Authors Note: To all my readers, no matter where you are, best wishes and all seasons greetings!
" The park was filled with a light haze,
At the gates, flames of gaslights arose,
I remembered only one gaze,
Still unknowing, calm and composed.
And your sorrow, hidden from others,
Drew me close and opened forthright,
And you saw just how much I was smothered
By the poisonous yearning inside.
How I treasure and honor that day,
I will come as soon as you call me.
Though I'm sinful and idling away,
You alone never chide me or scold me".
Akhmatova, 1912.
In the dim flikering light of the hired carriage that took us away from La Scala to our place of residence. I gathered my nerves and pondered aloud in a calculated mesure of unruffled calm:
" Those women just who they are so if you know, can you tell me, if
it is proper? They caused quite a stir in the Opera and everyone around us seemed quite staggered to see them here?.
Father leaned back in his seat and tapped the glass window with his manicured fingernail and replied to me:
" Lizzie, some people do not even want to tell you anything about them, or their kind, but remember that there are many different shades and paths to life. Knowledge, any kind of knowledge is always a power that can be harnessed if it can be desired so. Those women, both blondes, sitting next to us, they are wealthy British-American Sapphists with Time and Wealth for Amusement and Travel, often across Europe, most recently in Greece, I understand. They have been living somewhere in Paris for years.
Father continued musingly and his tone grew even a shade more dry:
" You should stay away from people like that, on the other hand, money and wealth are good motivations and you have artistic ambitions, as I have been made to understand. Maybe it would be proper if you could get a wealthy patron, or to be enrolled to some music conservatory, to get further education, if you truly are good enough. Your latest scholarship has ended.
Next few months are going to be a lot of travel for me away from Paris. This trip to Milan, is soon ended on my part, you can stay for few weeks more. However, I have to decide where you will be placed now that your school is over. You will no longer be able to get into gymnasium´s halls dormitory and stay there, as you well know. It is unfortunate that almost all of our connextions are away, from Paris. That trouble with the boats and the harbour in some corner of Japan, with Russia, worst luck ever. The stocks are dropping and everyone is panicking, even small wars are so nasty. The newspaper headlines are full of English superiority. First the Boer War, then this Tibetan thing, and now the Russian-Japan skirmish. What a strange madness of conquest by the monarchs is going on. We live in interesting times.
Do you want to travel maybe to Geneva, Firenze, Venice or Canada, where your principal Anne Shirley-Blythe lives, have you been in correspondence with her lately?"
Cold damp sweat bloomed in my skin, and a choking feeling at my throat. My heartbeat staggerd in my temples, as I listened to Father's words. He suggested travelling, but it was actually an order. Again, I was left alone, behind, to another country, boarding house, or hotel. Only raising more money and wealth is been always more important than a daughter, with him. Money and material benefits are no substitute for emotional security, which I had never received from any of the adults who were responsible to me for duty and kinship. Father's information about the women was a sudden glittering golden grain that fell into my arms from Heaven, or so I thought at the time. I spinned golves with fingertips, and wrinkled the thin card, and the opera program in my hands, and wished desperately to be not in the carriage. Oh that I could transform into a a bird and fly out of expectations, or any Plans and live freely and aim towards my dreams, like a released arrow. Anxious I jerked my dresshem straight, and I said:
"Father it turned out that the Blythe´s are in fact currently touring around Europe. Mr. Gilbert Blythe has taken part in some medical conference or other, and now they are in somewhere in France to meet Anne Blythe's old colleague, and friend from Summerside days former Vice-Principal, a certain Mademoiselle Brooke, who in past years has acted as a assistant and secretary, of a certain well renown businessman and has thence traveled quite a bit around the world around Europe, and Mesopotamia, to Russia and Japan too, I think."
