Artist: Elena Tronina

Marie looks at the apple core of spring with a distant gaze and lips so dry you could think she had never said a single word before. The colors of the street are inviting to some; there’s the flowers on the trees, every day seems to come with a rainbow on its hat and the Sun is stubbornly lighting all the poor souls on fire. But she is away. She’s walking slowly through the boring cemented sidewalk, but she feels stuck in place. She looks around. The streets almost feel like they’re being struck by a hurricane. People are barely hanging on, trying desperately to cling onto something to not be carried by that violent windstream. Their hairs are all over the place, the houses are getting destroyed by the simple brutality of nature and everyone’s screaming. It’s not surprising to her, though. The Earth was moving around that gray Sun at about 30 kilometers per second while rotating around its own axis at 1,600 kilometers per hour. That is unfathomably fast. But for her there was not even a single breeze. The world was moving, but she was still. Every rainbow was made of colors she had seen before and she felt like all the people on that sidewalk were already getting too old for her. She had seen all she had to see.

Her friend Natalie told her of this sort of “guru” that lived in the street behind the pastry shop she used to go to with Vincent. She said he had the power to cure any illness of the mind. She had nothing better to do, and she had to get some grapes from the market anyway, so she decided to pay him a visit. It probably wouldn’t take long.

Marie enters a shady building on the other side of the sidewalk she was just in, asks about the guru to the receptionist and he insists on taking her to him personally. The place was common and smelled like an old car trying very hard to smell like a new car, except for the entrance to the guru’s “office”, which smelled like a plank of wood left too long to rest in the rain and… Something else. There was another scent coming from the room, but she thought she could’ve been imagining things.

The whole room seemed to be made of this old dark wood, but inside it was very colorful. Too colorful. Next to his table, on the floor and on a few shelves there were a lot of dolls of people and animals. All of them seemed to be dressed in all the possible existing colors there are, some even looked a bit clownish. There was this little elephant with silver earrings that seemed very friendly. There was this blonde woman dressed like a Hawaiian astronaut, a little boy with long rainbow nails and what looked like a prince. It was a beautiful, beautiful man with brown hair and dressed in white. She got lost thinking of all the color on the room and all the little dolls she could find, so she got a bit startled when from behind the desk a bearded man dressed in green greeted her.

“Sit! Sit!” he asked, with a very pleasant voice and an obviously forced indian accent.

She realized that there was a chair in front of the desk, where she thought it was just another monument for the dolls since it was so decorated with flowers and little animals. But the seat, which she couldn’t have seen from the door, was perfectly emptied and ready for her to grieve.

“Good morning.” She was tired.

“What ails you, my beautiful lady? What is your name?” He kept going on with the fake accent.

“Marie. Marie DuBois.”

“Ms. Marie…” He grabbed this pile of papers that was on his desk and kept searching for something. “Marie… DuBois… Oh! Found it!”

“I was scheduled?”

“Your friend told me about you. Lady Natalie. She said you would come here. I was waiting for you, yes, yes!”

She didn’t mind. Not even the silly fake accent. Even after a lot of thought was put by her on how she felt miserably still, she was happy on being carried by the wind just this once. It wouldn’t hurt to be carried away like flotsam, waiting to be played with like one of those weird dolls.

“You lost your husband.” He said, after her silence.

“Yes.”

“What was his name?”

“Vincent.”

“Sir Vincent!”

He got up and started looking for something in the room. She thought he would appear with some file about her husband like he did with her, but no. He seemed to be looking for a doll.

“How was he like?” He asked, still looking.

“Outside or inside?”

“Outside or inside what?”

“How he looked on the outside or on the inside?”

“Oh! Hm, both? What about both, lady Marie?”

She thought for a moment, and for a moment she was out of that room.

“He was silly. Very colorful. He liked to tell jokes. He had big hands and thin lips. His hair was always messy. One of our last conversations was on the bathroom of our house. He grabbed a strand of his hair and laughed. I asked what it was.” She was getting a bit emotional. “He said that the strand was white. He was getting old. I called him my little grandpa. We joked that his face was already too wrinkled.”

“He died of what, lady?”

She took a deep breath and came back to the room.

“Of death. Everyone dies of death, it’s the same.”

He let out a smile; he found the doll he was looking for. The guru grabbed one doll that was on a shelf close to the door and came back to his seat to look at Marie. She looked at his smiling face. Silly. She looked at his hands. In his left hand, on her right side, there was a little elephant figurine. It was another elephant with earrings, but these were golden ones. And it seemed a bit taller than the other, even though they looked like they were made by the same person. Now that she was back in the room, she noticed that odd smell again. But it wasn’t odd at all, it was… Strong. Strong, but delicate. It felt fresh and mundane.

