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3 May 2010 Black KitesA Tango
It is an old mars lumograph. An 8B lead and coal mixture, so
that it doesnt break and flake across the
white ivory sheets. It serves well. The strokes are hard and try
to be precise. But they seem to waver just
as theyre tapering off or attempting to shift their weight from
paper to person. The person isnt doing
his bit to help either. He keeps dipping the tip in the clairet
beside him and then bringing it to his lips.Something about the
coal and heady acidity of the wine keeps him going. The flavor
remains intoxicating
at the tip of the tongue and stains the corner of his lips. The
wetness of the coal tip merges with what
remains of the wine on it and smudges on the paper, broadly,
darkly. It was easy to mistake the broad,
precise, tapering strokes for brush strokes but that is what he
wants people to do. He wants people to
make mistakes. He likes being the one orchestrating their
mistake. He hadnt been able to orchestrate
his own.
Hes working on a portrait. Darkening the wild mountain curves of
black hair, finishing the cupids bow
of a full mouth, letting the wistfulness of the eyes glisten a
bit with specks of pale red from the wine
stains; his hand trembles as he approaches completion, and he
can feel the beginnings of a shiver at the
base of his spine. Yes. This was different. She was special.
Known and unknown. He tipped the glass of
wine carefully over the hair, controlling the flow, and then
dipping a calligraphy brush in ink to smudge
and dry with the wine and shadows of her face.
He wasnt just making a portrait. He was hoping. Perhaps he could
recreate the flavor of her lips against
his, remember the earthy tanginess of her breath. Maybe, just
maybe, if someone leaned in close
enough to this picture, they could smell her. He could smell
her. Theyd know how intoxicated hes felt.
Theyd probably guess at how his pulse quickened, his fingers
trembled as he felt her quake beneath
him. They might guess at the aroma that has buried itself in the
layers of his skin. Salty, piquant, spicy,
spirited. He could feel the words roll of his tongue as much as
his tongue contorted itself in memory of
the flavors it loved. Vintage wine. Vivacious woman. He bit his
lips, wiped away the stain of coal and
lead at the corner of his lip and exhaled slowly and long.
He calmed for a while. Added further touches with wine, ink and
coal. Pouring sometimes from a bottle
of darker merlot and sometimes drinking from the clairet before
flecking it specifically. He wanted this
done and over with. She needed to get out of his system. Just
out. He had to move on. She couldnt stay
with him then, he wasnt going to carry on with her now.
Just this last indulgence. Just this last curvature of the lips,
this last deep shadow along the collar bone,
this last outline of her jaw, this would be the last. The last.
Hed be done. Hed be wasted enough not to
care anymore. He swung the glass of clairet to his stained lips
and drank in large gulps. And when he hadreached the last drop, he
bit into the rim and clung to the glass, looking through it as he
finished the
portrait. He liked the uncertainty of his line of vision. She
was, is, an uncertainty. This uncertainty would
also be among his last indulgences. Part of his purge.
Hed never known the jaded naivete before her. He wanted to
assume it was a cultural phe nomenon
now but hed never known it after her. Her explosive laughter
that knew how to control and manipulate
its pitch according to the company it entertained, the slightly
cocked left eyebrow, the sidelong glance
7/31/2019 3 May 2010 - Black Kites
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He grunts and shifts. The broken glass rolls off his desk, the
last of the wine staining the carpet with
fanned droplets. The grin dies. Hes alive.
She gets up and looks around her. She lets a sigh escape as she
begins clearing things away. Shards of
the wine glass, the spilt bottles of merlot and clairet, the
calligraphy brush, the ink why did he always
do this?
He brooded to the point of destruction. Layering, stripping and
then layering again with his own
perverted sense of reality, his own anomaly of life. Hed turned
her into a creature. Something
daemonic. She didnt have to look at the work. She knew the red
-brown eyes that would stare back, the
sensual curve from nape to thigh that he decorated with
voluminous ribbons of hair, the half open lips
always on the verge of revealing something clandestineevil
therefore enchanting. That was why she
had left. He had turned her into a thing of a vital evil energy,
a thing of ravishing thrall. She had become
one of his black kites.
His black kites were his masterpieces, his signatures. The
delicate paper was intricately decorated with
silk thread and calligraphic embossing and etchings, sometimes
ancient, other times fiercely modern.
Hed cover them up with Blakes vision of Dante, twisting it with
layers of psalms or proverbs from hell,
or with devnagri letterings of Ghalibs poetry with modern
whirlpools of wastelands and confused souls
or something universally visceral and yet not, always something
alien and yet part of the plight of
humanity. Yes. They were beautiful. Disturbingly beautiful. They
sold the most; they were what had
turned him into a legend. These beautiful horrors soared through
kite festivals and art shows, dotting
the skies, obscuring the light and casting monstrous shadows
across the peopled pavements. He
covered everyone in his design, in his version of reality,
wrapped them up with his words, his images.
Shed escaped his captivation but only in a bare sense. She
always returned to him. When she knew he
wouldnt see, couldnt rather, when she knew hed only feel her
presence, just not her that was whenshe came to him. Like now.
In the climaxes of his spasm hed completed her. Then, as the
vision of a companion through lifetimes,
now, as the nightmare that refused to part from her soul.
She finished cleaning up the workspace - Arranged the unfinished
kites, the completed portrait, the
brushes, the ink, threw the wine bottles away, set a kettle of
coffee to boil and with its whistle, wake
him. She brushed his hair back with her fingers as she gnawed at
the pit of the apple. Stared at his half
shut twitching eyes - he was dreaming. Hed know she washere. Hed
hate her more when he woke up.
But hell purge her in a kite or portrait accordingly. Itll be
fine.
Theyd stay this way. Not together. Never together. Just living
parallel lives. Him purging her, she,
cleaning up his purges as he slept. His child, his fury, his
muse:: her daemon, her breath, her vitalist.
