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November 4, 2007

Nanowrimo: dust

Back at the hall, Mary and the Major, favoured recipients of the aubergine paint, are dusting. Or, more accurately, Mary is dusting, the Major is directing matters with out lifting a finger. He’s wearing a fine knit beige jumper with darned elbows over a white and red checked shirt. Slacks also. And although she can’t see, she knows he’s wearing thin brown socks pulled up sharp up the shin bone. He looks clean and annoyed and he smells of soap. He always looks annoyed, thinks Mary. She gets an urge to dust him, the old fossil. She looks at her duster, moves it in his direction, but he’s not looking at her, he’s staring up at the ceiling, his shoulders slightly stooped still, giving him a weird origami quality. He shouldn’t fold like that, really, it’s not natural, especially given his continual moaning about his gout and arthritis. She told him to join the weekly yoga class, but he said he didn’t believe in religion. She told him it wasn’t religion, just stretching, then he said the strangest thing- then it isn’t proper yoga, he said, I spent three years in the Kashmir, he said, they didn’t do it to be flexible, they did it to live better lives. We just take things, he said and she remembers that he looked even more annoyed than usual, that his eyes looked liquid behind his glasses, we take other people’s ways of living and we murder them, we suck them dry for our own purposes and take all meaning they might have had out of them. Leave them dry, leave them as dust. And expect them to be grateful that we took an interest. We deserve all we get, he said, except in the end, they got it worse, and that means I can’t sleep at night because of it. She didn’t know what to say to that.

Mary stops dusting over the window sills (which are quite a stretch for her, the village hall having been an old Methodist church with arching high windows) and runs her hands over the feathers. The Major grimaces in the corner, where he appears to be shifting chairs, for no known purpose, as far as she can see- you’re just redistributing the dust, he says, you should do that outside. She keeps rubbing the feathers. She feels foolish doing it, but also, brave. Dust, she thinks, it’s just dust.

Posted by scumkitten at November 4, 2007 2:04 PM

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