“You know how this works?” He held the figurine closer to his face, maybe in case she hadn’t looked at it close enough.

“Hm, no. Do I have to pay you?”

“No, no. Don’t mind about that.”

“Really?”

“Yes, yes. It’s fine.”

She didn’t mind this, either. Carried by the breeze.

“Well, this is sort of a trip.” The guru said.

“A high trip?”

“What is a high trip?”

“A drug trip.”

“Oh, a drug trip? Like pot?”

“… Yeah?”

“Oh, no. No drugs. Drugs are illegal.”

“Sure.”

“It will make a bit more sense after it started. Don’t worry, I’ll be here. And at the end of it, you will be a completely different lady, lady Marie.”

“Okay.”

“Let’s start and…”

“Hold on.”

“… Yes, lady Marie?”

“Hm, can you tell me what is this smell?”

“What smell?”

“Hm… It’s this… Sort of sweet fragrance…”

“Oh! It’s probably this!”

He approached a cup with a dark liquid to her nose. She could recognize the aroma in an instant, it was the same she had been feeling for quite a while after arriving at that room.

“It’s… Grapes?” She said, smiling a bit.

“Yes, yes. It’s a type of wine, actually. I love grapes.”

She really liked that smell. It made her very hungry for some grapes.

“So… The high is on these… Grapes?”

“The high is on the grapes?” He seemed very confused.

“Yes, the trip.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Will I drink this?” She pointed at the cup.

“Oh, no! This is just mine. I had a cup for breakfast. I’m sorry, this has nothing to do with the trip. I just like to start the days with wine!” He laughed.

She got sad for an instant. She really wanted some grapes. Or a grape-flavoured thing, it could do wonders for her.

“Are you ready?” He said, pointing at the elephant figurine.

“Yes.” She said, still unsure of what was going to happen.

“Close your eyes and put your hands above the table.”

She closed them and moved her arms, following his instructions. He grabbed her hand and placed the elephant figurine on her right hand. She felt him move her hands so they both would be holding the figurine. But his hold was strong, so she got a bit hurt by the pointy earrings.

She started to feel a bit dizzy, but she couldn’t open her eyes. She felt like drowning in a black void, but still feeling the hands of the guru. Suddenly, a loud noise. A noise she could describe as “a star colliding on itself, but stuck in a living room full of wooden furniture”. She felt inside of a hurricane for once.

“You are now less than nothing.” It was clearly the guru speaking, but it wasn’t his voice. There was no fake accent. It was her voice, as if it was a thought that she could hear with her ears. “You are to be played with by the strong desires and intentions of your Ego’s God. And then you will come back to me, so I can destroy you so you can become nothing. And once you’re nothing, you’ll have only yourself. And once you have yourself, you’ll be everything.”

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All the noise stopped and was replaced by people chatting. It was a party. She still felt the hands of the guru. All her senses came back to her at the same time and she opened her eyes. But the person holding her hand was not the guru. It was a brown-haired man, a most beautiful man, dressed in a white fancy suit. She quickly realized she was not on the guru’s office anymore. Everyone around her seemed to be rich people, dressed like rich people would dress like in the 19th century. There was a huge chandelier on the golden ceiling and everyone seemed too polite. She was sitting on a luxurious white sofa, while he was kneeling on the fancy carpet embracing her hands, too eager to interrupt her assessment of her arrival to this reality.

“So…? What would you say, Hermina?” The brown-haired prince said, still holding both of her hands together with his hands.

“I say you’re a silly man, Ezekiel.” Hermina escaped his grasp and crossed her arms. “You can’t possibly think I would marry a man that made me feel so embarrassed on Sunday’s lunch.”

“That was an accident, you know it.” He turned to her, even though she kept avoiding his gaze. “You know I do love you more than the stars love the night sky.”

“The stars don’t love the night sky, Ezekiel, it’s just their home. No, it’s more like a job. They get there and shine until the shift is over. This is exactly how your love feels to me.”

“You’re cruel to me, Hermina. But I do not mind. You know I would take a sharp knife of yours disguised as a bunch of phrases if it meant to just hear your voice again. I…”

“Excuse me, are you prince Ezekiel?”

This young lady appeared out of nowhere. Hermina looked at her, still crossing her arms. Ezekiel seemed a bit foolish knelt on the floor like that, so he got up for a moment to talk to the young lady. She was dressed in an ellegant and giant blue dress, which to Hermina made her look like a big and ugly peacock.

