KS Culbreth

The Structure of Night

Beloved: I slept but my heart was awake…
Song of Songs

We would sleep on a thin futon mattress on the floor. Actually, she would sleep. I was not insomniac but chose not to sleep.

I would lie on my back with my left hand under my head and she on her side to my right, turned toward me, pressing and leaning against me. Her head on my shoulder and my arm woven under her head and around her back. Her left arm would sometimes dangle between us, frayed from the whole as it were, sometimes her hand threaded securely under my back. With my right hand I would pet her shoulder or her side or lower back, whatever I could touch within the arc of my bending arm without forcing my arm or moving otherwise if it should awaken her. My arm would tingle within minutes and fall asleep when I stopped stroking her side or petting the side of her head.

She would fall asleep in good time and I would lie awake, my eyes wide and my pupils dilated so that I could see all the room in detail, a clear detail bathed in silence and calm. The detail of the mahogany trim around the windows, the lintels of the doors where a red paint long removed still stained the deeper crevices of the grain. You would half-expect beams of cedar and rafters of fir, so sweet yet subtle was the forest scent, a fragrance of cedar and autumn’s apples ripe and cidered by the crushing press and of wax from that scented candle whose sharp cherry embered bright and smoked long after she blew it out.

Very late at night with only the ambient light of the city pale blue in the room – this was the most comfortable light for my photosensitive eyes, the only time I could open my eyes wide without risk of snow blindness from the glint or glare of reflected light. Snow blindness. Such debilitating pain even if not caused by the original source but from an unsuspecting agent or courier of the source.

I would lie awake for a long while. Hours at a time. I would turn my head toward the pink clock atop the old wooden munitions box, stenciled on its side Winchester Small Ammunition, the wood oily and dark, stained from being transported by hands blackened with gun grease and bolt lube. When I looked at the clock, I would find another half hour had passed as I looked about the room.

Lying in this position, I could see through the two windows the upper reaches of a tall, thin maple that had outgrown the sumacs wild in the alley, the top of the building across the alley and beyond this building the tops of the skyscrapers downtown where it was brilliantly lit. The tall white buildings glowed against the western sky at night. The sky above downtown was bright all through the night.

Five days of perfect weather and the moon waxing throughout the week, dimmed only by an eclipse on Thursday we gazed upon from the rooftop, that made of the moon a bloody eye briefly. The eclipse made the sky a shimmering, chromatic blue. Later we could not see the moon from her apartment but its light washed the walls red. The buildings stood ghost-like beneath that vibrant canopy as though deep in some hallowed cave wherein passes redemptive rites, overhead a darkness into which we cannot see but from which the acolytes view us with sympathy.

There was a multifaceted building, not square but tall and narrow, it had maybe five or six sides angled for views of the Sound. It was difficult to determine its precise structure, to distinguish the recesses and projections, but atop this building was a massive flagpole with a tremendous flag that blew constant and lazy. As I lay awake for those hours, I would watch the flag blowing and then scan the room as if some angel were due to appear and tell me the secret of my future with this beautiful woman who lay sleeping in my arms, this form that contained the soul that was meant to bond with my own, these two souls intended to bond since their creation, which was time’s creation as well.

Though I was sure of this, I could not be sure what the future held for us here and wished that the angel would appear. For in the night, sleepless, I suspected that since the bond between people is real, incontestable, yet is not tangible and cannot be proven, that the intention, the plan of the bond in itself must have a kind of soul. And from there I thought that as the bond between people if neglected can disintegrate, if the soul of this bond is subject to entropy, so too can the soul of the individual decay if it is neglected and not cared for as a separate entity, held above worldly concerns.

I wished that the angel would come and tell me what our mortal days had in store for me and she who lay at my side, for I could prove nothing of the soul of the bond between us, could not prove its eternal life, could not prove it was not bound to the principles of heat death.

This is my beloved and this is my friend.

And if I could not be sure of this, could I be sure that my own soul would not slip perilously into desuetude were I to be negligent, preoccupied with worldly concerns? Could I be sure that my own soul and the soul of all my bonds would not become merely a memory lasting my mortal days, a memory and a shadow of what had once passed. The disintegration of the unattended soul. The soul an energy that can be destroyed.

When my eyes would close, I would fear the angel would appear and that I would not be awake to see her. And I would awaken because of this fear, not tired. Alert. Then I would turn my head to the left to look out the windows and there would be the flag blowing like a standard of the camp. It would be three or four in the morning and I’d be awake on maybe eight hours sleep over the last three days. But alert and not tired, quite anxious for something to begin. What, I did not know. The flag would be blowing in the breeze. Blowing very lazily and slowly, nearly dropping against the flagpole at times then being drawn taut as the high breeze gained. I’d look away and as I looked about the room for the hiding angel I would wonder if the flag were still blowing. When I looked back out the window, it would be.

