SECRET LIVES AND MANUAL TYPEWRITERS There were houses along the quiet and tree-lined street: a few. There were expensive boutiques catering to the tastes of women with a fondness for hats and blank-paged journals. There was a restaurant with a specialized menu advertised as Asian and as Fusion. It took more money to eat there than Marc could justify for so small a meal, He contented himself, then, with the local coffee-house: a place friendlier to cyberspace-squatters and their laptops than any corporate franchise with a green-and-white sign emblazoned with some sort of atypical mermaid. He lived nearby—and so it was an easy walk on lazy weekend days, and on days alive with a madness in his veins as intense as lust, but gentle in the manner of something he could scarcely name. Such days—as always—began with the discovery of international mail. Such days—as always—were Saturdays. The mail—as always—came from far, far away: airmail with origins on the northern and easternmost fringe of Europe. He knew the city: a place of cobblestone streets and meandering medieval alleys at its heart, and wider city-fringe streets loud with the dinging bells and indescribable groan of electric trams—a city (as well) of hulking underground bunkers of nuclear-age-Communist pedigree, turned into the high-end nightclubs and tourist traps of today’s age of giddy freedom. He knew the city. He’d been there many times though he had yet to visit in the flesh. He smiled at the thought and all it implied: his own personal joke. The letters were of a singular sort: poetic declarations and teasing, provocative inquiries. They came on broad and mature catalpa leaves—larger, by an inch or so, than a man’s hand with splayed fingers. The letters were works of meticulous artistry, typed onto leaves green with life, and then allowed to dry and brown and harden. From their scent, he knew, they were sprayed with some sort of fixative: probably that acrid aerosol stuff charcoal artists used so that their masterpieces wouldn’t smudge. The letters—as always—came in large manila envelopes, addressed to him in an exquisite, Old World hand. They were poetic ruminations, two leaves long on average, and precise in their amatory provocation. They were, Marc thought, little horrors in their flawless and continual reference to his innermost (and unshared) dreams, private, naughty fetishes, and noble, longing bouts of idealized romance. They were the offerings of an admirer: one Marc knew in every way except in name. The letters—as always—typed on catalpa leaves were always signed by hand and with a fountain pen: —Your Lover.— It was Saturday. His blood burned with smoldering embers of something like lust and something without a name. He’d received another type-written letter on three leaves, this time. The scent of fixative lingered in his nostrils like some strange, otherworldly, and expensive perfume. He closed his eyes and recalled the scent. Though not packed to capacity, the coffee-house was crowded. His normal table was occupied by a duo of blond girls keeping up with Facebook friends. They were uninterested in the view beyond the window beside them. They scarcely looked up from their screens; and he wondered if he—with an expression of rapt obsession—ever failed to see the outside street and the flowers dripping color from the planters just beyond the wall of glass. Probably. He was aware of the planters, the pansies and the violet things he couldn’t identify, because of the leaf-poem wafting through his mind. He’d read it—three times—before grabbing his laptop and heading here. The Lover had an email address, but The Lover never sent poems to Marc’s inbox. It was Marc’s habit to inform The Lover that he’d received mail. And always, within an hour of sending his message, he’d receive a short one from The Lover. He’d sent a message long, long moments ago, and now—sipping a frothy cappuccino—he saw new mail in his inbox. He recognized the address and it’s invocation of Agara—a land so far, far away. Think of me as you sleep, and perhaps in your dreams, I can touch you. He smiled at the message. He typed a response: I’m thinking of you now, and I will as I sleep. There were—perhaps—a million-and-one reasons to fear The Lover, and yet fear never came, not even as The Lover—so perfect a stranger—knew Marc’s mailing address and email contact information. The Lover was—if anything—more intimate to Marc than anyone had ever become, and something in that emotional proximity (The Lover’s awareness of Marc’s innermost secrets, fetishes, and desires!) demanded trust, though Marc could never explain how or why. The insanity of poetry typed on leaves and amorous emails was—simply—what life had become. Such things