After The Solstice: Days Of Bloom
Ascending the stairs, Clyde is in a hurry. He's got an idea for a piece he's been laboring over lately, and finally, he's met a breakthrough. They hold plastic bags full of groceries as Verona says a phrase in Italian, her mother tongue.
Pian pianino ragazzo dolce.
Clyde takes a beat. Something about her calms him and tempers his impatience that, for him, comes so naturally.
Oni, I'm sorry. I really should slow down. I just have an idea for the piece flying through my brain like a comet. I have to catch it before it burns out.
Verona smiled. Verona was always smiling around Clyde. She has a soft spot for his head of curly hair that somehow always looks in disarray yet is styled just right. His big nose holds up dark-framed glasses, and she thinks he's the cutest boy she's ever seen. Even in his impatience, she adores him, for she is patient with him and nurtures the wild passion he has for creation.
Give me the bags, Sly. I'll take it from here.
Thank you, Darlin.
Clyde reached the door and turned the key harshly, barreling through the threshold and heading straight for his studio in their spare bedroom. Verona, encumbered with spoils from the market, ambled to the kitchen, straddling bags and boxes. She set them down and took a breath.
Sly, this had better be a worthwhile idea.
It was late October in Hamburg, and from the view of their third-floor apartment, the leaves were making their change. After putting the goods away, Verona sat looking out over the courtyard. She watched the birds fly through the light colors of Autumn trees, the European beech and common yarrows, the sycamores and common hazels. She tracked the squirrels jutting back and forth, listening closely as if to catch the soft pitter-patter of their paws against the limbs and branches. After some time watching, she made her way to the bedroom and began to remove her jewelry. She wore subtle pairs of earrings in each ear, the thin gold necklace with a heart pendant that Clyde got for her shortly after they met. He said it was to symbolize that this wasn't just a lay to him but something more he took quite seriously, and she gladly accepted it as a token of their future. At first, Verona was unsure about Clyde, but to him, no doubt existed anywhere. She was all he saw in a room of crowded faces, as a world without her lacked all color completely. Verona hails from the north of Italy, she wears bright gold hair and light eyes of powered blue, she's broken many hearts in her day but never on purpose, some might say she's too smart for her own good, but she doesn't feel that way. She knows her worth and seldom fails to forget it.
Clyde and Verona would say they know each other. Clyde is a morning person, and Verona is not. Clyde knows to let Verona have her coffee and cigarette before discussing the day. Verona knows that Clyde needs time for reading by night, and despite her preference for the afternoon, she permits him his time to marinate in imagination. Clyde knows Verona prefers wine, and Verona knows Clyde takes gin. Verona hates dresses but often wears them for Clyde. Clyde hates a beanie, but Verona loves how he looks in one, so he often sports a cap. They live together in that apartment just outside of Hamburg near Saxony, and together, they stroll with their pooch, Priscilla, here and there to the market, coffee shop, movies, or thrift store.
Clyde and Verona know each other, and they know each other well. Clyde knows of Verona's storied past, her European travels, and schooling in the north. Verona knows Clyde like the back of her hand and values incredibly the joy he brings her. Clyde is an artist, a painter. He practices watercolors primarily, as his greatest talents reside in landscapes and scenery. He has had many exhibitions where critics have proclaimed him the next Demuth or Moran, and when they heap praise, he smiles obligingly but only as obligation. Verona loves this about him; she knows his talent and loves him more for it, but what touches her most is his fervent ambition and desire to only ever be himself.
