Stone Steps - Gary Bolick

‘Here,’ he thought as he ran his hand across the brown paper wrapping, the twine holding it tight, tied in a delicate bow. There on the stone steps leading up, and into the library at La Sorbonne. ‘Open it here,’ she penned in her thin, fine script running across the wrapping like a sandpiper scampering across the sand, leaving fine blue tracks in its wake.
 
‘Of course, I see a sandpiper,’ he mused, ‘she adores birds.’
 
Untying the package, a small chapbook of poetry was revealed. Still, he wondered,
 
‘Why here? Why not at her or my apartment, why-’
 
A note‒on cue‒dropped out of the thin book of poems, answering his question. Reading it, her reed-inflected voice filled his ears, its delicate timbre, as always, shading the air with the whisper of cicada wings. She laughed the first time he made that connection, but preferred to liken her voice to the oboe piping out the first few measures of Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, “Not‒cicadas, sweet. Now, come closer, there, now into me.”
 
Running his hand over the centuries old, worn steps, her voice continues to pipe out inside of his head,
 
“Even permeance . . . moves. All things must. Even these steps, the ones I sent you to perch on, to read this, yes even these steps‒move, but so slowly, we will never notice. Just a thought, sweet, wishing that the two of us could be set in that stone.
 
“It was here, in late Autumn, on these steps, that I would have my lunch. In late October, even in the light of a full sun, there was no glare. Resting comfortably, still in my sweater, the “goldilocks” warmth was sumptuous, invigorating.
 
“So, with my pigeon-sized lunch spread out on a handkerchief, a cool breeze wafting in off the Seine, I was free to read what I wanted to read before returning to the drudgery of class. It was here on these steps that for an hour or sometimes less, I flew unencumbered. Anything was possible‒here when I was still a young woman.
 
“Shortly after, I‒like most women of my time, had my wings clipped‒married off with child or two or three and? Well, I never imagined I would think of these steps again. Nor did I ever imagine or believe a moment would arrive that would remake and refashion myself into who I dreamt of being‒here on these steps.
 
“Not until I stumbled into you, did I see myself again‒here: a young woman‒purposeful, but still dreaming. So, yes, it must be here that I give you this.  A small, but precious parting gift, sweet.”
 
Yes, he reread it three times, the note said: ‘parting gift.’ His heart slowed, then sped up as his adrenal glands emptied; his stomach imploding. A wave of nausea swirled through him. He looked up, stared into the cobalt blue of the early afternoon sky, took a long, deep breath, and whispered,
 
“Shit!”
 
‘Was it just two months ago,’ he thought, ‘her little Renault dead in the street‒flooded out. Her cellphone, back at the apartment. My French? Just passable enough to let her know that it was an easy fix. Climbing up and out of her car, we were suddenly face to face‒staring. Neither of us moved. I started to speak. She shook her head, raised her index finger, moving it like a windshield wiper, signaling me with her eyes‒no. No words. Later, ten minutes after we made love for the second time, she was right,
 
“You, sorry, I mean‒your appearance, completely at odds with your eyes. They suggest, whisper‒autumn. Random, flecks of brown floating on a pond drenched in sunlight‒brilliant emerald-green. Such old eyes in a young man.
 
“They remind me of a Mallarmé poem. Yes, something in them will be different each of the next five days. Mallarmé’s desire was to create a poem that would be different each time it was read. You? Your eyes are quiet, weary, but the rest of you? A summer day pushing away the soft, green shoots of spring, desperate to drink in the sun.
 
“So, yes, the two of us? At odds‒new and old flesh, locking eyes as we pass. You on the ascent, me? Who can argue with the unmerciful sherpa as he pauses, shaking his head, his eyes signaling: no.”
 
Stopping, she became strangely demure, almost adolescent, unable to look him in the eye, turning to the other side of the bed, searching the worn, wooden slats of the floor for relief. Nothing. Turning back, she stared up at the ceiling, her eyes watered, close to tearing.
 
The old wind-up, travel alarm he bought at the Goodwill Store just before leaving for Paris sounded like a metronome as it clicked out the seconds. One minute, now two‒passed.
 
Turning back to him, she said,
 
“Sorry. I, I was just remembering when I discovered that I have your eyes. I was twenty-one, applying my eyeliner when suddenly back from the mirror I saw the second, then third swirling constellation of points arrange and form‒me. You know it, too. I saw it in you the first moment our eyes locked.
 
“That haunting sense of you watching yourself as you go about your business, only to pause and well, yes, another incarnation of yourself pops into form. A sort of symphony of light and sound, music and movement roiling around in the center of your head. Intoxicating, tiring, but most of all‒lonely, the isolation of it all can be like a prison. Always asking yourself, ‘Is there, will there ever be someone who is made of the same cloth, who shares this with me?’”
 
