The Jester and Other Stories by Adrian Sturgess
THE JESTER AND OTHER STORIES
Adrian Sturgess
Copyright Adrian Sturgess 2012
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Cover Art: Beti Bup
Preface
In some instances, these stories are very short, in the manner of so called 'flash fiction' although I think the term ‘prose poetry’ is a better fit for them. If you are not familiar with this concept then think of them as short stories, but with the sensibilities of a poem and tending towards heightened imagery and restricted subject matter.
Many years ago I worked in the construction industry. On one occasion I had to drive for a couple of hours, through dense fog, very early on a Saturday morning in order to witness a large and problematic concrete beam being cast. It seems that the factory had put back the time of the casting, but they hadn’t bothered to inform me and I therefore found myself alone and waiting, in the sublimely austere setting of a deserted precast concrete works, with nothing particular to do for an hour or so. The basic idea of ‘The Jester’ popped into my head and I rushed into a small office room to scribble it down. I have always had a bit of a fondness for it.
The Jester
The jester stood atop a building so high that, from the ground, if he was noticed at all, it was as a speck of colour against the monolithic grey. He stood in all his multicoloured finery and savoured the chaotic beauty of that which lay below him on that summer’s morning. He shut his eyes and several times drew the pollen and petroleum scented air deeply into his quivering lungs. He then moved to the very edge of the building and flapped his arms as if he might actually fly.
Calmly and with infinite dignity he stepped forward. The world spun; his head spun; a shout escaped his lips, lips drawn back in splendid glee. But the shout was sucked back into his throat by the vacuum within him and there it echoed about his inner chambers throughout the duration of his long descent. As he fell, an object of supreme beauty, his fine young face was a slowly turning point of focus amidst the surrounding chaos and colour.
A woman on the ground looked up and her eyes registered bliss.
‘A shooting star,’ she murmured. ’The first I ever really saw.’
And she watched in rapture as the jester cartwheeled slowly against the blue sky.
A group of schoolboys stood and gazed. ‘A bird, escaped from the zoo,’ they cried. Their high-pitched, excited voices floated up towards him and were sucked past his unhearing ears. Their outstretched hands and fingers pointed frantically until the jester finally passed from view.
His bursting inner joy forced it’s way through the pores of his skin, as cherry red as blood. His smile was as pure as high mountain air and his broad white teeth glinted in the early morning sun.
The fortunate few who witnessed his splendid flight had all sorrow lifted from their hearts and were as children in the innocence of their joy. Ever after it was remembered as a special day in their lives.
But one girl wept. For her, it was a day of sadness, a very real ending of a life. She saw the grinning faces and felt the warmth of hearts touched with joy all around her; but deep within her was a coldness, as of a shadow crossing the summer sun.
She had loved the jester and her love had both consumed and sustained her. She had stood close to him on occasions and yet had never uttered a word to him; save in her dreams. But, she had foreseen his destiny and now, through the blur of her moist eyes, she saw and was proud. Proud of him and proud of the tears that she shed. Precious tears; tears that were the last remaining earthly fragment of what he had once been.
She sat on a park bench beneath the canopy of that glorious July day and watched him. He didn’t quickly pass from her sight, nor did he spin; rather, for her, the world spun, whilst she gazed straight into his rapt and steady eyes. Eyes that were focused and yet unseeing of her; eyes that had left her realm and were now looking beyond her, towards the object of their long and lonely search.
As she held him in her gaze, so his multicoloured raiments suddenly fused into a blinding point of white light, which stayed with her for the rest of her days; and as her tears soaked into her pale cheeks, so his strength came to her through them and at last she smiled.
A Dark Night
The night was as dark as the inside of Satan’s heart. Storm clouds sailed the sky like some huge armada with evil intent. Very occasionally a wan and washed out moon could be briefly glimpsed, like a will o’ the wisp, flitting amongst the great cloud-ships.
Silence was upon the world and dawn lay a thousand miles away. It was an April night and at its end, the landscape would be flooded, not just with daylight, but with springtime as fresh as the first spring ever to grace the world.
It had been a restless night and I had finally come to realise that sleep’s all-enclosing hand would be denied me, on the very night that I craved its balming effect the most. I lay, with curtains opened wide and watched the dark shapes rush across the roof of my world, in sympathy with the dark and foreboding thoughts drifting through my troubled mind. For a moment, I turned my vision inwards and there inside me, echoing the unearthly moonlight above my head, was the conception of the only woman I would ever love. But, if I so much as tried to fill in the features of her face, the great mind shadows would come, driven by the numbing winds, which spring from the arctic regions, lying at the extreme poles of our sanity.