Clyde regards material success with contempt and is interested solely in originality. When he paints, he paints with Verona in mind and appraises quality by standards of what he might think her to appreciate and her alone. The banality of comparison churns his stomach, and Verona sees his nausea while others only see his smile. Verona studied at the most prestigious universities in Germany; her full name carries weight wherever it is spoken. Her professors proclaim her dissertation to be groundbreaking, a leap forward in the world of philosophy. Her metaphysical analysis on the nature of language has grabbed many great men by the scraggles of their beards. To her, philosophy was merely the way she interacted with the world and her way of making sense of it. Clyde knows Verona's true love is animals and how deeply she yearns to skirt the classroom for a farm and ranch house with a creek. Clyde and Verona spend most late nights talking of his studio, facing the sunset and her pigs, goats, and chickens. How lovely it all must be to know the truth of another person. Only they know of the others while they face the world dawning masks, hiding behind thoughtless ambition, straying from paths carved by the men and women of yesteryear. How sweet their flame from candlelight, their bodies nestled into the other, speaking low, so low and soft that only the other may hear it.
He calls her Oni, and she calls him Sly. The sobriquets they only speak to each other like code names for their more intimate moments. Verona requires patience as she moves in her own way, a trait that Clyde initially had to learn lest he lose her to his more impulsive inclinations. After their first date, it was difficult for Clyde not to inform her of his intention to marry her, so instead, he told anyone who would listen, hoping word wouldn't get back to her before he was ready to tell her himself. Walking home alone after their first date, the smile on his face was so large he thought his cheeks might burst. He knew he would have to learn patience as she was not interested in going home with him after one date. After all, she knew her worth and seldom gave it away to just anybody. He waltzed home, crossing the creases in the concrete, cruising down the side streets, taking the long way home so as not to end the night prematurely. He wanted just one more second in the beginnings of new love. What a warm feeling, new love. It's like finding gold in the gutter of life. Finally, finally he felt as if his art had a purpose, becoming a degree more serious, and his life, for the first time, made more sense than it ever had before.
To Verona, Clyde is why the clouds blow through an unending sky. To Clyde, Verona is the wind that moves them. One cannot exist without the other, they would otherwise suspend stagnant like the mud puddles they step over on their meandering journeys by the river Elbe. When they find a spot away from other souls, they stretch a blanket, and Verona bends her body across Clyde's lap. He holds her head in his hands, kissing her ever so gently, and with eyes closed, they smile, settling in on the banks, basking in contentedness, swimming in the fate that brought one to the other. Their palms fit like two halves of the same whole, their fingers intertwined like they were created in the womb and so familiar they'd thought themselves attached since birth. Clyde pours Verona a glass of Traminer into a styrofoam cup; Verona uncaps the gin and doles out a nip in the second cup of styrofoam. They clink the cups, take small sips, and smile again like they were kissing, surrounded by tall grass and hidden away from the peril awaiting them. They stare for a moment, their moment elongated as their uninterrupted eye-lines meet and intersect. Clyde sees a slight smile spread across her face, and his heart about swells to the size of a watermelon. He shies in the tenderness but cannot bring himself to look away. After some time spent staring, Clyde requests that Verona sing that song only she can sing. He asks her to recite the notes of such seraphic resplendence he's sure she's his own personal angel. Verona relishes the attention, but it's not just any attention. It's his she craves; the notice he pays her is its own form of currency and Verona is a very rich woman.
I ain't got no sunshine, oh baby I got you
You were a candle in the darkness
You was green and I was blue
I would light up the world just to make you my girl
And we'll dance in the ashes as the skyscrapers burn
Clyde claps in admiration, smiling ear to ear. Verona takes a bow, smiling equally as wide, laughing, half embarrassed and half proud of the spell she casts on him. Verona joins Clyde again on their blanket, and they sit suffused. No space exists between them, seeing same, watching the sun set behind dark blue clouds hanging heavy in a blossoming sky made of pinks and oranges, bright like cosmos Glorias or ball mum poms. All at once, inside their moment, everything has its place, and everything has a home. Everything at peace, zephyrs rising and falling against their shared skin. Clyde pulls Verona in closer, and they sit together, together in love.
