Sunday 4th – Marta and Ivan – Spring 1941

The days are warm enough for them to play outside now (though cardigans and long socks are still occasional necessities). Mama has told Marta to make sure that Ivan stays away from the rivers and streams: mama was already disapproving of their water play after last summer’s ruining of Marta’s dress, but she’s become even more insistent after the drowning of the two local boys during the winter rains.

Ivan doesn’t seem too worried by this restriction, however: whereas last year he and Marta had been quite close and had played together often in the woods and in the stream up at the summer house, this year he seems to be more interested in hanging around with other boys of his age, and in making small carts out of planks and pram wheels, with rope-made steering mechanisms, which the boys can then race around the waste ground near the old gas works. Mama doesn’t need to know that Marta and Ivan aren’t spending their days together.

So this fine spring morning, on her own again, Marta finds herself sitting on one of the wickerwork chairs on the summer house [verandah\stoop ?], looking out at the sun glistening on the green leaves, and wondering what she can do with herself. She can’t get used to the feeling of being on her own; she’s so used to having Ivan attached to her, and she’d grown accustomed to that push/pull dynamic of resentment/comfortable dependency. So long as Ivan was with her, her days and her moods had some sort of focus – primarily, her goal was to look after Ivan and keep him amused and entertained. On her own, she has all of the hours of the day available, and no single, clear purpose. [HER voice fades up] Left to herself, she doesn’t have any aim or driving force. She could do anything that she wanted to, but she doesn’t know what she wants to do. She doesn’t really want to do anything. She picks at the sharp end of a stick/strand/reed of wicker on the side of the chair, twanging at it with her thumbnail.

She doesn’t have any playmates of her own, which is very unfair. All the time that she’s spent looking after Ivan, for no thanks, and she has no reward. Just being here on her own. Invisible.

Nobody cares about me.

The sun shines down on the green leaves, and they vibrate and shimmer in the breeze. She starts to cry, and picks at the loose wicker until her finger is indented and sore.

Why can’t everything be like it was before? This is horrible.

[…last summer…]
Last summer, the day she ruined her dress, she and Ivan had played in and around the stream, and it had felt as if that day was a hundred hours long. The sun was high, shining down through the convoluted, twisted oaks that overhung the stream, picking out the colours of the moss and lichen in the branches that were constantly damp from the moist air above the stream – pale greens and greys, oranges and browns. Up to their knees in the flowing water as they built their dam, their ears absorbed the sounds the passage of the water made over the rocks and stones: the constant white noise of froth and flow, the gurgling, chuckling, and tinkling of water against the bank, over stones, through little channels and around tree roots and fallen branches – all those complex sounds, intermeshed and counterpointed.

Now and again Marta would find herself emerging from the dam-building zone of focus and intent, a heavy stone poised in her grip, and she would gaze at the stream, her focus flickering between the persistent, rippling patterns of light on the water’s moving surface and the fixed rocks and stones beneath – the constantly shifting play of paler light moving over the sandy stream bed, over the yellow-orange gravel, the grey and brown stones, and over the clumps of white, quartz-like rocks embedded there.

The light, amber tinged, rippling through the physical ripples and waves in the water, everything somehow staying in place, constant, despite the ceaseless change of the water and the light, and the coronas of light from fallen leaves and floating debris and weird, prismatic effects whose source she can’t identify. All flowing between her legs and around them, with Ivan moving at the periphery of vision, adding the latest chunk of masonry to their growing dam; the spray splashing on her bare arms, cold drops on her throat sometimes, and flung up inside the dress whose hem she has rolled up to keep it clear of the water.

All movement and flow, and yet constant. Each uncapturable moment merging into the next, creating a vivid memory state that holds together in her mind, an assembly of all these sensory patterns and fragments, vibrating there in the space behind her eyes – vivid, crisp, and ephemeral. As soon as she shifts her attention to the tiny bird dipping its needle-like beak into the water from its perch on a flat stone, all the rest of the scene retreats. The bird has its own constant motion – shifting its angle to keep its eyes on the move, the regular darts at the water, the vibration of wings and tail as the spray falls on it, and the aggressive whirr of wings as it takes flight in fright. Marta, disappointed that the bird – a fixed point of [focus/constancy/expectation] – has gone, finds that she’s still holding the large, smooth stone. She looks for a suitably shaped space to lay it down.

[building dams out of streambed rocks – the satisfaction of eventually damming the flow, of seeing the water rise against the barrier that they’d made – the thrill of creativity, of transforming the world and changing the shape of things; the sensual joy of having your feet in the water and the slimy mud, and the gradual piecing together of the barrier; the little disasters and set backs as a section gives way, the wet stones sliding and grating across each other, and them I+M struggling to stop the fall while keeping the rest of the structure in place, and the momentary blaming and falling out, soon subsumed by the re-immersion in the work; finding horrible things, and realising that you’ve squashed them in your fingers while you’ve been working; getting used to the slimy squashy things, getting inured to the way that they crack and squash and split – eventually, just getting back to concentrating on the construction effort; the glitter of sunlight on the water skipping over some miniature rapids further down the stream, which you notice when you pause for a breath, standing up and feeling the ache in your back, in the backs of your thighs and calves – and the salty, gritty sweat on your forehead, and the grit and dirt in your hair, where you’ve wiped away the sweat on your brow using a hand that’s muddy and sandy; the changing light as the sun slides down the sky, charting the passage of time; the sudden sense of chill as the sun dips down behind the high wooded slopes to the west, and you suddenly notice the breeze that’s been cooling you all day – now, you feel like it’s chilling you.

(c. 1200 words)