AND THE GHOST DANCES IN THE FLAMES
An extract from the novel: Memories of the Awakened Machine
[4]
Inside the case was Reuben’s guitar. Belle had already watched him play it at The Club. She indulged him nonetheless.
“It’s pretty,” she said.
“Yes, she sure is. A little dented and scratched, and been dragged down the road with me, up and down and every which way in between. Yet still plays a sweet tune.”
“I know. I heard it earlier this evening. Remember?”
He smiled and nodded. “That you did–that you did. But right now, you’ll hear her sing in the open air to an audience of stars. And you’re gonna lead.”
Belle raised her palms and held them out in front of her chest. She shook her head; a wave of red hair danced across her vision. But her eyes remained fixed on the curves of the wooden guitar–its easy shape reminded her of her own body, and for a moment she inhabited the mind of every man who had seen her; had touched her. She imagined how they must have felt. The nerves; the excitement and desire. The lust. So intently was she looking at the instrument–eyes moving from left to right as they followed the path of the slim strings and shaped wood–she did not see the movement in the bushes and trees behind Reuben. All she absorbed was the beauty of the instrument, and the accompanying words and melody sprouting unburdened from a seed buried in her mind and memory.
Her peach lips parted. The words came first as a sigh. Then she breathed in and opened her mouth wider, closing her eyes as she did so. It was a song her mother used to sing when cleaning the restaurant, and Belle remembered joining in, even before she.could understand the words. She remembered the name of it: My Sweet Lord. As the first line emerged into the night, Reuben clapped his hands, and a look of joy spread across his face–if Belle could have seen him, she would have noted the lines patterning his aged skin had smoothened.
“Now that’s a beauty. A love song to the Lord on high. George Harrison! I haven’t played this for a long time, but old fingers don’t forget. Neither do the strings.”
He was already strumming. The notes from the guitar were soft and warm. Belle opened her eyes and saw that the flames in the barbecue pit had lowered to a red glow, and she sang, and even to her own ears, it was beautiful. She heard the voice of a young girl who had, at one time, known only love. The air smelled of cooked fish and the salt of the sea, and fragrant grass. Reuben watched her as she relaxed cross-legged on the ground, body swaying from the hips.
Can you still love, still desire, even in the twilight of your years? The thought was given form by the music; and by the man’s rasping voice as it backed Belle’s own.
They sang in moonlit duet. They finished when the song was done.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” he said. “When two join together in song, there’s more than simple music happening. Or melody. You relive your past. See the future.” Though the song had ended, the echo of it still hung in the air and whispered in the breeze. “You have a sweet voice, Miss Belle.”
“Thank you.” She was surprised how much she appreciated the compliment. “Do we eat now?”
Reuben rested the guitar on its back. Grass ringed its slope-shouldered form.
“Soon,” he said. “May I be so bold as to ask you a question?”
“Of course.”
“Do you swim?”
Belle put her hand to her mouth to stifle laughter at the unforeseen pivot in conversation. She removed her palm from her lips and saw their outline there; a peach-coloured oval. She looked at him and saw his eyes were earnest.
“Sorry,” she said. “I just didn’t expect that question. Yes, I do. I lived by the sea, remember?”
“Yes, yes, I remember.” He stood up, and his knees cracked. It reminded Belle of the flames. There was another movement in the bushes behind the old man, but neither saw. “The sea is still warm at this time of year.” He began unbuttoning his shirt, slowly, from the top down.
“You can’t be serious? It’s dark. Is it even safe? What if–”
“Freedom.” His one word was enough to stop her lips dead. His tongue curled about the two syllables like a flame around whitening coal. “Every once and a while, I take a dip in the sea. You might notice that in the bay there are rarely any sizable waves of note. It’s like a pond. And you walk in, and once your feet can no longer touch the bottom, once your toes are no longer tickled by the shells and kissed by the sand, you raise your knees and stretch out your arms and legs. And you float. It’s dark, and quiet, and still. All you can do is feel. That’s freedom.”
