To Share a Dawn

     It was nearly dawn when the old bus arrived in the capital.  It had taken five hours to bring Luna from her village to the city.  She had sat silent and still throughout the night. 

     Luna stepped down, left the depot.  She walked towards a main street.  She saw that the city never gave itself to the dark, so it might sleep properly.  Places were still open, where they had never finished serving drinks and girls to the rootless.  There were enormous buildings, in hard rows of glass and steel; some with their lights on.  Already, men were at desks in shirt sleeves . Luna wondered, 'Why work through the night without even the moon to light you?'

     Luna chose a wide central avenue as her stage, lit by a traffic light..  At this early hour, the traffic-light was in no mood to change its colours quickly; it was not a chameleon.  Red caught and held several expensive cars, with drivers invisible, on their way to somewhere important.  They were joined by some fruit-lorries, heading around the corner to market.  Vehicles slowed and idled in the few ranks of a yawning queue.

Luna felt that the static minute of a traffic-light red would be long enough for her. She was ready. 

     She had changed into traditional costume before she had left.  Her skirt was dyed russet; her blouse was white with roses embroidered near the collar.  She wore a bowler hat, which always looked too small and odd.  However, for Lena it was given by her mother, who loved her and it felt natural on herself.  The owners of the sleek cars and the rough lorries saw a middle-aged woman who had gone astray looking for some peasant party.

     Luna picked up her skirt and walked to a midpoint of the road.  The drivers thought she was crossing the road, until she stopped and bowed to them.  A Ford Mustang flashed its lights at her, partly from curiosity, partly from annoyance that she would be be a damn problem, if she hasn't moved when the lights change.

      Then Luna began to move. The destroyed protest over the proposed new dam was the matter of her short performance.  She began to move as a mole rat, panicked when water flooded its tunnels.  She crossed her hands and moved them to her face, her fingers being whiskers, writhing furtively, desperate to feel for any escape. Luna ran between the first and second rank, using where she could not squeeze through as a blocked tunnel, with no way out.  Luna twirled and disappeared from the sight of the drivers, as if drowning.  Then she jumped up again and stood rigid, ready to begin a new part of her minute’s performance.  Cars hooted at her, an accompaniment without rhythm nor tune.  A young worker across the road came to his window to see what all the noise was about.

     Luna clenched both fists: the right in front of her chest and the left in front of her face.  Then she swivelled her hips in a march.  Each step was deliberate, aimed, strident, formidable, solid.  Then she changed style. She bowed forward from her waist,  extending her arms, throwing them apart, as if someone she had been holding had been wrenched away and she was pleading with her wrists and hands for them to be given back.  She moved rapidly backwards as if grabbed in her middle.  She bumped into the back of a Volvo but that didn’t matter.  She moved her arms down by her sides quickly; then pulled them up rapidly behind her back, like they were being forced  there.  Luna's mouth became contorted in what might have been a shriek but could have been someone's name.  She went loose, conceding all hope with infinite regret.  There was no physical pain like this. 

     By the time her snapshot amongst vehicles was complete and the  traffic-light signalled amber, Luna had already returned to the safety of the sidewalk.  The traffic-light went green: the road started to clear.  More cars hooted as they passed her; several flashed their headlights in a useless attempt to blind her. A man leaned from his Volkswagen window and told grandma to fuck right back to the village she crawled out of. An apple hit her.

     Luna stood by the traffic light  and stood by the pump in her village. 

     Business in the city grew as the dawn approached.  The number of vehicles increased with the rotation of the lights. Luna moved into the traffic again  And repeated her images.  The response was louder honking. More lights flashing.  More threats and curses. The worker in the glass building opposite reached for his phone. 

     Luna felt a tremendous blow to her back.  It knocked her down. Her bowler hat came off, despite its support and rolled under a vegetable lorry.  Three policia, had arrived in their rubberised armour.  They had gas masks on for some reason, making their eyes monstrous.  Luna saw three huge frogs staring down on her.  She felt other arms under her own, as she was being dragged somewhere forcefully. She could make out that one policeman was waving the traffic along.

     For a while she saw only pavement; her head near it, as she was being pulled along the street.  They dragged her up nearby police station steps, her knees hit each one, ruining her legs.

     They didn’t bother to question her.  They threw her into a holding tank, where she joined the detritus of the previous night - drunks, human litter and those, like her, thought to be a mad nuisance.  

Luna crawled to a bench on her elbows. She hauled herself up and sat.  She could see, far above her, a window.  Early morning rays were coming through.  Luna put her hands together.  She sent a prayer to the Holy Virgin that she had been granted the right building, that he would be in the basement somewhere.  She yearned for an impossibility - she could be with José again.  Her scheme, dreamed in the village, was to be in the same building, together in time. 

         Luna reached with both hands towards the window and pulled the rays of sunrise into her lap. She bent them into a circle -a ring.  She held this light in front of her.  Then she dropped it through the floor into the basement, so José could  feel the warmth of her love as strong as the sun of a new day.