The Pool

 Of course, it was neither the evening at the seaside the passion of which is awakened by the chillness of dusk, nor the summertime romance or the honey-flavored adventure anymore. However, the wind which had just begun to make trees naked was bringing the sounds of that ancient and painfully familiar melody from far away.

 The gardener was emptying the pool. Somewhere near you could distinguish the contours of two silhouettes. The first: tall, with confident moves was continuously strolling back and forth. The second: with her back towards the water was sitting on the chaise lounge, legged in a careless manner, thinking about something and trying to express those thoughts.

  -Writing the dialogues is the hardest thing of all- said the man, stopped strolling, squatted near the chaise longue and stared at the pool with the remnant of the water decorated by colorful leaves for the feast of decadence, in such way that you’d think he was remembering some very complicate dialogue he wrote.

- You should pronounce it aloud, to make sure that it sounds like the real one.

-Your last novel does not look like the real story either but it is beautiful, it promises you great success. The tender voice of the girl sounded as if it was bringing clarity into this evening half-light.

-I could never have written it without you.

It was correct. One evening, at the shore of Black Sea she told him the Heine’s poem about Lorelei, brushing her very long, golden hair with golden comb, singing the magic song and directing the ships towards the inevitable peril.

 As a response the man touched her arm with his own. Her tanned, magnetic skin, glazed with salty drops. It was a soft touch, very tender and just as careful as they carry the thin, completely filled cocktail glasses in small, bamboo huts with tasteless music playing in them.

 She quickly finished the last lines and they together made the story up: the story about the musician who has his own mermaid giving him songs by which he becomes successful.

 And that one passionate kiss was almost simultaneous to the downfall of an immense, greedy red ball stuffed with life, into the sea.

-Writing the fantasy gives you the freedom-

Said the girl and her small frantic body- locked up in blue jeans and the tight jacket- dropped back from the vast memories into the autumn suburb.

-         Everything is supposed to be unreal and nobody can accuse you of writing about them or about yourself. Meanwhile, you can write and write and have your masked revenge on everything and everyone on earth.

-         Yes, that sailor which turned into the musician looks like me, however, will anyone believe that I have my own Siren? My fiancée won’t be jealous thank God,-

The two endings of the smile of a writer stretched till his ears as he patted the knees of the girl in a caring manner but for a moment it looked as if he wanted to make sure that there really were legs and not the tail of a mermaid, just like you’re pinching yourself to wake up from a nightmare.

-         Nobody believed in Hemingway’s fisherman as well- said the girl and the ring-like voice was reflected from the pink bricks of the walls. The building was of a kind which looked like a Barbie doll house and in which you could peacefully spend the rest of your life with dignity. She as a child had the dollhouse like that, with beautiful barbies living inside, who were simply supposed to enjoy their luxuriously long midday baths or sitting on the balcony and that was all. Five smiley friends with dark skin and flawless bodies about which you could not even tell whether there was any difference between them or not besides their favorite rooms in which they were pictured for advertising purposes on the surface of the box.

-         But he really caught that big fish- answered the man with certain enthusiasm apparently awakened by the topic and his eyes narrowed due to his smile which at some level was quite empty as well.

-         Maybe everybody catches their big fish eventually but it remains unnoticed by others because this fish looks different for each of them.

-         That’s true. You also are going to find yours. -said the man and once again smiled staring at the eyes of the girl in which the tears were pooling.. He smiled as if nothing was going wrong.

One way or another, the pool was once again filled before the Winter began, "the winter of our discontent".

 The party started at eight o’clock. The guests were coming as groups out of the colorful, sparkling cars, the couples were sipping the minty whiskey and were showing off their relationships just like the precious jewelry. You could hear the melodies which seemed somehow irrelevantly heavy for this environment. Dressed up, over-fashioned girls with relaxed, slow, prolonged movements at one hand were reluctantly enjoying and on another trying to get used to encountering attention in a nonchalant manner. Younger ones danced a lot and just knew that everything was theirs. It looked like Relentlessly aged machos who were not so young anymore had no idea what had happened to them.

