Destiny

DESTINY

A short story by Anjali Paul.
Copyright by Anjali Paul 2001.

My grandmother died and left me her savings. I decided to buy a house
in England, in the Peak District of Derbyshire. I knew people in the
area, and I wanted to settle down, in a cottage in the country with a
log fire, a big flagged kitchen, and roses round the door.

I went to stay with some friends in Nottingham. Mike and Penny were a
married couple
I had known for years. I gave them a certain cachet among their social
circle, which
was made up of people like them, all born, bred, and planning to die in
the area. To
them, a week in Brittany would be an exotic experience. In their local
pub, Mike and
Penny liked to shrug their shoulders and say
"We never know when she's going to turn up, or where she's going to
turn up from."
I am a singer/songwriter, taking my blues around the world and teaching
English as a foreign language to support myself. I am a human atlas;
they have seen the world through my eyes.

An advertisement in the local paper caught my eye. It was a cottage set
in the heart of the Peak District; small, but modernised; with "many
unusual period features, offering spectacular views." I went to see it,
bought it, and moved in.

It was all I wanted. A place of my own. I could shut the door on a
world which had nothing to show me, and retreat into myself, protected
by the thick stone walls, secure because no-one could breach them and
hurt me.

Sometimes I lay on the floor of the living room, doing my rebirthing
exercises. Sometimes I just lay on the floor and watched the clouds
drift across a misty grey sky. The window was a screen. Across it,
nebulous faces twisted, changed, moved on. Soft grey skies always fill
me with longing, as though I have found and lost something which I
cannot remember. It is a longing as ancient, fragile, and complex as a
coral reef. In the clouds I saw faces I knew; the men who had fired the
lump of clay that had once been my pliable heart; old acquaintances;
old Gods - Thor, and Isis, and Aphrodite. All made up of empty eyes,
gaping mouths. All etched with fleeting fear, anguish, ecstasy,
mourning, regret, incomprehension

Sometimes I sat on the sofa in the living room, listening to Mark
Antony and Cleopatra making love in the place where I occasionally
found my kitchen.

Simultaneous. Synchronicity. Beautiful words. Confusing situations. The
principal was simple. A Buddhist teacher had explained it to me in a
cafe in Vienna. Time is not linear. Cause and Effect move in mysterious
ways, because the Past, Present, and Future are all happening
simultaneously.

I appreciated it, as a theory. I just didn't expect to find it all
happening simultaneously in my own house.

It started one morning. I got out of bed, staggered to the bathroom,
and opened the door on the Mesozoic era. I was face to face with a
brontosaurus. For a moment, I thought that my spider plant had grown
overnight - I am myopic - but it is difficult to mistake a living,
breathing brontosaurus for long. I walked slowly out of the bathroom,
showing no fear, and shut the door carefully behind me. When I opened
it again, I was faced with the ruins of Carthage. I decided not to
brush my teeth that day.

I got used to it. It didn't happen all the time. Maybe it was something
to do with the rebirthing. I liked flirting with rebirthing, lying on
the floor of the living room, breathing deeply and rhythmically. I just
didn't expect it to work...so well.

I had obviously begun to conjure up all the environments I had ever
lived in. I had figured in Cleopatra's life, but I was not sure how, or
as what. I knew now, though, that I had been an amphibian of a nameless
( extinct) species in the Mesozoic era; a lonely eight-wived Mormon in
Utah; a bewildered battery hen; a rootless Nomad in the Kalahari
desert; a troubadour in thirteenth century France who sang about
unrequited love; a lady-in-waiting at a fourteenth century Italian
court who poisoned her lovers to amuse herself; a lover of considerable
reputation and an untouched heart in Mandarin China; a gipsy in
Ireland; a gestalt entity in some unimaginably alien future time. These
were the links between all my past selves: a frozen heart, and an
unceasing restlessness.

I knew all this now, but I didn't know who Bill was.

That was not his name. I didn't know his name, but he knew me with the
familiarity of a lover, so it seemed tactless to ask. That's why, in my
mind, I called him Bill.

I was sitting in the living room staring at the TV ( which was not
switched on), when a man appeared on the sofa, beside me. He sat
reading the paper as though nothing had happened. After a while, he
folded the paper neatly, and said:
"I'll never let you go."

He obviously knew me well. His expression was loving, but his features
were blurred, as though I was looking at him through a camera lens
smeared with Vaseline. I didn't recognise him. Thoughtfully, I pointed
the remote control at the TV, and pressed the "on" button. Nothing
happened.

"Why don't you try plugging it in?" he said helpfully, with an
encouraging smile. That was Bill.

I pointed the remote control at him, pressed the "off" button, and he
disappeared. Somehow, I knew he would return.

My throat was dry. Tears of anger rose to my eyes. I held them back.
This was my house, my haven, my shell. I had been invaded. I took a
deep breath. I could fight. I would get rid of this stranger.

I went into the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea.

The barge she sat in burned on the water. Cleopatra was fishing; her
handmaidens giggled and baited extra hooks with morsels of roast kid.
The golden rod in Cleopatra's hand quivered, a blaze of glory against
the setting sun, as she crowed, clapped her hands; she had hooked a
fish. Charmian reeled it in for her. They paid no attention to me, yet
I was there.

"Tell us tales of love and longing, Charmian," the Queen sighed. "These
are what we are hooked by."

Against the starlit sunset, the fish flashed pink and silver in her
hands. She kissed its chill lips, and threw it back into the sea, and
disappeared, taking the blue Nile with her.

Alone in the kitchen, I blinked. I did not want to see the world any
more, yet the world kept coming to see me. I couldn't help wishing it
would telephone first.

