Back at the estate

“I have decided I want to be one of those mad old women,” I tell Jörn as we pull up to the estate

He throws a look at me that says, whilst holding back a rage, that he has no time for nonsense

— his eyes say that

I realize he’s angry at me

We both stand outside the crumbling mansion and look at at it. To me I see the new work done by the masons who have been hard at work; in fact I notice a  few new completed ionic columns where the top parts had been all broken away. They have fixed it like new! You can’t even tell the difference. So I stare at it awhile. For a moment I am breathless with the happy wonder of it

Only Jörn makes a disgusted sound as he gestures with his shoulder,
“why are you staying here?”

He looks at me in that challenging way he has that is almost antagonistic. But it’s not that, it’s something else; it’s a sublimation of his frustration with me— or what is that really? Passive aggressive?

I suppose I find it amusing in a way which is what makes me smile inappropriately just then. He sees this and seems to look even more enraged

“It’s a favor to Joanie,” I shrug to gloss over the moment

I start to head for the entrance over the broken stone walkway which was once a grand neo-classic entranceway and as we head inside over the old marble floor inside, covered in the soot of time and the regular traffic of the workmen, we hear something in the rafters

He looks at me pointedly,
“What was that?”

He stares with those eyes

I hide a smile,
“I don’t think you want to know, Jörn,” and I start towards through the main part of the interior that leads down a long hallway past the wide, elaborate, staircase ....that is also quite in a state of disrepair

My shoes echo down the checkerboard corridor —and squish too as they are still rather wet

There is a large ballroom that we pass where there sits an old broken piano

this makes me look at him because I see his eyes light

“Is that a Steinway?” he asks me

But I keep going then because I sense he is now intrigued. We pass the main dining hall and here I cut through the doorway that leads to the kitchens

It is huge

It took some doing but I figured out the trick of the old range positioned at the center of the main wall.... also huge. And somewhat intimidating. I couldn’t attempt it at first. It was so formidable to just stand in front of it at first. But then I remembered from Nigel how they work. And this kind was built to last ....never mind the state of the rest of the place.

I don’t think the kitchens, as they stand, would ever pass any public safety regulations. The floors are far from hygienic, for one thing, and the counters make my skin crawl

still, with some skill of ingenuity, I convinced a worker to lay a slab of marble by the old farm sink and this served as a good spot to chop an apple or make a sandwich and pull up the tall servant’s stool

There is a long old wood table at the center of the room that I imagine must have been where the cook and his assistants did most of their work. It is a fascinating piece with its battered dents and worn corners

These had been the servants kitchens and it is quite overwhelmingly huge to spend any time in

....by the time Ethan owned it he had a installed some “modern” equipment —so the refrigerator, that still works, was at that time state-of-the-art, of course but now to our eyes seems like it is something straight out of Donna Reed’s kitchen. And yet, thankfully, when I first found it, remarkably clean inside considering. It only took a few hours to scrub it down

I walk through to the narrow hallway that leads down to the servants quarters

“Where are you going?” he asks as he follows me

“To change out of these wet clothes. Did you bring clothes?” I ask him

I just hear an annoyed sound that comes from the depths of his throat as a reply

“Well, I’d offer to share mine but,” I laugh because his legs are much longer than mine

“I came to bring you back with me, min lilla duva,” he says now. “I didn’t count on a dip in the Hudson,” then adds, “we’re not staying the night here, in this bat infested haunted house— and uh—I have a concert tomorrow.”

The Pirate with the vampire eyes and his dove/Vampyren och hans duva; the story and backstory

It could have been that her strange and exotic colors and features could make him forget the family, the sons, the daughters and woman from before. The family that had been his, along with the mother and sister who were caught in a blood vengeance and began a conflict with another warrior leader who eventually conceded to his skills of warfare. After burning down his huts and women he was let to stay with the blood enemy when he had taken that leader’s right leg and arm and thus became the war leader by the victory of a battle that Raoul fought only to avenge his heart without the lust of power nor had it been for gain. For long after he felt a stone had replaced his heart and all will for life beyond except for anger. This was where the bitter coldness began within those vampire eyes. The breeding emptiness of life. Sometimes too much loss is more than one human life can take before turning into an empty living corpse

The first time he saw her that day at the market village, her strangeness was so otherworldly so as to make him believe she was an angel to distract him from the emptiness of living.....

