Rigel and Betelgeuse – by A E Macleod
ISLAND | ONLINE ONLYR looks at their ball of thread on the floor. They are never sure when they pull the first thread where it is coming from. Is the beginning really blissfully unaware of the end?
R knows that each package of thread is 60 metres and on a good day one package is enough to make it through the day inside their apartment and to the welcome mat next door. Two is for a trip to the street to smell the day, three is to pat O’Henry the poodle across the street which is something R must do once a week, both for O’Henry and R’s wellbeing. Four is to the grocery store. Five is to see the doctor. Six is the park. They have 100 packages of thread in the apartment but they are still waiting for a shipment that has been delayed for weeks, or perhaps it has been months. For now they must go no further than the park.
*
R has been up for a while. It was 4 am when R pinned the first metre to the floor by their bed. Now it is 10 am and they have used 20 metres already. They have been pacing. They have been letting out the thread and walking, careful not to cross strands, careful not to drop a stitch.
They have already visited Anya Volkov, the elderly woman next door. Some days, if there is enough thread, they will go in and sit with Anya Volkov and listen to her stories; all Anya Volkov wants is an audience. Today they do not have enough thread for anything other than a cursory hello, a welfare check. They still have to visit the grocery store, two blocks away, as they really want bread for toast. They should also visit the doctor but it is further down the list because they want bread more. That is what the list is for, to prepare them, to plot the course every day like a beaver mapping a river for the best place to build a dam.
R has been marking their movements with thread for years to thwart the loss of time; letting it out, taking it in. R is not sure who recommended this. R isn’t even sure it wasn’t Hansel or Gretel, though string is not breadcrumbs and their apartment, the walk to the supermarket and the pond in the nearby park are hardly a dark and foreboding forest, although R cannot truthfully attest to their being no witches in the park. Once upon a time, to see what it was like, R travelled in a pattern that reminded them of the constellation of Orion. But was no Hunter; that was their father. Sometimes their mother had even called him Orion. It was no wonder he had tried to kill them all.
*
R has been corresponding with B for the past month. They have met online (of course). When R tells B about the Orion path (they have come to call it this), B says the best things about the constellation of Orion are its brightest stars, Rigel and Betelgeuse. These names alone are dynamite to R. Later, thinking about B, R listens to Anya Volkov’s music (Debussy’s Syrinx) drift, and melancholy eats through the walls. R dreams they are floating across a sleepy river until they disappear into a bed of reeds. When the music stops, in the silence R looks out to where birds snatch butterflies from the sky.
“The following morning R writes to B (perhaps too early on – it has only been two months). If we make this journey how far will I have to travel? If I reach out, across the divide, will your hands be there?”
The following morning R writes to B (perhaps too early on – it has only been two months). If we make this journey how far will I have to travel? If I reach out, across the divide, will your hands be there? What R really wants to see is what B will say. If B will say: Dear R, there is no proof it is even possible to expect reciprocation. At this reply everything will be confirmed and R will feel their anticipation was premature, like they were always distant moons moving away from the same celestial orbit.
When B actually replies, they say why does the hand across the divide always have to be there and why can it not be different hands for different subjects? Somewhat unsettlingly, B goes on to ask (by way of gathering information also, perhaps) is R stuck by some chance? Is R an object without motion?
R does not reply immediately.
In R an even grosser fear arises and a deeply bedded root sprouts: that B is an electron, quantum-hopping across the universe, and that R is just something in B’s path. Eventually, and changing the wording slightly, R asks if this is true. Are you an electron, B?
B replies immediately and in capital letters.
I WONDERED IF YOU WERE NO DIFFERENT TO AN UNPAIRED ELECTRON – UNBALANCED AND DESTABILISED
Immediately R feels the sting as if bees are landing on their skin. R writes several responses but deletes some soon after. Virtual dust gathers on the others. Outside, a tumbleweed on the pavement engorges itself on dying foliage. Some time later, R hits purchase on the personalised stationery they have been considering. Days later, in time and space where there has been no correspondence at all with B, and on the arrival of the new stationery, R begins to make amends, knowing they have been doing it all wrong, again.
Please tell me your physical address, R emails B. I want to send you something.
R, here is my address. B.
*
Dear B
Our relationship began and then I believe I derailed it. I have expectations of the way things should be. I am writing to hopefully set our course straight.
Our is the word R prefers to use to make the connection with B again and R will, in each of their correspondences going forth, use this word so it is as if they have already committed to a relationship in the future. Not I or You. R has already thought about writing Our first meeting will be at The Gray Tree, which until recently was R’s favourite work of art by Piet Mondrian. R won’t mention to B that it is because R wants to know genuinely what B thinks about Mondrian and secretly hopes this presents a point from which things can grow.
Perhaps Our first connection will be unspoken, only felt, R muses.
What about Our first kiss? R pauses, this is a generous leap. Nonetheless, R has let it be in the world. Our first kiss will be indescribable.
None of this makes it into the letter. Instead, R sketches a small locomotive resting at the top of a grassy knoll. Nearby a track appears in the long grass and meanders across the page, twisting and turning. There, R thinks, is a path for us to follow. R signs all their correspondence with a miniature sketch of a small flourishing oak. Then R unravels a new package of thread, hesitates and commits to the errand, to the expenditure, to the postal box at the end of the street, and sends the letter.
*
At R’s apartment, mail arrives each morning between 8 and 9 am, except on weekends.
B replies almost immediately with a sketch of their own. It is another locomotive, this time on the track heading towards the figure of R that B has placed, sitting with their back to the viewer, on the grassy knoll. R smiles, smiles too much across the morning. They write again and again. In the sketches, the train travels the pattern of Orion across the grassy knoll. After this, B begins another connection. B writes.
I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
R cannot resist the exchange that includes of all the gin joints in town she had to walk into mine, to which B delightfully replies, the only words on the page, here’s lookin’ at you kid. Each time R sees the mail arrive, they feel a flutter, and when the mail is late, R nervously waits until it does. It is three weeks after the first letter, after they have exchanged words belonging to all manner of characters including those played by Bogart, Bergman, Hepburn and Gable, that B changes things and sends a blank page.
What truth are they circling now? Are they like two ships at sea? R feels untethered in the universe, but for now, for the first time, they oddly like it. They feel like a new star, a billion years from the end.
“What truth are they circling now? Are they like two ships at sea? R feels untethered in the universe, but for now, for the first time, they oddly like it. They feel like a new star, a billion years from the end.”
*
Blank pages travel between them for weeks until it is almost a joke; then a postcard arrives: Seascape near Les Saintes-Maries-de-la Mer by van Gogh. On the back, R finds B has written ‘One night I went for a walk by the sea along the empty shore. It was not gay, but neither was it sad – it was – beautiful.’ Vincent. After some research, R sends B a photocopy of Mondrian’s View from the Dunes with Beach and Piers, Domburg and on the back: Our first date will be to the beach. ▼
Image: E Colbert, Astronomy Without a Telescope, 1869, p 35
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