There she was, like a vampire at the gates of my heart. The blood that should have flowed through my young body, instead, seemed to flow straight from my veins into her gaping mouth. The barest trickle left to me was insufficient to allow me to sustain my grip on reality. She became, simultaneously, a gloating and sinister gargoyle and the most desirable carnal object that my fevered and ranting imagination could devise. My mind spun, like a planet pivoting at these two extremes, whilst the whole global surface was a playground for my own spreading insanity. The real world seemed so pale and distant, whilst my inner world was vibrant and terrifying. My mind was in turmoil and I cried out loudly in my desolation.
Suddenly, I was walking down a long tunnel. It was lit at intervals by lamps and each lamp was a glowing caricature of her face. When I tried to change the lamps to objects of beauty, they flickered and died and I was in a dripping darkness.
I stumbled on through the tunnel; the great lakes of sorrow inside me, only finding an outlet through my eyes. At last, I was outside once again and looking up at the looming cloud-continents high above me. And then, with a great sob of despair, I launched myself upwards, towards them, and the roiling dark shapes parted and received me. My senses were numb and I know not how far, or for how long, I travelled. But, I was aware that, with each passing minute, I was brought nearer to her.
At last, the darkness parted and I floated down, like a wind-borne seed, in through her bedroom window. There she was, with her gargoyle face turned in my direction. A man lay on her and they were writhing like some ghastly serpent. I moved towards them, knowing that they could not see me and I merged with her. I entered her mind and I could feel her love for him, tangible and loathsome, like a polluted spring. It sickened me and I recoiled violently, ejecting myself with such force that I left her and drifted into him.
In that moment my sanity returned and my torment was instantly banished. Finally, I had found peace. Her mask was laid aside and her beauty spoke to me. I knew I could never leave; I had her in my arms and her body was my whole world.
I See Just Your Face
I would c
I see just your face, floating before me like something too beautiful for words to convey. Your hair glows like a field of sun-soaked corn, framing a face whose very pallor excites me. Stay quite still, do not alter your angelic pose. Let me circle you and witness all angles of you. Your profile; the cascade of your candy-floss hair obscuring the delicacy of your neck and shoulders; and back, once more, to your captivating smile.
What is the nature of your beauty that I cannot cast aside the hopeless image of you for but a single minute of my day? You ride with me inside my head.
I gaze backwards, inside myself, at the mythical and quite magical creature you have become to me. You grow inside me intimately, your tendrils slowly creeping through my arid body, like a vine. I feel you; you touch all parts of me, etching yourself into my body and I feel the pain of this process.
At night, I lie in the darkness and I try to force you outside of myself; to create you in all your tender beauty, but not just as an image. I wish you to have a density of form, which I can feel with my fingertips and caress with my lips. Can the very thought of you inspire this possibility?
Your head shimmers on the pillow next to my head. A strand of moonlight lends faint light to your face and I strain towards you with infinite gentleness, for I wish not to burst your fragile existence. I feel the touch of your gossamer hair against my cheek and I hear the faintest whisper of your breathing and, as my lips touch yours, for the briefest of moments you are with me. For a second, at least, I am a God; I have created a living, breathing woman. My body is turbulent with passion and my lips are alight with the desire to touch you once more.
But it is too late. Like a ghost, who vanishes in the daylight, so you flick out of existence and I bury my head and bite my pillow, hoping for the oblivion of sleep.
The Wind
Through the open window, gently caressing the butterfly-patterned curtains as it enters, comes the soft summer breeze; still dancing with the excitement of similar encounters and filled with the thoughts of a thousand lovers, each touched in turn and yet all quite senseless to the ultimate lovers’ touch.
Onward, past the dancing butterflies, to a seated woman who sings, oh how beautifully she sings, of summer love and moonlight.
The breeze is a coolness against her lips; how full, how soft they are. No human touch could match the gentle play of breath on breath, thought on thought; nature’s great computer, storing, remembering.
Ah, she stands and the fragile clothing sways against her body. The night and the moonlight know both so well.
She glides towards the window, floating before the night. Her head rests gently on the windowpane. Her eyes are closed and she listens as the wind slowly relays its message. It nestles in her raven hair, is inhaled deep inside her and she feels, she senses, each little secret it has to tell.
The Tunnel
It was late in the evening as I trekked wearily up the hill towards the railway tunnel of my youth. I had expected to tread the road with some trepidation, but in fact, the experience was more of an elevation of the spirit and I found myself humming in time to my footsteps. However, as I approached the tunnel, my humming died away and I had to consciously prevent myself from tiptoeing the final few yards. The air was chill as it is wont to be in autumn at dusk and the only sound was the soft rustling of grass by the roadside.