“Yes, madame. Are you enjoying the party?”

“I was going to ask if you would like to dance with me. I am the princess of…”

“Listen here, you condecorated blue whale!” Hermina got up from the sofa and started pointing her fingers at the princess face. “He is mine and mine alone, okay? Take your title and shove it where the Sun doesn’t shine!”

The princess was terribly offended, while the prince, in his shock, was laughing a bit. Hermina grabbed him by his hand and dragged him to the dancing hall, leaving the princess to feel insulted and alone.

Hermina was not a princess. She was modest and hot-headed. She didn’t dress very flamboyantly not only because she didn’t have the money for the fancy dresses, but also because she was not interested at all in dressing like that. She felt like an intruder at that party and an intruder on Ezekiel’s life. But he didn’t mind. He loved her too much.

“You made quite a scene over there, Ms. Hermina.” He said, with their faces and bodies close, dancing in slow circles on the dancing saloon of that huge house.

“Shut up. I hate you.” She said, avoiding his eyes, but still on his hold. She sighed a bit and rested her face on his chest a bit while they slowed the pace.

“You could’ve let me go just then. You could’ve made me exit your life by giving me to that princess.”

“I know.”

“And what made you not do it?”

She lifted up her head and looked at him. It was the first time she did it after she woke up from her dream.

“Be very careful, prince Ezekiel. I still have time to do that, you know? Don’t make me change my mind.”

They laughed a bit and kissed. It was a lovely kiss, still keeping the dance in a hug that felt like it could be eternal.

The night went by slowly, the people were slowly leaving the place and the saloon started, slowly, to not smell so much like old sardines from all those old people in hot dresses. Ezekiel, now without his white suit, was looking for Hermina. He found her, sleeping on the white sofa where he proposed to her earlier. She had her feet up and everything. Even on her sleep, she looked like she was mumbling and was fighting someone. He laughed. That was so her. He put his white suit on her laying body to protect her from the cold and stared at her for a bit. “It’s best if she sleeps a bit more before we go to bed”, he thought. “My sweet wife Hermina, thank you for accepting me into your world.”

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Many years have passed and Hermina lived through them all. She was always on a carriage going somewhere, always thinking of her silly husband who she loved so much. She started to dress a bit more royally since it was procedure, but she would always joke that those dresses were so tight she would just choke one of those days.

They had a kid last summer, little boy Allan. It was also procedure to have him put long rainbow nails on each finger every time there was a royal parade. She also felt this was silly, but Ezekiel promised to her that Allan would find that hilarious when he grew up. She didn’t felt that suffocated by all those eyes, not even on the parades. She only cared about Ezekiel’s eyes and how they would look at her.

One day, she was in a carriage going to meet a princess from another country that was visiting Ezekiel’s parents. Arriving there, it was odd. She was dressed on an astronaut costume, but with a Hawaiian shirt on top. Hermina could swear she recognized the costume from somewhere, but Ezekiel’s mother said it was part of a fashion movement that was happening on her country. Hermina thought it would be silly to be intrusive about this, so she didn’t thought about the princess’ clothes any longer.

They had just finished dinner and the princess turned to Hermina. “Come with me” she said, and led her to the empty garden. They sat on a bench next to a couple of flowers. It was the apple core of spring, she could feel it.

“Do you ever want to get away?” The princess asked.

“Get away from where?”

“From here. From all the duties.”

“I feel fine. I love Ezekiel too much to leave him. There’s no other place I want to be in.”

“Oh, you’re so lucky! He is a lovely person.”

They looked at the grass for a while, in silence.

“If you ever want to get away from here, you can talk to me.” The princess said.

“And go where?”

“Everywhere.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s fine. But know that you can just call me.”

She grabbed a pencil and a piece of paper that were both stored on the pocket of her astronaut suit. She annotated her telephone number on the paper and gave it to Hermina.

“Keep it. Talk to me if you feel lost.”

She left the garden and Hermina.

A few months later, Hermina and Ezekiel received the news. The princess had just killed herself. She left a baby and two kids for her husband to take care of. Hermina cried and Ezekiel conforted her. She was a bright spirit in that royal world.

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Many years had passed. Hermina now took care of three children and a baby, with little Allan now on his piano classes. Hermina seemed a bit upset. She walked to her husband’s room, the prince. He was struck by tuberculosis and was suffering a lot, but even still he smiled when he saw her approaching his bed to carress his hand. Since they were still at the end of the 18th century, nobody knew what he had. They had to just watch him fade away.

