Tanya and the Wind

Artwork by zanara

The wind woke her. Tanya remembered the washing outside!

She ran out half-naked, in only a nightdress. The cold pierced her and the first drops dug into her. The house was planted in the middle of the field, completely separate from the village. As far as the eye could see, ink-black clouds were crawling low over the ground. Oily streams of dense rain were preparing to pour themselves over the dry arms of the trees. The field behind the house was bathed in golden light springing from under the ground. The steel line of the horizon was tearing the thin rip between the concrete air and the glittering wings of the wheat stalks.

She began taking down the clothes from the line quickly. It was night but it was light as day. There was something in the air, something uncommon in the gusts of the wind, she could feel it. As if solid, powerful hands were trying to catch her, envelop her whole. The air thickened, forming huge, juicy fingers around her body. The wind whistled and began swirling around her.

He began flirting like a stag with a doe, like a drop of dew with the sunlight. First he entered her eyes and ears. Penetrated her thoughts. He seized them, jumbled them, and opened her mind without permission. Opened wide all the windows of her thoughts, invaded every nook and cranny and completely disarranged her ideas. He created weightlessness in her soul. He wrapped himself around her breath and made her smile. Tanya remembered how long she had waited for this passion to enter her life. Not in vain did the people in the village call her the lonely gull. So many desperate nights she had stood at the window, looking at the frozen landscape outside. Without hope for movement, change, sweetness. And here he now was, in all his strength, ecstasy and vigour. He was here.

He caressed her skin, slid his invisible lips over her body. Gently glided between her fingers and she dropped the gathered laundry. He took it up and breathed life into it. The clothes filled with movement and began twisting their slender bodies high above the ground. Their patterns created new shapes and states, like a kaleidoscope in the sky.

Tanya was at the bottom of it, admiring the performance. While the wild dance swirled in the sky, Tanya felt how the embrace of the storm became stronger and more passionate. She felt herself swimming in his airy desire.

That night Tanya conceived a Universe. A universe with the eye of a typhoon, an eye like a black hole from which poured out a new world that connected with the umbilical cord of life.

She did not feel alone anymore, she was the wind’s woman. She felt how all of nature loved her. Each night he came to check on her. She lived in the ocean of his presence and the air electrified by his breath and passion. He lived around her, opened the doors before her, brought her bouquets of beautiful flowers floating in space.

Tanya lined up numerous little weathervanes in the field. She wanted to know and see from afar when her husband returned home. And each time when he crept in, all of them rustled softly like hundreds of hands in greeting.

She felt chosen, special and more secure than ever before. As if a divine being had sown magic in the womb of her soul.

She was in love. And the love for the great element has no comparative measure in any human dimension. She felt like she had control over all his might. She had the hurricanes and cyclones as her guardians, she had power over an unrestrained force. This love was all that Tanya had ever wished for.

The eye inside her grew quickly. She felt the thrusts and eruptions of this new world. Laughter and dancing, nightmares and catastrophes. There were so many things happening every minute. Tanya gradually began transforming. She looked like an astronomical map. Her organs formed constellations. Her cells recreated the laws of sacred geometry and formed quite unusual dependencies and shapes.

She had become transparent and was becoming witness to the tiniest of movements and changes inside. She watched sunsets and sunrises, movements of suns and planets. She felt the splash of the waves and the contractions of the tides.

At night she was like a walking candle in the dark. Like a large firefly in the field. She stood on the seashore and shone like a beacon for the lost souls out there. A flame in a human body singing its quiet song.

On one such night she gave birth to their child. It separated from her like a light stream and began shining like a burning symbol against the dark sky. A sign with its own will and purpose, with all its multifaceted meanings. At first glance simple and slight, but every curve of its body, every movement announced that it carried the load of a myriad other meanings. It was an ancient symbol that had gathered the old and the new into one, with a new meaning and purpose. It was infinity collected in a shape, life in the process of dying. It was the child of the wind.

She knew that she had just given birth to one of the many letters of god. One piece of his alphabet to be written into the book of life.

A gentle breeze almost bashfully blew and carried away the glowing child and then a complete calm set.

No matter how long she waited and time passed, the field remained silent. She increasingly focused her thoughts on the sky, until one day Tanya herself became a windmill, waiting to be awakened by the breath of love.

And somewhere there, far away, the wind rushed towards new shores. Because in some remote and foreign field, illuminated in a strange light, a storm was starting and a woman had come out in the middle of the night, half-naked, and begun collecting the laundry outside.

Wriiten by ZANARA /Translated by Reberta

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Pebble

artwork by ZANARA

Vladimir always carried the pebble with him. In his left coat pocket. On the desk, and even under his pillow as he slept.

