December 1999
Editor: Klaus J. Gerken
Production Editor: Pedro Sena
European Editor: Moshe Benarroch
Contributing Editors: Martin Zurla; Rita Stilli; Milan Georges Djordjevitch; Michael Collings
ISSN 1480-6401
INRODUCTION
AMELIA LANIER (1570? - 1640?)
From Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum
CONTENTS
MICHAEL LACKNER
Oblong Mirror (Painting illustrating Farzana Moon's
short story)
FARZANA MOON
Oblong Mirror
STEVEN LAIRD
CON'S HILL SUITE
BRAD EVANS
with questions like hemlock between the lips of Socrates
a human element of the banking sector
Christmas Invite
JOHN E. MARKS
REDEMPTION SONG
MOSHE BENARROCH
Ending The Century
POST SCRIPTUM
KLAUS J. GERKEN
Where Were You When Adam Ate The Apple?
The first feminist poem in western literature:
AMELIA LANIER (1570? - 1640?)
From Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum
Now Pontius Pilate is to judge the cause
Of faultless Jesus who before him stands,
Who neither hath offended prince, nor laws,
Although he now be brought in woeful bands.
"O noble governor, make thou yet a pause,
Do not in innocent blood imbrue thy hands;
But hear the words of thy most worthy wife,
Who sends to thee, to beg her Saviour's life.
"Let barbarous cruelty far depart from thee,
And in true justice take affliction's part;
Open thine eyes, that thou the truth mayest see.
Do not the thing that goes against thy heart,
Condemn not him that must thy Saviour be;
But view his holy life, his good desert.
Let not us women glory in men's fall.
Who had opower given to overrule us all.
"Till now your indiscretion sets us free,
And makes our former fault much less appear;
Our mother Eve, who tasted of the tree,
Giving to Adam what she held most dear,
Was simply good, and had no power to see;
The after-coming harm did not appear:
The subtle serpent that our sex betrayed
Before our fall so sure a plot had laid.
"That undiscerning ignorance perceived
No guile or craft that was by him intended;
For had she known of what we were bereaved,
To his request she had not condescended.
But she, poor soul, by cunning was deceived;
No hurt therein her harmless heart intended:
For she alledged God's word, which he denies,
That they should die, but even as gods be wise.
"But surely Adam cannot be excused;
Her fault though great, yet he was most to blame.
What weakness offered, strength might have refused;
Being lord of all, the greater was his shame;
Although the serpent's craft had her abused,
God's holy word ought all his action's frame;
For he was lord and king of all the earth,
Before poor Eve had either life or breath.
"Who being framed by God's eternal hand
The perfectest man that ever breathed on earth,
And from God's mouth received that strait command,
The breach whereof he knew was present death;
Yea, having power to rule both sea and land,
Yet with one apple won to lose that breath
Which God had breathed in his beauteous face,
Bringing us all in danger and disgrace;
"And then to lay the fault on patience's back,
That we (poor women) must endure it all;
We know right well he did discretion lack,
Being not persuaded thereunto at all.
If Eve did err, it was for knowledge sake;
The fruit being fair persuaded him to fall.
No subtle serpent's falsehood did betwray him;
If he would eat it, who had power to stay him?
"Not Eve, whose fault was only too much love,
Which made her give this present to her dear,
That what she tasted he likewise might prove,
Whereby his knowledge might become more clear;
He never sought her weakness to reprove
With those sharp words which he of God did hear;
Yet men will boast of knowledge, which he took
From Eve's fair hand, as from a learned book.
"If any evil did in her remain,
Being made of him, he was the ground of all.
If one of many worlds, could lay a stain
Upon our sex, and work so great a fall
To wretched man by Satan's subtle train,
What will so fault amongst you all?
Her weakness did the serpent's words obey,
But you in malice God's dear son betray.
"Whom, if unjustly you condemn to die,
Her sin was small to what you do commit.
All mortal sins that do for vengeance cry
Are not to be compared unto it;
If many worlds wold altogether try
By all their suns the wrath of God to get,
This sin of yours surmounts them all as far
As doth the sun another little star.
"Then let us have our liberty again,
And challange to yourselves no sovereignty.
You came not in the world without our pain,
Make that a bar against your cruelty;
Your fault being greater, why should you disdain
Our being your equals, free from tyranny?
If one weak woman simply did offend,
This sin of yours hath no excuse nor end,
"To which, poor sould, we never gave consent.