“But don’t you get scared? There could be anything in the water. You can’t seriously expect me to follow you out there?”
But she knew he did. And she knew she likely would. Reuben unfastened the last button of his shirt. His chest and belly were flat. She could see the outlines of his ribs as a soft breeze caused one side of the shirt to flap open. His skin was rough clay stretched over a rutted track of bones.
“No fear. And a tip. It’s best to go in as bare as the day you were born. Let the water touch every inch of your skin. It’s like music. Carries you away.”
As he spoke, the lightness in Belle’s head expanded like a bubble until it seemed primed to burst; all she could do to prevent herself screwing her eyes together and biting down on her lip was to stand as well. She felt the heels of her long boots sink into the grass and dirt as she raised herself. Then she was standing. They looked at each other from either side of the fire. Her fingers went to her collar. Belle undid the top button. Reuben stood unmoving, except for the ebbing and flowing red glow colouring the exposed flesh running from his rough-skinned neck to his dusky belt buckle. Belle undid the next button down; her fingernails rubbed against the brown skin of her breastbone. She saw Reuben’s lips quiver and realised he was singing, but the voice was so quiet that the words slipped away into the night before they could take full form. She closed her eyes. Moved down to the third button. A flick of a nail and it too fell to the side like a leaf pulled free of a twig, and in the darkness of her mind, and onto the backs of her closed eyelids, an image came: her in the sea, alone, a figure with arms and legs outstretched in a pool of black silk. And she was unclothed, and her skin was shining mahogany as the water lapped across her slim thighs; the swells of her breasts; the dark circles of her nipples. She was a butterfly with wings extended, ready to fly–except her flight would take her down rather than upwards on a journey where she would glide through the dark depths until she found what she was looking for. What she desired. The winged creature that was her wore a crown of red that fanned out among the dark ripples of the shapeless ocean; but it was her hair, thick and black and gleaming–no cheap wig. The deepest of dives. Down. Mouth parted in song. The water was so dark it could well have been ink. Or oil. Belle, or the creature, for there could be no proper distinction between the two, drank the water in as she sang.
The image dissolved into the night. Outside the cinema of her mind, Belle’s fingers moved down. Another button came unclasped. She opened her eyes and saw Reuben’s mouth still moving. Even though she assumed he was singing, the vibrating of his lips and tongue reminded her of prayer. Her mother had often prayed. Where had that left her? Belle remembered the woman on the kitchen floor. One of the men had bitten down on her breast so hard his teeth had broken the skin, and by the time Belle had returned to the house, the thin tooth marks were dark red with congealed blood. Belle looked down to where she had unbuttoned her shirt; the tops of her own breasts were visible above her bra and decorated with crystal droplets of dewy sweat. She could see the outlines of her nipples through the sheer material. She looked back at Reuben. He smiled, and she could see his teeth–they were stained orangey red by the wine and the glow of the fire.
She buttoned up her shirt.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“I know.”
He moved towards her. His hands were outstretched; prologue to an embrace. But Belle didn’t see him. Not really.
Movement. Undeniable. In the trees behind the man, behind Reuben, though his name did not matter anymore. Nothing did.
“If you’re not willing to swim, I guess there’s little remaining for us to do but lie down on the grass together and be man and woman for a few verses.”
“No.”
Camouflaged by leaves and shadow though they were, it was clearly a person there–not one of the creatures from Belle’s darker dreams; or one of the tigers sketched by hearsay; not a pig, nor cattle.
Reuben remained oblivious. His right hand grasped her left. For a moment, the spell was broken, and the bushes and trees were again empty. Belle’s reality shrank. The old musician stood before her. His open shirt flapped in the breeze. His exposed chest and belly were marked with brown spots: bruised and spoiled fruit. She noted gaps between his teeth that were wide and uneven, and each tooth bore a tombstone outline. The alcohol on his breath was bitter; the odour of the grilled fish, rotten and stagnant. His breath rivalled the heat of the charred coals stacked beneath the blackened barbecue grate.
