The apartment looked so different from how I remembered it when my parents first showed it to me. Then it was bare, just empty rooms with cream coloured walls. The sounds of my shoes scraping against the metal step echoed softly from the blank walls. I wondered how metal could sound so soft, but it did. I was a teenager at the time and the apartment was attached to our house. My father had been so proud when he told my mother and me. “I have bought us a house,” he said, standing at the doorway of our rented house, holding his rolled up newspaper like a baton held by a marathon runner. He swished it around in the air as he told us about our wonderful house and how it would give us an income because it had a separate apartment. I glanced at my mother who was slowly wiping her hands on a tea towel. She had such a look of love on her face that it makes me sad and happy at the same time to remember it. Tristesse I think it’s called. It makes me feel tristesse.
But the apartment looked so different now. Bands of light stencilled the shiny wooden floor in welcoming patterns. A simple white sculpture on the table blocked some of the beams of light that stretched between the window and the floor, illuminating it from behind so that it seemed to radiate a peacefulness that emanated into the room. Now the apartment was filled with an elegant simplicity that came from some other place that was strange yet so appealing.
I was holding a clutch of still warm eggs that I had just taken from beneath mother’s favourite chicken, Black Honey. They were a gift for the new tenant.
I was fascinated as she walked towards me. For a moment, the bands of light stencilled her dress instead of the floor as she moved gracefully and silently across the shininess, wearing delicate little slippers that were embroidered with ribbons.
The apartment was quiet now. As I scraped my feet against the step again there were no echoes. They were captured by the cushions strewn about the place and muffled by the delicate drapes that hung across doorways.
She was very beautiful and in the time I knew her she taught me so many things. She taught me to make a pair of slippers like hers, how to make the exotic food she cooked for her husband and the greatest secret of them all, the perfume that had been used by women in her homeland for countless generations to enchant their man of choice and hold his love for them only.
“You will captivate him, capturing his heart, mind and spirit,” she said. “But you must remember one thing.” I leaned closer to her and my ears were almost hurting to hear the next words. The little cobalt blue bottles that held the essences were lined up neatly on the bench as she told me. “It must only ever be his idea that he loves you. You must never tell him about this perfume. It is a secret for women alone. For him, for his understanding, it is only your perfume that was given to you by a friend. Tell him no more than this”.
“This perfume,” she said, cupping it in her slender hands, “holds seven oils from seven plants, flowers and trees including almond to nurture his love. Use it as the ritual words say”.
She took a handkerchief from the bureau drawer, wrapping the little bottle within it, and then, drawing a ribbon from her hair, wrapped it around the little bundle, and tied it with a bow. Valentina
Used with permission.
Surname withheld by request. I've taught many hundreds of students, perhaps even thousands, and every now and again one of them produces something exceptional. The above example was one of those. It was submitted as an assignment at a community college. The course was Creative Writing and the question I asked was: "Write a short text from 500 to 1,500 words based on an experience from childhood, either real or imagined".
The person in question was a mature-age student, a woman, of perhaps mid- to late thirties, who had produced good, but not surprising, work up to this point. I was intrigued. I often reply to students via email, but I don't usually comment specifically on their work. I tend to be generous and supportive, but not what I would really call "personal". The following is a copy of the email I sent to her.
Your last assignment submission was of a high standard. It has a sensitivity and feeling of "being there" that either suggests you have come a long way with your writing or this is something that really happened to you. Either way, this is exceptional work. My only (constructive) criticism is that the "voice" of your real or imagined friend doesn't sound like the voice of a woman who has recently arrived from another country. If you listen to the voices of people around you will find that they all have their own rhythms and ways of saying things. I look forward to reading your final assignment.
Even though I was fascinated by the subject that she was writing about, I really left it there and didn't think too much more about it. That is, until she submitted her final assignment. The final assignment topic was: "Write 500 to 1,500 words on a memory or memories, either real or imagined". Her assignment is reproduced (with permission) below.
The old man had travelled for many days through the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula, arriving finally at his destination. Shadows crept across the landscape, stretching towards vibrant patchwork greenery studded with colourful wildflowers that still remained in sunlight. The shadows darkened the surfaces of rocky outcrops that clung to the hillsides, jagged within the slope, each drawing in the warmth from the remnants of daylight, with every stone darkening in turn in a steady progression towards dusk. The tallest trees engulfed the smaller, gnarled trees in a cruel darkness, starving them of light while greedily saving the last, lingering warmth for their own use. The old man peered into that cruel darkness, knowing that, for him, it was a kindness, because it was those small, struggling trees that held the sap he had travelled so far to find. He knew that when he filled his flask with tiny amounts of sap gathered from the little trees, as little as 10 ml worth, it would sell for more than the price of gold.
She named each essence as she put a number of carefully measured drops into the perfume bottle in front of her. Holding in her hand the smallest of the blue bottles, she said: "This is the one that makes life's happinesses cuddle us and knock our door. It comes from the far south of my home place and brings benefit of life’s joys and cheers. This is a very brave plant do live on the hard hillsides far away and for years that are hundreds. Every time as I forgot my own problems seeing this honoring tree in my mind. Its scent is very weak, suffering from varieties from not greatly memorable or much practical use, save for one use, and was advising me that remember for that it is priceless. It as a gram of gold costs me that one do not spend in a jewel shop will cost less than a gram of this".
With those words, she poured the essence into my bottle, turning to me as she finished, her face filled with love.
"One day after I was not more the child, my mother came to me and said that her mother says to my mother to do this ritual perfume, when our aunty came to our home she openly told us that the ritual has the power to make men heartwarming without his prior information. As I was elder than my other sisters urge with my mother and aunty on the matter. They were sharing me the ritual. Three times each day I rise to put some perfume from the bottle as my smell and to say this saying as the scent comes to me. This ritual is most important. It is said in my language. I will write it down for you, Valentina, and I will write it in your language," she said.
As I left, the gathering dusk was filled with many scents that mingled together in the row of paperbark trees, weaving through leaves of a ghost gum, and gathering in bushes at the side of the apartment, perfuming the handkerchiefs and pillowslips that were nearby, drying on the clothesline. Valentina There was a handwritten note, attached to the assignment with a pink paper clip. I remember it so well. It said simply: "These are the ingredients. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with me. Your understanding is appreciated".
Beneath that statement was a list of each ingredient, the amount needed to make the perfume and the "ritual" words that she said "hold the key to love". |