Witness, thy wife, O Pilate, speaks for all,
Who did but dream, and yet a message sent
That thou shouldest have nothing to do at all
With that just man; which, if thy heart relent,
Why wilt thou be a reprobate with Saul
To seek the death of him that is so good,
For thy soul's health to shed his dearest blood?"
MICHAEL LACKNER
Oblong Mirror
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
FARZANA MOON
OBLONG MIRROR
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Olga, seated at her cherry desk cluttered with stack of unfinished stories
was gazing at the gilded portrait on the wall, vacantly and thoughtlessly.
A cloud of gossamer mists was rising in her head suddenly. She could feel
it piercing into the very void of her inner silence. And tearing the old
lace of her memories where the gluttony of death had swallowed the last
morsel of her friendship, leaving behind a terrible vacuum. On the top of
the clutter lay her real labor of love and grief, all clothed in words, yet
naked at the dawn of tragedy. Her last story! she was thinking, the dagger
of truth cutting her sanity. This story was meeting her gaze and flashing
one mockery of a challenge. It was demanding her attention, and goading
her to look into the eyes of Doom, Death and Inevitability. The Truth!
her thoughts were weaving despair, as she snatched the pages with the
intention of devouring them in all entirety.
The rain and sleet were beating on the mullioned windows, as Mohagan
stood gazing out into the very face of this pelting fury. Down below, the
battered garden lay mute and shivering. Beyond that stood a large mansion,
its Greek columns rising and its shuttered windows polished and gleaming.
This mansion belonged to Lord Lombroso of Bloomsbury, who had several
employees, including Mohagan's parents installed comfortably in one of
the small annexes. This particular rainy, dismal day, Mohagan was standing
in his workshop on the second storey of his parents' home, from where the
hamlets of the workers against the towering mansion could be seen without
much effort.
"A monument of ugliness," Mohagan's thoughts were lashing epithets at
the large mansion, as he stood there inert and brooding. The memories of
his happy, carefree childhood were flooding into his head, along with this
recent painful affliction of the body and soul. Some fatal, nameless
disease was gnawing at his youth of barely nineteen summers, confounding
not only the physicians, but the Masters of Science and Medicine. Mohagan
was devastated. He knew only one thing that he was dying, and he was
overwhelmed with fear and grief. Sickness and death were Mohagan's grandest
of fears ever experienced by him during his young life. To him, they were
as intolerable as his savage dislike for decay and ugliness. Right now
those fears were rising to his throat like a swollen lump, and his heart
was gathering the claps of thunder and lightning.
"I am going to die...so soon, so soon. Actually die? Is my body
really going to rot and decay in some unmarked grave?" Mohagan whirled
around, almost staggering over his worktable.
The large, oblong mirror with its mahogany frame arrested his attention,
along with the violence inside his heart. He had carved this frame in the
semblance of delicate vines, where morning glory blooms were yet to be
chiseled and polished. This frame was his love and obsession, demanding
his attention at all sleeping, waking hours of the day and night. But
right now he was oblivious to the masterpiece of his own exquisite design,
only gazing at his own reflection in this oblong mirror. His dark eyes
were bright and feverish, accentuating his pallor and his cherry-red lips.
He seemed to be gazing into the soul of this mirror where dreams, mysteries,
continents were frozen inside the profound depths of his own soul. His
thoughts were breaking free of these icy deeps within him. Dawning upon
his awareness like the crackling, splintering mantras. This loud babel
was repeating names, but he could catch only the name of Lord Lombroso.
Lord Lombroso, who was to celebrate his sixtieth birthday, receiving this
exquisite frame intended as a birthday gift from his own father, Mohagan's
thoughts were holding flint to ice.
"Sixtieth birthday...and I a poor wretch will probably never see the
first bloom of twentieth?" a wild cry escaped Mohagan's heart, as he began
to pace in some stupor of pain and misery. "Why do I fear death? Is death
so very terrible and loathsome? Is it cruel and painful..." his thoughts
were caught in the roaring furnace of a wildfire. "Yes, I will die! And
this mirror with its exquisite frame will live forever and forever. No
seasons will steal its youth, nor mar its beauty. No fair maidens can
break its heart, no desires wanton corrupting its soul. No fears, no
desires, no passions unslaked, it will live, live and live for centuries
to come..." he was lured to the mirror once again, gazing at his own
stricken face as if bewitched. The violence of agony inside him was
muttering a soundless prayer.
"My sweet mirror, arrest my body and soul in your sparkling youth. I
will live forever, in you...God, I will live forever! Let me live..."
Mohagan's lips were breathing fire and madness.