——————————————————————

The first time I dreamed of the pirate with the vampire eyes, I have said, was when I had been very ill with mononucleosis

..... and it was one of those times when I had fallen into a deep sleep. 

It is now many years ago since that first dream and over the years little by little more of the ‘story‘ has been filled in. Sometimes upon waking I recall more of that story, sometimes more of the dream gets remembered throughout a day when I don’t know that I dreamed that night

But what stands out the most are his eyes, the boat and the cold and icy land....

and too, the hut where he took me (that ‘her’, because I saw everything through her eyes)— to where most other memories are mixed; good and bad

Those ....have such a bittersweet....happy and very sad connection of emotions with inexplicable parts of my subconscious .... and how I mean this has to do with things I feel drawn to; places; cravings; longings.... and things that haunt me and interfere in my life in such strange and disturbing ways

When I first talked to Gerald about this; soon after the illness it was....

we were then working together at the bookstore outside of Hempstead in New York

but.... you know 

I learned to chalk it up to part of life’s mysteries; like so many déjà vu’s

Sometimes years went by and I forgot all about them as well as the tall, blond warrior that haunted those scenes from dreams that lay indelibly in my deep subconsciousness

And then when I saw him that day....

Those memories flooded back —and it was the night before I saw Jörn in the penthouse lobby that I had the dream again after many years of dormancy; a foretelling it would seem.....

You see, as I have said, it was years ago, when I had been very ill with mononucleosis for six weeks at the time and I lost my job and so, had to give up my apartment on Long Island; forced to swallow pride and endure the humility of asking ‘my father’ for his allowing me to recover there where my parents lived; an unwanted guest and an unwanted situation

yet those first weeks were so submerged in the illness and the dreams that I did not at first notice much about my surroundings; submerged in fever dreams that flooded me for weeks

After my recovery I didn’t have time to think much about those dreams. My ‘father’ wanted me out of his home and I was tossed back into the turbulent sea of trying not to drown in the overpriced cost of living of New York.

“I walk alone I walk alone,” as Billy Joe Armstrong sings and me, like as a modern day Kerouac dharma, was paved on that broken road and as before and thereafter and evermore it seems

I don’t really care for the material world that my father represented; all his material values had long ago disgusted me; I embraced the life of a nineties grunge queen

But those broken wings don’t get you far, nor carry you forever; the broken bones from my attack took their toll

and maybe I forgot how to dream for awhile

Their first time together was on the beach enclosed in a rock cliff beneath where the water lapped up against the rocks and when she looked into his eyes and saw the soul within she did not fear the force of his passion

He was not what she had once imagined as a maiden growing up; that maiden dreaming of a man that may one day claim her

but she was no longer that maiden who had once held such dreams

She had witnessed her mother’s violent death and knowing that he was capable of knowing loss but also capable of fierce violence seemed to draw her.... compel her as something almost primal and with almost the same force of violence she had witnessed in him when he saved her twice; first from her father and then by the warrior from his ship

He was a strange man.... both twisted with anger but capable of a tenderness she had never imagined could exist from anyone

The weeks that followed the voyage on his boat with the other men altered her and perhaps both of them 

as he would watch her constantly when they were at sea, she would turn to see him as the wind whipped back his hair from his face and the sea crashed around him; a new idea of a life formed in her mind and he was at the center of it 

so that when the day did come where his boat pulled up to that frozen land, she wasn’t afraid to follow him to the hut, reached by a passage behind a kind of shrub or skeletal grove; a group of dense bushes and ....by then they knew that a child had begun to grow within

The pirate and the dove

Elan chewed on a type of tree bark mixed with the seaweed she had gathered and dried when she had been searching for moonstones. She chewed the bark and seaweed every night after twilight until she blead from her sex by the third week. She washed herself in beach water

At first full moon she would whisper the incants and stare into the night sky reading the stars

It was something they both knew much about. Elan, because her mother taught her the strange characters of the sky and how they moved across the horizon of the sky all the days through the seasons. Her mother taught her the secrets of the stars. She learned to memorize the characters

