Her Palace on The Hills

“Must I still exist?” a thought perturbed her maturing slumber as she reached for an imaginary stone on the forlorn boulevard where she lay. For an instance she thought she could smell those familiar dandelions and those cocoa leaves but they were just talons from her past… a past as dead as her…

Overhead buildings surrounded her like the Mesopotamian Ziggurats. Looming shadows of ever present defilers and vandals, street hookers and eunuchs, rapists and voyeurs…

Night moon serenaded to the melody of a nearby minstrel band, merry makers sometimes made it to this side of the town in their most hapless days. She remembered the time she stepped on the padded pavement of this town with her ‘heart’ in her hand, she felt like a misfit… innocent and docile… pure and pristine… alas, that was eons ago and her ‘heart’ now lay  in bits and pieces besides the scree and debris of the town… and her…

“Vstvay! Shlyukha!... Get up! Whore!” said the fat festooned harlot in red… the harlot screamed at her again, kicked her shins, mustered a thick globule of phlegm and spat at her… She had gotten used to the obscenities and the blemishes, the stains and the tarnishes… she gathered her stripped clothes, her remaining assets and the pieces of her ‘heart’… She washed her face in a nearby fountain and placed her unkempt dishevelled body besides the road.

The street sign above her head read “Kurtizanka Alleya” …Courtesan Alley… her eyes bled every time she looked towards that sign, her toes curled backwards with every step she took towards the alley, her throat dried every time an admirer approached her and asked “skol’ko?” …How Much?...

She waited by the sign board… waited… waited… for her ominous fate to disclose… what manner of a ravenous beast will satisfy his voracious hunger with her youth this time? A local hyena? A travelling jackal? A regularly visiting wolf? Or a whelp?

She remembered those evenings in the abandoned barn up the hills where she found herself… where she bent and caressed and moved about her fists for the first time, the cool winds kissed by the evening grass painted a smile upon her comely face every time, She remembered the times when the music she played with her ‘heart’ evaporated her juvenile displeasures… she remembered… she was dead but she remembered, her body had turned to stone but her memories were carved at the back of that stone…

She found serenity in detachment, amidst the playful green grass, the hilly winds of repair and remedy and herself. She was in solitude but not alone, she had made a palace of isolation and she was the queen of cipher, princess of zilch, empress of naught and she had never felt more powerful…

“Must I still exist?” she spoke out loud this time
A standing by patron noticed and asked, “Izvini?” …Sorry?...
She thought “Sorry? No one apologizes to courtesans… a whelp is it?”
She replied, “Nichto, ukhodit’… nothing, go away…”

Tonight she won’t be able to work, her mind was not at peace, and talons from the past had left her in a lacerated bleeding mess. She walked down the alley, and then she ran… there was only one ointment that could alleviate her agony, she was in solitude here too but this palace of isolation wasn’t hers… she wanted something warm and moving, to prove she still exists before she ceases to do so…

She entered a shop gasping for her breath, sweat drops from her winsome forehead dropped like icicles on the shop’s floor. The gush of wind through the revolving door awoke the elderly man behind the counter, profound wrinkles had formed a crevasse as if carved by the reaper’s scythe. Indifferently he asked, “chto vam nuzhno, shlyukha? …what do you want, whore?”

“A Ukulele! Quick!” she grabbed to utter her every word before her mind could fabricate it.

The man turned in an awkward shift, manoeuvring his venerable body in order to grab the nearest Ukulele. She deftly examined the instrument, smiled with complacency, paid the desired amount and dashed towards her heavenly abode, the barn atop the hills, the place where she found herself…

She leaped over the wooden fences and ran past the motionless haystacks. She sat on her familiar seat under the front porch and took a whiff of life… the scent still persisted, the palace still stood strong, she was still the queen… the only thing that lacked was her ‘heart’, she took out her new Ukulele and kissed its neck… whispering gently like an archangel talking to a newly born…

“Serdtse… Heart…”

She played long and vigorously, she cried even more vigorously, she laughed and sang and cried some more till her cup of happiness was full of tears… then the last tear fell in the cup already full, it was the tear of grief... the tear of a simple person who wanted nothing, the tear of an eye that wished to see nothing but green grass and unfathomable terrain…

She curled and hugged Serdtse close to her body, her heart pacing and her eyes glistening in a red conflagration resembling the devilish evening sky above. Her mind was in unrest, but her heart was at peace… a long desired peace… she took a sigh of solace and scribbled something on the Ukulele before dissolving into a slumber…

Dreamless sleep are often occurring, endless sleep only once… she wished for both and the Gods were kind… for once…

The winds kissed her goodbye, the grass fields played a canorous nocturne and the barn shielded her comely body like a coffin. The cocoa leaves smelled like ambrosial incense bidding her dasvidaniya and Serdtse lay there besides her speaking her last words again and again….

“The Uke of Vera”…

“The Uke of Vera”…

“The Uke of Vera”…

In continuation with:http://thatkaleidoscopeguy.blogspot.in/2012/05/uke-of-vera.html