Electra’s dictionary/“Operation delivery ‘going postal’” Noir

 

Operation delivery ‘going postal’” goes perfectly without a single hitch, as it is Willem who arrives driving the delivery van, as I had half expected it would be. As expected, Sunny is not present during the ‘pickup service’. So, from the nearby cluster of thick shrubs, Jörn is camouflaged by the thickly leaved trees as Willem opens the back of the van to remove a large box of wild deer feed at the moment Jörn climbs in. Willem neatly shuts the back and carries the box of deer feed to the spot where Sunny has in past requested his packages to be placed 

I casually walk up the long drive that leads to the dirt road and walk to the end of it where the postal van is waiting to pick me up so that I may say my goodbyes to Jörn. 

The ride to Chesapeake Bay’s ship launch is heavily silent though as Willem drives and Jörn and I sit in the back on the floor surrounded with shipping boxes, all of which are actually empty 

I feel as though someone should say something but it seems none of us find something relevant and worth saying but then, they have their top secret world and who am I in all of the grand scheme of things? 

“Will you report to Stina?” Jörn asks suddenly over the hum of the van as he looks up from the cover of the floor to watch the sky through the cargo window 

“Is this really what you choose to talk about right now when I don’t even know when I’ll see you again?”

“He’s right,” Willem says from the front, “you should. This way if anything—“ he stops whatever he was about to say and pauses as though to reconsider his words, “I would also feel better having someone or some way we can reach you. We don’t feel it is safe for you with that maniac still out on the loose too and Sunny….he’s retired and not up on ….how things work these days….”

“Why would you need to reach me?” I ask and watch Jörn for any sign of emotion 

He glances up at me and raises one brow. Then keeps his eyes steady on me; they are shadowed and still gray overcast and reveal nothing 

I look away

“Duva….” he touches my hand and then takes it in his. But I don’t look at him. There have been so many stretches of silences between us and I just don’t know if he leaves me with any possibility of believing in ….anything. More softly and just audible to me, he says again, “duva….” and weaves his long fingers through mine 

“The last time you just ….there was nothing; no communication from you—nothing! I mean, I do understand you’re in deep cover but, Jörn, already the ties between us have been so sketchy at best but ….mostly frayed at the rope’s end ….” the last part of what I say comes out tense but my eyes tear and I look away 

We reach the bay and there is the shifting of props —he changes clothes putting on a US  naval military disguise but is set to climb into a box large enough to contain him. I realize the plan is to have Willem cart him to the ship in the box using a hand truck but the rest I have not enough to understand more of their plan 

“So this is it?” I look at him as he is about to climb in it

Willem says from the front,

“I’ll let you talk in private,” he gets out

But then not much is said beyond,

“you’ll hear from me ….I promise….”

“You said that last time,” I look up at him and search his eyes, then I say, “be careful,” and grip his hand tight, “please….”

conversation, ymddiddan/Electra’s dictionary

   

There is this sense always when you turn back the pages of a lifetime and it feels as if that lifetime has remained preserved; frozen as it was

That life. That relationship. Those people you were. 

To me, it is like you could see them there still; your ghosts haunting the hallways of scenes from that life. There they are still lurking in the shadows of rooms where the dust glistens like pixie dust and romanticizes forgotten pain 

“Do you know where I am right now?” Bran. His voice. Alive. It reaches me through that audible organ my phone is pressed to; ageless and ….still belonging to that ‘her’ that ‘“Beth” who is what?’  

But in slow motion I only comprehend the meaning as I am myself in this strange bedroom that I have only learned to occupy as mine of Sunny’s hunting lodge. No the bedroom is not strange. Just strange as in I am its stranger; new and not mine and I am not its 

I belong to me. I am mine. 

or am I? I look around me and wonder how to mesh the celves ….how to become its whole; how to find perspective with this voice that belongs to a man who once broke my heart 

“Cardiff?” I ask him. And I fear the very strangeness of my voice gives me away

“Well…. I mean—where I am sitting….calling you from….” and that lilting of his accent befuddles my mind playing tricks with how it causes me to feel

I only realize when I exhale I’ve been holding my breath and need to breathe and must stop to inhale deeply as I pull the phone away a moment so as not to give myself away 

I cannot find any answer though to what he has said and feel too dizzy to think 

“I used to call you from my car outside, remember? I showed you ….”

“The same car?” I ask because I remember it from our trip when we drove from Paris to Rouen 

“No—that one had a sad demise,” he says with a kind of heavy nostalgia

“So the same house then….” I say because ….because ….it was that life that won over me 

“Well….it’s ….a lot different now—added on….” he says and I note he refrains from any pronoun 

“How is Clare?” I ask as I put my mind on the frank reality of the present 

“She’s ….she’s….” he sighs heavily 

“And the child …? Should be —what eight right now, I guess?”

“Please Beth….” unexpected is the heavy sorrow in his deep voice, “you’ve been on my mind so much lately,” he says with a sigh of defeat 

“Have you been reading my blog?”

“Do you think I ever stopped?” he asks

“I don’t know. How would I know?” I ask him. But then ask, “why did you call?”

He does not answer right away. But hear him moving around in his car. In my mind he is still in that old faded blue car with the mis-folded old maps stuck in the visors. 

After a moment he says,

“I’ve needed to hear your voice again. Maybe it was that recording. Or….maybe ….I just wanted that glimpse back of feeling ….anything.”