She’d be sleeping, barely making a sound. I’d lift and turn my head toward her very slowly and gently and look at her face. Her eyes would be closed and there’d be no tension. Neither the tension of worry and nervousness and sadness nor that wondrous tension of smiling and laughing, of contentment. I could not see her breathing and only knew that she was by the warmth that caressed my hand when I moved it from behind my head and laid it on my chest, when I would lift my left arm so that my hand would dangle dust-light when I traced my fingertips along the curve of her eyebrow and cheek, tracing with the touch of a feather that unnamed area where the brow becomes the cheek.

And I would lay my hand upon her face so light a blade of grass could have fallen between, would mold my hand to her hoping that by doing this I could learn the contour of her face and later, alone, would be able to hold my hand in that form and somehow see the outline of her pretty face, touch her presence though she be not there. I’d lay my hand on her face thinking she was sleeping. She would be sleeping but then she’d lift and turn her head toward my hand and would kiss the palm of my hand several times with strong kisses.

As she kissed my hand with those lips softer than wet and sun-melted clay, I could feel the sharpness of her perfect teeth, a sharpness that was white. Then I would move my hand and pet the wild curled hair over her head and neck and she would lay her head back down on my shoulder and would be asleep again in a minute. She would be sleeping and I listening for some proof of breathing and watching for the angel. Then I’d look again at the flag still blowing in the unceasing breeze, in my head now the soft and fading echo of the swing and big band records we’d played on the phonograph, circling around the center of the room the soundless shadow of our slow-dancing, our first dances.

In my head fragments of conversation. Why did you send me your wind-breaker in the mail? she asked. She was sitting on my lap in the only cushioned chair in the apartment. She sat on my lap because I was afflicted with sadness at how short our week together would be.

Why? I began to answer. Because I absolutely adore you. I love you and to think of you walking the streets in the rain with a cold and soaked through because you have no rain coat wracks me with pity and with the desire to care for you. I want to lay rose petals for you to walk upon. I want to bathe you in hot soapy water, lily-scented, and to dry you with clean soft linens. I want to wrap you in wool and warm you outside with a good fire and warm you inside with brandy or bourbon. I want to caress from you the cramping chill and draw you into me, enclosing you, comforting you, letting you rest in my arms reclined against me, sated by a hearty meal.

She was silent then for a minute. I asked her what was wrong.

Nothing, she said.

Tell me, I said.

I’ve never felt cared for quite like this. I asked her whether that were a bad thing. She said it was not.

Fragments of tastes, of scents. As we danced she pressed her chin to my collar and I could feel the cool draught of her smelling my neck.

Mmm. I love your cologne, she said.

What do you like about it?

It’s fresh and smells like cinnamon, but a musky cinnamon. Thou art mine young buck, art thou not? she asked using the language of her Quaker heritage, that language she used when she was being most poetic and sincere. For that language hearkened back to scripture, and she would not issue forth such a reference frivolously.

Yes, I am your young buck. And then she placed her left hand behind my head and embraced me about the waist with her right arm and pulled me toward her until our mouths pressed tightly. She kissed me. And her lips melted beneath mine as honey. From her kiss an intoxication stronger than the Myrrh-low.

While she lay sleeping, I recalled many of these fragments of conversation from the week previous. We spent three or four nights this way, me sleeping only a couple of hours a night and she sleeping soundly until I accidentally woke her. Every night I would watch the flag and wonder why I was watching it, what was forming in my mind as I watched it and awaited the angel and held my beloved and my friend, sleeping in my arms.

The city was the heart of an unknown beast. As was any city to me, as was any unfamiliar town in any foreign country. When I traveled I also did not sleep. I did not lay awake but roamed the night, searched the heart in its darkest and most honest state. Looking for clues, it seemed, though I did not recognize the clues until much later, after I’d left and returned to that dull familiarity I called home.

When I did recognize the voice of a stranger, the blowing of debris along a side walk, the silhouette against a curtain of some man sitting late at night watching television, the sound of an English woman calling through the house Richard! Richard, it’s for you, Richard! when I did recognize that these were clues, it was worthless because I didn’t know what was the puzzle or the mystery I was trying to solve. Yet when I traveled I did not sleep and ventured out early in the morning, returning to my room at the hostel or bed and breakfast, returning as if there would be a message waiting for me. There never was. And that drove me back out to the busy streets of evening, and later to the empty streets of night that contained so much more life than during the day, but a life sometimes so still that is not recognized by many as being alive.

It was four o’clock one night toward the end of the week. I had not wandered the city alone yet, as I am wont to do, compelled to do, and told her I might. She saw the restlessness burning in my eyes. She looked confused. What was to see? Isn’t it dangerous? Why would I want to leave her? Finally saying she would go with me, sitting up, sleepy and pulling the sheets and blanket from her, but still looking confused and somewhat hurt.

