Danas Na Plagu

29 Aug 2010

Ana Tewson-Bozic

The ocean looked very rough and choppy, darker than ashes it was, with great chasmous waves and many people watching brave swimmers from the beach.  It reminded me of a sports day or fireworks celebration, it was strange to see even young people wearing clothes here.

I had insisted upon coming out today and my Baba Marica doggedly stalked the red earth behind as chaperone, so appalled was she of my plan to go alone – as Mama was this day tied to home and my lazy brother.

Nearing the beach, I dashed ahead to preserve the lonely tableau I had been creating all morning, picturing myself bravely striding to epic waters to perform my display of aquatic mastery.

I kept my eyes on the sea as I carefully weighed down my towel and undressed.  In this same casual, careful manner, I picked my way to the stony shore, taking care to avoid eye contact with any of the Babas there.  My own Baba was risibly galled at the sight of my knickers; I could feel all her god-fearing force preying down upon my ears; she could not be seen to let me catch a cold, I was being very crazy.

I decided that day that I did not understand the language that she spoke, and concentrated very hard on keeping my gaze away and on making her words become but a faint rapping music to fall quaintly on English ears.  I was a sexless beast anyway and fiercely determined in my plans.

There might have been wailing following my little body as I ploughed through the hills and valleys of my wet playground.  I could hear none through the crashing ocean and the singing of its salts. It felt so warm and lovely and, excited, I forgot my agitation at the grey old woman and thrust forth from the waves repeatedly my grinning head – I was giving to the still onlookers the sweet thrill of experiencing a child in joy.

I was dolphin central to a mad frenzy of shadowy eruptions, the waves cutting all around in shards of dancing grey and my two tiny arms flapping amidst this, signalling to land the height and end of this victorious duet.

I sighed, pleased at my strength, and swam a little further out.  Ahead of me were two bespectacled German swimmers hovering about the stern of a boat.  I waved to these smiling dough spheroids as I pedalled past them.

It began to rain and became quickly very dark, my limbs felt terribly thin then and I succumbed to the roll of the water caressing its way to shore. I pushed my head backward into its rhythms.

I was looking at the clouds above me and dwarfing under the terrific might of their proximity, they were – I believed this entirely – leaning so terribly nearer to earth to scold the waters for their boisterous behaviour and time spent in undignified company.

At this moment I was suddenly submerged in water, a punishing force at my neck holding me rigid to a kicking bulk sat too low for air.  I screamed and cried and struggled, catching precious gasps at the sopping pits of this track-suited leviathan.

She was truly relentless and pounded her singular way to shore never once allowing me the space; as I so wanted; to claw at her face.

Standing now shivering, hunched at the neck, I wrestled from her grip and then dodged from the grabbling blue of Baba to find freedom in a higher spot on the pebbles where I looked in disgust at insolent ugliness.

‘Fuck you!!!  Fuck you!!!’ I propelled my voice with balled fists at sides, closing my eyes to the German and Yugoslav words floating at the periphery of my rageful comprehension.

I ran at them, pushing through air and flab and muscle toward my things, but these women were rabid for my remorse.  They wanted thanks and were pulling at my naked chest for it, yabbering a collective tongue with no comprehensions.

‘You’re all idiots!’, I hissed and wrenched free of their chorus.

Staggering toward the trees, I turned back and with blue lips and bare nipples screamed at the white sky and above them all, ‘PI?KO TI MATARINAA!!!’ and quickly dashed away.

On the track now, I ran for home as if I was leaving the devil behind me.  I slipped down many times and wailed into the dust on my face.  Earth dyed me orange as I careered along, screaming and crawling like a dog, making spectacle for tourists creeping into the sunning day.

I was Rama fleeing the terrible might of Ravana and monkeys were riding on dark clouds that gave me chase.  Baba and other mercenaries could not be allowed to catch up and I made a fierce cry fly over the shores to punctuate the instinct.

I remembered Baba’s face for a wild moment between some trees and a bridge, it had looked; in the fleeting glance as I fled; very old and was stretching awfully at its sides, the mouth an old scar tearing dark lines on her paralysed potato.  It nearly sobered me.

I had to concentrate hard around a bend and a beach to avoid the onslaught of sandaled feet and roots tangling awful near and threatening all my bruises, all things obscuring in the glare of this sea; a diamond-rippling circle to my left; towed to behaviour for those families – my obstacles – a cool tonic to my darkness.   It moves the dark mud to my eyes and I was seeing lots of strange patches floating about behind coverings of magnesious whiteness -  it was blurring my lids, making me useless and melancholy.

*

As the trees thinned along the line, I began to become aware of awkward glances at me, and saw people stop, hands on mouths and hips, to stare in agonised considerment at the scene.   The hot pounding of blood which had so far driven me, now shifts beat into wretching shivers.  I cry to faces as they materialise – looking – ahead of me.  Mala beba, sprinting dazed right at people, dripping them my red juice.

Though the sea was calming, behind me was a dark grey table cloud; its black shadows leaping at my feet, silent and outofsight; while the great plume bends itself, poising to pounce.

All those seeing white I knew feared my snivelling intensity and could not withstand the force of the injustices that I had carried from the rough with me to confront at their flocks.  Not a soul would approach me, feral urchin that I was, a painted Mowgli flown from the dark woods of Chitrakuta to reap furrowed discomfort through the dawning of their afternoons. . That pert and proudful sight of mud-caked buttocks, shiny as apples, and the ache of my gurn.  That would come back so surely to them who were there, and then they could just imagine at the terrors they had allowed befall me.

*

Eyeballing my legs on a route screeching through bricks of cool boutique shade, I really almost smiled because I felt barbarian in the stone road, storming through the town’s shoppers who would curve to walls for their dumb escape, for freedom from my twitching body.  Rings clinked and knuckleskins of clasped hands glowed thinly.

In hard, gaiting little struts, I whipped fists at angles and elbows passed the zenski, wailed once more and long, and then disappeared; clawing with hands and toes up the cobbled slope to my house, which I slew myself against wailing agonies.

It was Mama opened the door, her mouth slightly parted, looking down on me on the floor reaching for her ankles.

She grabbed me inside bending, and noise everywhere, hot as India, illness hanging in strips on the air.  A shower was run.  I was placed crumbly in there and reached and reached for her body never getting it, pleading orange-faced in demon tongues for sympathy and a cuddle.

Nonsense got at her; the pricklings of my weakness wore sticky at her fists and in front my countenance lying pathetically in arrogance.  I hugged and shivered in the corner of the bath being scoured and beaten, mother sobbing and making whirlpools.  Guilt was lonelily washing me, swimming in my ears and I jolted and cried.

I would never see Teo’s eyes were large, pointing all over walls and the quickly shut door in the room next door.  Swirls from the pink tank that had us would creep to him, thronged in pillow, statue still.

Inside Mama breaking and wiping her brows of the steam, hit out for the people who had stared and hit for the woman who would to save me and Mama, she thumped a very sad beat upon my cheeks, a song for Baba who was still wearily footing a path through the ghosts of my adventure.

She hit finally, shaking in the vapours of shame, upon my hot grazes.  The patchy bruises glowed through muscle with mesmer for Mama, for magpie fists finishing mourning the special energy of the mania in me so fiercely destroyed.

*

Solemnly in my dressing gown, having refused Mama’s apologies for thinking me a killer of grandmothers, I sat, murderous imp in the yard, watching Baba, her head down, very quietly ascend a way through stone and past me.  I blinked, and with forced dignity, tried to spirit glide myself upstairs where Teo and his skeleton eyes would come to sit with me soon.