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Novelo Rectangle

&nbsp;&nbsp;Seek And You Will FindbyDavid Kotok&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;She vanished. Just as the year was ending. Minutes before the countdown and the fireworks, bagpipes and circular stomping. Just as the old year fled with its heavy baggage and the new rushed in, beaming the lightness of joy and hope. We’d toast to health and prosperity. We’d pray for peace to break out. Revellers filled the Square with noise and colour, dancing and singing to a cross-genre bangers band. Locals and visitors alike were dressed in garish make-up and fancy dress in degrees of sloppy and authentic. They wobbled, laughed, smeared grease-paint across their faces and dunked wigs in beer. Families and friends embraced and clinked glasses and spilled drinks. Friendships would form and old enmities be placated, if resentments burned shallow. The freshly acquainted might nod or tip a cap in January, share a joke or feign memory loss, and apologise anyway. Maybe wake up tired-eyed and regretful, bury what had passed or curdle at nebulous feelings of guilt. Eve wasn’t one to forge a false acquaintance. She wouldn’t fall into a clinch with a handsome or exotic stranger, however intoxicating the cider, however emotive the music and the charm of a poet. She was no coquette to be seduced by flattery and deception. Not again. Nor would she wander off in a drunken fug and stagger into the sea, or be cajoled into smoking weed on the beach, or go for a nude race along the Cleave. Not without telling me, not without confronting the distant urges that nagged and enticed her.She’d gone clandestine. It was what she did.&nbsp;***&nbsp;Eve concealed herself in gaps and cracks across the Peninsula. She hid for me to find. It was an indulgence, a frivolous and harmless distraction enacted on quiet weekends and in daylight hours. She’d not secreted herself in the middle of any past festivities as I could remember, not during a party or even a lunch. In the dead of winter too, when the cold was damp and gnawed the bones. She avoided winter mostly. She didn’t want the hunt hampered by darkness and ill-tempered spirits. She didn’t want to be stalked by night demons and mischievous imps. She wanted to be found. Eve’s disappearances were not random, at least on her part. She never said if and when she might run, but she wasn’t spontaneous. She planned. When I discovered she’d scurried off, my role to find her kicked in. Her whimsy could be inconvenient, cutting across my arrangements or affecting others so I had to apologise, but there was no malice. This evening though, her vanishing act was especially irritating. I’d been looking forward to bacchanal until morning. I thought we both were. We were excited to take a more active part in the celebrations this year, to see them through. Of course, the serpent on my shoulder suggested I ignore her, let her shiver in the gloom whilst I dance with the throng. But I wouldn’t and couldn’t and never will. The angel at my back will forever comfort me with that. Have you ever needed a person so intensely that separation is a slow cut, getting deeper as the minutes tick by? You forgive everything, however hurt you feel, however fake your anger. The longer the pain seeps, worry concentrates into fear for the bond straining between you. Terrible thoughts of catastrophe dart like maddened wasps until they are safe in your sight, back in your arms, and your heart can resume its beat. I wonder if that’s why she latched onto the hiding, knowing I’d seek her, knowing I was unable to bear the parting? It was her way of testing devotion, of forcing me to prove my desperate love, over and over. She hid, I sought and peace showered upon us. We were devoted, since the world began, or so it seemed. Our respective duty was to ensure we’d never be lost to one another, to perpetually strengthen the sinews that tethered us so they’d never snap.&nbsp;***&nbsp;Before the usual firework display, above the expanse of the Bay, a scatter of coloured lights gathered. From the open mouths and what the fucks, it was as much a surprise to the watchers as to me. The lights multiplied, spurting fluorescent streams as the sky shimmered. Neon dolphins skimmed the waves, mutating into configurations of gannets, crabs, a shoal of bait fish, pulsating squids. The crowd gasped and applauded, looked quizzical. ‘Drones,’ muttered on the breeze, which brought smiles and nods of agreement. ‘Where from?’ brought shrugs and wrinkled brows. ‘Who cares?’ More nods, spread hands. I jabbed Eve’s number on my mobile, to tell her to forget the game and watch the spectacular show, but she didn’t pick up. The call went through to talk-mail. ‘Seek and you will find.’ I didn’t leave a message. The lights floated from Barrier to Point, manifesting animals like running dogs and spitting cats, loping bears, dazzling antelopes, blue pigs and pink elephants. The shapes altered at an increasing pace; goats, ladybirds, owls and locusts and sloths, images swapping in a frenzied blink until the drones mustered into a pulsating disc. The disc rotated and rose, gaining height until darting over the rooftops and behind the Fort. The sky returned, swathed by cloud, the sea silvered by a fat moon. Venus and Saturn hugged brightly in the west, Mars glowed like a celestial ember, Jupiter the navel of the planetary parade. A lone voice broke the silence with a ‘wow’ and hands clapped. Another demanded ‘more’ and the crowd cheered and clapped, talking in a vibrant, excited babel.The band finished their set with a flurry of feedback and the loudspeakers crackled ‘Stairway to Heaven’, one of Eve’s favourites. It was rather an inappropriate choice for the jigging hordes, but maybe she’d requested it, maybe it would draw her out. I weaved through swaying zombies and cavemen, witches and aliens, pirate gangs and customs officers, looking for Eve. The DJ confirmed she’d bribed him to spin the Zepplin for a mojito. “It ain’t exactly a bum-shaker, man,” he said, glancing at the static clusters. “Wonder why she left without a listen?”The Blues Brothers hadn’t seen her, nor Batman. She’d missed her own song and the spectacular light show, and now she’d, we’d, forgo the fireworks and the countdown to Auld Lang Syne and the annual embrace. She wanted to be here. She wouldn’t start the hiding ritual for nothing, not when there was so much fun to grab. Tonight felt like a wrong-doing, counter-clockwise. I needed to calm the moths of alarm in my chest, to make sure she was safe, and if I could do so quickly, we might be able to join the final fling. Recriminations were for later.&nbsp;***&nbsp;Whenever Eve secreted herself, she left a clue. A slip of paper selectively positioned to sharpen my search. Stuck to the fridge would point me to the supermarket, or the pizza van. Pinned to the drink cabinet steered me to bars or cafés. On the bath meant a beach or a river, but the toilet was more specific, like the sewage pipes near the Oil Steps or across the Tamar at Firestone. The bed was invariably a graveyard. The doorbell signalled a church. A book was the mobile library.At times the messages were too vague. A post-it floating in the kitchen sink was tough and I still squint at her explanations for stashing herself in the restoration yard. She was also lucky with Pig Tail Woods, the message stuck to a slice of bacon pinned to the front door. Equally so when glued to a patio chair by the frog pond; I eventually found her in a cornfield just off the coastal footpath, after the two old ladies said they’d seen her. She was fortunate if the hunt took several hours with such nebulous hints, when it might have been days, or the weather turned storm horrid. But she never accused me of not trying, or being stupid or lazy. Without a pointer, all I could do was pace aimless, but she must have been seen. She was dressed quite distinctive, Barbie in pink latex, but I was getting nowhere until one of the Seven Sisters told me she’d been spotted scribbling lipstick on a mirror in the ladies’ washroom. Excusing myself to a surprised Boadicea, I found the clue written in reverse over the basin. Behind me a second mirror showed the message ‘seek + find’. What the mirrors meant I had no idea, other than to look inside myself? Alice through the Looking Glass? The infinity of reflection? “She gone again?” the Mask asked, smirking behind the green carving. “Seek and I shall find,” I said, passing Eve’s cider to Maid Marion. “Ten, nine, eight….” The chant began. Popeye put his forearm around me and glugged from a can, whilst Olive Oyl combed her fingers though my peroxide quiff. I didn’t know either of them. “Are you with the Dead Elvises?” she asked. “No, I’m Ken. I’m looking for Barbie.” “Well, Elvis has Barbie’s hair, with the pink bow,” Olive said. “Seven, six, five….” One Dead Elvis was wearing the wig and swinging his hips to Suspicious Minds. “I found it hung on the dear old Vortex cave,” he said to a chorus of ‘uh-hah-huh’. “Finders keepers.” “Four, three, two…” My fists clenched at the Elvis barb and I necked my beer. “ONE!” Hats flew as the first fireworks exploded.