That she wanted to be with me in my most isolated state either to join me in my search to discover the unknown heart of the city or to watch over me as some divine guardian appointed to my safety and guidance, that she would leave the warm bed to be with me, to be my partner in these maniacal journeys – to or from what I did not truly know – steadied me, and I lay on the mattress and pulled her down beside me and told her I did not need to venture out and would not. That it was becoming unnecessary. I don’t think she fully grasped the implication.

She was sleeping and I was lying awake waiting for the angel and the flag was blowing, the city not making a sound to any but me and that sound only a whisper through the window, a cajoling, fading whisper Come out. The city is revealing her secrets. Come and learn her secrets. The breeze was gently slicing through the open window and over the mahogany sill, over the floor and chilling my exposed arm. I was glad to be blocking the draught from reaching her.

After a couple of hours of her sleeping and my lying there I began to think about how much time we’d wasted over the past seven years. It was mostly my fault, partly the fault of fate or a god whose greatest control over us is his tactful manipulation of our own ignorance, of those truths which we believe we understand but which he has merely allowed us to apprehend. Of the circumstances and our duties, of the missed signals and misunderstood silences. Of the foolish decisions that would have one available when the other was not, and then, within months, the roles reversing. In each new romance trying to believe we’d found the right one but knowing something was missing. That they were not the one.

We were both old enough to know what our soul was whispering and how important that was, but too young to act, to overcome the reasoning that stood between us, to see that the reasoning was not just, indeed, rather the offspring of ill-founded convictions and faint-hearted resolution.

I lay ruing all the time I could have known such wonders as this week had shown – hearing her call my name and seeing her approach as I came through the gate at the airport, the slow drive back through the city, showing me around her new apartment, preparing our dinner and dressing the finger she’d cut while cooking the night before, drinking the red wine together, sleeping under the same roof for the first time, parting at morn, cleaning her apartment while she was away and then spending the afternoons together, about the city, hiking the mountains in the outlands, picnicking in the park and climbing the observatory, drinking martinis on a deck overlooking the Sound, going to market together, dancing together at The Vogue, kissing at red lights, smiling to the small audience warmed by our affection and telling us so from their cars – this belonging sought for seven years.

I lay regretting what was lost and cherishing those precious and rare moments we were fortunate enough to share over the past seven years, those moments that are to me like miracles that remind us two millennia later that the man was sent by a God of uncommon love, those moments which, in recollection, although I could determine to be neither dream nor real were no less than prophetic.

We can never know God with certainty, as we can never know man with certainty. But man is before us constantly, displaying evidence should we observe. If man is created in the image of God, might we learn something of divine love by observing the love that remains when freed from the chains of the world?

As I lay in recollection, some tears gathered in my eyes and my chest began that stuttered breathing. But I stilled myself, not wanting to awaken her. The tears subsided and began to dry where they had trickled over my temples. I had failed in stilling myself, though, for she pressed herself tighter to me and buried the side of her face into my chest and held fast to me and pulled me toward her, draping one leg over both of mine. All these elements of her movement seeming to pull me together like a blanket wind-torn from a clothesline which she had caught and was gathering away from the damp ground.

What’s wrong? she asked, her voice husky and sensual with sleep.

Nothing, I whispered.

Tell me.

There’s nothing to tell.

She lifted her head and propped herself up on her elbow and looked down at me. She saw right away that I had not slept again, my eyes still wide and alert. Hers partly closed and as angelic as those of divine servants who do not have mortal tension because they do not share this struggle. But as I looked at her again I could see a tension come over her, her eyes and face subtly frowning. My eyes flooded again.

Her face became grave as she looked down at me and she touched me with those clay-soft hands and stroked the side of my face as a hot trickle streamed down both my temples.

This blessing we have over even the angels, that we can touch and ease the suffering, console the worries of an untouchable soul. The soul and the touch. The two combining to create that which separates us from all other mortal creatures. From the soul and our ability to express the soul through touch, compassion.

Oh, Darling. Tell me what’s wrong.

But I could not talk. She positioned herself on her knees and bent over me and wrapped her left hand under my head and with her right hand embracing me, pressed between my back and the mattress, she drew me toward her, lifting and turning me to embrace me tighter. She held me so tight, so tight, it was an embrace that was not human. That it could cause such force without crushing my ribs and rather than suffocating, calmed.

Please tell me, Darling. What is it?

How could I say what I’d been thinking when I had not thought it in words.

Through all the structure of night threads a breeze, as it has for all time, pressing, pressing. Unseen. Unknowable. The breeze cannot be seen and its only proof of existence is the blowing of a flag, the chilling of flesh. Its existence is proven only by those who see it.

