Dada 71

Even though the caretaker was old, he had beautiful bright blue eyes and his face was an even brown with deep creases below his grey hair. He brought a chair over for me and then sat down himself a little behind me. The nurse stood up and headed for the exit. The way her hair bobbed under her scarf  made me feel strange and I realised it was like my mother’s , the way she wore hers, red and white striped cotton and a bulge of shining silk behind her neck..

At that moment, the caretaker said: “She has a big family”. I didn’t understand so I looked up at the nurse and saw that she had a bruise around her cheek bone just below her eyes. It sat a flat blue like an island under some depressed skin that acted like a sandbar away from the side of her face. From where she had been sitting, all you could see was the raised skin around the mark. It made me think of Iskra’s mistress and the way he beat her; the way they beat all women in this watery world, wives, mistresses, lovers or whores.

 “She has to work with you” the caretaker said.

After the nurse left the room, he said: “I`ll leave you alone now.”

 I don’t know what gesture I made but he stood at the back of my chair and didn’t move. His presence behind me made me feel uncomfortable. It was late afternoon; the room was bathed in a beautiful light. ‘We have reached the mountain,’ I thought. It had been a typical day, for this island, hot and humid with a grey pewter coloured sky shot through with sun and misty visibility that always looked to be clearing. I spotted the butterflies, flying outside all around the yard and the early click of the Cicadas as an early soundtrack to the evening. Amongst the pine trees and rhododendrons, white and mauve cat’s whiskers were flowering in the increasing gloom of landscaped patches that had been cultivated by the home’s residents outside their ’homes’.