Three weeks after this prayer, Mohagan had died, leaving behind his
gift of love in carved frame. As intended, this exquisite frame housing
the oblong mirror was presented to Lord Lombroso on his sixtieth birthday.
Lord Lombroso was so enamored by the beauty of this unique gift that he
had ordered it hung over the hearth, replacing a family portrait which
had occupied this wall since decades. He was rather fascinated by it, as
if it radiated some light of youth and eternity which poured mysterious
rhythms in his own Being. Though not very perceptive, he could feel some
sort of connection with this mirror where spirituality could be viewed as
sane, and reality the product of illusion, if not of insanity. He was
growing senile, Lord Lombroso would think, gazing at the mirror hours on
end, rapt and transfixed. To him, the Artist who had carved this frame
was immortal like the gods themselves, and communicating to him alone in
the Light of Silence. He was to live another quarter of a century before
his own death could open the gates of mysteries, of which he had a few
glimpses here and there.
Mohagan, in renewal of life after death, knew those mysteries to be
true, way before Lord Lombroso could explore their depths and silences.
Mohagan was alive as he had never been before while living. He was
encased in the shining tomb of his own Masterpiece. A living, breathing,
throbbing entity with the wisdom and knowledge of the Time changing and
changeless. Mohagan had become the Soul of this Mirror. The soul eternal,
the soul everlasting. The soul undaunted, the soul unsuffering. Yet he
was a prisoner inside his own beautiful Creation. A prisoner! who wished
no escape, knowing only the bliss in living, and suffering not the fetters
of life and death in continual cycles. His mind could journey beyond the
valleys of ether, unfolding the voids, the heavens and the constellations
as if they were nothing but the gossamer mists suspended inside one cosmic
bubble. He himself could pierce the heart of that bubble, swinging on the
cradle of time and timelessness. Gathering the ripples of awe, and sailing
on a boat of oblivion, where Posterity was the bride of Existence.
Mohagan-Mirror was endowed with a youthful heart, as ardent and
vulnerable as a lover's, its boundless depths concealing passions blind
and terrible. But most of the time, his heart was peaceful, knowing only
the surface-calm and discovering not the dark, abysmal depths. It was
untouched by the reflections of the faces ugly or beautiful, but catching
the evil and corruption in the souls with disgust as violent as hate and
revulsion. Paradoxically, he was content in his abode of 'monument of
ugliness' as he had named it during his lifetime. So fascinated was he
by the masks worn over the human faces that he was tempted to reach over
and rip them open. His sight alone was enough to do that, for he could
see the souls of the human beings bleeding through their lips and eyes
in rivulets of lies blanched and truths corrupted.
The hours and the vicissitudes were gliding past on the ever-marching
rhythm of time, to which Mohagan-Mirror had remained heedless. He was
luxuriating in the bliss and purity of his own life. Living metaphorically,
and enjoying the sense of invulnerability. His existence was free of pains
and sorrows, and no fear of death or sickness could ever tarnish his
sparkling essence. He had outlived Lord Lombroso, welcoming peace and
silence with as much passion as his passion to live and brood. While
brooding, he would court the knowledge of his own immortality like a
bridegroom courting his bride, wanting nothing but life and contemplation.
Right after Lord Lombroso's death, this 'mansion of ugliness' had been
unoccupied for a few years, and Mohagan-Mirror's heart had suffered a
change. Besides, the house was locked and the drapes hermetically drawn,
and he had begun to long for sunshine and companionship.
Mohagan-Mirror must have had longed with all his heart and soul, for
within a year after the inception of his first longing, the doors of the
house were thrown open, and voices booming loud in the parlor and hallway.
After so many years of silence, he could hear his heart thundering with a
volcanic fury, as if the day of doom had landed over the very hearth above
which he sat resting against the wall. With the aid of his honed
perception though, he knew that this was no Day of Doom, but the Eve of
Rejoicing. Lord Lombroso's son and family had returned to occupy this
'monument of ugliness'.
A little girl with face as white as lily and eyes as bright as the
stars had arrested Mohagan-Mirror's attention. She had bounced into the
drawingroom like an angel, her blue eyes twinkling and absorbing all which
came her way. The flaxen gold in her hair swept back in a ponytail was
bouncing along with her merry frolic of a stride as she went exploring
each little article with the passion of a tourist.
"Sweet heavens! What perfection in that small, white face? What
purity? What innocence? Dear God, let this girl live...live in my soul.