Raoul asked her about her strange sounding incants with his questing gestures and some words they both knew

He patiently smiled with an indulgence that suggested he found the chants useless

She smiled and drew a picture in the sand

They were by the shore and watching the full moon

She drew a picture of a baby in her mother’s arms. He was impressed with her ability to draw and praised her with his words but his gestures filled in enough to express his genuine praise

For a moment she looked away. She lowered her eyes. Then she smiled looking back up at him

Her eyes looked at him like, it seemed to him,a child basking in the first compliment ever said and with the same unabashed modesty of not knowing how to feel

Then she pointed to the baby and then at herself

She pointed to the mother and made a gesture to her eyes to express tears falling for the mother and touched her heart. It was then when she repeated the incant and gesture and she expressed to him this way that it was not for faith she did the ritual and drew two females in the sand to tell him it was a way to remember her mother because it was something they did together

In this way he asked her about her herbs and he made a frank gesture to her sex and pointed to the baby in her drawing

She realized he must have seen the evidence

It had been seven days since

But she became upset and stomped on the baby she had drawn and obliterated the image in the sand

He saw her eyes become angry but then fill with tears before she started to run into waves

When he caught her going under the water she was sobbing into the waves what sounded like “ma-ma”

She would always wonder if he had only waited for her monthly flow before he decided to claim her with his sex

or....

if he had only been waiting for her consent

It was soon after this that it happened

He had built a fire in the sand and dried her hair with a hide in front of the fire. He began to talk to her with words of his own language, interspersed with hers and gestures as he ran his fingers through the red tangles as they dried and he then he pointed up to the night sky

She had begun to know his words from his repitition but with only a dullness of interest, at first, she found herself listening to his story of the stars. And other things he began to babble on about 

His story was about his voyages. He told her how the sky watched over everyone and how they determined when it was time to leave home for a journey but also he told her how they guided them to their journey and helped them know how to go back home

In this way they had began to build their own private language between them; sometimes using their eyes to say what they could not find words for. Sometimes they used voice and tones of sound, sometimes expressions or her pictures

Elan did not realize that in this way she had begun to respond to him with a sense of trust towards him nor notice that she had begun to relax with him

Those visits with the village women had happened less and, in parallel, inadvertently, her trust of him also had started

The last time he went to a village woman had happened the day before this conversation

Which had been, in part, behind some of her anger

....because it happened then before that it was the first time he put his hand on her in such a way to tell her he meant to have her

But it was because she had pulled away from him that ....made him angry

But she had pulled away out of fear and out of habit 

.... and they went to the stall by the market place where those women “traded”

and made her sit outside the doorway where she could hear .... forcing her to listen

But now.... when he used her pictures to tell her another story.... it was a sad story

and it was about his own family.... and it was a very sad tale

It was the surprising sadness of his eyes that changed her towards him and so she reached for his hand

and then she placed it where he had

he would never know if it was the picture story he told her or the woman’s sounds from the night before that changed her mind

The men on the boat immediately noticed the change between them

And their resentment of him grew

History is written on lies; what archeology reveals gets tainted in the politics of the backers of the expeditions

There had been a written language

no history research can tell you this because the language had been outlawed and any writing too

Everything written had been destroyed by the Romans but the pride of the people remembered anyway and told each of their children the true story.

Hid secrets in knots

Secret codes.... wrapped in a maze of design and woven into the memories

What is in the DNA?

what does get passed down? Darwin suspected the secrets and is it not all about survival?

