Sleeping Girl With Peaches

SLEEPING GIRL WITH PEACHES

A Story in Voice by Ann Martin

Johanna

I could feel it that afternoon.

Could you feel it, Gabrielle, the brewing storm? That’s what they do, is it not? They brew, they brood and they break.

So, no forgetting that afternoon. July, eighteen ninety eight. No forgetting for me, nor, I think, for you.

I could feel it in the heat. In the hush. In my baby’s bubbling snore. I was afraid for my baby. He’d been so ill. Afraid for him and for so much more.

This storm that was coming, I wasn’t sure when, but soon. It had my name on it. Johanna. This one was for me. It’s what I do. I weather storms.

And there was this girl, thirteen? fourteen? walking the wheat field track.

Could you feel it, Gabrielle? Could you feel the storm? Or only the blisters weeping into your mother’s shoes? Thighs chafed red from walking, salt sweat stinging your eyes, hands bruised   from lugging that basket. And I bet you needed to pee.

Walk a mile in somebody else’s shoes, fine. But sixteen miles? You went too far. And all for a basket of peaches? Come on, child. Way, way too far.

Gabrielle

You think?

So tell me, Jo, how far would you go, even in my mother’s shoes?

You couldn’t have walked in mine, the soles were full of holes. How far would you go for peaches, if peaches were all you had?

Did your maman ever weep from hunger, from the mean, empty, nothingness of it all? Do you know how it feels at suppertime to have half a potato each?

Tant  Berthe had peaches on her tree to drop at the feet of the poor, if the poor cared to come and collect them. So that’s what I went and did.

The man hanging on his cross above my bed.“The poor you shall always have with you,” is what he said.

But, “The poor shall never have peaches,” I don’t think he ever said that.

So think, Jo, about the peachiness of peaches, the downy gold and pink skin, the squelch of the pulp in your mouth, juice running down your chin.

Would you be a potato eater, if you could eat peaches instead?

 Johanna

Is that you, Marianne, out there in the wet? You know about walking, too. Halfway across Paris, there and back, six working days a week. Those are your own shoes you’re walking in, true, but they let water in when it rains and dye your toes turquoise blue.

But how can you ride on the metro as well as pay your rent? How could you drive a car of your own and still buy your cottons and silks?

Beautiful, beautiful rainbow girl in your hand-made finery. Your peacock skirts, your harlequin shirts, your bird of paradise hats. Two hours walking, eight hours standing,

Why are you doing that?

Marianne

It sure as hell isn’t for peaches! I can’t remember how a peach tastes, except maybe once a few year ago, I ate peaches out of a can.

I don’t think much about eating. I don’t always have the time, while I’m selling cheap, crappy clothes in a store all day, then sewing my own designs at night. But I love when my toes turn turquoise. I love my cherry pink hair. I love satin and sequins, antique lace, ruffles, rustles, velvet and pearls and wispy veils that half hide the face.

And you know what? I’m going to make it, Jo. My own brand, Marianne Running Wild.

That’s what I walk for and work for, Jo.

All I need is a start.

 Gabrielle

I needed to stop and pee behind a tree, then sit for a while in the shade. Not for long, a minute or two, just to rest my feet.

The wheat field was behind me. Slow, black, flapping crows. A lonely path going nowhere under a sky so heavy it ached. The grass where I sat was green and deep, daisy bright like a star-spun night.

I kicked off Maman’s shoes, stretched out my toes and felt the coolness against my sores.

So, I took a peach. Took a bite. So much sweeter than sweat. I sucked and slurped on wet ripeness, crammed my mouth ‘til it over-ran, felt the peachiness of a peach slide over my tongue and my throat.

Then I tossed the stone, wiped my mouth, and my fingers my chin, on my sleeve, pushed back my bonnet, closed my eyes and lay down for a moment or two.

Johanna

Sleep. Ah yes, my baby slept sometimes in the afternoon. He cried all night, no matter how much tenderness I poured onto his fretful pain. But sometimes he slept in the afternoon and I could do the same.

But not that afternoon. That afternoon I felt the gathering storm.

Marianne

Sleep? Yes, I do get an hour or two between my ideas and my sewing machine. Between zombie dropping onto my bed and the alarm going off on my phone.

Gabrielle

I woke. Half an hour? An hour? I’m not sure. The taste in my mouth had turned sour.

I itched the itchiness of sleep in the grass. Mites, ants, some other small biting things?

My basket had tipped and my peaches had rolled. I began to gather them up.

The wheat field spread in shades of ripening lemons. Green yellow, yellow yellow, earth red. Still the crows cawed under a violent sky and I saw the man in a straw hat.

L’Artiste. They called him the ginger lunatic and he really was a lunatic. Been locked up more than once. Harmless, folk said, even   Maman said that . But once he’d harmed himself. Injured himself. Made himself bleed.

Now he stood by the track painting. He was always painting, or weeping, or starting up blazing rants in the bar of the Auberge Revoux, about God, or the lack of him, art and other stuff that had even Doctor Gachet beat.

Some laughed at him, most ignored him. One or two were scared. He made me feel sad.

‘Can I have one?’

He was looking at me and calling to me, so I walked to him and handed him a peach. He took it and bit it and grinned, rejoicing in all that wet gold. Some of it ran down his beard.

I looked at the painting on his easel. Oh yes, quite crazy for sure. Great rolling swirls, daubs, splashes, strokes of colour. Nothing right. Nothing real. Yet more real than anything else I’d seen. I was seeing with the part of me that feels.

Johanna

Thank you, Gabrielle.It breaks my heart to think of him there alone. Painting with his soul. Painting what his soul saw. Longing, hungering to share his soul. And that afternoon, there you were, thirteen, fourteen? Seeing, feeling, sharing and not even knowing. Such is the way sometimes.

