaming - streaming up to the ceiling, bathing in
sex and bathing in the heat of the evening, the scent of
sex and lilacs while they shared a large snifter of
cognac.
In the white room the bodies filling and
emptying and through the screens the scent of lilacs
holy with desire in the white room night thundering as
the rain hushed their tired bodies into something like
sleep - but not really sleep - something like exhaustion
but not exhaustion - something like love or something
like sex or simply something like the constancy of the
scent of lilacs.
*
“the woman with the only hand
sits with passion and grief”
She said the words softly to herself. The
line had stayed in her head all day - actually she woke
up early that morning - it was still dark - a few lights
were on in the boats in the harbor, readying for a day
of fishing. She looked at the body lying next to her.
She didn’t want to leave the bed. She longed to arouse
the body lying in sleep beside her. Somehow she knew
she’d be rebuked - or thought she would- might be - no,
she was certain of it.
“the woman with the
only hand is empty of love”
came into
her thoughts- that line - that exact line -all at once -
all together - a complete thought and with that she knew
she should get out of bed - go into the next room and
write it down - but she stayed there, in bed, for a
while - just lay there - the words kept filling her up -
over and over - those words.
Finally, she pulled the covers back - looked
over her shoulder after getting out of bed, replaced the
covers gently. She went into the next room, closing the
door behind her - it was a small bedroom - a chair, a
window, a single iron bed, a night table and a lamp. The
view from the window was a longer line of darkness - no
lights from here - just the sound of the waves hitting
the pilings of the wharf below. Something was breaking,
something was emptying, something foreign and full of
sorrow, something so full of nothing, something so rough
and dangerous. It moved like a snake. It slithered this
something, moving with purpose and direction, moving and
gnawing up what was in front of it. Somewhere deep
inside her she knew they’d never sleep together again -
there was something so cold in the words “woman only
grief passion empty love.” She felt the chill of
them - she shivered. It was as though this was where it
all ended - the years of peaks and valleys, gorges and
precipices, passion and grief.
And there on the small cherry table beside
the white iron bed lay the fan her mother had sent her
years ago, the fan that had caught on his red silk
scarf. It was a paper fan and the moisture of the sea
air had altered it. It wasn’t the same as that day in
the bookstore in Paris when they met. Beneath the fan
was the red silk scarf folded carefully. It had faded
over the years. Why had they put them there on the
table, and when had they done that? Why had he stopped
wearing it and when? Why had she stopped using the fan?
beside
the bamboo trees
two
birds drink the moonlight
falling
in love
The poem was meant for the present. Perhaps
that was it. It moved the air then and had a purpose, a
life then and there. Maybe she knew that and put it
away, nearby, not in a drawer but on the table he had
built one summer for her.
Sometimes, she’d learned, you knew more
than your thinking mind knows. Objects know things,
sense the dust that collects on them, know when they are
no longer seen by the eyes that once cherished them,
know when they have become invisible.
She removed a box of matches from the
drawer of the night table and struck one hard. Then she
picked up the fan and held it to the match as she leaned
into the fireplace. She watched it burn, still holding
it till she could no longer. Then she took the red scarf
and laid it across the bed, unfolding it so the sun
faded parts stood out sharply. Turning back and looking
into the fireplace the only word left from the burned
fan was “falling.” It was the end -
not just an ending again - it was the stillness of the
room as though love had gotten up and left the room - a
room empty of love. The end and the beginning of what
the end is - always before there was the idea that there
would be another time, another chance.
There was a moving off in the other room.
It was as though it was yesterday’s room. And in that
small room she was left with only a line, the darkness,
and a chill.
“the bird of desire
flies wounded.”
*
Who knows what
happens to love or lovers.
Sometimes who one chooses to
love is not the best person to love.
Love has a beginning
and sometimes an ending...
Sometimes a moving off or moving on.....
Leaving
is not forgetting
*
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