Daphne - Short Story by David Russell

 

Daphne by David Russell

I caught many glimpses of her as a fleeing form. I wondered if she would ever look my way. The first eye contact was cosmically penetrating.

I was so surprised at the invitation. Daphne asked me around. I felt surprised and honoured to be beckoned. Interspersed with the art deco furnishings were piles of books, of all ages, shapes and sizes – some brand new, some gracefully yellowing, on the shelves and half-open on tables, chairs and sofas.

“You make me read; you make me think.”

“We must put our bond to the test. It is vital that we make a questing journey together. Come on: let’s cast our fates to the wind; we have to get our thumbs up on the great highway.”

Luckily, this happened around the end of term. Just a minimum of time to wait for the vacation. Those were the days of carefree hitch-hiking, when one felt perfectly safe and globally mobile.

The cars and the lorries were speedy and benign. Finally we reached Paris.

“I’ll contact my old school friend Cressida; she runs a fashion business here. Maybe she can put us up.” She went to the phone, and came back jubilant. “We’re in exceptional luck. She’s just on the point of going away, and would be very happy for us to look after her flat.”

I breathed elation. The apartment was every bit as gracious, as luxurious as her own. Abundant books, lush furnishings, a massive wardrobe. Cressida was vibrant and vivacious, a perfect foil for Daphne; I could sense their rapport. She gave us knowing glances, then put on an overcoat. The doorbell rang; it was her taxi. She picked up her suitcase, and gave us pecks on the cheek. “Be good, but have fun.”

Daphne motioned me to the sofa.

“Now I’ve got you to myself. I want to guide you; I want to enlighten you. I’ve seen into your eyes; I’ve seen into your mind. I want to know you in your totality, and guide your life mission. I prompted you to search out the details of all those goddesses: I am their beacon, their channel. Now: you’re in luck. We could only bring a minimum change of clothes for our hitch-hiking expedition, but – as you see – Cressida is of a similar build to me. Through the years we have often exchanged and borrowed outfits. Relax a bit while I have a shower and a change.”

My thoughts rose like the steam as I thought of the spectacle behind that closed door. She returned in a pale blue dressing gown, looking utterly refreshed. “OK: I’m done. You go in after me, while I get changed for this occasion.”

The shower ran deliciously over me. The flow of the water evoked my thoughts of the touch of her hands. The steam rose visible, elevating me with its gaseous essence. There was another dressing gown in the bathroom – pink to counterpoint her blue.

She entered in a Hollywood-worthy black, low-cut evening dress, her steps graceful and swivelling. She drew me up before her, undid the sash and slid the dressing gown from me shoulders. I was levitated by her gaze.

“Well – my Adonis surrogate. You’ve kept yourself in shape for this sacred occasion. Now for the sublime fusion of body and soul. You may divest me.“ How often had I done this in the imagination, in a different, exotic dream setting every time, those palaces, those ballrooms of seduction. I had just seen her once in a bathing suit. How many of the world’s exotic beaches did I dream up for our ultimate beach tryst! I loved the feel of the fabrics, lovely heralds of the beauty they covered. We wafted to the ionosphere of our godheads.

She dragged me to the bedroom. Our union was circular, orbital, cosmic. It was followed by a heady sense of health and recuperation. After that, we both lost our immediate sense of time. It felt as if it could have been the same day when Cressida returned. She beamed with approval of our happy state.

“Now we are refreshed, we can pursue the next stage of our quest: the caves of Lascaux. I’ve seen so many photos and prints of those paintings; we’ve got to see the real thing. I am sure they will reveal to us their hidden truth.

So, a wave of goodbye to Cressida, then down to the highway and thumbs up. Happily, we did not have a long wait. A pantechnicon drew up. The driver was quite diminutive, but full of vitality. As we progressed into open country, he accelerated. “We make good time,” he said – in broken English. Just when we were getting into a feeling of heady speed,     there was a split-second flash of headlights at a road junction, followed by a screech of brakes and a deafening crash. The driver’s cabin was dented; the steering-wheel shaft penetrated his abdomen and heart.

We managed to negotiate the grilling from the Police and the Hospital. We were free to proceed, but felt we had been given a dire warning.

Shaken but calm, we came face to face. Somehow our nascent love could not blossom in the face of that laceration, that bloodshed. 

Daphne, with her panoramic vision, put this tragic incident into context and restored equilibrium. “Let us hope that neither of us will ever witness total war, and that this will be the worst human injury we shall ever have to encounter. Let this horror give us the strength to face later life’s adversities, and let us keep sacred silence.”

Strange to recall this, with simmering Ukraine now in the background.

The impact, the screech, the grinding, the cracks, the shards felt like the arrival of a personal war – mass humanity’s horror focused on one individual.

“We were lucky to escape with our lives.”

I had to nod in agreement. She gave me a penetrating gaze. “We must keep this tragedy a secret, only divulging it to those in whom we hold the deepest trust. And we should make a distance between each other.” 

“How so?”

“You know there is great depth between us – some sense of being lifelong partners till death do us part. Death could be a jealous entity, and if we stay too long together, may strike us both down. I feel we must take this incident to be a warning.”

The paths wove in and out, globally parting and tentatively, briefly re-linking, but with a powerful sense of an unbreakable bond. I seemed to have gained equilibrium from that trauma, resilience against the buffetings. In more recent years, there was an absence of direct contact. But I heard once that she had got together with a wild American landscape artist, and quite a while later that she was in rehabilitation from drugs and alcohol. She had strengthened me in my younger weakness, left an indelible imprint on me. Pain, death and sickness stared into the mirror of their contrary – beauty, life, and everlasting love, bridging the gulf of age, sickness and mortality. The perfect time found its ice-pack.

David Russell