“It’s been eight years….” and I regret how cold my voice says this 

“I deserve that,” he says 

“No—no—I’m sorry….I ….have wondered about you. I just felt it was best to leave you in peace.”

“Peace. Is that what you call this?”

“I don’t know….but still, I mean—I left Chris ages ago and even that life feels it belonged to someone else.”

“I’ve been replaced by a Viking,” his laugh is forced 

“Not replaced —another who is otherwise engaged so to speak; unofficially still with his partner.”

“What happened with the other one?” he asks trying to seem casual 

“Who? Eliot? The step cousin of my illegitimate father and his ridiculous ideas….?”

“Nicholas? The archeologist researcher, professor?”

“Nigel—oh, he was just ….that was….I don’t know; his DNA memory theory was really why but he—was….I think he was my rebound ….from you,” and only as I say this do I realize what that was, “why did you really call me, Bran? Don’t tell me it was to give me lessons in Welsh.”

“But….it would be a good excuse,” he says 

  

mapping a legend

 

The first time I visited England I was six. It was a family summer vacation. My mother’s husband (aka ‘Hitler’) bragged about our summer holidays but it was part of his work; he sold travel ad space to travel agents so, this was homework to an obsessed shallow man. He imagined himself to be Onassis one day so he was all about the bling before that was a word 

I had lived the first year of my life on the island of Jamaica because my mother left her husband ….there was question of whose I was ….for good reason; but the story held ….after the one year away from America living at her best friend’s holiday resort hotel. 

They used to tell me their wild stories. I heard about the two gorgeous blonds dazzling the jet setters; movie stars, authors, billionaires, you name it. My mother was not wasting her time on just anyone and her best friend? Let’s call her Barbie for this; she was the equal in looks to my mother so, I imagine they were a force to contend with. My mother was very charming. And she was smart. Too smart for her own good in those days. 

Anyway…. that is how we lived that odd life we did and how and why money got blown away ….gosh could they do it up …. my mother had to have the best 

I’d watch it all from the walk in closet floor through a crack in my mother’s walk in closet; my secret room ….I heard more than she knew 

Anyway ….

I never felt I fit there. In that family. They were all crazy. My sister who molested her sister, the dad who whipped the daughter with his Baly belt “which one, sweetie….” no he called me something else —one was bastard 

My mind often took off and I saw things nobody else did 

they thought it was odd how it came true and I was always right  

But the moment we landed at  Heathrow Airport ….the voices all around, the manners ….then once out in the open windowed drive…. the scent on the air….I’d been here before….I turned to look for things I knew….the slope of the land and ….the color of the horses     

 

I remember crosses, fields, they went on and on, rolling green and hills, hammers. The hills turned into rocky paths. And the drumming. They shook the trees and the ground ….I would stare into the distance and see ….they littered the road everywhere and the acrid scent that blew across and stayed inside your breath and taste ….I remember her; she was apart from the rest of us but…. when she had something to say, she would come and find us. She told me about the man who would come. First one and then I would never see him again. She said they would come and I would go. With them. 

 c'est moi qui ai été aveugle

 Il me voit

thoughts of legend 

I have been aware of a sense of bereft 

and the cheapness of life. this precious time we spend in the flesh. this precious time we spend with each other 

through time as it is marked by those who left us their accounts of life …. 

what does it mean ….?

there has always been war….savagery….horrors ….unspeakable cruelties 

I was thinking about the discussion/debate with Finland and Sweden over NATO and you know…. I was thinking that how as far back as history as we know it is marked there has always been pacts with tribes, cultures, nations, countries ….The Franks, Burgundians 

they say necessity is the mother of invention …. I suppose it’s necessary to edit as you go —things change; times changes realities 

relatively speaking but I believe at times such as these, it is always better to find strength in numbers and only burn those bridges that connect you to the enemy breathing over your shoulder and adjust your autonomy when it is safe to otherwise there is nothing but principle but also, it may be time to alter one’s perceptions of self in the grand scheme of life and humanity 

I was thinking about Jim Morrison today too—such extreme thought swings perhaps but ….not really; he was a clever political animal; the son of a military man and he witnessed the Vietnam war as a young rebel voicing out 

he was deep down a philosopher and a poet but such a humanitarian which comes out vibrantly through his poetry 

it is always his poetry I most adore about him. his style influenced me. he was a literary scholar and a graduate but he chose to break rules consciously aware 

but what I thought about him today was …. when those of us who first followed him in the mysterious glow of his disappearance 

we believed he was alive; that his death was a hoax. Like his idol Arthur Rimbaud; so, we believed Mojo Risen had sneaked away escaping attention from a prying world ….and as long as he walked the earth …. we had faith …. we cheered him as the poet who got away from the devil of the commercial society that ruined him even as he sought it; he thought he could conquer the world

I don’t know why I write this 

it’s just words …. am I a fascination? only that? a fetish ….I always hoped one would really see me ….see me….to be understood and adored for that is more important than to be cared for only to be whored and who ever loves an old whore or are they expected to quietly expire like those yellowed photos of a pin-up girl…. Jim Morrison once said something similar to that…. 

but he did actually die in Paris of an accidental overdose much like that Uma Thurman scene in Pulp Fiction because he didn’t know it was heroine he’d inhaled; he hated heroine ….why did I think of this today? ….the tragedy of a poet ….did I ever write here how I discovered my biological lineage connects to medieval and ancient French aristocracy….I know it sounds outrageous but it is documented and I realize…. so it seems I contain nearly every nation in my dna  

dna memory ….? what about that ….am I just haunted?