 And you, dear man, Dear soul. Dear lost, lonely, seeking, hurting soul. What of you in the midst of the gathering storm?

L’Artiste

You gave me so much, Jo, my brother and you. You gave and gave and gave. Your money, your kindness, your trust, your patience and understanding. There never could have been such love to feed a famished heart.

Gabrielle, you gave me a peach when peaches were all you had. I gave, or I tried to give. In the beginning it was all I wanted to do.

‘Go out and preach the Good News to the poor.’ The Gospel and a great deal of love, that was what burned in me. So I went to the downcast, the sick, the poor, the enslaved and the oppressed. I poured out love. I gave not only tender compassion, but everything I owned. My home, my clothes, my income. Everything I had.

‘Listen to me!” I cried. ‘Listen to what your Saviour has done for you!”

But they did not listen. They did not care.

Was I silenced? No, I was not. For had I ceased to proclaim it, the very stones would have cried out. That’s Saint Luke, chapter nineteen, verse forty. The very stones! Love is everything! I loved and I loved and I loved. But was I loved in return? No, I was not. The people feared me, or laughed at me. They called me a fanatic, a crackpot and worse. They shrank from me while I yearned and yearned simply to be their friend. Their brother, their companion, at the very least I would have settled for friend. I longed for that deep understanding of each other… that, …that mutual kindness… that affection that is supposed to bind us all in the human family. Could I create it? Could I find it? No, I could not.

In the end those who sent me called me back. Too much passion. Too much fire. Too much love. My task there had been to save souls.  But the souls refused to be saved.

Those I had yearned to bring into the light, I now entered into their darkness instead.

I sketched them in their darkness, painted them in their darkness and tried to save my own soul, my own mind, my own reason… with art.

Art. The great conversation. The bridge, the mirror, the eyes. See what I see. Know what I know.

Nobody wanted to know. Not even God wanted to know. All the love, the fever, the fervour; not even God wanted to know. There was nowhere for it to go. So it gathered, brewed and brooded and finally it broke. It screamed and wept and raged. It burbled and blundered and groaned. It bent me, bruised me, broke my heart. And so I was locked away.

All for the best. Nobody wants to be near a man who screams and rages and weeps.

And when the calm came, when the rage was spent, I knew how wrong I had been. God is not God as I’d thought I knew God. He is not above all, but in it. And do you know what all is? It is colour.

Colour is God. Colour is God speaking, singing, dancing. Colour is God being God. Sunflowers, wheat fields, strawberries, sunsets, skies, seas  poppies, poplars, all just God being God.

Gabrielle

‘Do you believe in God?’

That’s what he said. That’s what he asked. Those eyes. I never saw eyes that blue. Blue flames scorching me. Blue ice knifing me. ‘Do you believe in God?’

I said I didn’t know.  I knew I was supposed to believe .But the wooden man on his wooden cross only made me feel sad.  Nobody ought to be hurt that much and then hung out to bleed to death.

And when I looked at that poor painter fellow, he made me feel the same. Sad.

I said I had to go.

“Thank you for talking,” he said. Then he pulled something from behind his canvas and held it out to me. It was a little pencil drawing. It was me asleep on the grass. Mouth a bit open, bonnet askew, skirt rumpled, peaches scattered around.

That was how close he’d been. He’d drawn me while I’d been asleep. The lunatic alone with me. While I had been asleep. Maman would have screamed in fury and fear.But I wasn’t angry. I wasn’t afraid. I took the gift he gave.

‘Small payment for a peach,’ he said,

Then he smiled at me. So I smiled at him and ‘Thank you,’ I said. And I promised to keep it always. It seemed the very least I could do, when he was trying so hard to be kind.

Johanna         

Ah, the colours, the life, the love, the crying out loud, for torment and joy

The very isness of all that is. He knew it.

You knew it, Gabrielle.

You know it now, Marianne.

He painted it insanely, frantically, couldn’t capture it fast enough.

You, Marianne, want to wear it. You want the world to wear it with you. Want the world to wear the celebration of the isness of all that is.

Marianne

I want, I so want. I want to do my best. The very core of who I am truly believes that I can.

We who see the colours. We who know the glorious craziness of God, or whoever (If we have to name it at all). We who burn and burn to share these things we know. We either go crazy ourselves, or succeed, or die in the attempt.

Johanna

Then it broke, the gathering storm. No louder than a gunshot in a farmyard behind a pile of manure. But loud in my heart and in my husband’s heart.

Maybe in your heart, Gabrielle, when they told you he had died. Ended his life, so typically, in a painful, drawn out way. Given up all hope, all striving, all hungering for what he hungered for and simply ended his life.

The storm, our storm, was a storm of grief. For him it just meant peace.

Gabrielle

‘Thank you for talking,’ he’d said to me. I always wished so much I’d done more.

  Johanna

Oh, there was more, much, much more, but too late for him to know. Too late for those who loved him, but Marianne, now there is you.

That little drawing that was among your grand-maman’s things. She never told you where it came from. Only that it must be kept.

Gabrielle

I promised, faithfully promised him just days before he died.

Death and promises. Final. Unchangeable. Sealed.

My daughter kept the promise, without really knowing what it was. And so did her daughter and then hers in turn and her daughter after that.

That’s the way it is with promises They are made and supposed to be kept.

Marianne

It’s just a little drawing. Nothing much at all.

Sleeping Girl With Peaches, signed with a single name

Gabrielle

Marianne, I think you know what it is. You just didn’t dare to believe. And if my promise is to be broken now, it’s because he wants it to be. The best price ever paid for a peach by someone who was so much like you.

Johanna

You know where you have to take it, Marianne. You know how much it is worth.

Marianne Gone Wild, wearing God and the world. I can see him rejoicing at that.