TCOTNK 4 Nobody Can Keep Up
TCOTNK 4 Nobody Can Keep Up
“You’re the artist!”, Charlotte uttered when she recognised the name.
Nobody Can Keep Up
There was a midsize tent and some rusty truck with the curtains drawn on a freshly sown patch of dark soil. Besides that, the place was deserted. Charlotte wondered what time it was. The sun was throwing shadows from behind a row of oak trees. No leaves yet on the frozen pattern of tentacles that decorated the empty field. Some sheep with a full body buzz cut were watching the arriving girl with an air of indifference. Coughing, chewing and farting. Charlotte lowered her baggage. Waved at the raunchy bunch and said, ‘Meeeeehh’.
Why weren’t they building castles? Shouldn’t they have started constructing medieval chatrooms and crocodile ditches? Where were the hundreds of horse trailers? The shipping containers brimming with knights’ armour? The shit built shit bricks? She shivered. Was it colder here? It dawned on her she hadn’t brought a coat. Back home the weather had been mild. What a total dork she was, bringing no blankets or pillows. She slowly looked down on her bagage and sighed.
She pulled out her notebook and took a seat on the high racked hood of the rusty truck, her back against the windshield, muttering while doodling.
No, because we never planned to go camping anyway did we? We just had to leave and grab whatever we couldn’t live without. Toothbrushes were easily left out but not the stuff for drawing. Not the unreadable journals. Or the half finished goddess carving. And definitely, most definitely not the red dress, not yet sewn, with the patterns still pinned to it. It had to come. And the magazine with the instructions. And an absolutely positive rock-hard no no on not bringing the moon lamp. With the extension cord because that was sensible. Socks and underpants were no-brainers. Can’t live without them. Sapi’s book came with. The empty water bottle that belonged to Chris. Tampons. The still uncharged useless dead phone. The two by now empty light pink lunch boxes Karen had given her. Mascara, the yogurt bucket filled with baking soda, indispensable, paper towels and the cactus. And still this universe always focused on what you didn’t bring. It didn’t matter how carefully you packed, it was always about what wasn’t in the bag. Also because no destination ever was what you imagined. The mind's eye is as blind as a bat with bad ears.
She stopped scribbling. Climbed up to the top of the cabin onto the squeaking roof and did a full lighthouse turn. Luckily she had a pen and paper. After stretching her back and arms she lay down on the warm metal. This place was amazing. An unworldly choir of a million crickets saying their goodbyes to the sun. The blue was deep without end. She was exactly where she wanted to be. The moment she sought out the granule in her chest it was present. Glowing like a little bulb.
Fire, she thought, I must start a fire.
In the middle of the small round circus tent was a fireplace. Between the four center poles stood a large and very clean steel bowl beneath a chimney made of cloth. The rest of the tent was empty. She bit her lip. Now what? The camper-thing-vehicle was locked. No doorhandle or keyhole. She smiled. If it’s impossible, she thought, just do what is doable.
The thicket across the field was littered with dead wood. Some soft and rotten, some too big but mostly gleanable. She roamed until the fading light forced her to stop. She stumbled back across the plowed meadow holding on to a ridiculous stack that blocked her view.
Then she almost dropped the pile. The fire was already burning. Cracking loudly and lighting up the striped tent from the inside. Animated voices from several moving shadows.
“Hey, firegirl! What took you so long?”
Nobody seemed surprised to see her. The one talking was a type of unwashed kobold. He drew near to hug her so she had to drop her load instantly. Long and intense. Without a word. Strong smelling. But ending with a deep gaze into her eyes and a nod to end it. Better than any welcoming speech ever could have been. The other two attendees followed. A woman talking to her phone - a tiny tray on the top of her fingers - in a dialect Charlotte couldn’t place, gave a routine one armed hug-like something. The third was an older guy with a long beard and a balding head. Not looking straight at her. Introducing himself as Raphael Strato, he gave a sloppy awkward embrace and started moving the fuel she brought closer to the fire.
“You’re the artist!”, Charlotte uttered when she recognised the name.
“You painted that amazing horse, and the shining armor, and the colors on that light-shattering shield with the arrow piercing it! That was magical! Totally sick.”
The man with his philosophical facial hair seemed to shrink because of the amount of praise stacked upon him; no longer sure if he actually did paint the thing. He mumbled some excuse. Charlotte smiled. A teddy bear hiding in a Plato costume. The skinny kobold sorcerer slapped Raphael on the shoulder.
“The past months he’s made four of those pieces. Aren’t they amazing? Later they will be brought back here to line the gate. Hey, I’m Joe by the way, and all this is my diversion. Oucatur is my highly personal handcrafted nightmare.”
A broad gesture included all of the invisible.