He kissed her‒deeply and without urgency, lingering. He felt her relax and soften as she pulled him closer.
 
Gently breaking away from each other, they remained inches away, their eyes locking, allowing the other to descend as easily and deeply as the other wished. She whispered,
 
“I can say this to you. Others, even my husband, were never open to it. Always dismissive of my voice. So, I took refuge in poetry. All of my favorite poets speak of light.
 
“And with this fascination, I was invariably drawn as metal shavings to a magnet, to a tiny woman, the grand dame of La Sorbonne, Madame Breé. She was lecturing on Osmond and Apollinaire, her two favorite poets. Both were forced to fight in the trenches. Neither survived, save for their poetry.
 
“The first shock of light,” she said, is birth. Fixes an idea, a personal imprint. How we react to that startling revelation is a permanent path, a directional choice. Embrace it or recoil, she said. These two poets embraced it, yet when dropped in the hellish shock of howitzer flashes, feeding the nightly fires built to force the gas up and over their heads, even strong, young men‒buckle; find themselves with no point of reference‒newborns encountering a light so “shocking,” life becomes disconnected from itself. Where can the heart and mind find a safe haven when the universe is transformed into an indifferent, spiritless void? Still, it drew their best poetry‒out.
 
“When I climbed out of my car, and we stood‒staring into each other, it was the first time that I have ever looked through another person and found myself‒waiting for me. In you, for the first time, I saw myself connected through another soul. You have such a soft, bewitching inner glow.”
 
Pausing, she reached out and stroked his face, then continued,
 
“The two of us? Climbers crossing paths? Maybe. Staring into your eyes, now, it feels more like you are a flower opening, as I am slowly‒closing. For a brief instant, we can share, inhabit the same time and space. The new bud extending out to catch and hold the dying petals of the old. Give us another kiss, love,” she continued whispering in the center of his head as read her note.
 
“Apollinaire always received so much more attention. Perhaps, rightfully so. Still, he, Claude Osmond, fought and died as well, leaving these poems.
 
“My grandfather Albert knew him. They shared cigarettes and coffee in between the assaults. Funny, he‒grandfather never smoked before or after the war. But ankle deep in mud, the stench overwhelming, he told me that the smoke helped hide it, if but for a few moments.
 
“When Osmond discovered grandfather was a printer, he gave him an empty corked bottle. In it was a tightly rolled spool of poems. For writing paper, Osmond had used labels from tin cans, stationery, the back of the morning orders, any and all blank spaces available where Claude could scribble out his free verse. ‘Make sure my wife Elise gets the letter in the center and, well, if you please, print a small book for her. Here, this is all the money I have. It should cover it,’ he told grandfather.
 
“Albert would not have it. Told him to give them to her‒himself. He smiled and shrugged, then said that would be impossible. Today was the day. Saw it all in a dream, he said.
 
“Claude was right. Albert, when he returned home to Paris, smashed the bottle and delivered the letter to Elise Osmond, but not before reading his poems. When he handed them all to her, he told her that he wanted to publish them. A modest run of two hundred copies, that she was under no obligation, and that she would receive all the profits.
 
“An editor at Gallimard, stumbled upon a copy. Grandfather had entrusted them with a vendor along the Seine just across from Notre Dame. Gallimard printed a limited run of five hundred copies. Sixty years later, one of father’s original chapbooks is considered priceless, well, at least here, in France. Albert left me three, now I will have two, forever grateful I could give this one to you. We were and will always be a little like my grandfather and Claude. Death separated them, and now the odd accident of time makes it impossible for us to remain together.”
 
Flipping through the slim chapbook, he landed on a short poem, started to read it, then paused. Pulling out his cellphone, he started to call her, then stopped. He moved his hand across the worn, smooth step, looked over and smiled as he imagined her sitting there, nose in book, mindlessly reaching over to pick up a grape, a bit of cheese or a morsel of baguette off her handkerchief.
 
Returning to page seventeen, he whispered, “Shit!”
 
‘One day . . . maybe, I’ll want this,’ he thought as he picked up the brown wrapping paper, then with the tip of his fingers brushed over her delicate bird-like script. Staring at it for a long moment, he smiled, then folded it up and slid it into the side pocket of his backpack.
 
‘Saved and‒gone,’ he thought as he zipped it away.
 
Then as he picked up the chapbook, he suddenly felt embarrassed as he measured the source of the poetry against his own dilemma.
 
‘I’ll survive. But-’
 
He looked up into the afternoon light, thinking of how momentary and pointless man becomes under the sun.
 
‘No difference. Just a wink of the eye when it watching Albert and Claude as they sipped stale coffee, smoked in three feet of mud, as they watched and listened to all hell, literally raining down on them. Sheets of gas, mortar and howitzer shells all under the same fucking light‒here, now.’
 
