Ultramarine

This morning, the last one of my memories had left me. It happened just then. I had my pinch of sunflower seeds, stood by the window to look at the field. Already, the flowers had darkened a shade of blue, barely perceivable on their still pearlescent petals through the telescope. Caught in the act of noticing this change, I realised I don’t remember why I had devised such elaborate method of observing the flowers. Or how I had come to possess this telescope in the first place. I stepped back in terror, walked to the kitchen to cook some frog legs. As soon as I sat down to eat, I found, with great irritation, a plate of the same thing, sitting on the table, barely eaten, waiting for me with a devilish glister. Listlessly, I looked up: a bright red telephone on the wall, inviting me to call, with a line of black-ink-written, big-font number next to it.

I called.

“Hello, this is Odin Psychiatry hospital, how may I assist you today?”

“Hello...this is...”

“Yes?”

“I’m afraid I don’t remember my name.”

The woman cleared her throat. After some mumbling noises, she said, “that’s alright, please stay calm. Someone there with you Miss?”

Calm. How’s calm going to help? “No, no one. Just me in the house,” I said with irritation.

“Do you remember your address Ms?”

“No, I don’t.”

“I see…Anything you can see around you?”

“A field of flowers from the window. A table. A bowl of seeds. A red telephone...” Utterly useless. Who could deduct anything from this? Vexed, I started to bite down the wooden stick on the shelf unconsciously till an absent-minded gaze revealed a sentence written in the same black ink on the stick.

My hair lifted up in a chill.

“Actually...I see something now.”

“Oh?” The woman raised her voice. “What is it?”

“’Ultramarine…is…the…last…dream…of…’ That’s all I can see. The rest is too smudged to tell…”

“Ultramarine...hm...Could it be you have a daughter called Maria? We have Maria J., Maria W., Maria...”

“No, I don’t have a daughter. I don’t have any children.”

“Are you sure? You said you can’t remember, perhaps...”

“No, I know whether I had children or not. How can you forget when you pushed that stuff out of your body?”

“I’m sorry Miss…I didn’t mean to offend you. What about...”

I hanged up. Useless. 

Turning around to the window, I stood at the same spot, feeling like an actress in a set that I've not agreed to be put in. With a slow, absorbing gaze, I can’t help but marvel at the supreme craftmanship of the set. Everything felt like me, appealed to my senses so intuitively that even I would have chosen them from a thousand other things in the market voluntarily.

What about that market in the blackest, driest summer?

My hand lightly touched the textures of each item as I walked by. Women walking delicately, unsure of themselves, their faces hidden in the disproportionately grand straw hat, their body hidden in the disproportionately wide summer dresses. Men, in their summer suits, walking with a hump on their backs, face shadowed by the sun. The sellers hid inside the shade of the stalls, unidentifiable, but the goods were magnified, excruciatingly clear. I saw the finest details of the wears and tear of the silver, the gold, the metal spoons, the ceramic tea pots, the intricate hair brush with a faint scent of spice, the feather pen with the most sleek, silky black. I picked it up, put it under my nose. Immediately, I saw a black raven gliding on the sky, so close as if I was that feather among the others, feeling the air caressing me gently and I…

“You can’t pick that up,” the seller’s stern voice reached me from the shadow, still obscured in the face, but a man’s voice nonetheless.

“You are selling them, aren’t you?”

“Yes. But not for you.”

“Why?”

“Because you killed it. You killed everything. Ever since you were born, you had been killing…a beauty it was, did you have any pity?”

I looked at the shadow blankly. “What…?”

“Don’t pretend to be nice. I can see time has done its sentence on you. It’s written all over your face, your body… Look at you, decrepit, curled into a cage to lock yourself up.” He let out a sigh of disgust. “But people don’t change. Your eyes still belong to the eyes of a killer. “

“I just want to buy this feather pen. How much is it?”

“Are you deaf now too? I said, I told you. It’s not for you. I won’t sell it to the killer.”

“But I’m no killer.”

I stared coldly into the darkness and stood fixed as a statue, letting time pass freely around us. Seeing the impossibility of my leaving, the man extended his shaking hand from the shadow, holding a gold-framed oval mirror in front of my face.  “Look for yourself. You pathetic worm.” There, I saw a black raven’s face. It’s feathers were tousled, tinted with bright blood, bald patches here and there, peak crushed into fragments, left eye dangled down, right eye had only half left hanging.

I reached to the mirror.

At my fingertips, the reflection turned into a field of flowers. All coloured in ultramarine. Shakingly handed one of them to me with his other hand, he said, “take it and leave. The only thing you deserve.” I picked up the flower which transported me to the field. Hovering at mid-air, the field turned into a hypnotising sea of ultramarine. There, I saw my father flying towards me with his majestic black wings, holding the same golden mirror at me. Inside, my mother was weeping behind a bush. I was being torn apart by the strong, stately hands of the sailors next to the shore. My black feathers became the same colour of the flowers; my organs, half-exposed to the air, tinted too with the residual powder of Lapis Lazuli.

“We will make a fortune,” one of the sailors said with a manly smile, “the Jouverets will love it.”

“Tell me about it,” the other one jumped in, “especially Madam Marianne. We all knew the Prussian blue was too Moorish for her refined complexion. It’s only a matter of time before the Ultramarine become a must. Not a shade of darkness to ruin that delicate creature.”

“Just imagine these feathers on her head…” the first sailor said in a reverie, ”so beautiful above her long, slender neck, and her round, smooth bosoms…”

“Be careful of your words Tommy,” a straw-headed, tweed-coated, back-hunched man packed up his sensors and telescope, walking back with a scorn, “It’s dangerous to mix business with pleasure. One shall always treat one’s customers the way a doctor treats his patients.”

“Of course, doc, my bad,” the sailor scratched his head in embarrassment,”when should we go?”

The man scrutinised at the feathers with his golden magnifying glasses, held by his white-gloved hand. “Soon. Let it marinate a bit longer.”

Upon hearing his words, my mother turned to my father and my two sisters. “Let’s go quietly. They will be busy with her now. Don’t make a sound. We don’t want to end up like that, do we?”

“Of course,” my father said, “thank god it’s not one of you. You are much more virile. You will live much longer. She did take your brother anyway,” he sighed in grief, “God had always been a strict bastard…” He shook his head and led the way. My two sisters looked at each other, innocent and half-understanding, and remained quiet. In a narrow line of four, they marched towards the deep forests beyond the shore, where one sailor had spotted them and shouted, “hey look there! There’s more!”