were easy… …because of the dreams. *** Sleep came quietly, as if on cat’s paws, and Marc knew that he was dreaming when he opened his eyes. It was hour since he’d left the coffee-house and found beer with chatty friends in that cramped little bar on Paulina. He didn’t belong, despite his blond hair, tee-shirt, shorts, and frat-boy sandals in just the right shade of coffee-colored leather. The place felt wrong despite the presence of friends and the cheap beer. He’d left after his third: enough, he’d said as politely as he could manage. I need a clear head tomorrow. There were no Sunday stresses, however; he simply wanted to sleep. And now, in the depths of slumber, he opened his eyes and drew a deep breath. There were city-smells around him: the familiar cloy of mold and humidity, of damp stone and moss. There was the sudden shock of mud between his toes. He held his sandals by their heel-straps, as he picked his way along the shore of the river’s largest island. He’d picked his way down the ancient steps leading from an ancient bridge. He smiled at his companion’s invitation to simply walk, to listen to the night, and to talk if the need arose. It was his companion who insisted that they walk with naked feet: something of a local custom, he’d explained, a sign of openness, of trust. His companion, as foreign to this place as Marc himself, had gone native in ways Marc could scarcely fathom. Dream logic and the logic of mundane waking life were—always—two different things; in dreams, he noticed, things maintained a particular, heightened clarity and possessed roots sunk deeply into intuitions inaccessible to the waking mind. His companion—The Lover—touched him gently on the shoulder, halting his forward steps. There was a breeze: more a sound in the tree canopy than a sensation on the flesh. The air was cool and redolent with olfactory splashes of mud and green growth, of wood-scent, and something Marc couldn’t identify. Paused, he listened to the sound of his own breath and the drumming thunder of blood in his ears. Jabs of subjective electricity danced through the flesh of his arms, following the paths of his companion’s fingers. “My most recent letter to you is an important one,” his companion said. “All of your letters are important.” His companion smiled; night colored the expression with shadows and smears of sodium vapor light and the greenish cast of pressurized mercury vapor—cheaper light: parking lot and public-park light. Marc knew—in the most intimate ways—the subtle tints of his companion in artificial and natural lights: the shade of his skin, the hue of his eyes, and the manner in which his hair (black) swallowed even the brightest sunglare. He reveled in such sights, recalling them on boring days when his waking world (and the absence of such blushes and shades) drove him to the edge of depression and impatient despair. “The one you read today…I ended it with a question.” Marc remembered the manner in which he’d opened the oversized envelope and teased the dry and fragile leaves from between protective dividers of expensive card stock. He remembered the hunger in his fingers to stroke the delicious incongruity of words on so natural a surface: more natural than paper. With each reading, he imagined The Lover, seated at a small, wooden desk, arranging leaves between the platen and rollers of an ancient, manual typewriter. An Underwood, he imagined, or a Corona, a Remington—though in all reality, it was most likely, an ancient and rare skreibmašin of local manufacture. It was adapted for the Roman alphabets of Poland, Czechoslovakia or Ükür, though the same manufacturer likely made Cyrillic machines for the local language, and for Russian and Bulgarian. He remembered the words, and the spark of arousal they engendered in the flesh south of his navel. He nodded. “I’m here because of that question.” —On this river-straddled island: Kátálpské Ōstróv. “This is your answer?” his companion asked. He needed to hear the word, Marc knew, needed to hear his voice uttering the answer to the most important of questions. Marc closed his eyes, drew a deep breath, and clenched his naked toes in gritty, chilly mud. “Yes,” he said quietly, but with as much conviction as sudden nervousness allowed. “Yes,” he said again, leavening the word with a smile as faint as the crescent moon’s light. Had his answer been anything but willing affirmation, he would not have walked with naked feet through mud on the fringes of an island named for its prodigious number of catalpa trees. “This is one of the world’s sacred rivers,” his companion said. “A bit like the Ganges of post-Soviet Europe.” He smiled; his fingers brushed the exposed flesh of Marc’s arm. “There are people