His adrenal glands flushed themselves dry a second time; he was empty. In a matter of weeks, she had become, ‘Foundational,’ he thought, ‘no going back. I’ll always have her eyes inside my own.’
 
Looking back, straight into the sun, he shook his head, whispering,
 
“OK, with you‒here.”
 
Thumbing back through Osmond’s chapbook, he randomly picked a poem, then read it on the same steps where she once escaped; found the perfect time and light through which to imagine herself‒free.

The Tease and Kiss of Acid Light: Verdun
Out of the womb, each new day, this trench births, spills over with dead spirits laughing/shouting in voiceless echoes/a choir to call themselves up and out of hell to scurry back/before we were
Sawed down and slashed/ stored/stashed and stacked like cord wood piles: brothers, fathers, old and young, large and little all faceless, frightened little boys‒us.
Singing silently to ourselves, like raving loons we search for lakes of mirroring water to soothe and solution out a response to the hell-born kisses of the flashing, flaring ever-expanding
Annihilation of all light and with it‒the whisper of a new dream.
Before our eyes, rolling over and around us is the new acid of my maker’s distain, a light salted and seething with the tears of a dream lost. Looking out and into this long-lost Eden, I only see the resolute fear and hatred flowering into a mirroring new reflection.
A looking glass whose light blinds as it reassures us that birth only leads to loss, so we crush and fling endless, nameless, disposables souls onto pyres of our own self-loathing, pausing only to weep silently, alone and lost.
 
Thumbing through the next few pages, he landed on a short prose poem that she had marked with a short note:  Sweet, my favorite. Reminds me of us.
                                                                                          
 
 
                                                                      The Tease and Kiss of Acid Light: Verdun
Out of the womb, each new day, this trench births, spills over with dead spirits laughing/shouting in voiceless echoes/a choir to call themselves up and out of hell to scurry back/before we were

Sawed down and slashed/ stored/stashed and stacked like cord wood piles: brothers, fathers, old and young, large and little all faceless, frightened little boys‒us.

Singing silently to ourselves, like raving loons we search for lakes of mirroring water to soothe and solution out a response to the hell-born kisses of the flashing, flaring ever-expanding

Annihilation of all light and with it‒the whisper of a new dream.

Before our eyes, rolling over and around us is the new acid of my maker’s distain, a light salted and seething with the tears of a dream lost. Looking out and into this long-lost Eden, I only see the resolute fear and hatred flowering into a mirroring new reflection.

A looking glass whose light blinds as it reassures us that birth only leads to loss, so we crush and fling endless, nameless, disposables souls onto pyres of our own self-loathing, pausing only to weep silently, alone and lost.
 
                   Thumbing through the next few pages, he landed on a short prose poem that she had marked with a short note:  Sweet, my favorite. Reminds me of us.
                                                               
                                                                                             The Threading Light 
                                                                                                       (Verdun)
                                                                                                                         to Elise
            In the Bois de Vincennes by the basin where children set their tiny sailboats off to circle the globe of ever-expanding inner light, swirling within and without them, I watched you, not unlike a lithe, angular blue heron, first checking that no predator was afoot. Sensing that you were safe, you dipped your handkerchief into the water, rose and then gently began your primping, stroking your neck and face with the wetted cloth, I saw both you and the wonderous heron‒simultaneously.

              I was as helpless as Zeus watching Leda, but feared even to grow feathers or approach you. Still, I could not leave or move my eyes from your form. So, rather than approach, I marshalled the available light. Clear, translucent beams showering down and through us both, then began to sew a tapestry of my hopes and dreams of the day I might, in fact‒hold you.

As night becomes intermittently shocked into day through the blasts of Howitzer/radiographed light, it is not so much the fear in our faces that is exposed, rather the skeletal form of nothingness that is now haunting us, as we await the next searing burst of indifference.

            I never feared death until I watched my blue heron in the Bois. Now as the indifferent eye of night turned hellishly white threads through me, I must reimagine the very idea of‒hope.

So, I close my eyes so that I might look into yours as we mesh, thread and loom into one another, to form a new, unknowable light, save for radiance with share as‒one. 
 
            He closed the book. Running his hand across the stone step, he smiled, then looked up again into the light of the late afternoon sun. After placing the chapbook into his backpack, he pulled out a notepad, jotting down a note to himself: If one could attain the speed of light, then time stops. Though still moving, existence takes on the permanence of stone. Now multiply by 2.

            Putting the pad back into his backpack, he pulled out his cellphone and began looking for the first flight back to the United States. 



​
Gary Bolick is a native of NC. He currently resides in Clemmons, NC with his wife Jill. Bolick lived and studied in Paris and Dijon, France prior to graduating from Wake Forest. Go to garybolick.com for information on his latest published works: Ouroboros, Store in a Cool, Dry Place and A Walking Shadow.