It had been given to him by an unknown girl on the train. They happened to be in the same compartment. Her mother had slept, while she had spread a piece of cloth on the folding table before her. There she had lined up many colourful pebbles. When the child invited him to choose, Vladimir smiled patronizingly. Finally, as if drawn by one to the side of the rest, he made it his and for the past two months it had rarely left his grip.

It was small – it barely filled his palm. He fiddled with it, took delight in it. He felt an unusual attachment towards such an insignificant object. The gentle friction of skin on these soft and sensitive sides brought him peace unfelt before. Many hours had he spent in reverie, while he spun it from his finger joints to his palm.

Vladimir had learnt to see it solely with his skin. He knew every millimetre of it. Four of its sides were smooth, almost velvety. The fifth, in complete contrast, was exceptionally jagged and serrated, as if that was where it had been ripped off from the flesh of a large rock. His fingers traced every corner and angle, as if trying to find something new every time. One end began low and bit by bit, millimetre by millimetre rose, forming a beautiful hill with three peaks. The first was sharp and slightly leaning to the right. The second seemed to hesitate which way to lean. The third was the widest and with a flattened top resembling a bird’s head. Between them two valleys seemingly formed.

Very often, when his thoughts meandered off to somewhere, he caught a movement or change on its surface and then he quickly looked at it. But it remained the same. A small and unremarkable tiny piece of rock.

With time the scenery on the jagged side seemed to have become more interesting and varied. More and more often he traced what was happening between the cracks. The “landscapes” began filling up with colours and sensations. He began “seeing” how on one side of the hill there was a forest, a river, and tall pines on both slopes of the valley. He almost smelled their fresh scent and heard the flapping of wild birds’ wings high in the sky. In the evenings he could hear owls producing their unearthly war shouts. Crickets and frogs added magic to the place. There were beautiful flowers everywhere. Tulips and hyacinths, snowdrops and roses. He was amazed that they all grew in the same season. It was an unchanging, unspoilt beauty, but one that was somewhat boring after a while. There was no one there and Vladimir wondered why this heavenly place had been created at all.

In time he found that there was another valley. The place was endlessly different. Dark short grass and dead trees. There were no flowers and the sun barely shone. Animals rarely passed – a complete antithesis to the neighbouring valley. The rivers had gone dry. A dead place, full of the skeletons of a long-gone happiness. Quiet and ominous.

Vladimir enjoyed examining these two complete contrasts and wondering how it was possible for these two worlds to be divided only by a single peak.

One day, while examining the black valley, he noticed a house between the trees. Greyish and low. Without a fence and without a path to it. While wondering why he had never happened across it before, the door opened and a woman came out. Beautiful, with light eyes and dark hair. With his whole being he knew that this was Nona.

From this moment on, Vladimir began spending all his free time with her. He watched her get up in the morning, hang the clothes. Sing or go hunting. Once, he was so worried when night overtook her near a half-dry lake, that he didn’t sleep all night, and instead guarded her while she camped.

Nona’s life was hard but she endured it peacefully, almost happily. Despite her being alone and not speaking to anyone ever, he somehow could not imagine her complaining about carrying water from kilometres away or for having almost no crops in the small garden behind her house. The most favourite thing of both was when Nona sat down on her chair at night, facing the horizon. She contemplated the distance, he – her.

Vladimir often wondered what it must be like to be as alone as Nona, alone in this hopeless blackness.

Walking down the streets he caught himself trying to see her in the crowd. He yearned to hear her voice. To have a real conversation, even to embrace her. Lately he often imagined being there, in her world. Their world. He saw himself showing her the whole heavenly place on the other side. He imagined them living in an eternal summer, having set up their home, and how he took care of her.

Whether it was from these thoughts or from something else, Vladimir’s nights became sleepless and long from the endless streams of thought. Just then he also noticed something that he thought was strange. Recently, life in the valley had become darker, and the days shorter.

Nona’s garden was now completely fruitless. More and more rarely did she go hunting or walking, and she spent longer sitting on her chair. Life’s pulse had somehow slowed down. The last few days Nona had been looking very thin and sick, but she was still moving. Ah, thought Vladimir, if only she knew that on the other side of the hill heaven awaited her, untouched by the sorrow of her world.

The more he dreamed of saving her, the more the darkness of her reality thickened. As if the clock of her remaining days had sped up imperceptibly.

One day she did not leave the house.

Vladimir became sick. He did not sleep, cried, screamed, and finally in complete exhaustion, he fell asleep, fingers intertwined around the pebble.

***

Several days passed before the neighbours decided to break down the apartment door to check if everything was alright. There was no trace of Vladimir. The only thing they found was a small pebble on the pillow of his bed.

***

Somewhere there, in some other world, he opened his eyes. He looked around. Dark short grass and dead trees. There were no flowers and the sun barely shone. Everything was quiet and sad. He noticed a house, greyish and low. Without a fence and without a path to it. The door opened and a thin female hand emerged.

Written by Zanara/ Translated by Roberta