all over the city who swear by this river, by this island. At night—like now—you might find people bathing. They call it swimming but it’s more sacred than that.” “You bathe here?” Marc asked. “I did, once. Local friends invited me to May Day celebrations. There were bonfires all over the city, as if Pekkur decided to write its name across the night. There was music: guys banging on drums and blowing weird little flutes made out of goat’s horns; the air was heavy with the stink of smoke, sausage, and beer; everyone drank skőy and home-made brandy. For the next two days afterward, the city seemed to have a hangover and upset stomach. I’d bathed, though; I found out what it means to do so…I’m a part of this city…this whole frikkin’ country because of that. Even though you’re back Stateside—like I was, once—I think maybe it’s important for you to know what it’s like to belong somewhere, to have someone who cares about you.” They walked in silence, following the oblate curve of the island’s eastern flank. Traffic noise wafted from beyond the river-hugging park. Strands of music spilled from a beer-garden, but the island itself—so large and dark with night-cloaked trees—was separate from the city: its own world bordered in every direction by water like ink only one degree cooler than blood. “Tāü and Müé are the most ancient gods in the mythology of this country,” Marc’s companion said, picking his way through mud to the face of a water-skirted boulder. It was, Marc saw, emblazoned with graffiti in a language he could scarcely recognize, let alone read. “These twin-brother gods are kind of a big deal here.” Marc’s companion spoke in quiet, almost reverential tones. Though born, like Marc, in the United States, he’d lived in Pekkur for three years, being someone else, he said; learning—he’d said—how to see things differently. “Nobody’s really religious here—not like back home, at any rate—but Tāü and Müé are important; more for nationalistic reasons than anything else: cultural identity and all that stuff. Anyway, according to modern versions of the old myths, they bathed in this river, scrubbing each other with catalpa leaves.” Marc nodded, savoring the odd, unfamiliar cigarette. For long moments after his companion’s casual ruminations on local mythology, Marc sat in silence, savoring the sensation of smoke in his chest “Are you ready for this?” his companion asked after long moments of what seemed like inward contemplation. “I’m ready,” Marc said. And they undressed, wordlessly. Naked, they plucked leaves from nearby trees; the largest they could find: the broadest. They carried them—like the pages of some fragile and ancient text, to the water’s edge, holding them gently, as they stepped into the shallows and into deeper, cool water. Marc flushed at the thrill of nudity in so open a spot, where anyone might see them, where local police might find reason for two arrests. But no one saw them, and if so, Marc found no indication of such. The Companion scattered broad leaves over the river’s face. Marc did the same, fascinated—suddenly—by the manner in which they drifted like night-tinged boats, bobbing on tiny wavelets. As a child, Marc would set ants afloat on smaller—maple?—leaves and make bets with boyhood friends as to which little leaf-boats would make it—first—to the other side of a puddle. The winner never really won anything much: bragging rights, if anything, but the whole point of the game was to fight boredom and little else. “Close your eyes,” his companion said, softly, punctuating the words with a kiss, a caress, and another—longer, probing—kiss. With eyes closed, Marc heard a gentle splash of water and felt the soft, almost tremulous rasp of a catalpa leaf on his skin; wordlessly, his hands—as if their own accord—sought his companion’s flesh with fingertips first, and then the face of a single, heart-shaped leaf plucked from bobbing rest on the face of the river. He stroked his companion’s skin, gently, scrubbing shoulders, arms, neck and torso in soft, green swirls. As one leaf tore into sodden shreds, he plucked another from the mass dispersing slowly over the river’s face. He and his companion scrubbed one another, softly and without words, until the last of the leaves was left tattered and abandoned to what fate the river might have for it. “When you return to the States, bathe with the most recent leaves I sent to you. They’re dry and brittle, they’re impregnated with my words, but bathe with them, and remember tonight.” His companion spoke softly, and in the half-whisper of his tone, Marc heard the undeniable voice of The Lover. The night—after that—was amorous and playfully naughty. *** He awoke to silence and the familiar, lonely scent