Let me cherish and worship her beauty, perfection, reflection. Let her
live...let her live--in me," Mohagan-Mirror's heart was on burning, the
flames of love and agony awakening in him like wildfire. He was renewing
his link with God, courting the mad, mad prayers of his youth when he
wanted to live forever. His prayers were answered then, bestowing upon
him the curse of immortality, was Mohagan-Mirror's one bitter, bitter
thought. Now his prayers were wordless, and as mute as death. His soul
too was dying, it was smoldering in some familiar torment he had not felt
in decades.
"Mind you, missy, you ugly witch! You look quite silly in looking at
yourself like that in the mirror, it won't make you pretty," one boy with
a cherubic face had stolen behind the girl, laughing into her face.
"Bully, bully...nothing but a bully, and my own brother," the girl
sang dreamily, trying to catch her reflection in the oblong mirror by
standing as far as she could. "Mamma is going to box your ears if you
tease me," she flitted away, the bully of a cherub following her.
The flight of time into months and years had been so swift that
Mohagan-Mirror had not had the time to explore the rivers of his own
agony. He was in love, profoundly and wretchedly in love with this child
of Beauty and Perfection. Cassandra was the name of this child who was
transformed from the bud of childhood into the flower of maidenhood.
Since childhood she had been fond of this mirror as if it was the only
thing in this mansion which befriended her. It was her nearest and
dearest of friends. She was wont to confide her little secrets to this
mirror with all the purity and innocence of a young girl who had no
confidante. Little did she know that this fantastic mirror knew all her
secrets even before she could put them into words. As she grew older,
she felt otherwise, discovering some sort of nameless kinship with the
mirror and herself. She would gaze at her reflection, at times, rapt
and elated. Those were the times when no one was around, and she would
feel giddy and delirious, thinking to herself that this mirror worshipped
her--paid her compliments. She could not fathom her attachment to this
mirror, neither her sense of pain and sweetness when searching the fever
and sparkle in her own eyes.
All-knowing, like God, Mohagan-Mirror could catch all moods and nuances
of this beautiful flower, called Cassandra, and would sigh to himself.
Unlike God, he had no power to command what he willed, and his will was
to behold her beauty forever and everlastingly. When Cassandra was away,
his heart would sob and weep, gathering tears of blood which he could not
shed. In the evenings he would gather the saddest of sunsets and send her
fond kisses. And in the mornings when she came too close to him to view
her reflection, cold sighs would escape his heart which he could not stifle.
Inexplicably and astonishingly, those were the times when he could feel
and taste the mists of his own despair and longings. And those were the
only times when a thick mist would sit on his sparkling entity, blurring
his vision, and frightening the young girl.
"Beloved! Dearest, don't be frightened! Don't leave me, don't ever
leave me," Mohagan-Mirror was praying. He was trying to control his
sighs, while watching Cassandra recline against the tapestried chair,
dreamily. She was waiting for her fiancee, Maillol, he could not fail
to surmise quite profoundly and painfully. Besides, he had seen them
quite often, sitting together on the same sofa, talking and laughing.
But this very evening, he was suffering the agonies of a million deaths,
longing to crush her young body into his glazed arms.
"Awfully silly, what strange dreams, what insane thoughts?" Cassandra
was thinking, unable to tear her gaze away from the mirror. The
passion and longing in Mohagan-Mirror's heart was reaching out to her,
tingling each nerve in her body and soul. "This mirror is no ordinary
mirror. It lives, thinks, yearns, breathes, I can almost feel it. I
can hear it sigh...oh, what sheer madness? Yes, it knows my thoughts,
it forbids me to leave, it chains me to its compliments..." she was
swooning into one of her opiate, blissful moods. "What gender, if
this mirror is alive? He? He is watching me. He is mad, pleading,
devouring? Stop staring at me, you bright bully, you are making me
feel naked..." she was closing her eyes. Trying to banish her own
maddening soliloquy.
"My love, it's hopeless, helpless..." Mohagan-Mirror was groaning, as
he espied Maillol sail into the drawingroom with a patrician stride. "Is
this life worth living? Yet, I had always wanted to live. What is life?
Without love, it's nothing but a vacuum. A deformed, crippled lump of
nothingness. I cannot stir, I cannot speak. I cannot feed my hungers and
longings. Dear God, release me, release me from this bondage of life.
Tear out my heart from my glazed bosom, let it bleed, let it bleed! Let
me love, just once, just once? Then I will welcome death. Oh, I must be
mad, raving mad, to wish death? Just for one moment of--Love!" he was
trying not to watch his Beloved and her lover saunter out of the room,
arm-in-arm.