&nbsp;***&nbsp;Vortex was the last working fisherman on the Peninsula. He lived in a cottage slimed by algae and festooned with netting; a filthy slither between freshly painted holiday homes. It was called ‘Sextant’, a means to navigate using the stars, but that was all I knew. I googled the reveal; the ‘Principle of Double Reflection’. A sextant uses two mirrors. I felt relief, or was it pride at resolving the message? I rapped on the door but the house quiet, locked. Peeking through the letterbox a painting of a lugger with torn sails, battling a whirlpool under an angry sky, was propped up against the stairs but facing the slat. An odd place to leave a picture. Rockets exploded and sparkled the road. My head itched. The mirrors had led me to a sextant, but how to connect that to a struggling boat under sail and a celestial stairway? Another rocket burst green and gold, flaring on the hill and tumbling sparks into the remains of the Ship Inn. The embers bounced through the broken façade of the old pub, which had burnt down decades ago and not been restored. The Ship was an empty space, a shell between groomed terraced houses, but perfect for a star-gazing navigator and a stow-away, and there were steps at the back that climbed vertically to the Fort, a ladder to the gods. Was Eve waiting in expectation amongst the battlements? The door to the Ship creaked in the breeze as the pipes screeched Auld Lang Syne and distant voices hooted and yelped. The floorboards were solid, if creaky, with a temporary roof of slats to stop weather falling from the gaping upper floors. Shapes of forgotten work benches and stacks of plaster skulked in the shadows. A glass door at the back pictured a tightly walled garden. I edged towards it, palms out to soften bumps against ghosts. Ancient cannons guarding the Bay could be seen from the garden, towering over the cliff-top, but the cannons had faded into a grey blush. The steps were an ancient escape route for smugglers, and so vertiginous a rope was pinned into the slate to assist the flight, but it had a metallic sheen, more steel than twine. Looking up, the stairs and stone blurred with the cannon into a cloudless night, shorn of stars, planets and moon. I called Eve, but my shout sucked into the void. The hush clung and I felt the tickle of ants on my back and sweat pop, despite the chill. Where were the fireworks, the wail of bagpipes, the murmur of the crowd? Where was the sky? I touched the rope. It was hard and smooth, not rough like fibre. Letters were drawn on the adjacent stone: HIDE. Capitals as emphasis. Eve’s pink lipstick smeared on my finger. Why would she lead me here and tell me to retreat? Was there sense to this concealment? Her warning ignited intrigue as much as unease, and I wasn’t for turning back. I started the climb, one foot after the other, hauling on the rope. I was soon higher than where I expected the Fort to be. The stairs faded with the mist, but were still solid to my feet. Another few steps and the wall dissolved, and I was perched in a thick, wet mizzle. I clung tight and reached around, but the rock flaked into crumbs. A further step and the stairs collapsed, my feet dangling. I was suspended in a vacuum, staring at a void, up, down, around. The cable softened and evaporated, and I flayed to catch hold of something, screaming as if in free-fall, an instinctive fear, but there was no rush of air, no spin, no whistling in my ears. My stomach billowed and my chest heaved and I sprayed vomit into the dark, which collected as a balloon and toppled out of sight. I closed my eyes and opened them, to shake off the illusion, but there was nothing to see, to hear or smell, only the acidic taste of bile as a clot in my throat. I retched again and flipped backwards, floating in a circle. Eve joined me from nowhere, spiralling around me. She was naked. My clothes had gone too. My skin prickled, hairs shivering with the confusion. She swam to me and held my hands, licked the lump in my neck and the mist collapsed. Stars spun, or we rotated amongst them, and I saw creatures suspended miserably in opaque bubbles; a lion tore chunks from his mate, zebra twins cowered and brayed, a pair of fireflies flashed alarm, porcupines impaled themselves, entwined pythons throttled each other. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I shouldn’t have come. I shouldn’t have set the clues, but I didn’t know where it would lead, not until the ladder.” “The stairway to heaven?” “That’s what I thought. It’s not though, is it?” “How could you Eve, surely it must have crossed your mind not to engage, not after all this time?” “I’m sorry, Adam, but the allure of the song, the lights, the promise of revelation. It was all too tempting.”

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Seek And You Will Find

davidkotok

David Kotok

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Seek And You Will Find

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