of bedding. He was alone. A glance at his bedside alarm clock told him that sleep had lasted for no more than a couple of hours. City noise confirmed this with the sound of voices across the courtyard: laughter and conversation from some apartment, deep within the distraction of a party. It was still Saturday night and early enough for life to move through indolent, nocturnal rhythms. He’d metabolized the night’s beer and could taste it on his breath. He recalled the vague expressions of disappointment on the faces of friends as he made his departure from that small sports bar on Paulina Street. Now, alone, he stared up at the ceiling and the play of night-light across the plaster in the shades of sodium vapor streetlight, and the strange incandescence of those spiral bulbs in the courtyard walkway lanterns. He’d moved in the night and so the light blanket he’d thrown over himself knotted in draping snarls around his ankles and shins. It took a while to disengage himself. He swung his legs from bed, feeling rug-fibers, and then hardwood beneath his naked soles; he padded from bedroom to bathroom and splashed his face with cool water. His hair: a sleep-tousled storm of straw-colored cowlicks mocked him from the reflective face of the mirror and he grimaced at himself. The faintest whisper of stubble marked cheeks and chin. He turned from sink to tub, stoppered the drain and spun the taps; he listened for long moments to the sound of flowing water. The Lover told him to bathe with the most recent poem sent—typed, as always—on dried leaves. And with the echo of those dream-words dancing through the convoluted mass of half-formed thoughts clogging the space between his ears, he padded into the bedroom, retrieved the leaves from their place on his desk, and stood, brushing them against his face. Their scent was intoxicating: acrid with whatever fixatives The Lover applied, but strangely sweet and organic in the way of leaves left on a forest floor. Something in the scent triggered a recall of cool river water and the faint drone of city-noise heavy with trams and distant beer-garden laughter in another language. It was day-time, over there and he wondered if there was brilliant and golden sunlight, or gray, sullen overcast. It didn’t matter, ultimately, because he was alone. Here. and it was still dark, still—in the strangest of ways—the night before. With leaves in hand, he stepped into the bathroom and dropped them into the filling tub, to scatter on slow, undulant waves, to recall the quiet, wordless gestures of the river. He undressed, turned off the cascade of water and stood, considering the leaves…yellowish/golden/brown in the white tub. He closed his eyes, stepped into the water and settled. He felt enamel pressed to his back, cold where warmer water hadn’t reached it. He caught the mingled scents of soap and body wash, shampoo and conditioner: modern smells, and not the thrilling, atavistic scent of mud, moss, and water spilled from the flanks of some distant mountain. He read poetry afloat in the water, clasped a leaf, read it again, and then slowly…slowly began to scrub himself in slow, circular motions. He thought of The Lover’s hands, The Lover’s fingers touching him, guiding him to turn here or to turn there, to raise an arm so that its pit might be washed. His skin tingled. Brittle leaves tore, their poetry torn with them. In his mind, he kissed The Lover, and in silence, and promised—as he had in dreaming—to leave this place when the time was right. He soaked, for long hours in the debris of leaves and poetry, and when his fingertips and the tips of his toes puckered with prune-flesh wrinkles, he drained the tub and dried himself off. He padded back to bed, not bothering to dress. He slid between the sheets, closed his eyes…and again, with words scrubbed into his skin, and the scent of catalpa wafting through his nostrils, he slept. Quietly. THE END This story is actually one I'd planned on writing long, long ago...back when nearly everyone around me either spoke Czech or spoke English with a Czech accent. Needless to say, there are wee little bits of this story that reflect their Czech origins and as such, I'd like to think of this as something of a dedication to...of all people...that old guy who spent days hammering out a manuscript on his manual typewriter...and to Pavl for reminding me that yes Smith-Corona was not a common "scribe-machine" in Czechoslovakia, back when there was a Czechoslovakia. Thank you for reading and commenting, and I hope you've enjoyed this compressed little tale inspired by typing noises heard in a courtyard. There is more to be sure...and I'm curious to find out just what else is likely to come oozing out of Agara.