Maillol and Cassandra were strolling in a public garden outside the
precincts of Bloomsbury. The Spring with all it glorious colors was
wafting the scent of life and laughter. Despite the abundance of bloom
and fecundity, they could feel the hush and peace of this early afternoon,
as if nature itself was taking a siesta. So absolute and awesome was this
ocean of silence all around that Cassandra's heart was missing a few beats,
and lurching toward swoon. She wanted to scream. Though usually buoyant
and profuse, even Maillol was affected by this aura of hush and quiet,
his heart constricting and churning.
"This hush and peace, isn't it unnerving, my love!" Maillol demurred
aloud. "This cloak of silence! one almost wishes to tear it to rags,"
he laughed. A sweet, buoyant mirth in conformity with his handsome
features. His sherry eyes were spilling love as he tossed his head in
denial of some inner conflict which he could not fathom.
"Maillol!" Cassandra murmured softly, almost dreamily. Her wish to
scream was dissolved in a pool of fear where words could be seen swaying
like the reeds under some spell of swoon and giddiness. "I wonder if
everything around us have a life of their own. I mean, the plants and
the trees, in a sense similar to our own? If we could hear them talk and
think? Do they know fear? Are they aware of the caprice and uncertainty
in nature..." some sort of chaos and confusion within her were goading
her to levity in ideation. "The stories we hear as children. The stories
which haunt us in the sleeping, waking hours of our youth and adulthood?
The trees groaning and shuddering against the blasts? The birds and the
beasts sharing wisdom and knowledge? Look at these willows, Maillol, even
the streams, and the blades of grass? Don't they all have minds and
tongues. They are talking to us, what are they saying, is this absurd?
Yet, I can feel, if we wanted we could hear their voices, we could fathom
their mysteries!" one little ripple of mirth trembled on her poppy-red
lips, her thoughts gazing into the eyes of the oblong mirror.
"Mankind, my dear, have a jolly rough time catching the sounds in
their own souls, how could they ever tune in to the rhythm of words in
nature?" Maillol joined her in her mirth. "Silence is the only tool
worth exploring, but then we have to be deaf to the symphony of our own
essence in body and soul," he kicked one stone, planting his feet right
on the spot where the raw earth cradled a few pebbles. "How beautiful
you are, my love...more beautiful than ever before, if possible," he
murmured abruptly, his look warm and shining.
"Unpredictable as usual, Maillol! Always evading the subject of life,
and courting the illusion of beauty in all thought and argument,"
Cassandra's eyes were kindling to blue flames of reproach and mischief.
"Life is beauty, my love, and beauty, life, how could they ever be
separate?" Maillol intoned rather soberly. "Beauty is the soul of the
universe, and life without beauty can never claim to have soul. Likewise,
a soul without beauty can never inhale the breath of life," he added
doubtfully.
"My turn to evade this subject now!" Cassandra exclaimed capriciously.
Her cheeks flushed and her eyes sparkling. "I have a little secret to
share...no, it's too silly, too bizarre," her poppy-red lips hugged one
delicious smile.
"Anything you share with me, my love, is worthy of reverence, not
tainted by words like silly or bizarre," Maillol murmured passionately.
"It's really absurd, Maillol, awfully absurd," Cassandra murmured back.
"You trust me, don't you?" Maillol pleaded.
"Well...then, answer me first, truly," Cassandra began reluctantly.
"Do you think everything inanimate, visible or invisible might have a
life of its own?" her thoughts were touching the hem of some cosmic
awareness, bright and sinister like the oblong mirror.
"Only my blind love, though invisible, it is very much alive and
ardent," the wine of love and mirth in Maillol's eyes was some sweet
libation escaping his lips.
"Love and trust, another illusion," Cassandra murmured to herself.
"If you are laughing now, how can you not help laughing what may sound
ludicrous to you," the blue lakes in her eyes were profound, yet turbulent.
"I will laugh with you, my dear, only if you are, not otherwise,"
Maillol responded contritely.
"Now, you are mocking," was Cassandra's feeble protest.
"Love never mocks, my love, it only cherishes what..." Maillol could
not continue, catching the saddest of reflections in the blue lakes of
her eyes. "You are...serious? Why this sadness all of a sudden? I
promise I won't breathe a word, and listen most attentively, please tell
me," he murmured tenderly.
"Don't know where to begin!" Cassandra chanted with the violence of
hopelessness.
