A Rat's Nirvana

Who doesn't want to be beautiful?

 

 

Imagine an old, thick, wooden table. Dark and heavy, the kind you find in rustic kitchens. Now imagine a rustic kitchen with a thick wooden table in its’ centre, with the remains of an elaborate feast trickling its’ seeps trough the breathing wood. The sweaty cheese, the stale beer, the blood from the lamb still on the heavy silver plate with it’s big bone lying there exposed to a now chilly morning air. Like the dry skin covered bones in an elephant graveyard. There is a beam of light coming through the shutters on the back of the house. Just a little slice of moon colored pale early morning light cutting through the dank alcohol and matured meat smell saturated air. Like a benevolent dagger would do. And small flecks of dust already dance inside of it. Catching the first and early light like eager dancers do in the spotlight. That slowly and gracefully fall into the hands of gravities fate. Now imagine, on the table and between the remainders of that extensive feast, a figure dancing slowly with the dust. A small, dark and elated figure lifting its’ head to the imaginary butterflies he sees fluttering over his head. His tiny distorted claws or paws playing with the light around them. His feverish eyes only half open. And a happy smile around his large white teeth softens his grotesque features.

 

Once upon a time there was a woman who lived in an enormous house that belonged to her mother. She, her mother and her sister all lived together. Although this had not always been the case, long ago, so far back in her minds eye that she could barely remember, it had all been different. But those where the ‘days back then’ of witch no one spoke. In fact, this woman’s most distinguishing trait was that she did not speak at all.  As she had not done for almost ten years, so when she rose that morning she was not bothered to find her mother and sister gone to the market. She welcomed the silence that folded around her like a complicit blanket. She breathed more easily knowing that her mother and sister would not have to suffer her stoic measures.
Slowly she had risen from her damp sheets to feel the cold draft move over her naked feet and legs and face. In the distance she could hear the flap flapping of the plastic sheets put up to protect the rest of the house from all the dust escaping from the falling walls and piles of bricks. Their old house had needed structural improvements; its’ foundations slowly sinking away into the soggy marshland, its’ walls and timber gently being eaten away at by rot and water. She misses the smell that the old house had, that smell of secret mold hidden away in the underground crevices of the house where no one came. Now the whole house is full of fresh paint, creaking floorboards, shifting piles of rock, supporting frames, chalk dust and the fragrant young smell of sawdust. And her bare feet leave small footprints on the new wood as she makes her way to the shower.

Mid cleansing her daily ritual is suddenly disturbed by a loud ringing coming from the door. Her instinct prevents her from taking any course of action whatsoever. She remains there, under the perpetual stream of warm water that softens her skin. Her eyes still closed as to drown out the intruding noise, her face tilted toward the fall. For a moment is looks as though the Sunday morning disruptor has stopped its’ insolent clattering, and that peace has returned. But no such luck; again and again and again the doorbell rings, and rings, and rings. With a deep frown she steps from under the shower to make her way the full long distance though the empty and disrupted shell of a house. It takes forever, without the ringing stopping to catch it’s breath. Cold and in a stained bathrobe with wet hair and lips pierced to a slit she then opens the door to a thin creak. What could you possibly want, it’s Sunday, her eyes tell the tall blonde man standing in the doorway. A tall blonde man who, for all his tall and blondeness can’t help but stagger back when seeing the irritation on the woman’s face. His mouth starts to move and some form of words come out: “I am very sorry to bother you on a Sunday, miss, but I have orders from the foreman to check something immediately. It seems that we miscalculated some measurements and if we don’t get them by the evening, we’ll be set back a week. Again, very sorry, but if you’d let me in, that would be great.” Silence falls. “I’m being rude.” He then says. “I’m Jovi. You must be Ella; your sister pointed you out to me when we got started on this project.” And after a little more of the silence he adds; “You don’t have to talk to me, if you don’t want to. I don’t mind. I think people talk too much as it is. But if you could let me in, that’s all I want.” Indignant, she throws open the front door and quickly returns to the shower. When she looks over her shoulder, halfway down the long corridor, she sees him looking after her with his toolbox in one hand. Her feet cross the other footprints and make a strange pattern as she goes.

 

She is in her bedroom, the windows open, her bed made, her clothes on a little tidy pile by the chair on her bed, the curtains drifting on the draft coming from the rapidly heating air outside. A beautiful summer’s day ahead, with forever her silence filling the space around her. No music. No release. No grounds to break the spell that she lies under.

1)   A quiet knock at her door while she is buttoning her blouse, hesitant the door slowly opens by itself and Jovi stands there. She doesn’t tell him to go away, she is a woman standing in her bedroom with her buttons still undone.

2)   She wants to be that woman.

3)   Fast, fast before she can change her mind, the Sunday morning man is suddenly in front of her and is speaking softly in her ear: “I know what you need.” He says urgently. “I can tell. Will you let me?”

When it is done, her clothes are everywhere, the bed is unmade and she has heard her own voice for the first time in ten years. Bouncing off the bedroom walls with her ecstatic calls when she was calling out for God. And then as she tells him goodbye and the door falls into the soft click behind him. Leaving her room as it is, in blissful privacy.

