Beautiful Soon Enough

Cannibal Notes

Cannibal Notes There will be no action in the street for hours. Dawn before hot rolls or crows, before monks and nuns in woolen hoods and naked feet, and kneeling. She has an hour in the churchcandle darkness before the crazed neighbor she’s fascinated by comes in with his cologne again, louder than incense, seducing her. He’s manic and she can seduce him back, pew to pew, prayer to prayer— windows filling with Christ and him rocking on the balls of his feet 20 berdeshevsky when he prays. He says she has Magdalene eyes. Do monks love like this? She doesn’t know. But in her early hour she’s quiet in her tight black coat, and there’s no eau de toilette yet. She’s heard madmen wear a lot of scent on purpose but that they can’t help it. There’s a dark place, like a womb, where she’s waiting for the holy to rock her senseless. To split the top of her head with her soul thrusting her; she’d like a lick of it please: obsession is awake again. And the man who is on heavy doses, who doesn’t want to take what he’s been given to calm what rages in him, who doesn’t want to take it or be crazy either, wants help, and he’s praying for it. Wants a sign. He’s heard that mania’s a spiritual crisis, hasn’t he? Curling like a baby, all two meters of him. He thinks she has holy answers, which she does; she’s worked on answers. She’s praying to let her help him, heal him. It doesn’t work. But now, his choir-boy eyes and baritone have her attention. And with her eyes closed, serenity is distracting her heart. And she thinks maybe love would be enough. The man comes an hour late, sleeps in, arrives later than she— the neighbor lady who’s getting too psychically connected to his story which is dire as a church fire. In her flat, alone, she wakens with his nightmares, in the darkest before dark. She heads for the church pews, long before pigeons are ruffling in their gutters. Before the monks. Driven by nightmare and perfume and piety. He’ll be there in a little while, she knows. An hour, and then a singing mass, to pray harder with the other rats and frogs in the baptismal fonts, that’s what they call them: church-rats, moles. Morning after morning, penitence, until they get an Alleluia. A lady with healing hands, everybody says, healing hands, but it’s femininity roused by her neighbor’s perfume. Does anybody else notice the waft at the side door when he strides in from the chill, old pipe smoke in his pocket and clinging to his clothes? cannibal notes 21 A morning breed apart, before dawn. Before clanging, lauding bells, and the sun. The monastic order files in: white, woolen, boys left, girls right, fervent as a tide drowning everything that isn’t sacred. But she has a purpose. She’d like to have a turquoise-light epiphany , to drown in dark heaven, in this Romanesque church around the corner from where they both live, at number 22, second floor front, hers, fifth floor rear, his. Both hurrying here, some sixty gargoyles, saints, and a revolution of dragons in her hair. Who’s the manic here and how does she know it’s him? He confesses every morning to her after the last bells when they go to have café au lait, after they’ve had the wafer and the blood of wine. Now the sun is sneaking up, and the good monks tucked back in their ordinary robes with no hoods—do they have hormones? He confesses. He wants to love women. All women. She with a wafer of wisdom over the perfume, and the man, the man, the man—he’s dead certain that her optimism and hands can save his life before the crows. Of course she wants to, she desperately wants to, or they would not both be there at this deep-cut well. She wishes a storm would come. They don’t want depression; they do want rolls and marmalade; don’t want chaos; they like Gregorian chants; they want a sign. She wants a sign. Not a nest of dead birds. If one...