In an elderly May, Verona was to travel to Hanover for a conference. A conference she felt like skipping. Clyde had an exhibit about that time, and she thought it more important to support him than to rub elbows with old men. She was slotted in a speech before the keynote, a rather important assembly in philosophy. She expressed her conflicting feelings about the conference to Clyde, but he urged her to attend. After all, it was only four days. She would return on the 3rd of June, a Wednesday. She was to take the Hanover-Hamburg Railway on an ICE 1 high-speed train; at least the trip would be quicker than on a lesser engine. Mulling it over, she thought maybe Clyde was right. This conference could present new opportunities for her to break out independently and take them one step closer to their farmhouse dream. On the Saturday before her return, Clyde took Verona to the station, and they talked of this and that.
Remember to give Priscilla her medicine.
I know, I know, I won't forget.
They hug and share a kiss. Clyde was holding her suitcase and handed it over to her when they broke their embrace.
Good luck tonight, Sly. The exhibit will be great. You're going to sell everything!
I hope so. My good luck charm won't be there, but I think it'll be okay.
She embraced him again, standing on her tiptoes, whispering in his ear.
I love you, Sly.
He wrapped his arms around her lower back, raising her, pulling her toes just an inch above the platform where they stood.
I love you, Oni.
She turned to enter the train and took her seat at the window where she could see him. They held their stare momentarily, waving until the conductor blew the horn. The train lurched forward, the wheels beginning to turn on the tracks below them. Clyde stood there until the train was out of sight, heading for Hanover. On the train, she planned several ways to tell Clyde about the baby joining them in 8 months' time. She knew how overjoyed he'd be by the news and was excited to see him as a father. Verona felt lucky to share it with him and was patient enough to wait. She folded her hands, placed them in her lap, and threw her head against the window, staring down the track and watching the train pass over each tie, moving ever forward toward Hanover. She exhaled a breath and smiled a little; she smiled one of those little smiles a person cracks when they're pleased and contented in life as if to laugh in the face of that thing called despair. Everyone at one time or another knows of what I write. The moments or even prolonged periods of life where it is only dark, like a day in mid-December when the sunshine is already short, but there are still days to cross over before they flip, after the solstice. Periods where seeds withhold a sprout, a flower withholds her bloom, and a tree stands bare and frozen.
When the mystery of another is solved, the mystery within oneself is easier to understand. Verona and Clyde solved each other's mystery, and now they could spend the rest of their days solving their own, which gave Verona pause. She recalled times in her mid-December days when academia underwhelmed her, the stuffiness of classrooms was mundane and stale, the books she once cracked enthusiastically were beginning to collect dust in her library, and she felt as though she was traveling mindlessly through the motions of daily life. Was this all there was? Was this the furthest extent of her life? Verona knew she was not made for this condition where time was lost in pursuing something she was not so emphatically in love with. She was looking back on these mid-December days with compassion for herself. She wished to tell the younger her that it does and will change after the solstice.
A train attendant, passing by her seat, offered her a coffee, and with that, her thoughts were disrupted. She started in on the memory of when the seeds sprouted, the flowers let loose a bloom, and the trees shook the freeze from their limbs. She remembered when she met Clyde and how, at first, he only slightly mollified her. She recalled how terrible he was at hiding how deeply he felt for her. She was annoyed at first but came around to his hopeless romanticism. She thought of him as a clueless puppy dog taking to his owner with such thoughtless affection that there was nothing, nothing she could do to shake him. It was in the way he looked at her for the first time. She was unknowingly at one of his exhibitions in Hamburg, and through the audience, their eyes connected, their eye-lines crashing into one another. She at first looked away, but when she looked back a moment later, she noticed the clearness in his eyes; she was struck that no man, or anyone really, had ever looked at her like that. Verona was unsure if love at first sight existed, but if it did, then it was surely the shape of his eyes on hers. He looked like a person who had been stabbed in the stomach. There was acute fear in the clearness. She smiled again, her head leaning against the window. Taking a sip from her coffee, she even let out a little chuckle and stared forward. The chuckle was from the idea that mid-December days stay forever. The fear and the immobility it can spawn in a person's life is like a season, prolonged and sometimes extended but vanishes as quickly as the brilliance of a sunset fades into the night, a new day dawning just beyond the horizon.