“Where is the smile? I want your smile.” He said, with a raspy voice and barely being able to speak without coughing.

She smiled, but quickly started to cry.

“I love you. You do know that, right?” She said, crying a bit.

“Of course I do.”

“I always think of these moments. I want you to know I loved you, I love you and I will always love you. I want you to know that.” She cried more.

“I do know that. I always knew. Even when you pushed me away.”

She laughed a bit.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for anything.”

“Why be sorry? I’m so happy you’re here.” He said, with his voice getting weaker. “I’m so glad I get to see you one more time.”

“Don’t say it like that.”

“I can feel it, Hermina.”

“Don’t say it like that, Ezekiel, you dumb prick!” She shouted a bit.

“Hermina…” His voice ceased. His eyes closed.

“Don’t leave me.” She cried. She put her face on his hands. She could feel it. He was not there anymore.

*********************************************************************************************************

A few months passed and she lived through them all. It was hell on Earth. Suddenly all those eyes looking at her made her very uncomfortable, so she stayed inside for most days. She would often cry whenever her kids were not around. Oh, her kids. They were growing old so fast. Amelia had just learned how to read. Allan was a master of the piano already, at such an early age. “He would be so proud of you” Hermina thought to herself whenever Allan called her to watch him play.

She got in her carriage and asked to be driven around the countryside for a bit. She watched the people’s faces. She looked at their eyes as they moved quickly by her. She listened to the horse walking through that path like it was overwhelmed with its beauty. But there was no beauty for her. The sky, the Sun, the entire countryside and the flowers. They were all grey. She was alone in a world of clay, left behind to watch the days go by and the people to grow up and to watch herself grow increasingly more still. She barely knew if the Earth was moving or not, not even thinking a lot about the concept of a planet, but she knew that if the Earth was moving, she was still.

She got back to her castle, but avoided all of her children that were playing with dolls with the maids on a room behind the stairs that led to her bedroom. She sat on her bed, now comically large. No use on sleeping there alone, but still she was cursed to haunt that place. That planet.

Suddenly, she remembered what the princess said. She searched on her nightstand for the paper with her number, and there it was. A bit creased, but she could see the number. She laughed. She ran to one of the castle’s telephone, grabbed the number on the paper and jokingly called to it. A bit of noise, but a voice came up.

“Hello, Marie.” It was the guru.

“M-Marie…?” She didn’t understand, but felt like everything sounded a bit too familiar.

“Do you wish to get away?” The guru asked.

“Yes. Take me wherever.”

She closed her eyes and suddenly she was in a black void. But it was violent. She felt her whole body be carried by a stream of water, then suddenly being abandoned to drop from a great height. As she fell down, she screamed. Her life passed before her eyes. She could remember very vividly all the 15 years she spent by Ezekiel’s side. Every single second. Every minute. It was all fresh as if it had just happened all at once. The day at the party where he proposed to her, the day Allan was born, the day Ezekiel felt ill. All of those moments were raging inside her brain and she felt like it was too much.

Suddenly, she stopped falling. She was floating on the dark void. Around her, she saw a lot of explosions happening. It was as if she was in space and a bunch of stars decided to die all at once. It felt like a sky full of the most beautiful fireworks she’d ever seen. Every time one star would explode, she would feel it like a wave had gone by her, and her soul was permanently moved. There was a lot of sounds. There was a lot of color. There was too much of everything. Words rushed through her brain and her ears were quickly filled by a sea of curse words and songs. She closed her eyes in pain for a second, but as she closed them she realized they were never open. So she opened them, in the middle of that chaos screaming on her face. She saw… Something. It looked like a face, a giant head. It was God, she knew it. He was very far away, but coming closer and closer. She tried to get far from him, but it was too late. God opened his mouth and she was devoured by him. She screamed.

But suddenly, she felt still again. Her eyes were closed and her hands felt the grasp of someone’s hands.

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“So… How was it?”

The guru stared at her as she opened her eyes. She was back at his office. Everything looked exactly like it was when she had entered there. The dolls, the figurines, the dark wood covering all of the room. Even the silly guru with his silly fake accent. She came back to being Marie DuBois.

“Lady Marie?”

“Huh?”

“How was it? How are you feeling?”

She looked at her hands for a second. She looked at the walls and the dolls.

“I feel like…” She said, thinking a bit.

“Yes?”

“I feel like… Like I could…”

“Yes? You feel like you could what?”

She smelled the room one more time.

“I feel like I could really use some grapes.”

About the text: Had this idea after watching Under The Sand by Ozon. It is obviously inspired by Puhoy and “The Aristocrats” joke.