The Night at Solomon's and the Days After

At her desk, wrapped in her dad’s old jumper, Sylvia Lamb stares at a lump of clay. She hasn’t touched it in the last hour, only every so often reaching out, struck by an idea before flinching away, sure that it was wrong. Before enrolling in university, Sylvia had no problem creating, in fact her room in her mum’s house was filled with sculptures. Six months later and half a term into her new school and she was stuck, paralysed; as unmoving as one of her pieces.

            Around her lay evidence of great artists, her peers’ work, all caught in movement; whether they were mere beginnings or almost complete it didn’t matter, they were further than she was.

            Sylvia sighs and sits back in her stool. The lump of clay mocks her, and it doesn’t even have a face. She pushes her glasses into her fringe to rub at her eyes, the clock on the wall reads nine thirty, but it can’t possibly be that late. Her deadline is Friday, she’d had a month to prepare and nothing to show for it.

            The studio rooms would be closing at ten, so Sylvia resigns herself to trying again tomorrow. Maybe, if she gets one full night’s sleep, she will be back to her old self again.

            Outside was freezing and Sylvia hadn’t thought to bring a coat. Cursing herself she walks quickly to the bicycle lock up, climbing on and riding home as fast as she is able.

Her dorm building is warm and bustling, people hanging out of doorways wave to her as she walks by. When she reaches her room, she doesn’t bother to turn the light on, instead she throws herself face-down onto her twin-size mattress. The sculpture she had made to hold her glasses sits on her bedside and taunts her. It was fashioned to look like a water buffalo, her father’s favourite animal.

Simon Lamb had loved three things, God, his family, and the water buffalo. Sylvia couldn’t bear to go to church so honouring the animal seemed like the best way to feel close her father.

She’d failed in two departments then, Sylvia thought to herself, a sculptor who can’t sculpt, and a Catholic who can’t pray. Her father would be so disappointed.

A knock at the door forces Sylvia from her bed.

Her dorm neighbour, Daisy stands on the other side, hand raised as if to knock again. Her bleached hair held back by a number of multicoloured hair clips, likely intended for children, and her eyes thickly outlined making her look both old and young at the same time.

            “Sylvie!” she pulls Sylvia down into a hug, shiny arms grasping around her neck. “We’re going to Solo’s. You’re coming, right?

            “Don’t tell me you’ve been in that horrible studio all day, Sylvie.” Daisy scolds. “It’s awful damp in there, and you know the ventilations no good you could be breathing in all sorts of fumes. Yes, you do look rather pale. It’s decided then, to Solomon’s. I’ve got a top you can wear somewhere around here…”

Soon Sylvia is standing in front of the neon purple sign that reads, Solomon’s, or Solo’s, for short. Solo’s was an underground nightclub in downtown London, its décor is somewhat morbid, taxidermized heads line all four walls of the box basement, the flashing lights highlighting their large, marble eyes.

            She is alone, Sylvia realised then, Daisy and her troupe have disappeared into the bustling crowd somewhere. Sylvia wanders over to the bar and orders a drink. There is a drag queen preforming on the low stage, the top of her bright orange wig jumping out over the heads of the crowd.

            There’s a guitar strum, louder than the rest, a few drumbeats and the crowd go crazy. Everybody sat at the bar stands up and rushes into the fray. Sylvia feels herself getting pulled in. She thinks she spots the bright hair of Daisy and maybe an elbow of one of the other girls but before she can take a look, the crowd begins to move. It’s just a slow turning at first, the crowd moves around something in the centre, something Sylvia cannot see. The crowd moves fast, and Sylvia moves faster with it, soon she feels part of it all, conjoined to everybody in the room. The performer is singing loudly into the microphone, some song Sylvia has never heard, it hardly sounds like English.

            Spinning and singing and sighing and screaming, Sylvia feels drunk. It feels like a relief, like a freedom from the last month of not being able to create anything. That stupid sculpture is forgotten, in this moment Sylvia is part of something bigger.

            Somebody bumps into her and knocks her to the ground. Staring up at the ceiling Sylvia notices what she hadn’t before. Up there, above all their heads, are the looming, dead faces of water buffalos. In the flashing lights they look as if they are moving, blinking cow-like, shaking their great, decapitated heads.

            She is pulled from the ground. A girl, Sylvia’s age with flaming red hair who smiles at her with shining, perfect teeth. She says something Sylvia cannot hear. She looks at their entwined hands, at the girl’s perfect fingers clasped around her own, knobbly ones. She is still speaking to Sylvia though she cannot hear, a dreadful ringing had started in her head, making any noise sound muffled.

            The crowd continues its ritualistic dancing, circling them, cast in the tiny flecks of bright light from the disco balls overhead.