"End, middle, beginning, it doesn't matter where one starts. They
all run the same course of everlasting cycle where one point is
indistinguishable from the other, or all appear to be one," Maillol
slipped his arm around her waist, making her walk with him.
"Have you noticed the oblong mirror in our drawingroom, Maillol?"
Cassandra murmured, as if confidentially.
"The one with the beautifully carved frame, of course! How could one
miss noticing the delicate vines, and morning glory so exquisitely
designed as if plucked fresh out of the garden?" Maillol murmured low.
"Yes, the very same one," Cassandra reminisced aloud. "As far as I
can remember I have been fond of that mirror. That's not the right
word...that was the only object in this whole mansion which had arrested
my childish imagination. I was drawn toward it, rather attracted,
will-lessly, it seemed. I used to imagine that this mirror was my only
friend, some handsome boy, and I madly in love? I would tell all my
little secrets to this mirror, crying and laughing with it...with him?
At night when everyone would be sleeping, I would tiptoe down the steps
to be with the mirror, even kiss it, dreaming away dreams. Thinking,
that I was sitting with some Knight of the Round Table, drawn toward
him, possessed by his charms. Those days, I was reading Cervantes,
perhaps...yet, I had this feeling of restlessness? Silence itself
speaking to me, luring me toward the mirror, the air charged with the
threat of a storm, something awesome, something awful..." she could
not speak, as if the oblong mirror itself had barred her torrent of
confessions.
"Dreams and illusions, we all welcome them at times, more so the
children," Maillol began thoughtfully. "Little girls talk to their
dolls, and most boys pour out their hearts to their pets. I too used
to talk to my Irish terrier when I was barely six, but later I stopped.
I got busy trying to learn everything, to know everything...curiosity
became my foe, it marred my innocence of trust," he slipped his arm
around her waist. "Talking of trust, don't you trust me? Do you know
that I love you madly and absolutely? If you like, I will hang myself
up against the wall on your mantle, wearing that oblong frame as my only
garment of love and fidelity," he began to laugh, deliciously and
uncontrollably.
"Maillol, we must return home before you catch the fever of dementia,"
Cassandra joined him in his mirth, retracing her footsteps.
Another mood, another season. Against the wet, balmy mantle of summer,
the spring was lost in oblivion. Cassandra, a fresh graduate from the
Royal College of Arts, was celebrating her freedom in the heart of London.
She and Maillol were seated in a dark tavern after their endless wanderings
on the Piccadilly Circus. In the dimly lit booth, they sat sipping the
nectar of love and wine, when Maillol whispered with a sudden caprice and
passion.
"Darling, will you marry me?" Maillol sat gazing into her eyes rapt
and stricken.
"How very unromantic, Maillol!" Cassandra exclaimed. Mischief shining
in her eyes as she continued. "You had to choose this dull place, of
course, to make such an interesting proposal?"
"Sorry, bloody sorry," Maillol murmured one flustered apology.
"It's just that one of my friends loaded with all the fuel of romance...
wine, candles, flowers, had no luck in winning the consent of his
girlfriend to marriage. So I thought...well, let's leave this dismal
place, and find a quaint spot suitable for proposals both dear and
romantic."
"But this place is so very warm, rather charming..." Cassandra could
not continue, espying her long-neglected friend approaching close to the
booth.
"What a friend you are, Cassandra? How long it has been...never mind,"
Olga slipped into the booth beside Cassandra. She appeared to be ignoring
her friend's greeting, but snatching the introduction much too quickly.
"Maillol, such a handsome name, Cassandra, complimenting his looks! He
is much more charming than the dream-man in your letters," she teased,
barely heeding Maillol's thanks and acknowledgment.
"You are mistaken about the dream-man," Cassandra laughed.
"Yes, my thoughts are collecting the moss of illusion these days,"
Olga joined Cassandra in her mirth, her own dry and brittle.
"What in the world did you do to your hair, Olga? Might as well shave
your head, and go begging for alms!" cried Olga, as if she had just
noticed her strange hairdo cropped close to her ears.
"Nothing short of pulling my hair out of its roots will satisfy me,"
Olga quipped brightly. "But my will is weak and my courage weaker, and
my heart weaker still. Something inside me is simmering...some rage,
despair, madness perhaps?"
"You are in love! I know you are," Cassandra flashed a bright,
puzzled look at her friend. "You are hibernating, you never visit, never
write...yes, that's true, you are in love?"
"In love!" Maillol murmured to himself, feeling completely neglected
by this sudden reunion of the two old