Bill loved me. He blew me soapy kisses from the shower in the mornings.
Sometimes, I would walk into the kitchen, or the living room, or the
dining room, and see us making love, our limbs twisted into a lovers'
knot, and I would go and sit in another room, wondering which of my
selves I was now, and which of my selves was entangled with Bill.

He would appear next to me, envelop me in an embrace like cotton wool,
embed me in himself. I was struggling, a fly drowning in honey. He made
me uncomfortable. It was nothing personal. It was just that...I had not
invited him in. It was just that he did not want to let me go...out of
his sight.

I decided to try strategy.

"What do you love about me?" I whispered one night, my tongue curling
around his as we lay between the cool clean sheets of my bed.
"Nothing," he said "I love nothing about you. I just love you."
"What if I changed?"
"I'd still love you. I love your-" Choosing my moment, I bit his
tongue
-unpredictability..." he mumbled, locking me in his arms.
"I'll imprison you in my heart," he murmured, " And I'll never let you
escape." Tears sprang into my eyes.

"Don't leave me," I said, surprising myself. In the morning, when I
woke up, he had gone. Again.

Alone in bed, deserted, I hugged my knees against my chest. I didn't
want him here anyway. I got up, resolving to make him leave me
alone.

"I have his unconditional love," Cleopatra said in the bathroom, as
Charmian unclasped her robe. She was preparing herself for Mark Antony.
Iras tested the asses milk in the marble bath. It was still too hot.
She poured in some sweet musk oil.

"I need be nothing but what I am...which would be perfect if I were
not..." Cleopatra dipped her toe into the frothy, scented milk "...the
Queen of Egypt. Charmian, bring me my serpent..." and Charmian plucked
me from my silk lined basket, and placed me near the Queen. Her pet.
Her treasured creature. Her asp.

"He calls me his serpent of old Nile," Cleopatra said. "He calls me his
destiny...but you are my destiny...or am I yours?"
I gazed into her deep eyes. Did she know how it would end? Had she
chosen me to be her death, and reared me for that purpose alone? I
loved her. I wanted to touch her. I reached for her.

"Not yet," she whispered, "Not yet. Your time will come..." and
Charmian plucked me from the marble steps leading down into the Queen's
bath, and dropped me back into my basket, where I lay curled in a knot
of desire while the Queen bathed and dressed; while she, scented and
bejewelled, sent for the triple pillar of the world; her lover, Mark
Antony.

Bill loved me. I didn't want him. It was nothing personal. I just
didn't know who he was. His face was a blur where a face should have
been.

While I was cooking, he drifted into the kitchen, chucked me under the
chin, and said
"Don't treat me like a stranger."
I decided that strategy was not as good as the direct approach. I bit
his finger.
He slowly licked the blood from it.
"What's for dinner?"
I swore at him.
He sighed, and settled down in the living room, to read the paper. I
followed him, carrying my box of kitchen matches, and set the paper on
fire.

He stamped out the burning mess on the carpet, and looked at me
quizzically. Finally, he asked
"Are you trying to tell me something?"

"Look," I said. "I don't know who you are, and I don't want you here.
Leave me alone." Something died in his eyes. I turned my back on it,
and stalked back into the kitchen...

... Into Cleopatra's Monument. She held me against her breasts,
whispered
"Now," and I finally tasted the flesh I had longed for, and watched it
die.

When it was over, I caressed the cold skin with my snake's body. I had
fulfilled my destiny, destroyed the one thing that gave my life
meaning. My heart cracked, and shattered, leaving a gap inside me
filled with a bitter longing.

I didn't see Bill again. After a while, I began to miss him. I missed
him so much that it hurt, which was bizarre, considering I had never
really seen his face. It had never crystallised; it had always remained
a blur. He never re-appeared.

I started to feel as though the house was closing in around me; as
though my skin
was too tight. Sometimes I could hardly breathe, and in the night, I
often woke with
a start, gasping for air and screaming.

I decided to sell the house, go somewhere else. I called the Estate
Agents. They said the market was down, it was a bad time to sell, and I
should hang on until house prices picked up again. I decided to rent it
out, instead. I put an advertisement in the local paper, saying that
the cottage had many unusual period features and offered exceptional
views.

I applied for a job teaching English in Paris. I got the job, booked a
flight to France from Heathrow, and bought a train ticket to
London.

Meanwhile, I went to stay with Mike and Penny in Nottingham. I told
them I'd got itchy feet again, and they smiled at each other knowingly.
They said I looked tired. I said "Do I?"

Eventually a man answered my advertisement. He was an accountant called
Jacob Samuels.

I arranged to meet him at my cottage. When I saw him, my heart froze,
then melted. For a moment, while molten liquid ran around my veins, I
couldn't move. His deep eyes locked with mine. He could have my house.
He could have my heart.

I showed him around the cottage. We agreed on a rent. We went for a
drink, and came back, and made love.

My flesh recognised his, as though we had always known each other. His
touch filled all the empty spaces inside me.

I helped him to move in. I stayed with him. A week later, he drove me
to the railway station.

He asked me to stay. I told him I would be back in a couple of months,
when my job had finished. I studied him through the window, as the
train pulled out of the station. My eyes misted, his features blurred,
but I could make out the movement of his lips as he mouthed

"I love you. I won't let you escape."

I clenched my fists. Sweat broke out on my forehead, under my arms.
Aren't you supposed to recognise your destiny when you meet it? Or does
the knowledge always come too late?

Bill.

I know who you were, now.

Copyright by Anjali Paul 2001.