“When things go south, I’m to blame. Just so you know. Saves time on the backward quests of the future.”
He laughed, relaxed. Joe by the way and his amazing hideaway, Charlotte couldn’t help thinking while he talked on.
“The wood is welcome. We had just about enough to light it but not for the whole meeting. Are you offering? You’re early. According to the officialities volunteers don’t pop up before Saturday, but you are allowed to set up camp at the river and eat what remains after we’re done.”
Wink.
“I make up the rules here and I state there will be no rules that I haven’t made up on the spot until I change my mind. That keeps it utilitair. Will it not Raphi?”
He sought acclaim with the wider audience, but Raphael was deeply focused on snapping some of the more unsnappable branches and the phone-woman had gone outside. Charlotte unpeeled the sticky word utilitair from her frontal lobe and tilted her head.
“I don’t have a tent,” she said.
“Biute,” said Joe, “that’s sorted then.”
The warm fire, the sheep skins and blankets the woman brought inside, the discussion on the price of plastic coins and the silence of the painter soon melted together with the fatigue of the long day. Charlotte slept next to the fire.
When she woke, she was alone again. Warmly covered. She stayed still for a while. The fire was still glowing under the gray ashes. Going by the birds it was very early. Her nose was cold and the smoke stung. She sat upright. Next to her, several boxes with groceries, a crate with old crockery, an electric coffee-making tower for at least two hundred mugs and a guitar with just two strings with an extra unintended hole. She felt marvelously intense. Like a worn out runway.
Keep the fire going, she thought. Blowing new life into the ashes at the expense of her own. She coughed until her belly ached and her eyes watered but managed to get flames. And smoke.
Did she breathe smoke all night? She walked out, a greasy black fleece as a wrap. A clammy morning. Foggy and cold. The door of the campervan was held open with a bit of string. The beads of the fly curtain tinkled as she put her head through. Nobody inside. Pots of paint and a decorated ceiling made clear who the absent owner was.
She found him at the river. Naked and pale as a frozen chicken. Presumably just as cold. He had been swimming. Or bathing. Now he did some exercise. You couldn’t call it yoga. It was touching. He felt unobserved but Charlotte couldn’t resist spying on him. She squatted between some weathered trunks to peek. It was a ritual of sorts. After her initial surprise at the bony body beneath the mighty beard, and the itch to giggle, she observed quietly. The sun was rising. The burning ball appeared to be pulled out of the opposing river bank by the slow arm movements of the artist. The polished glow of reflecting water surrounded his profile. He was singing. A low voice. Braiding a few tones. Turning slowly. More of a movement than a melody. The inner cello following the big breath of the day’s dilation. Magenta rays caressing his chest and abdomen. A slight erection. It had been a shriveled earthworm. Now it rose back to life.
She sneezed. Suddenly. And Raphael was startled, made some uncoordinated moves to try and remember where he put his clothes. The first thing he did was put on his glasses. Charlotte burst into laughter. While she didn’t want to at all. She fell over because her legs had fallen asleep and bumped her head against the dead tree she’d used as a hideout. Because of that she cried out and ouch-ouch and sorry-sorry blended together while the laughing just wouldn’t stop. Raphael came running. In his underpants.
“You’re bleeding”
He pointed at her face. Charlotte touched the spot. Her cheekbone bled. She stared at her red fingertips while she still shuddered from laughing. It became hiccups.
“I wasn’t...”, hiccup, “laughing at you. It was...”, hiccup, “simply beautiful.”
She awkwardly stood up.
“Wait,” she said, “I’ll make it up to you.”
Her hands gesturing don’t move. She walked away a few steps and turned.
“Stay....”, she said slowly, “sit.”
Raphael reluctantly sat down. Unsure what to expect.
“Good,” said Charlotte, “good.”
She walked back and draped the black fleece round the painter's shoulders. Then she strolled to the water and smiled her widest smile looking over her shoulder. In a single move she took off her shirt, then her bra, and while walking she wriggled out of her jeans, strategically removing Karen's gifted, not so clean, undies simultaneously. She raised her arms, howled like a wolf and let the warm light pierce her skin. Sensing the promise of spring, and the new day, and all beginnings. She couldn’t do a quiet ritual, standing still. Only circles for her. Spinning and flying with her arms wide until the steep riverbed made her trip. The water burst open with light and liquid shards. Painfully cold. Liquid nitrogen pressing her lungs to produce a wild scream. It was impossible to stay in. She frantically crawled back out, shivering and dripping, and got a one-man ovation. Four claps. After two the doubt set in. Four was more a closing of hands than a true hit.
“The towel is on the boulder behind you,” he shouted, looking furtive and hesitant. Flight or sight. Half turned away, a hand on his head and another combing his beard he nodded affirmatively.