I hadn’t visited the tunnel in forty years and yet, as I stood there, looking at the now rusty rails disappearing into the gloom, it seemed so much less. Suddenly my childhood seemed to telescope towards me, shunting the intervening years to one side. I could hear the cries of my childhood friends from down on the track, where we had played at creeping into the tunnel as far as we dared go and then racing out, as though all the demons of hell were after us.
The children’s laughter began to fade and another image came to me and I knew that I would have to scramble down onto the track. The light was not good, but at last, I stood facing the tunnel mouth and all the infinite darkness beyond it. My eyes were stinging and there was a lump in my throat as memories, both beautiful and tormenting, threatened to overwhelm me.
Janet and I had often stood here, arm in arm, staring into the depths of the tunnel. We had been so very much in love that speech had often seemed superfluous. There had been a strong empathic link between us, right from the start, which I feel sure had contributed towards an intensity of love and understanding far beyond the experience of most people.
She had been given the gift of an innocent beauty, and she had looked as bewitching early in the morning, with her hair awry and the heaviness of sleep not long departed from her eyelids, as she had in death.
As an artist, she had been touched with genius. She could capture the knock-kneed helplessness of a newly born foal, or the effortless artistry of a bird in flight, each with equal ease and each with equal mastery.
And yet, she had always had such naiveté towards life, that she had needed constant protection from the realities of the world around her. Even her humour had had a childlike quality to it, as when she went into the tunnel by herself and then called for help, falling into my arms, breathless with laughter, as I rushed in after her.
Often, we had stood, as if in some timeless world, at the entrance to the tunnel, embracing in the moonlight. Why always the tunnel? I don’t know. It seemed to hold some elusive fascination for us, which I never tried to analyse then and still can’t explain even now after all these years.
The evening was getting darker and the wind blew with a fresh chill that sent a shiver through me. I determined to walk a short distance into the tunnel and as I stood, summoning the courage to do so, her image came to me. The inner radiance that she had always possessed, was almost tangible, contrasting vividly against the inky backdrop of the tunnel. I started to run towards her, but the image was already less distinct and when I reached the tunnel mouth there was only the darkness and from somewhere inside, the steady dripping of water.
The Umbrella
‘A ham and mushroom pizza, garlic bread and a glass of Pinot Grigio please.’ After Leo had placed his order, he briefly studied the back of the departing waitress before leaning back in his chair, placing both hands behind his head and stretching out luxuriously, whilst giving vent to a cavernous yawn. He then turned his attention to the outside world.
He had been scurrying across Leicester Square, battling against a bitter and ever gustier wind, when, to his dismay, it had started to sleet. He was not at all suitably dressed for the weather, having no waterproofs and carrying no umbrella, so he had begun to look around for a suitable shop in which to take refuge. It was at this point that he had spotted the restaurant. How cold he was and how hungry too, yes it was just perfect for his needs.
And now, here he was, relaxing in a warm and dry environment, with the aroma of freshly baked pizza all around him. Yes, Italian restaurants were all right, they definitely had a place in the world. He glanced out of the window at the poor unfortunate souls outside, who were being remorselessly ravished by the elements and he shivered in sympathy.
By degrees, he became aware of the plight of a frail looking old lady, whom he perceived to be engaged in a life and death struggle with her umbrella. The wind was gusting viciously, driving great waves of sleet from one end of the square to the other. His attention was riveted to the old lady’s plight, for she was being buffeted and spun in all directions and appeared completely helpless in the face of the relentless onslaught.
She was, he observed, the only person in sight; everybody else having presumably found refuge from a downpour which scoured the streets and was centring in, with alarming focus, on the now barely visible old lady.
It seemed impossible that she could be equal to the forces
The climax came with surprising speed, when measured against her initial, almost superhuman, efforts. Her umbrella snapped shut, completely entombing her head. Leo sat bolt upright and looked around him. Most of his fellow diners were either deep in conversation or were piling into pizza with abandon. One man was gazing abstractedly out of the window, but if he had seen the old lady, it had left him singularly unmoved.
Leo looked back and saw, with a thrill of horror, that she was now on her knees, looking for all the world, as though she were being slowly suffocated. The umbrella was still tightly clasped about her head and her hands were clawing at it feebly, but her strength was fading fast and the umbrella remained where it was, held secure by the colossal force of the wind.
The sky began to darken, although Leo would have sworn that it was not possible for the already leaden sky to darken further. The previous dark grey became a sulphurous and quite nightmarish hue and he found himself wondering, in all seriousness, if he was not witnessing the end of all things.
He could still just make out a little huddle of black through the window, but there was no movement, save for the flapping of loose material like a torn ship's sail in a storm. The brave woman's tenacious spirit seemed finally to have been quenched and she lay quite still and totally at the mercy of the voracious storm.