'The Song of the Lake' [He Hears her Song]
At dawn, he is in a half sleep haze, induced from the scent of poppies. In the backroads of his mind, he hears the varied notes of a morning orchestra of warblers, whip-O-wills, and mockingbirds.
And between these, the lapping of the lake at the shore, and the rustling of the reeds around him.
Then all is broken by the call of the loon, a passing flock making their piercing, haunting, antiphonal wails.
Then the chords of a violin. Faint, far away, but beautiful. Everything seems to interweave with it, around it.
Was that Adaggio Albioni? His ears strained.
'Adaggio in G minor'. A melancholy weeping of strings that vibrate with a haunting, poignant transcendence.
~
There are strawberries everywhere, and he eats them. Lives on them. At dusk, he goes for a swim. The waters surprisingly warm.
~
~
There was a strange bird that eve. A chirping, warbling, lilting sound, that begun to sound almost human. Then came a series of spontaneous stacatto giggling, and laughter, like a woman being tickled to no end.
Then there was humming. A woman humming a haunting, romantic rhapsody. It lasted a long time, and drifted over him like the notes of a piano nocturne.
She broke into words, into lyrics, but it was a strange, foreign tongue he could not understand. After some time, it became a chant. Like the loud, melancholic dirges of a woman's prayer song. Or the droning of Tibetan mountain chants. Or the haunting plainsong of a choir of lost convent sisters.
Then the woman began to yodel.
♫Oooohhh la-la wa-wa.
Oooh la wa weee wa-woooou♫
♫Oooohhh la-la wa-wa.
Oooh la wa weee wa-woooou♫
Then there were sighs. Purrs. Murmuring sounds, and lots of coos. It so blended with the cooing of doves, and the whisperings of the reeds on the shore, and the lapping of the waves, that he could not say where one ended and the next began.
The singing ebbed and grew; it seemd to spontaeously dawn from the lake itself.
The lake waters were humming.
As if the loch was full of Undines, and Sirens, those ancient water nymphs, singing their Siren Songs. Yes, the lake was full of these singing water nymphs!
There were also meowing sounds. Some seemed almost human. But some were of a large, wild cat, not far away. There were weeping sounds. Lots of weeping, and he himself, felt a pleasant sadness. There was gibberish. There was the whining of a young horse, a filly.
This was followed by a long, plaintive, moaning sound, that rose and fell, going on and on. The wild cat, the puma or whatever it was, was meowing loudly now. There were some sort of mystical incantations that degenerated into babbling.
There were squeals, and the wild cat began to snarl loudly. Then came loud groans. Like the groans of the dying. A woman dying. Or a woman coming, he could not tell. Cries that stuck in her throat. And the wildcat began snarling very loudly. Loud snarls that filled the air and went through your spine.
The woman began wailing now. Long, plaintive wails that seemed to come from the sea itself. It was strangely ethereal, alluring. The cat peirced this now and then with its loud snarls, and then hair raising screams. This went on for quite some time.
Then came a sudden scream. A loud, shriek, like the cry of the banshee, almost high enough to shatter glass. There was a moment of real quiet, and then another scream. Three or four times. Tomek could not be quite sure now when it was the woman, and when it was the wild cat.
Everything was very quiet and he floated a long while not hearing anything more.
Tomek thought. If here I am meant to die, then nowhere else would I rather go.
~
All was sound. Then all was silence, and he was swimming in a pool of lipstick memories.
~
[ It was too captivating for Tomek to want to get up and seek the source. All he could do was lie, eyes half-closed, in the poppies, untill long after the last strains had left, and the stars had moved across the sky. ]
That night, and the night after, each night it was the same.
~