Thursday, November 09, 2017

The Diva

   The cacophony in his head was the deafening opposite of the stillness around him. Her voice, loud en clear, overruled everything. Something he wanted to avoid at all costs.

   He sat at the red comfortable chair with the soft lining which was designed for his needs. And this indeed, was very expensive. Each chair on it's own was £ 1500. Ridiculous amount of money, fortunately it were only 6 and not a whole theatre. But even then he had been more than willing to pay for them.


    While leaning backwards, he modified the chair to his own comfort and allowed his thoughts to wander off, hoping that thinking about her might also reduce the noise that swirled round and round with false tones.
    He recalled her face and hoped this time it would be calm although he knew the main feature of it was her mouth and that was never calm. How stupid to have fallen in love with that same mouth which was at the time her attraction, particularly to him being a bachelor who lived on his own for too long.

    He met her at the birthday party of his best friend. He never meant to go but this was friend's 40th birthday and a 'Bal Masqué'. He liked that, he did not often appear in public and definitely not at parties but this way he was going to be slightly incognito. Not that he was easily recognized because he was famous (which he wasn't) but he just did not like large crowds.
And one other thing was that he was extremely rich and women, particularly single women, had a nose for money. They smelled it and immediately behaved like cats in heat, something he hated! It made him immune for the female species. But with a masque he would be fairly safe.

    Blame the masque that he fell for her mouth. Of course it was the most visible part of her face apart from her chin which revealed a determined character but that is not what he noticed. No, it was her mouth as beautiful as a rose in full bloom. He wasn't a poet but the phrase 'a rose in the morning dew' crossed his mind. He watched it from a distance and could not take his eyes of it.
    Her lips were so fascinating that the world around him disappeared. He stood in the middle of a universe without sounds and people. The space was empty and in this emptiness floated her mouth with the moving lips like wings as if they weren't attached to her.
    The thin air around him wasn't cold but warm and comfortable. He couldn't remember if her mouth made his blood boil or the warm thin air. Or both, he did remember he fell in love, deeply in love, without being introduced to her.

    The mist dissolved and very slowly the sounds of tinkling champagne glasses laughter and conversations returned.
A male voice next to him asked him if he was alright and without turning round to the man he said he was fine and added: “thank you for asking.”
    He shook his head an realized he must look like a fool although the beautiful mouth smiled and moved towards him. It was then when he noticed it belonged to a woman almost as tall as he was. He looked into green eyes behind a very simple but expensive masque. A warm voice said: “I don't think we met before”. When he agreed, they exchanged names and started a conversation. He needed all his willpower to listen to her words (which were many) and not to fix his eyes on her lips. Although he had relationships before with women he went to bed with, he never had the desire to kiss them the very first moments of their first meetings but now he only wanted one thing: kissing her. And not a social kiss, or a kiss between two friends no, he wanted to press his lips against hers until she opened her mouth to welcome him. He wanted his tongue to dance with hers in an erotic rhythm and he did not care he was at the birthday party!

    With these memories he moved in his chair, a little restless because his emotions balanced between relief and grief and he did not feel comfortable with both. Why did he marry her so soon? He surprised family, friends and society. Even the newspapers that never wrote about him before, headlined “Most desired bachelor found his Eva” (why on earth did his parents name him Adam...)

    She did not only have a beautiful mouth but also brains and organisation talents. In no time she organized their wedding and sent out numerous invitations to people he had never heard of before and who she called 'colleagues' or friends. If he had not been so very much in love at the time, inviting these people who were mainly in the showbizz, must have set off numerous alarm bells. But the bells kept quiet and only rang when it was far too late.

    It did not take her long after the marriage to convince him of her many talents like performing, singing and being an actress of high level. Well, not discovered yet but with his help (read; money and status, after all he did not only have a double barrelled name, no, he had three names and a long forgotten title) she was finally going to break through.
    Strangely enough he never heard her singing (not even in the shower but this might have been because the always showered together), nor seen her performing. And when it finally happened, in full public in the music room in his Manor, he was shocked. Not just a little bit but deeply shocked. At first he could not believe how a beautiful mouth and a warm sensual voice like hers, produced a noise that could only be described as an old unmaintained unidentifiable agricultural machine that tried to plough it's way through sticky clay.
    It was awful, terrible, shocking and above all embarrassing because she did not stop! She went on and on, looking over the heads of the poor spectators that were too polite to cover their ears wit their hands.
He wanted to crawl under his chair, fly to the ceiling, dissolve in thin air (maybe not a wise thing to do), everything to move away from her singing as far as possible. And by the look of their guests, every body had the same idea. And even so more the so called 'colleagues and friends' from their wedding party.

    Even after all those years his cheeks turned red in embarrassment. And what ever he tried to stop her, to convince her to search for other talents (she must have at least one he hoped), she kept believing she was The Star the world was waiting for. He sighed and was the producer that organized her first official concert, still thankful. Agreed, they planned it together to make her see that the large audience wasn't at all polite enough to let her go on. People who paid for her performance were most likely going to shout and whistle.

    Fortunately for her, it never happened. Yes, she was going to perform, people were waiting for her to enter the stage but when she did, her high healed shoe got strangled in her enormous dress of which the skirt was made of numerous layers of lace. Before someone could offer help, she fell off the platform in between the people of the orchestra and indeed, broke her neck.
Her audience still wanted their money back but not before the next day because they thought it was part of her act and applauded and laughed.......

Photo: @marshallubx (Instagram)
   
   In the old abandoned and forgotten Manor his now fading and decaying private theatre with the red chairs and curtains (the colour of her mouth) the blue walls and the large mirror instead of a scene decoration is the only witnesses of his desire to stare at the reflections of an empty stage, empty chairs and to absorb the valuable and admirable stillness.





Word of thanks
: the photo of @marshallubx (Instagram)) inspired me to write this story and I was given permission to use the photo as an illustration for which I am very grateful. Thank you Marshall!

Links: please visit the beautiful Instagram account of @marshallubx

Note: the story is pure fiction! A figment of my imagination!

Helen

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