A touch of family Royal Drama

“Feral....? Hfffmm....” this part of conversation trickles through the air and out of context it seems to hang there frozen.... the next comes out in staccatos “....en vild räv.... vansinnig.... crazy like a fox....” it is Elsa’s voice

But the words are chevron patterns in my mind;

it is instead, something like electric shock

that strikes through the air waves that seem able to tackle me

We step out of Jörn’s bedroom together and he says from behind me,
“Mama!”

Should I follow any of this?

I look in the direction of Elsa who is by the coat closet brushing off the opera coat with a valet brush. She sniffs it,
“har någon använt det här?”

Now I hear Jörn make angry sounds I’ve never heard before—a kind of spit but it’s more like from his throat and he then shouts something.... but I don’t have any idea how to spell it....

I get a chill that goes all through me.

I am stopped with a dreaded feeling in my center— like as if frozen on the spot

and look up at Jörn..., then

instinctively I back up and look around

Why is everyone looking at me?

I want to sink through the floor.

I hear a sound come from my vocal cords that belies my courage but thankfully no one else hears this; it sounds like a strangled mouse

Andreas looks uncomfortable I notice— his face visibly flushed and I hear him mumble something at her but only for her ears. He stands near her

Only Josef looks at me now.

His white-gray brows tightly woven as they stare at me with one eyebrow raised at me to tell me...? What... ? what is that?

I see his hand sort of wave at me conspiringly but I don’t understand the context. Then he does a gesture with his head to Jörn behind me as his eyes look at him

I look back at Elsa

She holds the opera coat and looks at me. She forces a funny smile and sniffs it again. She looks at me now thoughtfully

Jörn says,
“Mama,” again but this time his tone is softly appealing; entreating

After a tense moment she says, looking at me,

“What scent do you wear?”

I look at the opera coat and start to realize what she is talking about

“Yes, I borrowed it,” I say

“She borrowed it, Mama,” Jörn says even though it’s obvious by now

I say,
“Caylyx.”

She makes a face that is hard to translate, she arches a brow and sniffs thoughtfully,
“and patchouli?”

it feels like all the pores of my skin are burning with her sting and I don’t know why

but .... I get that inadequate feeling

I half want to turn and run back to Jörn’s room because of the sting in her eyes. I feel stung and I feel my eyes burn

“It’s— lovely....” she sighs

“Hanna outgrew it years ago,” Jörn concedes —he means the coat because he’s trying to change the subject

“Ja, ja.... yes, of course she did....”

She says, looking at me,
“your father has a street named after him?”

I don’t know if that’s a challenge

Oh God....

I look up at Jörn and he takes hold of my hand and yanks me along towards the kitchen,
“I’m making coffee,” he says and then looks at me

I start to realize I am in a drama. Is this what he meant?

Shit. I’m not good at this

Then we are in the kitchen. Jörn starts barking orders at me. He points to the kettle to fill as he starts searching his cupboards

Andreas starts playing something ominous on the piano and Elsa walks over to me. She smiles,

“you have very lovely skin....”

“Oh....!” I find I stammer, “you do too....” ?

Well she does.....

I look for Josef hoping to get a possible hint or cue and when I spot him he is looking at me. He walks over and makes a secret hand gesture to me that I am clueless over. I lack social cues anyway but it seems worse without my Swedish app

His cheery eyes dance mercurially as he suggests,
“shouldn’t you and Jörn do some more practice? I’d like to hear the new ending the way I suggested...?”

Elsa throws him an arched look and walks past us to the piano. She calls,

“Jörn!” through her nose in that way that sharply reminds me of Jörn’s text tone for her

Jörn speaks into my ear softly—but it’s actually another order he’s barking at me. He says,

“when the water boils— pour it into the carafe,” but sharply adds “ —but don’t push down the plunger!”

The vampire’s Opera

“I always wanted to meet someone as strong as me,” I tell Jörn when he finds me alone later.

I began to to hyperventilate and came to be away. It was the family all around. Suddenly I had the feeling I could not breath. It was an anxiety attack and I recognized it.

He finds me hiding

I am not ashamed. But I am. I feel a sense of horror that he sees me now as I am

....but where was there to go? But I don’t think he should see me like this.

I am in the deep corner of his bedroom, by the window where the corner meets. I am low by the shadow and turned away, within but

I don’t want him to see me

I say,
“I think you should go see your family,” but I whisper urgently

“No, what are you doing?” he asks me and walks over

“Nothing but....” I turn away, “please, I’m sorry....” I say with a terrible sense of awkward shame

But he bends down , he kneels beside me,
“tell me what is wrong. Did someone offend you?”

I shake my head,
“no. It’s me.... it is no one. It is just me.... but I don’t want you to look at me,” and I keep my face away

He does not go. He stays just there. Does not come near nor push.

After I forget to wonder I start to breath again.

“I think I am starting to crumble....” I say it almost like one handing over before the plunge into the depths because I suppose if he can’t stand that then it shouldn’t matter .... because then everything has only been lip service

I start to stand up and I move awkwardly past him and go to his bathroom to wash my face. I keep my hair over it as I go past him. I wash my face and can’t look at myself

I hear him come in. He stands in the doorway watching me and I get dizzy from the stress and sit down on the tile floor. Bend over to breath.

