549b - Alka, the one from the market

translated by my friend AiYiYi

As every week, she came to Split market at dawn. As every week, she came to her fixed place in that tree-lined square where the echoes of tragedy could be hardly heard among the plane tree sheets. To the square, as for her, the echoes still resounded in her eardrums, and also deep inside in her soul.

Time is a great healer, they said. White lies, they say. Time is not a great healer, it only darkens wounds, covers them with a thick layer which make them invisible to others … and they sting deep inside. Sometimes, in her often insomnia she doubted about time. It was a concept she did not understand and she wondered about the necessary amount of exact time, the precise time needed to maintain a minimum hope.

When she looked at her splendid products from her vegetable garden she couldn’t help thinking they had been watered with blood, lots of blood, her family blood. Red, bright red. And what about the smell? For her, they smelt of dynamite. Her eyes still smelt the dynamite from all the houses in the village knocked down to avoid being occupied by the enemy. But what enemies? She wondered, a few days ago all of them were friends, relatives… But everything smelt of dynamite then. And even though her clients appreciated her products, she knew they came from a poisonous soil.

Near the village, unnoticed by the tourists, some white limestones rested, as all the soil was limy there. They were surrounded by a light wired fence. The souls, victims from a ferocious fratricidal war did not rest under them. She did not know who rested there. Nobody knew it. But she knew that somewhere, in a similar place with a white stone on them Branimir and Držimir lay buried, their souls wouldn’t rest, as rest was impossible. Twenty one and twenty three years old, without a future. She also knew she did not have a place to take flowers to her children. What an irony! Her children’s names meant the one who protects peace and the one who keeps peace. Their father, Damir, he who gives peace had named them this way when future was only a promise.

Now, Alka, strength was her name, couldn’t even pray for their eternal rest at church; another victim of the dynamite or the bombs or any other similar thing, it did not matter to her.

And in Split market, while Jadrolinja ferries went continuously in and out , breaking the green jade water from the Adriatic harbor, spewing by their mouths people from all over the world, she looked at her goods, the fruit of her pain.

She was sorrowful flesh, the same as her church was sorrowful stone. Time is a great healer, they said. But it was not true.

And tourists, living unaware of time, a week is not time enough.

Alka: strength, person of a great fortitude.

Damir: To give peace.

Branimir: he who protects peace.

Držimir: he who keeps peace.

link: Spanish Version

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549b·INT036·130119 · Alka, the one from the market ©2013   712120613-018-Croacia-Alka, la del mercado-w ©2012

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478b - Purple Princess

link
··· Spanish version ···

She was, sure enough, Princess Purple or rather Purple Princess. It was really by her father’s specific wish, Little Purple Princess wouldn’t change with time. She was Pur prin in the privacy, pronounced something like /ˈpɜːrprɪn/

Granite mountains where beeches and spruces grew in harmonious coexistence, caressing morning fogs and low clouds were left behind in the distance. Very far away were also left the stories told by blonde governesses, in languages full of consonants at the light of large fireplaces while thick logs were crackling becoming bright embers.

Memories of her father, with a pompous compound name and long surnames of complicated genealogy were closer. He had to resign his throne by the pressure and thread of republican hordes out of control.

She was living now, in a golden exile, in a small village in the French side of the Pyrenees, very close to Coll de Ares. She was always seen with a large glass of Pelforth Blonde beer, always accompanied by her black chauffeur, Ray Charles’ perfect double and her dark young gardener who reminded Marlon Brandon in his early years. Always. She was always in the same little square which led to the big church and a little farther going out from the fortified city, to the Fort that had protected the town from Spanish sieges.

She did not know anything about that, nor was she interested in events happened up to three centuries ago. She was much more interested in the crowd of flatterers and admirers surrounding her.

Her gaze fixed on the narrow main street, goes beyond the borders yearning for his native land. She liked to walk on stormy days along the Tech banks that reminded her of troubled waters from her childhood. She also liked to eat wild strawberries, currants and raspberries brought by her gardener when he climbed some nearby peak in his days off. The path edges were adorned with all these delicacies.

Nobody would ever breath a word about this, as it would always be a well kept secret, that she wasn’t a princess, nor was she exiled or there wasn’t any kingdom called Purpleland. Nobody would ever tell her that all her life had been a tale, a big tale, invented by her father; a renowned watchmaker who was an expert making all the pieces fit perfectly in tiny mechanisms. 

It was the story of her life, a story intended to make happy a six year old blond girl with the most bluish eyes by a supposed king. 

478b·INT033·111020 · Purple princess ©2011  711110630-162-Francia-Prats de Mollo-Purple Princess-w ©2011

293 - The blue taxi girl

She is patiently waiting for the arrival of a taxi. I am talking to her. She is telling it to me. Apparently, all the girls waiting for a taxi tell stories.

Occasionally, she averts her eyes, without losing attention, to have some snack to get her strength back. She has been waiting for many days. She tells me exactly, without looking up in any diary, the hours she has spent there sitting on that small square from which all the visitors that New York devours, take photographs to the flatiron Building. She tells me it is “La Plancha”, that’s the way other people call it.

I say nothing. I don’t want to discourage her since I have the certainty, sorry, I would say almost the certainty that her wait will be eternal. I mean, her wait for a blue taxi.

I don’t need to make her many questions. She is talking in a soft voice about the taxi. It has to be a blue one, she is not wearing yellow clothes for that special occasion in vain.

I hint to her that New York is full of white limousines. She moves her hands disdainfully but delicately in an eloquent gesture. I also talk to her about black limousines, fewer than white ones; but there are still quite a few. However, she keeps insisting. Blue is the colour which suits her best. It suits her, as if she were her clothing.

I go closer to a street stall and bring her a passion fruit juice. It’s hot. 76ºF and humidity is high. She asks me if there weren’t orange or peach juices. Better an orange one.

While I am coming back with the juice, now an orange one, hundreds of taxis pass by in every direction. I know I won’t see any blue one… but I stare at them as if my happiness would depend on it.

Hurries

Fast taxis dye the Fifth Avenue with minimal yellow shooting stars.
Fast pedestrians leave the tracks of their existence in the air.
Trees tied to the noise mistake their shades for a false sky.
And a false sea climbs the skyscrapers.

Speed

And hurriedly, a warm tree wants to come to a square,
where a girl dressed in yellow, was waiting for a taxi,
to tell her the secret everybody conceals from her.
Blue doesn’t exist. It doesn’t exist in movement.
.
.
.

:::Post 293 INT 031 - 090526 - The blue taxi girl
:::photo 1: 090513-C1556 - La chica del taxi azul - f/3.5 - 1/400 seg - 420*mm
:::photo 2: 090515-C1628 - Prisas - f/2.7 - 1/4 seg - 36*mm
:::photo 3: 090509 -P1020565 - Arbol veloz - f/3.3 - 1/60 seg - 30*mm
:::link: Spanish version: Cristal Rasgado - La chica del taxi azul