A Tale of Two Sisters
A Tale of Two Sisters
A/N: Niet echt een gedicht, wel poëzie naar mijn mening. Gebaseerd op Downton Abbey. Dit is niet het hele stuk, het volledige vind je hier(credit).
– Dido's Lament, Henry Purcell
July 1901
There are three little girls sitting on the white steps of the temple ruins. There is a cool wind tracing a track between the three of them, three young girls. There are three pairs of feet in polished shoes, three sets of ten fingers, and three different souls. Two of them have hair as dark as night. The other is different. The eldest patiently watches over the youngest, the tiny hands, the tiny feet, the big eyes, the braided hair. That is her duty, watching, guarding.
"He loved her very much," she says firmly, "but he had to go and make a new city." She watches as Sybil's fingers fiddle with the pebbles, trying to pile them on top of one another, but they keep tumbling over. "Just like you build cities, and like home is Papa's city."
"Why?" Sybil asks without looking up.
"Because it was his duty, bestowed upon him by the gods." Mary's fingers trace the aged lines of the book, the wrinkles in the pages. "That's what it says here."
"And Queen went with him?" Sybil asks. The brown eyes meet her own. "Like Mamma went with Papa?"
"No–" Mary begins.
"Yes," Edith cuts in, putting aside her diary, filled with childish handwriting, "yes she does, and they live happily ever after."
"No they do not!" Mary snaps. "He leaves her behind and she kills herself!"
Promptly, Sybil bursts into tears and the trees seem to dip in the wind, bowing their heads, mourning in the silver sunlight.
"Why did you have to say that?" Edith asks desperately, Sybil's cries echoing out over the lawn. "I was only trying to help!"
"Well, I didn't know she'd cry! I didn't cry!"
"I cried!"
"Yes, but you're a ninny!"
Edith swallows, face turning bright red, tiny hands clenched in fists. "Then you can tell Mamma why she's crying again!" Edith collects her things, gets to her feet and stomps off, her figure shaking violently by the time she reaches the bushes.
As soon as Edith is out of sight Mary crawls down the steps to where Sybil sits and gathers her little sister up, presses her dry cheek to her wet one, takes her small body in her long arms. "I'm sorry," she whispers, "but it's all right. It never happened."
Sybil lets out a small sound that makes her think of a nursery with sky blue wallpaper and a crib rocking of its own accord and a baby so small it's hard to believe that it will grow up to become someone. Sybil twists to look at her with a face so sorrowful that it wrenches her heart. It's ridiculous. It's just a story. She brushes the dark hair away from the little girl's face.
Sybil chokes back tears. "People don't kill herselves?"
"Themselves," she corrects. "And I don't know. But the Queen never did, because the story never happened."
"I don't like it."
"No, I know," she says, "but it never happened. It's a story to make sure it never happens, to tell Queens not to love men who have to build cities," she finishes wisely.
Sybil sits up and she moves her jaw a bit, tasting the words, her mind running wild. "But but but...Papa builded a city, right?" She finds her sister's face. "He builded a city with Mamma and with us and with Nanna and Carsey and green trees and the temple." Her eyes flick up to the ruined building. "And they had no trouble."
Mary laughs lightly, her arms winding more tightly around her sister's shoulders. She always smiles when little Sybil talks like that. "But Papa is smart and he built his city before he went to find Mamma. He built it so that they could live there together."
And Sybil smiles too and takes her sister's hands and kisses them with her child's lips.
"Do you want a different story?" Mary asks, pushing The Aeneid off her lap. Perhaps it was a bit of a long shot in the end, reading classical literature to a five-year-old. She herself is ten, after all, and understands everything much better.
"Change it first?" Sybil says against her sister's shoulder.
"Change the story?" She raises her eyebrows. "That's a good idea!"
Sybil looks up again. "You cried, too?"
Mary freezes for a moment, then nods. Sybil has always been so empathetic, ever since she could talk and smile; and now, at the age of five, it has only gotten worse. At first, she had thought that it was a matter of a five-year-old's instinct, which, in part, of course it was, but it was also just Sybil, Sybil and her tender soul. "I did," she admits. She would not have admitted it to anyone else.
Sybil raises her small hand to Mary's cheek. With a tiny finger she transfers a kiss from her own lips to those of her sister. "We'll be all right."
"Yes," Mary replies. "Yes, and so will Queen Dido," she continues determinedly. "He comes back for her and they live in Rome in a big house with blue curtains and walls like in your room and they'll have–"
"Three princesses," Sybil finishes.
Mary laughs. "Yes, three princesses. They'll have three princesses."
Suddenly, Sybil is serious, as serious as a young soul can be, and when she looks at her sister, she looks into the eyes of a young Dido. "Don't die." Her voice is still that of a child, but low, low and earnest, and her face is filled with hope. She speaks as though she already knows exactly what her words mean.
So young and yet so old. "No," says Mary and pulls Sybil to her as the sun comes out to warm their backs. "Nobody dies."
June 1920
There is one young woman sitting on the white steps of the temple ruins. Her hair is black and her clothes are black. She sits with her hands folded in her lap and looks out over the dancing grasses and the swaying leaves. She sees three little girls who, when they were young, did not fight together yet, who, with tiny feet and tiny hands, clutched onto each other for the dear hope of life.
It is June and yet the summer has not come. She feels only the frost and biting wind of a harsh season. There's a little girl sitting beside her. She sees two feet in white polished shoes with thick black soles. She sees Edith writing; she sees Sybil playing; she sees three little girls with their lives spread out before them. She sees the age-old parchment of life, clean yet brown, sewn together by their predecessors, laid out for the young to walk upon with muddy feet, for the young to press muddy fingers upon, for the young to cherish and love.