“I will make breakfast,” he announced, “can you handle chai-latte before seven?”
Back at Raphael’s vehicle, Charlotte’s whole body was still glowing and her head bright as a headlight. The van was a treasure chest. A former army truck crammed with art and other materials. Drums, sketches, blueprints, books and unfinished mysterious projects. She couldn’t do anything other than look around. A mobile museum of ten cubic meters. Including scramble bed, tunnel shower and wok burner. The extractor hood was made from an old wheelbarrow. The front passenger seat a dry toilet with a view.
“It’s a stubborn rustbin,” the painter declared.
“What will you make for the festival?”
“Not sure yet.”
“Joe said the paintings will form the main gate. That’s already substantial.”
“Mmm, maybe.”
“What’s in the cupboard with the big lock?”
“Clothing.”
“Ow? Behind a lock?”
“No ordinary clothes.”
“Your secret dresses?”
“Yeah, those too.”
“Oh, meant that as a joke.”
“I’m serious.”
“Mmm-hm.”
“A gate,” said Raphael.
“Yes, like Joe said.”
“No, I wanna build a proper one for the knights’ area.”
“So you dó have a plan?”
“Mmm, don’t like talking about it. Haven’t told anyone yet.”
They were silent for a while. Sipping their second chai. Now and then he studied Charlotte. She let him.
“Scarlotte,” he said suddenly, “that fits you better.”
She looked at him questioningly. He pointed at the little wound on her face. She shrugged her shoulders.
“I always make up names,” he said and held out his hand.
'Hey, I’m Mike,” said Raphael.
“Mike? From Michael?”, she asked ignoring his gesture. He nodded. Charlotte did a bit of pondering. “I can do the same. If you start calling me Scarlotte, then thou art Michelangelo to me from now on. Let’s hide in the dark ages.”
Now they shook hands and she kept holding his.
“Do you need help, Michelangelo, with that dragon gate?”
His eyes lit up.
“How did you know it was....?”
She let go and pointed with two fingers at the walls.
“Well, how about those seventeen monstrously awesome sketches you have hanging in this mobile den of yours? Have you got a charger?”
She put her phone on the little table. Looked at it curiously. As if it had grown legs. Her face was suddenly grave.
“I guess you also don’t have a charger, huh?”
Michelangelo shook his head slowly. Pulled his lips inward, making his mouth disappear into the beard. In the silence following an electric field grew. The new Scarlotte was thinking. Not just with her brain. But something wider. More bulky. She felt like a scale weighing weights. With more than two arms. It was as if she saw the phone with all its connections. The fungal threads proliferating in every direction. How it bound her, held her, chained her. How it made her a perpetrator. She saw the camera eyes front and back differently now. The ears it had, the voice it reproduced. She felt how the circuitry was embedded in her body. How paying, searching, talking, making contact, connecting, history, fascinations, preferences, longings, impulses, expressions were all led through that listening, remembering, movement-sensing, place-registering thing, an endless stream merging into airborne tentacles and deeply rooted creeping channels and....a little earthquake of a shake snapped her out of it. She hardly dared pick up that little dark mirror.
She took a washed empty yogurt bin and a fork out of the sink.
“Come,” she said, “there’s one more thing I have to do.”
Charlotte ran ahead of Michelangelo toward the river. At the fish jetty she stopped.
“You and the sun are witnesses,” she declared, stepping on the narrow structure. On her knees she carefully pushed a single hole in the white plastic bucket. With both hands she solemnly placed her dead phone in it, closed the lid with care and lifted it high up by the bail.
“I release my binding to this object and send it on its way in this vessel with a destination unknown. Fate may decide where it ends up.”
She leaned over to lower the little blue and white buoy into the river and closed her eyes for a moment before letting go. The current took it to the right of the morning sun.
“Fock!” Michelangelo shouted. “You haven’t removed your sim-card.” He almost wanted to jump in and retrieve it, but Charlotte didn’t seem the least worried. A relaxed little smile.
“I think I have just launched a wild goose chase,” she said smugly and walked towards the worried painter.
“Renaissance,” said Michelangelo, loosening his eyes reluctantly from the little blue bucket being carried away by the river.
“Rain-a-sense?” Charlotte mimicked his voice.
“We’re hiding in the renaissance, not the dark ages.”
“Mmm,” said Charlotte, “but by then all the real knights are dead and buried. If we really want to hide properly there is only one place that isn’t in any book, history or register, or database. We would be completely invisible.”
“Where’s that?” said Michelangelo.
“Here,” said Charlotte, “right here and now. Nobody can keep up. They’ll only find a phantom, an echo, some leftover heat and ashes. Not us.”