walking down the street, naked
This short story-like essay was written as a part of writing practice suggested in Neil Gaiman's Masterclass on the art of storytelling. The practice had to do with remembering a childhood event, or remembering a particularly scary event, and writing about it truthfully. That being said, the following text contains unsavory details on school bullying, competitive education process and a description of teenage trauma.
“I wish you could die! Just die already, you ugly freak!” yelled a girl, getting up from behind a hand-made shadow play screen. Her Little Bo-Peep face now bore a strange resemblance to a piece of chewed gum: still rosy, but twisted, bent out of the normal shape. Her voice, almost coquettish in class, seemed to turn into an alien signal, a radio interference in my ears. Just one long indecipherable screech.
Our school was considered one of the best educational institutions in the whole city. At least one time in three or four months, the class was supposed to gather one hour before the lessons started. The classroom teacher then announced that, in two weeks, we’re having a ball. Or we’re going to try ourselves as actors - some Shakespeare would be really nice. Or a recital. Or a dance performance based on the topic of French revolution. Just being in this school meant that we were talented, and able, and inventive enough. Our teachers were all about making an individual star shine the brightest. Tasks were being given, the best performers were handsomely rewarded, parents were made proud. Failing to meet the expectations was, of course, not a thing. I remember we once had a classroom teacher - she hasn't lasted long - who was literally crying rivers when the expectations were not met, blaming us for being emotionless, cold-hearted little devils, utterly unable to understand or produce any art.
That autumn, it was a shadow puppet play based on a traditional fairy tale written in verse. A beautiful, albeit cliché story about a hero who, being tragically rejected from his home country, relies on a magical swan to help him with typical hero chores such as building a city, acquiring a squirrel that sings songs and cracks golden nuts, and, finally, marry the most beautiful girl in the country. Who accidentally happens to be the magical swan responsible for doing all the menial work of moving bricks and catching wild rodents.1
Now, it’s just not possible to do a shadow play alone, or it seemed so at the time. Better to take two of most promising pupils and make a rare attempt of team work happen. This one loves art and reading - let her make the puppets and read the text. That one, well, she’s good at concentration and self-management. Let her move the puppets behind the screen according to the text. Easy. A cakewalk. We’ll be victorious in no time. No other class has come up with such a strategy. Cheers, everyone.
What happened next were one or two rehearsals and a surprising amount of all-nighters, pulled by me and my mom. Mom was always a person who cared much about being made proud in front of other parents, so she volunteered to help with the puppets. I have rarely seen her engaging in any creative activities, being always busy with cooking, cleaning and driving me everywhere. These times, I've seen a magical swan of a mother, a crane wife who's making something beautiful behind the closed doors, when the lights in the house go out and everyone, except us, is sleeping. I still remember her tired face, partly covered with golden locks, partly - with shadows, a fragile silhouette bent over the pieces of paper. She traced the figures of fairy tale characters from an old book, and then traced them once more on a piece of cardboard. I thought that she was clearly enjoying this more than I was, hiding a small smile and pondering the idea of making the figures move their hands and feet. Most of the time a puppet, now she was a puppeteer, a queen of the paper kingdom, glowing in the soft greenish light of my old table lamp.
Everything went good on the rehearsals. The teacher admired my mom's handiwork and told me nothing. It was a quiet agreement between teachers, parents and pupils to simply ignore the fact that the children were relying on their parents for help or even delegating them the whole job. No one has ever praised a parent taking part in their child's creative project. I'm still wondering whether my mom, obviously a talented artist, was ever offended by that.
The play was to be shown in the school library, which haven't seen that much visitors in years. The shadow screen was installed in the middle of the passage between bookshelves. This passage led to the most compelling books of legends and lore, which, for years, had me as their loyal reader. I settled behind the screen with a book in my lap and a classmate holding the puppets by my side, feeling fussy and cramped. The library was dusty and there were no windows. I was barely able to see the text in the book before someone has finally brought the light behind the screen. In this light, the sight of my classmate's plump short fingers touching the delicate figures of fairy tale characters seemed, once more, a vision from another fairy tale, an ogre choosing whom to devour first. A remnant of breakfast, probably butter and bread crumbs, glistened on her forefinger, leaving greasy stains on the cardboard.
If you don't quite see or hear the tiger in the jungle, that doesn't mean it's not there, waiting for you, following your every movement with its fiery eyes. The old library covered all human noises - settling in a chair, coughing, scratching the itches, fixing the hair, whispering and giggling quietly. This unbearable silence of the audience on the other side of the screen was probably why I've started to read the tale even before the play had a chance to properly start. I was reading partly from the book, partly from my own memory, which often made my teachers proud. I accelerated without realizing it, the reading being a prayer or a magical spell meant to take me out of this room, back home, preferably under a blanket, with a new book. See, I really was the one who loved art and reading - but, as a child, I preferred to love it quietly, in the safety of my own abode. The spell, however, turned out to be a curse.
Time passed and I haven't noticed it passing. The fairy tale went on and on, crushing the borders of a chosen fragment and becoming something else entirely. Everything has disappeared before my eyes. I still remember how I felt blood rushing through my veins, pulsating in my temples. My involuntary partner found herself not being able to keep up with my rhythm. She whispered: "Stop it already!", and when it didn't help, she tried to nudge me, with no visible effect. I simply wasn't there. Being an honest pupil of our school, she knew what that meant - failure for both of us and for the whole class. A terrific loss. A disgrace. Worst of all, rumors that may leave a stain on her otherwise perfect reputation.
As far as I can remember, someone dragged me from behind the screen, where I was still curling - sweaty, shaking and looking definitely like a freak I was. We never talked about this with my mom. The cardboard puppets - the prince, the swan princess, the old king, the magical squirrel - were lost somewhere in the commotion. The whole class and the classroom teacher weren’t talking to me for a couple of weeks afterwards. Maybe even for a month. The untold rule was that you weren't supposed to talk with a traitor, who needed to be silenced to correct her behavior and adapt to the society of normal people. Well, the correction was not going to happen. But if I regret something at all, it's not being able to always show up uncorrected and unabridged, like that night when the screen finally fell down and I was there, locked in my own mind by my own spell.
Wise people say that writing - and I'm sure that's applicable to any form of art - may seem an act of walking down the street naked. As I eventually grew up, I started to love this act more and more, adding some jewels, some crow feathers and high-heeled shoes to the nakedness. The embarrassment should be voluntary and happen without a screen, so that I can look my audience in the eye and see them secretly scratching their itches. The pain that I try to describe, the loneliness of a monster lost in a world of humans, takes the form of a dragon one should defeat and learn how these dragons are meant to be defeated. As Alain de Botton writes in his book The Architecture of Happiness,
It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value. Acquaintance with grief turns out to be one of the more unusual prerequisites of architectural appreciation. We might, quite aside from all other requirements, need to be a little sad before buildings can properly touch us.
I dare to say that the amount of being sad, ashamed or painfully lonely needed to not only appreciate the art, but create the art should be determined by any artist on their own journey. Good news: no death is final on stage. No actor or writer or any other artist dies for real. However, if I dig deeper into my own memory, I can still feel the shivers and the sweat running down my spine.
I can still reproduce - much like listening to an old audiotape - this never-ending indecipherable screech from somewhere far away that orders me to die. I do stumble when I hear it once more, no matter how many years have already passed. But, as a writer and an artist, I aim to own it. I say to myself: "Wow, that was close. But no. Not today. Never".