Clyde took the steps to the street and walked towards home. He had nowhere to be, so he decided to take the long way. Clyde loved taking the long way home. He felt it gave him time to think and ponder. He thought of new pieces to paint and cherished the time to mull over the more significant decisions affecting his life. On this walk, he thought of Verona and his own mid-December days. He thought back to when painting had lost a shade of its luster when he felt like he was losing his fastball. Clyde remembered when inspiration was sparse no matter the distance he spent on walks, stopping on bridges to see the water moving softly below him. He would search for his reflection, and just when he thought he'd caught a glimpse, it disappeared against the smoothness of the ripples. Where, then, was he to go? Keep painting and what? Garner more success? What was the point if there was nothing to be cherished? There is no warmth in the words of others when one does not care for others. Clyde had things in his life, but they were only things, only awards and accolades, and what good were those? They couldn't keep him warm or soothe him when he had nightmares. Clyde carried on; that's all Clyde has ever known how; he wasn't one for giving up, but he was one for despair.
He passed by a woman pushing a baby carriage, and the sound of the infant's laughter broke him from his state. He smiled, that little smile a person makes when they snap back into reality, and all that warmth that once evaded them fills their body again, saving them from the days of mid-December. He thought to himself that the mid-December days fleet after the solstice. The snapback brought him to the night he first saw Verona. He recalled the explosion he felt when he first laid eyes on her. How he felt as though he had been stabbed in his stomach and almost collapsed. It is rare that a man adds to his list of passions. Before that night, his list comprised all of one and after, two. In the mid-December days of his life, he added Verona. The second superseding the first: Verona and painting. Clyde headed straight for her and asked for her name. Verona, seldom unnerved by a stranger, held herself in a divine elegance that appeared effortless, a demeanor that was as natural as a gait or simple posture. Clyde withheld informing her that it was his exhibition as he did not want to come across as a braggart or trying to entice her using his success as some sort of motivation to have sex with him. He wanted to fill his days with her, the only obstacle was to convince her of what he was already sure of. He need not convince her but rather express what he knew to be true, she only need believe it, too. As Clyde neared their home, he was thinking of ways to tell Oni of the farmhouse he bought for her. He became nervous that she would disapprove, but as sure as he was about her on the night they met, he quickly ignored any doubt as there was none existing anywhere.
Verona looked long way against the glare of a rainy day in Hanover. She was a short distance from the university, and her accommodations were even closer. Usually, she would have stopped into a tavern for a drink, but she skipped it this time. The morning sickness lasted until the early afternoon. She did her best to hide this from Clyde so as not to give the secret away. She walked to the street to hail a cab and found herself filled with an unusual energy. She hadn't spent any extended hours away From Clyde but felt it appropriate. When two people spend all their time together a friction is created that can poison any worthwhile relationship. There was no doubt existing in her mind about him. He was who she thought of when she thought of a future. The location largely irrelevant, so long as they were together there was no place worse than any other. Of course, she preferred the countryside and thought that upon her return she would tell Clyde of the life inside of her and they should relocate somewhere near water where they could spend their days rearing, he painting, and she writing. She decided she had no desire to teach; that was long gone. Her career would exist in producing and publication.
The conference passed quickly; Wednesday came, and with it came the conclusion. Verona was relieved. She quite looked forward to maternity, and although her steely nerves were somewhat shaken at the prospect of pregnancy, she trusted Clyde to take care of her. After all, she couldn't think of anyone she would rather raise her children. Verona boarded the train with a twist in her stomach. She rushed to the onboard WC to vomit. She wiped her face and took her seat, nauseous and uncomfortable. She ignored the sickness and settled in. The train ride was a short one which she planned to spend reading or writing. She began to think again about those mid-December days. She thought about the days after the solstice and how each subsequent period of 24 hours took her closer to her days of spring, her days of bloom were just beginning. The wheels of the train let out a groan, lurching forward. Verona rested her head against the window and thought about life as a whole, almost as an outside spectator. As if she were an alien watching all these humans running around on the earth's surface doing their best to contend with the human condition, how they would all be better off if they went a little slower.