Under Sybil's small knees something catches her eye. When she reaches out, Sybil is gone but the paper remains. It's the corner of a page. And even after all these years she knows that it is a page from the last chapter of The Aeneid, the final chapter.
For a moment the world goes dark around her, the temple reeling above her head, the steps coming to take her in, the water flowing up through the grass, and the ground folds up on itself – like a puppet show, just after closing time. And she leans to one side, black glove to hand, hand to forehead, head to shoulder, shoulders to knees. They lost so much time, all of them, every single one of them, years and years of wasted time...
But she does not break. She has a better idea than to cry on the stony steps of a false illusion. They cried too often here together for her to be able to cry here alone. It may be a temple to non-existent gods; it is still sacred.
She stands and walks and runs and goes into the house where everything is dark and where all who walk and talk and breathe are hollow shells of what they used to be. She sees them, washed up on the beach, the water reaching ever closer, the moon rising ever higher, disappearing into black. The sun is gone now and the night presses itself upon her, upon them, all of them, and it is starless and desolate. She's cold, she realises. She can feel the space between her clothing and her skin. And there's no one to take it away.
She's still walking, aware of the fact that she is lifelessly alive, aware of everything but the pain inside her head, denying the fact that it hurts, denying the undeniable. There's a pin lying on the patterned carpet, she notices, a pin lying on the carpet where three little girls once played. "Be careful," she whispers. "Don't cut yourself on it."
She goes through the grand hall, where the eldest taught the youngest to walk, taught her to dance, where the middle sister learned she liked to play the piano. She goes through the library, where two sisters travelled to Rome, spun elaborate tales, fought against merciless serpents, and hid from the wrath of the gods. She goes through halls tread by tiny feet and tiny hands, echoing with wails and laughter.
And she finds peace only when she reaches the one room that is warm and sky blue. Even before she enters, she thinks: There is a sun here, and stars, and a moon, and soft cotton clouds...
"Hello, Sybil darling," she says.
The crib rocks of its own accord. She pauses. She's small now, barely tall enough to look over the side, to lean over, to look at such a peaceful child, at such a quiet child. She's small again and hopping down the stairs and finding Mr Carson to tell him that she wants to run away, that she wants to be alone.
Little forks of silver, she holds in her hands, little slivers of mobile hope, of a harmless adventure. Because that is the best kind of adventure.
She presses a finger to her lips and gives her love to the child, the tiny hands, the tiny feet, the black eyes, the black hair, all of it, every single bit of it. Of course it's Sybil who ran away to create her own fate, she thinks, who ran away as she herself had never dared to do. But the little girl's back now, back where she belongs. And Mary, who always thought she wanted to be alone, only now realises that that is the last thing she has ever wanted.
"Darling," she says, "I'm going to read to you from The Aeneid and you have to listen very, very closely. It's very important that you listen very, very closely, because I'm going to read it only once."
She sits down and opens the book and knows that by the time she gets to the final chapter there will be a corner of a page missing.
Arms, and the man I sing, who, forc'd by fate,
And haughty Juno's unrelenting hate,
Expell'd and exil'd, left the Trojan shore.
Long labors, both by sea and land, he bore,
And in the doubtful war, before he won
The Latian realm, and built the destin'd town;
His banish'd gods restor'd to rites divine,
And settled sure succession in his line,
From whence the race of Alban fathers come,
And the long glories of majestic Rome.
When she raises her eyes again she sees two men in the room, young men, young yet old. She did not even hear them enter, and yet there they are.
She remembers now how she cast her heart away long ago, because the truth was so hard to bear that she had rather not bear it at all. And she remembers how one of those young men came along and searched every house and every field and every creek of England to piece her back together. She remembers that she has long meant to ask him whether he has found all of her yet, but now she knows that he has not and that he cannot ever.
It has been five days, ten hours, thirty-three minutes, and twenty-four years since...she knows not what. She sees only a little girl with blue ribbons, a little girl in an evening gown, a little girl helping the wounded, a little girl on the arm of her loved one, a child sleeping in her arms.
"Don't hurt her," says Mamma.
"No," she says, "not ever."
She sighs and watches the baby's hands reaching for the heavens. We should have stayed young together, darling, she thinks. We should have gone away together, seen the world together, Paris, Rome, Africa, the azure seas... We should have never grown up. She looks at the child's face, its little slide of a nose. We tried too hard, my darling.
In the end, she looks back to them again: the man who's Sybil and the man who's her, sleeping, no, breathing in silence, sitting in rocking chairs by the child who is both them and her and a part of each and every single soul in this house.
She sees it now, a circle between them, the pebbles by the pond, little hands replacing each one that tumbles until a balance is found. And from everything they lose, she sees that they gain something. Troy falls, but Penelope ends her wait; Dido dies, but Rome is built. That way, nothing ever goes to waste, and nobody ever truly dies. And that is what makes the sorrow bearable.
She has stopped reading, the child croons of sweet dreams, and the man, the tireless man, the searcher, he opens his eyes. They are blue as the sky.
He nods and smiles and she meets his gaze. "It's all right," she sees him say, and she knows that although it is a lie, it is the truth as well. Because that is the only way the truth can be faced.
It will all come, Mary knows, all in good time, the tears will come, the joy will come, life will come, death will come, but for now she smiles as Sybil would have smiled. Instead of crying over a false ending, she smiles at the memories, smiles as she counts her blessings, and smiles as she turns the page.
Lees het volledige stuk hier.
Bedankt voor het lezen.
Reageer (1)
Wauw.. Heb echt tranen in m'n ogen
1 decennium geleden