"Capital, Capital! So I can leave you in the care of Blythes and then to Mademoiselle Brooke´s tender mercies. In fact, I'll have to leave for Monza as early as tomorrow afternoon. So now you'll have to get around alone for a couple of weeks, the information about the departure was confirmed by express telegram before the opera. I'm glad the Blythes are relatively close, they'll definitely will help you if you need it. The Blythes can stay at our in our apartment, in the company's account covers all costs naturally, the usual rules apply".
There was a deep silence in the carriage after Father's words. The wagon curved towards our hotel there where four rooms at our disposal. Just as I was getting up, and out Father shoved a bunch of local currency into my hand saying roughly:"
In the meantime, poppet be sure to get enough clothes, and other necessary items."
The following week was busy one, as I ran around in different markets and shops, preparing clothes, and looking for hat pins, notes, sheet-music, dictionaries, and lavender water that had run out. I startched handkerchiefs, and lined the many trunks with my books, miscellaneous mess of volumes by Dumas, Tennyson, Blake, and the French Decadents; Mallarme, Verlaine, de la Vaudiere, Remy de Gourmount, and slim volume of Dickinson, the Brontes, and one greenish golden book written by Owen Ford, which I had received as a package from Ingelside, Glen , Canada, a Christmas present from Anne Blythe few years ago. The package had came with a card with the following sentence written in calligraphy; Dearheart! Have you already found Tomorrow?
Both the card and the book were quite worn out. I had read the novel almost to pieces. The work combined lush and vibrant maritime Canadian nature, exotic adventures and magical realism and decadence in a stunning way, the use of Ford's phrases was glowing and the work felt to be truly alive. A masterpiece, once published in a maybe a decade. All the praised reviews have been deserved, from Le Monde, to the more modest periodicals of in the provinces.
The remnants of my life, was found in the contents of these boxes. My life was lived bewteen trunks and different dormitories. Dozens of girls, of different nationalities all in mutually singlehandedly interested in the competition of status and popularity, of making the best and most well connected marriage.
Most of the time I was found in some window corner, reading, or I practiced the italiante music of Bellini, Adelson e Salvini, the tribulations of Norma and Adalgisa´s temptations, of Donizetti, varied faceted Tudor queens, shades of Lucia poor, and mad, the tenderness of Rossini, glimmering, seeking, La Cerentola, L´italiana in Algeri, of Tancredi, endless belcanto glory trills, variations, and permutations. Sight reading too for theory tests.
In evenings often I roamed Parisian streets, sidewalks, and alleys and watched as lanterns slowly lit around the facade of Notre Dame de Paris, cast shimmering shadows on medieval stones.
My antisociality could be due to my early upbringing, I was used to being alone and unnoticed, and yes kittens were still a whole lot better company, than babies. I remember that firstly I had announced that remark to very startled Anne, in the ivy green gloom of Evergreen house´ s front door, in our first meeting the in the chill days of Yesterday.
The encounter at La Scala had been confusing experience. It had felt like I was seen as a whole, not as a goal or a reward, but only me, Betty finally. It was some kind of internal connection of souls. Amost like a another kind tribe of kindred spirits that I had previously overlooked, or whose existence had not been revealed to me before a suitable, predetermined moment. Maybe I would find my way to the Island of Happiness, and Tomorrow would be one step closer.
I walked over to oval mirror and looked at my reflection in the glass in light of the flowing, dripping candles. Dim reflection showed a shady waivering image of a slim, bird boned, petite girl-woman with large golden-hazel eyes, with long sooty dark lashes. A waterfall of rippling honey blond hair with platinum pale stripes. It was braided into thick Sisi braid, circled slender neck and shoulders, up to my waist. Light rose complexion, pointed chin, with high cheekbones and a fragile, hesitant, but sometimes suddenly radiant smile. The pale ice blue gingham dress was old and slightly worn and frayed, suitable only now to packing and cleaning chores.
The girl in the mirror nodded contentedly and disappeared from view, as a gust of wind from an open window drowned the room in the twilight.