 

She starts humming. The humming becomes a singing. And by the time she has reached the kitchen she is singing so loudly the birds in the tree right outside flutter away in a panic. The radio, a shiny polished wooden thing, she turns it on. Soulfulness. Content bluesfulness. Instantly the atmosphere changes completely. Ultimately. Irrevocably. And for a small moment, the duration of a heartbeat, she considers her previous morning. Her sadness. And then it’s gone.

All she feels now is her hunger. She takes out a glazed ham, a large smelly cheese, puts bread in the oven and prepares everything for an extensive feast for one. She happily grinds fresh coffee and adds cardamom to her cream. She takes the fruits from the garden her sister picked before Ella was awake and stuffs two strawberries in her mouth while she waits for the bread to be hot enough to spread some salted butter on it with a large kitchen knife. Is there enough food in the world to satisfy her hunger? Making her way to the kitchen table with a huge plate filled with a gigantic pile of food, she suddenly stops dead in her tracks and lets out a deafening scream.

“AAAAaaaaaaahhhh!” There, in the corner, on his hind legs with its nozzle in the air is the biggest rat she has ever seen in her life.  And in a reflex, overcome by primal instinct, she starts running after it with the knife in her hand. “Come here, you filthy rat. You b*****d thing! You disgusting, revolting, smelling, rancid, bad, nasty, horrible piece of s**t!” And in the back of her mind: “How dare this lowlife, this poor excuse of a living thing disturb my breakfast. My first feast! My first fiesta in years!” As she is about to dive under the table to grab it by its’ tale and drag it out so she can kill it, she hears a little squeamish voice call out to her; “Ella, Ella, Ella; no! Please don’t hurt me!” She shakes her head in disbelief. “Who said that?” “Ella, look. Listen. Ella! Stop chasing me! Stop it! Look at yourself, you look silly; put the knife down!” She then realizes who it must be and sits down to catch her breath. “Well. I never. This is a day to remember. I say; this is a mother f-ing day to remember. What in the world brings you here, Rat. And how come you can speak? No, never mind. I get it. I must have missed allot during those years. Do all of you speak now, is that how it is?”  The rat looks at her without blinking for about a minute, causing her to think she’s gone insane. Then he speaks again, very softly though. Barely audible if you will, he says; “Lady Ella. You should not have ever seen me the Rat. You should have had your lovely food and not seen me. Rat is a night lover, normally. But I had to. And now we must speak. We must. He has to. Because this Rat is tired of the night, very, very tired. And hungry.” He is now ogling Ella’s hot bread with his beady little eyes.

 

And what happens then, dear people, is their secret. In so much as that it is a mystery what compels a human being to have compassion. To think outside the box, suffice to say that there was laughter, happiness and sharing. Ella felt she had found a most remarkable conversation partner, in her case for the first time in 10 years. And as Rat starts to loosen up, as the big kitchen knife is used to cut the bread in thick slices to eat, he starts telling her about why he is traveling during the day. Mid gulp and swallow he says; “I am so ugly, Ella. I am such a horrible thing. Even for a Rat I am vile. But I have found a way to become beautiful, as beautiful and graceful as a butterfly! True! You have something hidden away in your attic, I saw it once, it’s green and it can help me to become very pretty.” They sit and talk for hours more. They talk about her mother and her sister, they talk about his many sisters and brothers. They talk about everything there is to talk about. When suddenly, while Rat reaches for another piece of cheese, she is overtaken by some kind of instinct and her hand is on the knife witch she plunges into his body. A rat and she had been talking, what was she thinking? Rat looks at her in shock, as his blood slowly oozes out into the kitchen floor.  And as he falls over, she realizes what she’s done. The murder she has committed. “I’m sorry” she starts  “I don’t know why I did that.” Ella starts crying over her friend that’s dying, that she’s killed. “I don’t know why.” She sobs “I’m so sorry, Rat.” And then, just like that, he’s gone. Lying in a pool of his own deep red blood.

In a daze, she cleans up the blood and she washes the knife. Then she takes his small dead body in her hands. She leaves the kitchen as it is and makes her way up the stairs, all the long way up the winding stairs to the attic. Her face swollen from tears, her heart heavy with remorse and regret. What has she done? She looks and finds the thing Rat was looking for, the thing he told her he needed to become beautiful. It had been hidden away in an old suitcase, along with all the other things of the ‘days back then’ that no one in the house ever spoke about. Along with her voice and will to speak, ten years ago. It is a small green caterpillar costume, fit for a child to wear when it wants to dress up for a party. It is very soft and dry and smells of mothballs. And Ella closes her eyes remembering the festive day when her child had worn it, looking like a bouncy caterpillar. And with that, the sadness and morning of years and years for her dead baby boy is broken. And the spell is lifted as she gently, as tenderly as she can, wraps her friend’s body in the green felt. To take it downstairs, into the garden, where she buries Rat under the prettiest rosebush there is. Where she sits and sings soft songs to him until the sun dies down.

 

As for Rat, as his blood leaves him fast and he starts looking through his almost dying eyes. He sees a strange and warm light, in it some butterflies are already dancing to greet him. And he thinks; “Yes, this is it. I am finally transformed.”