“I saw you come in here before,” his voice is low and he bends down beside me, “I ‘m sorry, my family can be a bit much.... they were anxious to meet you, min lilla duva, they knew I was going up there.... because of you.”

This makes me look at him. It is something I’ve never heard anyone ever say to me before. Not ever like a proclamation but he does not diminish himself when he says this, it is the opposite when I hear something within that

I stare at him now. I stare into his eyes, their fierce beauty that is as sharp as a double edged sword

“My ....mother asked about the music I have been writing....” he stares back into my eyes. For just a moment he drops his gaze as he thinks. I watch his brow furrow as he frowns, watch the expressions move across his Nordic features like a tug of war between something deep within him,
“there is more to me than just my music and the intelligence work that I do— i was always going to write this great symphony..... my parents were expecting me to because it was what I always had talked about for years before.... well.... life? I have always had a recklessness driving at me that I never understood but as if I had to find the dragon to slay—something inexplicable. Especially about love.... I could never find something...it got in the way of everything. Every relationship and every work choice I made. Just could never .... find something that I could never explain. It seemed to cast a dark shadow over my life because it got in the way of —well, eventually, everything. No woman ever was enough and no place I lived filled the void. I think the danger of doing the government work was appealing as a means of self destructive behavior that is somehow acceptable—does that make sense?”

I think, but I’m not sure but still I nod looking at him

“My music lately has been inspired by these dreams that .... the dreams we share. I’ve never written this kind of music before and I am aware it comes from something else. They hear it,” he shrugs towards the other room where his family is

He says,
“I came in here to show you those photos I told you about of your legal father. No, it can wait because I’d rather show you later. The dreams .... they only began when I started reading your words. And I started to write an opera.... this is what we are working on now in there because my mother loved it when she heard it and now a part of it is going to be performed. It’s named after you —I hope you will come see it, min lilla duva.”

Meeting the parents

....so how would I describe Jörn’s family? Definitely the word “Dramatic” suits them, as Jörn aptly characterized

I find I melt into the corner here to write this into my phone completely lost in the sea of their rapid fire Swedish conversation. I cannot follow any of it. Here and there a word but then their words mean other things and instead I fall into a daze

He is right how he has explained them to me in earlier conversation. His father, Josef— I’m not sure I spelled that right.... he has a loud voice and he commands a lot of attention. Do I like him? It is a funny thing because I have not had a ‘father figure” in my life for at least twenty years—nor mother so..... that it feels .... so weird

Do I like his father....? Yes. Which is a foreign concept to me. Perhaps his foreignness too allows me to want to feel I can trust him. Without saying a word to me, Josef looked at me as I came into the apartment in this way that reminded me of how my grandfather used to look at me right before he pinched my cheek. I think it was this that made me instantly like his father. He said something to Jörn in Swedish looking at me and then Jörn replied something as he also then looked at me too.

I wonder what they said....?

But I sit here writing as they loudly discuss some performance they are preparing to do with such bravado that I swear, I feel like I am watching a Bergman film. I don’t really need the subtitles, their faces are so expressive and their inflection on words.... well, it makes me wonder why anyone even needs words.

What do I think of his mother? Elsa. I think I am a bit frightened of her even as she fascinates me, somehow. But I do like her even though she terrifies me.

They are both characters I would put in one of my stories so it helps to write about them here as I can use this for later ....Elsa has good taste in color and I notice this first as an artist; she knows how to dress so that you hardly think of her age; she’s quite beautiful; so as an opera singer she seems aware of what impact her presence can create along with her physical self. She walks into every room like she’s walking on stage. Her hand gestures amuse me. I can see this is where Jörn gets it from. Have I mentioned this about Jörn? I don’t remember but— they all do alot of hand gestures

and they walk as they speak as if in soliloquy

Not to be such a flaneur but they truly set the stage for quite a lot of material for writing so I hide in the corner well amused as I write analyzing them provided with such material

Andreas has told them all about who my real father is but I wish he would not because I still feel like it is a holy secret I kept for my mother.

I think Josef sensed this about me and.... it was something he did right after Andreas went to get his phone to show his pictures he took of the statue of him.

It was so subtle but he stood up from the chair and walked over to me; Jörn’s mother was busy beside Jörn at the piano looking over sheet music so.... as he played and she sang; her voice bouncing off the walls....

well, he put his hand on my shoulder very lightly in this tender way. Josef has much more gentle eyes than his son; they are eyes that have known deep sorrow too, I see this in their bright blueness so.... he looked at me with some kind of knowing —but I don’t really know what .... only that he seemed to say with just his eyes that he would keep my secret. But more than that. He seemed to be saying something else too.

When he found me later in the kitchen sipping coffee in the corner by the window he says,

“you have been without parents a long time.”