“Too late to renege on our agreement now, Miss Belle. After all, we’ve shared wine and eaten fish. Hell, if that ain’t an official breaking of bread, then I don’t know what is. I’ve got money. It’s the real thing. I’ve told you that. Now if you just let me–”
The heat on his breath intensified as his desperation grew. It reminded Belle of the pig. The boar. How the creature’s filthy breath had felt against her skin. Untamed. Lustful. Driven by fear and anger.
“No.”
His eyes. The crystallised grey darkened to match the night, and their wandering translucence was all that remained as the rest of his outline dwindled. If she hadn’t known better, she would have believed he was fading. Like mist. And through him, or past him–as the difference was irrelevant–the figure had reappeared. Framed between two misshapen tree trunks. Closer. A woman.
“You’re all the same! No respect. You don’t love. Don’t know the meaning of the word. At least I’ve been there. Felt that. And so what if I now have to pay my way to get what a man needs? You think I don’t deserve you? This is business, nothing more, and you better remember that!”
His voice was no longer music. Or poetry. It was louder, yet diminished. A rasping, struggling thing. Corroded iron dragging on concrete.
The hand gripping Belle’s felt cracked and worn, yet also clammy–it was the clutch of a drowning man. She looked beyond him again. Or through him. The figure–the woman–had stepped out from between the trees.
Crickets chirped. An owl hooted from an invisible perch.
Reuben wheezed.
It wasn’t her voice Belle heard when she opened her mouth to deny him for a final time. She could not even be sure she had voiced her refusal at all. But the voice had certainly been female. Then even that became memory, as the clearing was filled with the frenzied scuffing of boots on grass and dirt as Reuben made a frantic attempt to keep his footing, for Belle had, without thought, yanked her hand away with enough force to make the man stumble. He appeared corporeal again, the ageing fellow she had walked The Old Road with, not the despairing and desperate creature he had momentarily become.
The stumble splintered into a fall.
Belle had been beneath enough men to know flesh and bone had weight to them; it was undeniable. Reuben’s mass sounded a gunshot crack as he landed rib-first on the neck of his guitar. The sculpted wood that was his pride and joy snapped beneath him. Belle stood. Reuben lay on his side and whistled a song of pain through the gaps in his teeth. Their eyes met. His were colourless once more.
“I’m sorry,” Belle whispered as she turned away from him. But she wasn’t. In fact, she wasn’t sure what she felt. She was, however, certain of the song.
Around her, the crickets and their asynchronous chorus were undeniable; their vibrations touched her ears. The owl was real, though unseen. Reuben’s panting and hissing courtesy of his cracked rib cage was clear. Yet the song–it broadcast only in her head.
A mental echo. She’d heard it before. Only hours removed from the present. Sung from a stage: the tired-looking singer whose performance had preceded Reuben’s set that evening. Yet that was the past. The music in her head was live, though played from within.
And, somehow, without.
Belle bent down and unzipped her left boot. Her right. The unfastening of her footwear was an abrasive accompaniment to the guitar notes rearranging themselves into a lilting melody in her mind. She slipped the boots off. Reuben’s laboured breathing scuttered away on the wind. She stepped across the clearing. Toward the trees. The grass underfoot tickled her soles.
Belle thought she heard Reuben call her name. Probably. But the sound was unclear. What was sure were the words bursting with dry sweetness in her mind. The voice was understated, yet explicit. The lyrics told a story. There was a girl. And a man. They danced. A love song?
Belle continued toward the trees. The cycling heavens above–that had been so spellbinding before–were now ignored. Her eyes locked only on her destination. And the figure waiting there.
Next verse. The singing voice, the one in her head, recited the girl’s fate. Narration put to tune. When the clock struck midnight, the girl’s dancing partner revealed himself to be–
Belle’s wig slipped as her leading food caught in a shallow dirt crater. Her left eye saw only red. With both hands, she righted it. Another step. Damp soil stuck to the fleshy pads of her toes. And then she was there. It wasn’t a man’s voice singing now. The lyrics were reaching her through her ears. External. Her own lips were moving. Her peach lips. And her voice. Belle sang. Though not alone.