 After singing all the cliché melodies which were already sung thousands of times and after depleting all questions, answers, eccentric laughs and hint-containing eye contacts between the guests, they hit their roads: roads to bedrooms, roads to long long highways, roads towards the midnight secret adventures or back to boring daily routine.

 The writer went to the second floor of the barbie doll house just to plunge into the arms of his fiancée as a plush toy. Meanwhile his girlfriend abruptly got out of the flower dress and jumped into the pool with both feet even though always said that she did not know how to swim. Jumped into the pool the surface of which was reflecting and assimilating the colorful lights.

Very soon there would be the white dress and tasteless flowers, the whole army of children and cheap bickering, intrigues, the lovers’ revenge, being sick of home, escaping and homecoming, the doomed accidents, measles, scarlet fever and the summed up mishaps called life, the life of others, struggled and lived by others, extremely far from the rocks which were burning their backs during the search of the fairy tale shapes into the cloudy sky, painfully far from secret night rendez-vous and far from that feeling when you try to resist the urge to walk hand by hand with somebody next to you, Far from the beautiful story-telling and from that exhausting feeling which tickles into your stomach until it eventually expires. If somebody on the other shore asked what was she doing across the ocean she would probably answer: “I’ve been drinking and resisting love”.

 Night was gone. The light step by step was painting the contours of the subjects. The party was over. The new day was ready to shove their own reliable routine to everybody in their hands. Near the house, in a vast valley the group of young people carelessly continued what they began the previous night because they still had the luxury to do so. Even though the endless party was like a giant stone pulling them towards the deep sleep just like the stone hanging on the necks of medieval witches, descending them to the bottoms of lakes. Somewhere between them there was a spark of Huxley’s Moksha medicine, that’s why nobody was surprised when one boy with the hands illustrated with tattoos and strange eyes like pools in which all the little girls were diving with pleasure, saw the mermaid sinking in a dollhouse’s pool. The mermaid had long hair and her eyes were the color of that doomed ocean in which the ships were continuously wrecking. The skin of a mermaid was white just like the sails of those ships and her tail was covered by the fish squames like in Lovecraft stories. Her gaze was trained to endlessly wait for the sailors and her voice was creating the scream of no return.

It happens so: you live your ordinary life, having fuss over trivial things, trying to concentrate on your tiny-tiny dilemmas and just like that, out of blue, something happens.

Well-known French philosopher told us that one can encounter the feeling of absurdity in any corner of any street. Maybe you’re right Dear Albert. However sometimes it’s otherwise: the feeling of absurdity encounters us at every corner of every street, what we do is that we choose to ignore it just to be able to continue with our own lives and there’s nothing to blame. The worst thing is, when we find something sparkly – the bracelet or just a veil in these extremely pointless streets - paved with grey stones, and we don’t know what to do as if somebody lost it and we are confused between taking and leaving. What would be the right thing to do? Maybe it is not worth such thorough thinking. If it's not us then someone else will come and tag it along.

Sometimes we just don’t get it. That’s why the newly found miracle continues to sit there untouchably. Only because we do not know what to do with it. Whoever knows, let them handle it. . Time flows and nothing changes except for seasons: the week flies reluctantly, Pazuzu still brings the headache and nausea every Friday Saturday and Sunday, the trees still die standing tall during autumn and return back from the dead without movement during each spring. Street dogs are eagerly barking to the wheels of unknown cars disappearing in their own dust and home phones are silent but still continue to exist in this mad turmoil of the digital age..

-She said she’s leaving already, returning to the far oceans to make Odysseus dizzy once again and to mess with the minds of desperate shipmen. – that’s what the guy was telling while on the background there were the noises prognosing the new perils: the siren of an ambulance, the sound of a strained fuss, the noise of another and absolutely transient trouble and long story short the noise of the loud conscience of the fact that despite everything, this vast universe- the aquarium for little fishes is still the same as before, just like the pool about which the boy was talking. Still the same- as if nothing extraordinary is going on.