Vision
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"Ain't it just like the night to play tricks when you're trying to be so quiet?
We sit here stranded, though we all do our best to deny it
And Louise holds a handful of rain, tempting you to defy it
Lights flicker from the opposite loft
In this room the heat pipes just cough
The country music station plays soft,
But there's nothing, really nothing to turn off."
- Bob Dylan
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To fifteen-year-old Tesu Johanez, it was a concept as foreign and farfetched as ballroom dancing. He had a vague memory of Mama trying to waltz across their - shared - kitchenette, stilettos clattering on the tacky lino. She'd tripped, eventually, into someone's arms, but the boy was gone before she could tell him to go to bed. He'd sat on the stairs a few floors lower, on the solid, damp concrete, and heard her giggling to the other voice, Father.
It wasn't really, of course. Father was the man who Mama had met on Saturday at the bar, on leave Tuesday two weeks before, coming out of church at the weekend, and any number of other dates and places. That one might have been a Thursday-at-the-shop. Father was always different and usually less than sober, which suited Mama to the ground, though she was actually always the same. Father tended to leave before finding that out. Three was a crowd in the apartment, anyway, and on odd occasions he'd slept on the stairs. Father was always one person too many.
And then here was this man, Herr - Master Undersn, with the gray ponytail and the voice that sounded like he needed to cough. Tesu had a grating smoker's cough and a black rat-tail of hair and was at best verging on literate, and this man wanted to be Father. Master Undersn had not met Mama. Tesu hadn't seen her for some time; he'd been waiting without realising it for the day when she fell asleep on her back and choked. When that had been too long in coming, he'd waited instead for the next Father to appear, then left while she was distracted, taking pocket change and a rosary with eight cracked beads.
He still had the rosary, but hadn't fixed the beads; the Rue Vale Children's Home, Geneva, did not give its inhabitants much spending money. He'd cadged lifts from Zurich and, when questioned, told the police his parents were dead. Now, almost a year later, Master Undersn had come on leave from the Sacred Order, wanting to adopt something and seeming genuinely sympathetic. Fathers had been from the Sacred Order before, they'd been tall, gruff, rangy, uniformed like Master Undersn was, and largely amused by Tesu's girlish face and blunt suspicious stare. Master Undersn took the stare with one of his own, and prooffered a cigarette. Tesu accepted it out of sheer practicality.
The man lived in an impressive townhouse, bought on military wages and public support. It had white bricks outside, clean carpets and wallpaper inside, and its owner grinned a little to himself, watching. The boy tapped his fingers on the speckled granite counters and hummed Visions of Johanna under his breath. Then glanced up in surprise as Master Undersn switched it on on the stereo. Mama claimed it was her song, but it was old, old, and he didn't know Mama anyway. Her chipped heels would've skidded had she attempted to waltz on the clean blue tiles, one person too many.
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NOTES:
Haha, feather-duster likes writing things that people won't read, apparently. Go, small audiences!
Anyway.
Where the hell did this come from? No idea. But the Kliff & Tesu dynamic is a pretty interesting one. Also it's fun to explore where our dearly beloved skirt-wearing Gear originated from, ne? And yeah, feather-duster made him up an original last name.
Officially they're both Swiss, hence Geneva/Zurich. It's a long way from Zurich to Geneva ya know.
Yeah, yeah, Bob Dylan would be seriously old music by then. But ol' Bob's a classic at any time, right?
You have to admit that Mama being an overly-extravagant, dirt-poor alcoholic who hooks up with random guys, could explain a few things.
Kliff isn't really encouraging teenage smoking. Most likely he doesn't give a shit about that and is just trying to bond.
Review and Kliff will switch on "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" next! And I love you, of course. Wanna dance?
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"Oh yes it balances on your head
Just like a mattress balances on a bottle of wine,
Your brand new leopard-skin pill-box hat!"
- Bob Dylan