            In the centre, Sylvia and the girl dance, her arms around the girl’s waist and the girls’ arms over Sylvia’s shoulders. The music swells and the girl brings one hand to the back of Sylvia’s head and brings her down for a kiss. Sylvia kisses back, it is like nothing she has ever felt before, the girl is alive, warm liked worked clay.

            The night continues in this way, Sylvia and the girl dance and kiss in the centre of the circle, under the heads of the water buffalo, Sylvia swears she can hear them braying.

Waking up the next day, Sylvia knows she is ready. She bikes to the studio her body still warm from her bed. When she pulls out her tools, there is no hesitation, none of that block that had bothered her for a month.

            When her teacher rolls around to check up on her students, she is drawn to the sculpture sitting on Sylvia’s workbench. This sculpture that has arisen in less than a day is like nothing she has ever seen. It is a bust of a woman, clutching her chest, face twisted in extasy.

            She lets Sylvia know just how marvellous it is, gathering the attention of her other students who crowd around the figure. Sylvia is sweating and exhausted from taxing labour, but to her it feels like nothing.

            That night, before she leaves the studio, she holds the clay face of the girl she met last night and kisses her cold lips.

The week continues this way, Sylvia goes back and forth from the studio, each time adding one excellent addition to the sculpture after another, until two nights before submission day.

            She is working late, the studio has cleared out, Sylvia is just cleaning her tools before heading out herself when she hears it.

            A beating, calm and rhythmic but loud in the silence of the workspace. Sylvia approaches her sculpture, sitting still and beautiful on her desk. Carefully, she places her ear against the soft clay of the sculpture’s chest.

            Underneath the clay she hears it, a heartbeat. Jolting away, Sylvia clutches at her chest much like the sculpture clutches its own.

            Reaching out she tenderly presses her hand against the sound, the heartbeat can be felt there too. Something is terribly wrong with her sculpture.

            Gently, Sylvia presses her fingers into the clay, trying to carefully peel it back. Soon she is pulling chunks from its body. She keeps going until she finds it, right at the centre of the sculpture. A beating and bloodied heart.

            Sylvia looks at the sculptures face, still dressed in pleasure, turned to the ceiling. Surely, she could just remove the heart and store it someplace until she can get it of it. The sculpture certainly wouldn’t miss it, what use would it have for a heart?

            When she pulls out the organ, it continues to pound in her hand. The sculpture remains unchanged. Sylvia fills in the hole and wraps the heart in a towel; she places it in her pocket, gives the sculpture a kiss, and leaves.

When she returns the next morning, one day before submission, it is to disaster. She hardly slept the night before. After putting the still-beating heart into a shoebox and placing it under her bed, she got under the covers and lay there. Throughout the night she swore she could hear it. The beating never ceased, and she couldn’t sleep, thinking of the statue and the girl with the flaming hair.

            That night the statue had changed. It was no longer life like or beautiful, it had lost its charm, appearing plastic and clumsy.

Her teacher is appalled, startling at the difference of what she had seen just the day before. Students mutter about it, working heard on their own sculptures and sending sorry, disappointed looks the sculptures way.

No one was more upset than Sylvia. She cradles the sculptures face in her hands, she can see all its errors but can make no improvements. She feels just as she did a week ago when hadn’t had a sculpture at all. Every adjustment feels wrong, every try feels inept, the face of clear extasy the sculpture used to possess feels impossible to return to.

But she knows how to fix it.

That night she returns to the studio. Moments before close, when she knows no one would be there she walks through the doors, shoebox and heart beating under her arm.

            She places the shoebox on the table and cradles her poor sculptures face, reassured by the fact that soon, it’s previous beauty would be restored.

            Sylvia is startled when the door to the studio opens and another student walks in. They notice her sat at her table and give her a smile.

            “Burning the midnight oil, Sylvia?” they ask.

            Too startled to speak, Sylvia just nods and returns to her sculpture. She glances up at the clock on the wall, half an hour until closing, and if this student doesn’t leave, she won’t be able to return the heart to the sculpture and it won’t be ready for submission day.

She waits as fifteen agonizing minutes pass until the student stands up.

“I’m just going to the vending machine; can I get you anything?”

Sylvia shakes her head.

As soon as the doors swing shut behind the student, Sylvia begins carving into her sculpture’s chest. Before long she had made a sizable hollow for the heart to go.

Sylvia carefully lifts the lid of the box and, grasping the live organ with two hands, deposits the heart back into the sculpture’s chest.

The other student returns just as Sylvia finishes covering the place where the heart sits.

“You fixed it,” the student said, smile in their voice. Sylvia turns to look at the sculpture herself. It’s true, the sculpture has been returned to its old, beautiful self.

Sylvia nods. “Yes, it’s finished.”

She leans forward and captures the sculptures lips in her own as she has done, many nights before. Tonight, when she presses against them, the lips are warm.