Verona would die on that Wednesday, June 3rd, in the year 1998, in the Eschede train disaster. Verona was seated on one of the rear cars that derailed and crashed into an embankment. Life exited Verona's body almost instantly. There was a fraction of a second before it all happened. A loud crash of the car in front of hers and then, darkness, a black, a void, an end. An end to all the plans and dreams Verona had with Clyde and for her own life. Never again would she see the love of her life, her dog, or the farmhouse Clyde purchased the day before she departed. There was nothing but wreckage to sift through, nothing but the lifeless body of Clyde's one true love. Suitcases and bags were thrown from the carriage, blood painting the walls of the car from other poor, unfortunate souls. Verona's body lay motionless underneath the twisted metal, underneath the crueler circumstances of chance and bad luck. She died with Clyde in her heart, wrapped in his last embrace.
Clyde was waiting on the Hamburg platform waiting for her, but her train would never come. He stood with flowers in hand as he noticed the commotion from behind the ticket counter and operator's office. He noticed the rush that everyone seemed to be in. The more urgency those around him seemed to take on, the more curious he became to discover its impetus. He asked a woman running past him what was the cause of all this hysteria, and she informed him of the Deutsche Bahn derailment. He knew that it was her train but refused to believe it. To him, there was no possible scenario that day that wouldn't end in seeing Verona's smile, not even the slightest chance that they wouldn't be reunited. Clyde sat on the platform bench, flowers in hand, stewing in complete disbelief. From a bird's eye, he watched himself looking down at the crown of his head, his soul slowly separating from his body and drifting elsewhere. Moments later, he came to in a panic. He came to and began to run in the direction from which her train was to arrive. In a fever pitch, there was a ringing in his ear and an overwhelming feeling of helplessness. Helplessness the size of a mountain crushed his chest, and all the oxygen in his body rushed from his mouth; he began to sweat, uttering the words "no, no, no." But it was a yes, a resounding yes; he knew she was dead, and as a result, he died, too. Clyde collapsed on the ground, and all the crew members, in a frenzy, walked over him, taking care not to step on the man who lay there in a ball, half-dead and dying. On a most painful Wednesday, there is only confusion and angst on the Hamburg platform.
Clyde waited on the platform while the news broke, and the full extent of the derailment was announced publicly. The train hit an overpass, and then the pass collapsed on the train. One hundred and one people perished that day, and Verona was one of them. A number, the sum of her life and all the love she ever gave and received, was reduced to a number, a statistic to be cited in remembrance. Information trickled out as the hours passed by him. Clyde discovered her car was crushed, and there were no survivors. He cycled through the thoughts that maybe there was a mistake, and she actually did survive, but his heart told him she was dead long before the authorities discovered her body.
What happens to vacant space? What happens when a space carved from the heart is empty? Suppose you give it to another, but how can it fit them? The space is limited and must be custom fit. When a plot has been staked, a bind connects the heart to the other. That section of you belongs to them even if you deny it and abdicate. Returning to a time before the space was carved is impossible, A soul powerless to change the circumstances. In the throes of winds raging and bowing the back, it tries to stand tall, but the heart is missing parts that facilitate its beat.
Clyde takes the shortest route home so he may implode upon entry. He trashes the apartment, leaving her things together and undisturbed. He throws the kitchen wares and cutlery against the walls; he flips over couches and tears paintings from their placements. He smashes any glass on the floor and walks over it with bare feet. He enters his studio and rips apart the works in progress; he tears the finished works into shreds, falling to his knees, screaming, crying, spitting, yelling, shouting. Everything is suddenly a mystery. He knows nothing, he thinks of nothing, he only knows death and hopes it comes for him; he begs for it. He lays on the floor only to rise and destroy whatever is left of his possessions making sure to leave Verona's intact. This goes on for days, he's disconnected the phones so no one may reach him. His bell has rung, but he ignores it, shouting for them to leave. He empties the house of any alcohol and now just lays on the floor crying.
