A continuation of the journal entry made on 12/10/07:
As a girl, my mother was one of those thin, dark haired beauties who are endlessly photographed by the local media. Her father sent her off to ballerina school at the tender age of 8. The stilted physical formulations of ballet suited her elitist sensibilities, but she secretly longed to join the circus. Then the revolution came and crushed all of that. She ended up assuming the role of a prosaic Russian language teacher at a boy’s academy. Later she transferred to a boarding school some 20 minutes downriver from the city on a lush island. That was when we moved to her family house in the English Quarter. I didn’t see her much during this period and the rest of the family let me be. I ran wild in the strangely ordered garden of my new home, befriending stray cats, dogs and the occasional pheasant that wandered there.
For some reason, I can only remember with clarity a few isolated acts of violence. We had a fake waterfall that fed a small pool filled with goldfish. Once when no one was looking, I captured one of those watery creatures and smashed it with a rock until I made a foul mess. Later, I employed a small razor that I filched from my cousin. The slippery bellies readily yielded their mucky secrets to the blade, revealing tangles of red worms and black discharge. I showed my secret operations to a girl I fancied at the time. I can barely remember her now, but I think she had straight, brownish hair. For some reason, this act of innocent evil excited her. We tortured the fish together and buried the remains near a large plane tree. Each time we finished our task she would hold me in the shade and kiss my arms. “Now, this is ours,” she would say. My cousin eventually missed his razor and found out about my activities. I was punished severely. I think that girl left with her parents to France.
A picture by Monet that reminds me of those days:
 germanicus2 · Sun Dec 30, 2007 @ 06:08pm · 0 Comments |