But if we forget the knowledge learned how much loss for the knowing that it first took? How many seas were crossed? How many mountains .... how much was sacrificed along the way

The pirate with the vampire eyes

Yet he does not demand anything

Elan sees him go to other women. She sees him do this each stop they make. It is at villages they stop by to trade at. He never touches her, he only protects her from the others. Yet Raoul keeps her nearby and makes sure to keep  one eye always on her; he keeps watch of her and as he goes behind the doorway with the kind who give their bodies for something he sells 

he says,

“stanna här,” and points for her to sit at the bench of the proprietor’s stall

she hears them through the doorway as she waits.... hears the sounds the women make and sees the way they look at him after 

She always averts her eyes when he steps out

It is one of many times that he sees her washing by some fresh water and stays concealed behind trees

The perplexity of his face as he watches the girl. The way his eyes stare

The early days they kept a respectful distance of each other as they traveled or when side by side having a meal that sometimes she asks if she can prepare because it is something she would always do for her father. The first time she asked this he gave her something that had been hers from her father’s trunk. A leather bag of herbs

When she looked up at him for this he smiled

and then very slowly.... she smiled back

That was the first time

Something kept her in his stare and she stared back. It was a look she had never known before but it was mixed with a look she had known all too well

But she did not pull back

After that, each time she waited outside a proprietor of that kind she felt a feeling that she did not fully understand

It made her angry at him and she didn’t understand why

He noticed it though the first time when he motioned and told her to put on the cloak which she did with a cold look ....and it made him smile

She was angry all the way back to the boat and all through the voyage to their next stop and each time it happened hence 

intrigue Film Noir

“How did you get involved in spying?” I ask him shivering in the car as he drives. I don’t ask him about the car which is an SUV but I do notice it is a Volvo

Jörn grimaces, and shakes his head,
“....spying....”

“You’re trying to deny it?”

He sends me an icy look that is meant to scare me but I don’t feel scared. No. I suppose in a way I am intrigued

“Well....” he shrugs now and says, “it was during my rebellious stage— you like research, you’re always digging things up on Google.”

“I like archaeology. I liked it even before Google.”

“Yes, archeology.... I was more interested in the science angle,” he glances at me, “how biology tells its own story.”

“Pathology?”

“Yes—but even more than that. So.... at first I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a musician because everyone in my family is and I was always interested in things like what can be learned of a person’s life through their diet or biology or their .... remains.”

“I see. Gruesome.”

I see his smile even as he keeps his head straight and his eyes on the road

“It’s interesting, min lilla duva.... anyway, I studied at university for awhile and a friend of mine invited me to one holiday at his family’s summer house. His father happened to be an investigator.... is still actually....”

“What kind of investigator?”

“For the government.”

he says this simply with a shrug

I turn to look at him but still his head remains straight and his eyes stay focused on the road

“And?”

Only now does he glance at me. He draws his brow,
“and?”

“There is more to that,” I say to him

He looks back at the road,
“Hmmm.... you think so I’m sure.”

“Obviously.”

He shrugs again,
“well.... obviously I am a musician so I did end up following the family path.”

“I’m not sure if you’re really insulting my intelligence or if you think I can’t see through this.”

“No, I just don’t feel like talking about it because I just dragged you out of the Hudson ....so why don’t you tell me about that instead of trying to think you can distract me?”

“I don’t think that.... “ I say but then I add, “I just don’t feel like talking about it,” I say

Jörn, the drowning sea & the loss of reason; A mermaid’s drowning voice

“Our conversation earlier has disturbed me greatly,” he tells me

My mind is blank and fights through the morass, I stare into the Hudson; it goes to several of many conversations but I still

....well I don’t know

Jörn stands there in front of me and I have to look way up at him

“You told me about your dream, min lilla duva....” he squints into my eyes from up there because the sun is in his eyes; the way the sun glitters into them has me caught in the memory of something else

That he has come here makes me rethink what I may have....

I cover my face

“What were you planning to do?” he pulls my shoulder to look at him; he is now knelt down next to me where we are now by the rock ....it is nearly submerged now slick with water like I am and so is he

“Look at me!” he shouts this

I don’t look

Instead I realize what dream he is referring to. The one about the angel of death that has kept me up every night since

It has been almost a week

“You have been avoiding me all week staying up here....you say you are disappointed in humanity?” only this he whispers

“How did you know I was here?” I whisper back at him

“You posted on IG....” then he says, still with the intimacy of a whisper,

“don’t disappoint me....”

but why do I almost hate him now.... for saying that and finding me

“Plus, you haven’t finished your story,” he says in a gentle chide

I remember he is a father. And I remember he has a daughter

.... it makes me angry

before I find a retort he throws me over his shoulder like a bag of swords