The cloth blows. As through the night roams a hidden life, secrets revealed of a city that are told only to those who wander, who follow after the sirenic song. A breeze that has been for all time and is only known when observed, as a love that has always been and has sought merely the vessels in which it could be contained and shared. The soul comes and love poured in and only to those who observe is it ever revealed, as a breeze is proven by the blowing of cloth.

Each moment slips away like a ripple in the fabric. A new moment upon the unceasing breeze bells the cloth into new ripples. We sleep. We awaken. The multitudes sleep and the secret is told to unlistening ears and is lost and lost and lost, a dust swept by the wind beyond the structure of night. As the world is guarded of its secrets, so we are guarded of ourselves. We thus learn less of the world, our only laboratory of the infinite, than we would gather were we not preoccupied with self-preservation, self-determination.

How I have waited for these days, these first steps of our mortal journey, journey of an unknown length, of untold episodes, through this city lit at night, surrounded by the darkness of the outlands and the heavens. How I have waited for the beginning of this time with you, with your love, our love, complete. Seven years is no short trek alone through sleeping cities, following whispered voices that prove to be the misguiding sound of chronic sleepers.

She was clinging tightly to me. My voice a whisper and broken in the cool air of the night, the chill breeze over the sill.

So long I have waited, but it seems now, after our time together, that I was not waiting alone as I thought, as I made myself believe.

She waited until I’d finished speaking and then until our breathing was calm before answering.

I have been waiting, too, Darling. It’s true. Don’t you know my door has always been open for thee? I have been here though you turned me away. I bided my time in the company of strangers, watchmen in the city who hurt me and keepers of a selfish fortress who tried to ravage that which I knew was thine. But my soul and my desire awaited thee. It is right, finally. Nothing has been so right.

That we have always been, I know as though it has been written, that we have merely searched the birth that would lend form to what had existed only in ether. I know that we will always be, even after these forms are dust. The constancy, Sweetheart, good Lord, the divine constancy.

As she embraced me with that inhuman pressure, I felt a shift inside her and the tension that had been of compassion became of sorrow. She had begun to cry and as quickly as she gave way to sleep, she gave way to weeping. I could feel soaking through my flannel shirt the hot moisture of her tears and the warmth of her breath. When she regained control she whispered, now checking her voice.

I know. I believe. But I don’t understand why it must hurt. Why if we have finally knocked down the barriers that were between us and we are so happy, why must there be hurting and sadness? Why must there be parting?

She finally cooled the panicked heat of separation and of lost time by suggesting that those seven years may have been the necessary path that led us one to the other. Our breathing had eased. Around our eyes, a moisture dried to dust. Her breath against my neck.

Pity is that there are those who do not embrace when they sleep, who flinch away from the caressing touch, who lie cold in heart and hand. The touch fails because it is merely flesh. The flesh hollowed of all soulful bond. The hell of incompatibility so common, yet so few recognize and fewer acknowledge.

Here she lay, her skin flawless, milk poured over the marble of a recumbent statue from the cinquecento, hair fanned about her head like a halo, her face shining against the glow, the air drifting from her laden with the scent of orange blossom commingling with lavender soap, beads of moisture about her neck and the moon when it shone on the drops making a golden chain. Limbs interwoven all the night, the woof and the warp together forming a single cloth, our tangled limbs clinging us delightfully together, never too hot, breathing never thwarted, never turning away.

Clinging as you might dream it should and can be.

I could hear birds beginning to sing down in the saplings and weeds and ferns overgrowing the alley, that hardy flora that made the breeze aeolian and from whence those seeds and spores have drifted none knows. And high overhead the first wash of daylight as dawn crept in on stealthy toes. The flag wavered and soon began to hang limp. She gathered me in a final time before she fell off to sleep.

The room was still dark as the sun crested the eastern edge of the city. But a few beams reflected off the distant windows of the skyscrapers and shone on the wall I had spent so many hours gazing upon. And I watched the stripe of light as it crept down the wall and across the floor and to the foot of the mattress. I was growing very tired and she was sleeping soundly in my arms. My eyes were heavy and closing as day rushed in constant and proud like a militia who has invaded our city but who has yet to conquer us.

I wanted to watch the strip of reflected sunlight until it disappeared. It was on my hand as I stroked her arm and as it crept over us it grew smaller and smaller until it was a round dim glow. I kissed her forehead. She nuzzled her face against me and moaned. The spot of reflected sunlight paled as it crept along until it was a lambent glow on her face and an aura within her hair.

I did not know what was happening until much later that morning when I realized I was waking from a deep and restful sleep, she resting her chin on my chest and calmly watching me.

[This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance or similarity to actual persons or events is purely coincidental. The author bears no responsibility for any damages that may occur to actual persons based upon this writing.]