His mid-December days are now the only season he knows. The space in his chest that carved a place for her is now the source of his unending despair. Clyde is broken, malformed, pain shoots through his cavities and a soreness fills him. He is unable to move. He feels his life has no meaning, his art, his art? Verona? No more, no more expression other than that of sadness; he has cried his soul from his tear ducts. He is a body of meat; he is bones and blood, tendons and muscle, skin and toenails, teeth and cartilage. He is no more animate than a rock or desk chair. His brush is colorless and dry, his water evaporated, he is no longer a man, no longer a human. He wishes to die but cannot bring himself to hang or pull a trigger. He drinks gin like a fish and feels like one, too. He's thought about throwing himself in the Elbe. He thinks constantly about giving himself, giving his soul back to whatever created him as he no longer wants nor needs it. He is beyond broken, past repair. He is dying, dead. He screams out to God, but there is no response. He shouts, "Kill me!" he shouts, kill me! Kill me! Kill me! Until his voice box is over-exerted, and he can only produce a raspy whisper. Clyde is a whisper now, Clyde is a whimper, Clyde is near a total silence.
This goes on for months, and it is not until spring the following year that he regains even a shred of composure. He picks up a brush and sees her face. He places a canvas on the easel, and he smells her skin. She is everywhere, haunting him like a ghost; he is useless still. He cannot paint anything that does not remind him of her.
I've heard it said that life after tragedy gets better, but does it? This claim usually comes from those for whom it has, and one rarely hears from those for whom it hasn't. How shallow a projection to say to Clyde that things get better. A mean joke: "You will recover." If others have, that's great, but for him, who are they to say anything to him?
Clyde tries to recreate the memories of walking with Verona along the banks of the Elbe. Clyde traces his brushstrokes like tracing indentations over the raised ridges of his recollections. Standing in his spare room studio, a silence surrounds him, like a momentary pause in the passing of moments. He moves through a stoppage of time, a halt to the rise, and a halt to the fall. On the zenith maximal, he stands with a brush and pours himself into the canvas, Verona at the forefront. Verona is all that exists and all he can see. She is blinding, and he stares straight at her, unfazed yet all consumed. When he snaps from the trance, his soul lingers in the preceding state until she enters his space and takes him by the hand, guiding him out, anchoring him back into the crippling realization that this reality is no longer the space she occupies. She is gone and somehow lives inside him, pulling him from the only place he wishes to live. The void between today and the day before, the slightest sliver of distance is all he can handle without crumbling. He stammers and stumbles into the future, longing to live in reverse where the more that time rewinds, the more he loses until finally arriving at the moment they first met and then pressing forward again, earning back the only love he's ever needed, living inside his memories and dying everywhere else.
The tall grass on the banks of the Elbe would never know their love again, but the fact it was home to it once was enough for the grasses to keep growing. Year after year, hoping to one day be home again to a new love with new lovers, new souls holding hearts in their hands with such a fearless grip that when seen, it is enough. Once love is witnessed, it is unforgettable, irreplaceable, and most redeemable. Clyde still visits their place on the banks in the spring, in the days of bloom when the grass is still short, laying amongst it he watches the rise of the sun toward the top of the sky, holding Verona in his heart. She is gone in body, but her essence lives in him still, still occupying that place he carved out for her, and even though he sits solitary, he is not alone. He still hears the song she sang and can still feel her head in his palm, feeling the gentle kiss of her lips against his. Her heart lives in his, and they share it still. Clyde will never be the same; there is no going back, and he knows it. He thinks of how Verona would want him to slow down, she knew Clyde and she knew how ahead of himself he can get in almost all areas of his life. He did not just lose his love he lost the thing that kept his heart in rhythm. Clyde reminds himself when he feels the compulsion, he remembers her voice, soft and low, ”pian pianino, piano piano.”
Song Lyrics: Baby I Got You - Lost Dog Street Band
Cover Art: Work In Progress - Alex J. Venezia