It was not a question. But he searches inside me and I find I cannot hold his stare. I could not even answer him. It affected me because I was not prepared for it. I try to say instead,

“they were not happy people....” I try to construct my face void of pain and keep the mask smooth now as I slowly raise my eyes up to him. I successfully manage a sincere smile because he makes a sudden comical face at me almost like an exaggerated clownish expression

He says,
“people expect too much from happiness,” and still looks at me

I want to ask him about his life in Sweden; what their lives are like and how he grew up but I seem unable to step out of my own shadows. I think I have forgotten the vocabulary to speak to parents in so instead I am awkward because I am most afraid of being disrespectful by mistake. So I say,

“I can’t imagine being so fearless to stand in front of so many people and perform like you do. Like all of you do.”

But he doesn’t answer right away. What I say makes him think and in a quiet tone he tells me,
“I find the shyest people to have the most to say and find them to be the kindest and most generous,” then adds, “not everyone has to command a standing ovation. The world needs the gentle creatures too.”

Eye Spy Noir; driving back to NY

“I can understand why Nigel referred to you as ‘feral’,” we are on our way back to Manhattan

“How do you know about that?” I ask after a pause of bemusement

“How do I know? Because I read it in your blog,” he says glancing at me for a moment away from the road

I shake my head,
“well then that would mean....” I shake my head.... “no—wait.... I wrote that in my Nigel entry ....” I look at him; he has his profile turned to me, his aquiline nose in perfect silhouette against the dimming sunlight. I see his nostrils flare —that is all that gives him away

Is he testing me?

“Then you must have been reading my blog....” I stop speaking. I have to breath. I take a moment to configure the chronological time frame

“Before we actually met—“ he turns his head and lets the steel blue of his eyes pierce right through me, almost like supernatural beams of kryptonite. “Is that what you mean?”

“Because I took down all my Nigel posts....” I glance away feeling strange; dizzy.... overcome with a lightheadedness.

“Yes, I know, you removed over a year of posts, I noticed when you did that,” but he doesn’t give me time to allow the impact to settle in and continues with a different line of thought. He asks,

“Tell me, why do you say it is ‘too late’ to get any justice about the man who sexually assaulted and attempted to murder you? Retnuh Nivek,” he says

My mouth goes dry and I can’t breath,
“what are you talking about....? How did you find his name?”

“I went through the graduating class at Bard— didn’t he go onto being a practicing psychologist?”

“How do you know this?”

“He lives in Maryland and has a family— at least one daughter. I wonder how they would feel about this....”

“You are a spy, admit it!” I say this in s half insane kind of muffled scream

“I wouldn’t call myself a spy but I do research useful characters that come up on the radar....”

I wait staring at his profile and notice his nostrils have relaxed. He says calmly now,

“I mean, what happened is a felony—is that the word? There is no statute of limitation for murder, are you aware of that?”

I don’t answer right away. It is almost five minutes of quiet, tense driving with my mind spinning before I structure a sentence that framed some semblance to a complete thought and say very low and hoping almost that he won’t hear

“He said he would finish the job if I ever told.”

I think that he does not hear this

He does not respond

But after another five minutes he give me a chilling look and then says,
“I have no doubt I could do quite a job on him myself—by now I believe he’s turned into a blubbery fat mother fucker and I would love to be in the front row when you kick his ass.”

He is calm but I see his nostrils flare again

Much to my own shock I actually laugh,
“you think I can kick his ass?”

“You hiked from that estate to the Hudson —which is roughly about 19 kilometers—actually a bit more ....your legs are lethal weapons, min lilla duva,” he says and then reaches to switch on some music. As he does this he says, “to answer your question, yes, I still work for the government; it is not exactly a vocation you shrug out of, you might say. Especially once you have the instincts for it. It helps to be a symphony musician for them but also it keeps me sharp for the music and well.... you may not be aware of things about your assailant. We’ve been watching him for some time ....he’s been connected with international terrorism going back—oh—quite a number of years and when his name came up in connection with your school I started to put things together and it also revealed things about the man who raised you— there is a lot of evidence that he sabotaged the real man who was your father—Ethan— he was behind the downfall of his political career and likely turned double agent in the process.”

“Double agent....? You mean....” I look at him, “that’s crazy ....”

“I can show you when we get back. I have photographs of him at a meeting in Barcelona among a very interesting gathering.”

I don’t know how much time passed before I realized we were starting to see expressway signs for New York but I must have become lost in thought

I hear a text come through from Ilya and have to check

“Oh no....”

“What’s wrong?”

“The penthouse roof is coming down, she says there’s a flood now that they have emergency workers there now,” I try to find out more and call her

She tells me,
“they’re patching it up now, don’t worry but.... there’s a lot of damage. Especially the bedrooms.”

After I hang up I tell Jörn

He says,
“you seem to be having a lot of that lately—perhaps we should recruit your mason workers to come back with us.”

“Is that supposed to be funny?” I ask him

“I’m sorry— you should stay with me tonight,” he tells me casually, “although I forgot to mention I have a full house right now, besides my son, my parents are visiting.”

“Your parents!?”

He says,
“they’re here in business. In a way—they are appearing at an opera commemorative for the birthday of a late well known friend and are special guests. They also have enlisted me to be involved, as usual, they’re using a piece of mine and I have to perform with them so, be prepared for a lot of drama.”

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