The Angel of the Stories by John…

The Angel of the Stories by John Simmons: Episode 1

1 year ago

Julia Buendia Allone was proud of her name, even though it made people uncomfortable. People said there was no more difficult name in the world. How do you pronounce it? I don’t mind, said Julia, it’s up to you. But people still wanted to know. They shied away from calling her ‘Alone’ although that was the obvious pronunciation to many. Perhaps they felt that labelling her with such a name represented a small act of cruelty. So Julia herself took pity and decided to distance herself from the perception of loneliness. Her English mother had named her Julia but she abandoned the liquid “ll”s of Allone, retreating to the Spanish roots of her father with the sudden certainty of a sound like a “y”.

 Why? In truth she felt alone. At night her thoughts matched the darkness. Her head lay on the pillow which became a shell in which she listened to the hissing of her own thoughts and feelings. She was a writer. She was desperate to be a writer. So she wrote every day, constantly rewriting the same subject. The subject was herself, and she addressed her subject obsessively, listening to the thoughts of her feather-filled pillow.

One morning she woke and was aware of a sensation in her shoulders. It was not a pain, more like a tingling. Perhaps she had slept in a draft? She had a warm shower and noticed that she had two small bumps on either side of her backbone. She caressed them, as if to bring herself luck, and sat down to her writing.

The next day the bumps had changed. They had grown, becoming bulbous. She found herself straying from her subject, for the first time writing about the flowers on her window sill. She wrote on her rooftop, looking down at the people strolling through the street below.

She nurtured her bumps, showering them with love and soap. But then the bumps changed, they opened up like a bud in early spring. The buds were beautiful and they gave no pain.

Julia decided she should go out into the teeming streets, walking between the white-painted houses of the town. She wandered through places where she had never been before. People she hardly knew stopped her, calling out from the doorways of bars or from benches in the squares, and they told her how beautiful she looked. Strangers admired her, expressing their admiration with a word or a lingering gaze.

She looked in the mirror, back in her bathroom. It was true, she looked well, there was a glow about her. But when she turned her back, looking over her shoulder, she saw that the buds were now opening into what seemed to be flowers. The burgeoning flowers were exquisite and she knew that she had to write about them.

She thought about the doctor. It had been years since she had last visited the doctor. The unfolding flowers in her shoulders were unusual but she comforted herself that she felt no pain. And she had never felt better inside herself. She was writing in a way that she had never previously written. She feared that a doctor might treat her by removing the source of her wellbeing.

That night she woke from a deep dream and discovered that her pillow had lost all its plumpness. It was now just a pillowcase. It didn’t matter because she felt wide awake. The moon was shining, directing her to step outside onto the roof garden, where the flowers were wafting their scent onto the breeze. She looked down into the now-empty street to see that it was lit by the moon as if by daylight.

Julia felt drawn to look upwards at the pure whiteness of the moon. There was no cloud in the sky and the sheer emptiness seemed like an invitation. She looked back briefly and she smiled when she saw the wings on her shoulders. She stood on the railings of the roof, and she plunged off the side like a diver into the depths. But she didn’t fall, she soared, higher and higher, enjoying the sensation of the slow-beating wings, up and up towards the moon.

Then she knew that she had reached a point of balance, that she could rest in the air and look down at the round blue earth beneath her. She saw that the earth was wrapped in millions of thin lines, but that the lines were an invisible presence. She realised at last the secret of her name, discovering that she was not alone but that we live in a world where we are all one.

*   *   *

Julia came down to earth once more. She had soared and seen things that surprised her. But now the everyday took hold of her again. The simplest things pleased her most.

In the courtyard a pomegranate tree grew. Its leaves cast a cool shadow over the ground and within its green cover small bright fruits grew. Day by day they grew a little bigger, each like a pink sun in a dark green sky. 

The sun itself was high in the sky and burning fiercely but the leaves kept the fruit cool. Julia watered the tree. She cared for it as if it were her child. She caressed the skin of the pomegranate as if it were her own.

One day she squeezed the fruit gently and it burst open. The pomegranate seeds shot into the air like a firework, rising swiftly then spreading then floating slowly downwards in the still air of the courtyard.

Julia held out her hand, palm cupped, and she collected the seeds as they floated down. She raised them to her lips, smelt their freshness, tasted their sweetness, dipped her finger in their juice and started writing on the white wall.

The words flowed. Words written by finger in pomegranate juice. They poured from the tip of her index finger and they told stories of the people in the town who were sometimes touched by an angel.

Please note, the above image is copyright Anita Klein and my not be used without permission.