She sang in duet.
The woman was older than Belle–at least twice her age. That didn’t mean she was not beautiful. How long she had been watching Belle and the old singer from behind criss-crossed trunks and branches, Belle did not know, yet the woman’s simple green dress was untarnished by soil or bark. Her skin was neither dark nor pale. Like Belle, she was shoeless; the two were of similar height. Asian features–though the eyes were more rounded than most locals, the nose more pronounced. The woman’s lips were painted red, and that red was the same shade–deep, yet bright–as the single streak of colour running from scalp to tip amidst the woman’s otherwise jet-black hair. Her eyes were brown, though the precise shade appeared to shift from light to dark, and back again. She was singing the same words as Belle.
Joy. The feeling. No. Something more. Euphoria. As they sang, faces now inches from one another, Belle saw beauty in the fine lines sketched at the edges of the woman’s eyes. Enchantment, too; in the slight imperfection in the woman’s lipstick, smudged, perhaps by the rim of a glass; intoxication in the alcohol perfume living within the sweet chemical exhalations from the open mouth.
It was too much. A boundless fluttering within Belle’s insides. Undistilled ecstasy.
Belle closed her eyes. Flashes. Memories set to song. Her mother had told her about movies. Before she died. The melding of images and music. Belle must have seen some during her early childhood, yet she held no recollection of such thing. But in her mind, now, her memories were living pictures. Sitting in a cramped seat looking out of a small oval window with the world passing below, red hair, not synthetic, at the edges of her vision. Belle had never been on a plane. She opened her eyes. The woman’s face was closer. Her eyes were drowned galaxies of guttering bronze, replacing the night sky above. Still she sang. Belle sang. Eyes closed again. Memory. Grey skies and frigid wind. A sea. Not the sea she knew. White-tipped waves in the mist. The flash of a camera. Cold breeze. Unlived recollection. Eyes opening again as a hand took hers. Not the damaged parchment of the old singer’s hands. Smooth. The tips of sharp nails.
Eyes still shut. Movie. Song. Chorus now. Her mother. But younger. Dancing. She wore no clothes and no smile. Her breasts jiggled as unseen voices laughed. Eyes opened. Vision blurry. Tears. Belle knew she was crying. Her hand. Clasped by a woman’s. The woman’s. Warm and cold. The face before her was unclear through Belle’s salt tears, but Belle could see enough to know the expression was one of distress. A downturn of those red lips. Lips the same colour as the streak of red in the woman’s hair. This time, Belle did more than close her eyes; she squeezed them tight. The euphoria added vivid colour to the new memory. Then why was she crying? No matter. Fresh scene. Recollection. A boat. A man. Old. Not Reuben. An accident. The man slid down the angled deck. Wood slick with saltwater. No! A beast. Waiting. Open mouth and endless teeth, and dead, black eyes. Half the man disappeared. Blood fountained from his mouth as he screamed. Belle felt a warmth between her thighs. Her knees were weak. In the movie of her mind, she looked down at her feet, suspended above a floor littered with shorn locks of hair. She opened her eyes. Drawn in by two hands. The woman embraced her. Through the cotton of the green dress, Belle felt fire. A hand–not hers–rose and ripped the wig free from Belle’s head. Another hand grasped at the tight curve of her backside. She was still singing. The woman too. Open mouths. The kiss and the song were one and the same. With her own hands, Belle ripped at thin fabric. Found warm flesh beneath. They sang, though the words were muted by their joined lips. And tongues. The woman’s breath was decadence.
Final verse. The girl in the song was dragged down to–
Belle moaned as impatient fingers lifted the loose material of her skirt and yanked her underwear down over her thighs. Sharp nails dug into her uncovered buttocks. Belle tried to scream, but the woman’s greedy tongue occupied all free space in her mouth.
Knees and hips melting like candle wax, Belle sank to the ground. The woman fell into her.
§§§
