chapter 8
Through the entire royal journey it didn’t happen that I stayed separately with the queen more then a minute or tow. If I wasn’t busy with the king he was busy with the queen and if she wasn’t busy with him she traveled in her own worlds. At these moments the bubble around her is so perfect that Im being careful even with the eye contact between us. There for this entire event caught me unguarded.
I traveled with the royal couple to Karmel’s forests with tents and sleeping bags. We put up an encampment. Her majesty asked me to help her shake a blanket. We shake and ran away from the dust, even when there was no dust at all . The queen laughed like a child and me too. Suddenly the king pops up in front of us, barefoot with a wild blare in his eyes, shiny knife in his hand. He said something shortly in Badulinian and disappeared in the forest.
“What was that?” I asked
“A boar. He saw fresh footprints.”
“And what is he planning to do about that?”
“Dinner.”
“He went hunting? Barefoot? With knife?”
“That is the only way he goes hunting.”
I was still holding one tip of the red blanket. The queen was holding the other one and in the middle the shaken blanket was falling. The queen brought the blanket back into the tent. I sat on the grass surrounded by little winter flowers. Below us, forested hills were all around like a green sheep herds. No sight of the road, cars, other people, not evidence to the existence of another world but ours. Just flowers and clouds and singing birds and wind that blows on foreheads.
“Do you hear that?” the queen was standing beside me.
“The wind?”
“No. under it. Listen.”
“The bird….”
“Shhh..”
Her whisper faded away and one second before she became silence it swallowed into another sound equal to it.
“Water” I said. The queen started sliding down the mountain. I follow carefully and in few moment we arrived a little water stream totally hiding behind shiny rocks. I was blinking.
“How did you find this place?”
“Plenty of road signs. Goats tracks. Clouds of butterflies. The plant and now our steps as well became a road sign.”
She dipped her feet in the water and the stream surrounded her with silver circles. A red-brownish Gecko piped behind the nearest stone. Fresh mud was mixed with the water discovering silky feet.
“You always walk barefoot” I say “And your skin stays totally smooth.”
She continues splashing her smile steady. I feel like an Idiot with my saying about her smooth skin. “I mean” I try to fix this “How can it be? Its not reasonable. A skin that rubs supposes to be robbed.”
“I never thought about it like that. I am barefoot since birth and my skin is smooth since I was born as well.”
“That’s impossible. Nature rules have no influence on you?”
“Nature doesn’t have rules. It has ways and they complied with me. In people rules I take less interest.”
“Physics isn’t human rule its physical rule. Skins that rub a lot become scratched and rude.”
She gets closer to the Gecko with a smile like that’s her best friend from high school. The gecko isn’t moving just the bowl in its chin come up and down. The queens reached her hand lift the gecko and give it to me. “Touch her stomach” she says.
The gecko looks at me. I touch carefully her stomach that spent all her life time touching rude rocks , her skin is smooth like cheek.
“Its luck this Gecko doesn’t know physics” she laughs.
She pulls out of her pocket “kit-Kat” and gives me half swallowing the other half and licking the raping paper.
“Here, that another thing about you. You eat much chocolate and sweets, much more then any woman I ever knows.”
“You got here the best chocolate I ever ate all over the world.”
“But the point is – you don’t get fat.”
“Is that the point? I can’t get the connection.”
I found myself open and close my mouth like the gecko. Finally I managed to say: “What do you mean? Sugar is fattening. Thousand of concentrated calories become fat.”
“Ah” the queen is happy assisting me “Maybe that is the reason I don’t gather stuff just change it.”
“How do you change sugar?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think about all that but now that you are asking I remember knowing someone that gathered sugar. She had half bitten snacks in her purse and she would terminate chocolate on the way to the cashier at the grocery store. She wouldn’t eat desert but use to lick others plate on the way to the kitchen.”
“And according to you she gathered the chocolate physically in her body?”
“I don’t know. Its just clear that when you eat chocolate that way its hard to let it out of the body. When I eat sweets especially chocolate I smile immediately. Did you notice that? Its like a stream flowing in me and every time I laugh or dance or paint or pet a dog I release sugar. It goes through me I don’t need to gather because I always have more chocolate and she pulled out another “kit-Kat”.
Her legs wondered in under water circles, the sun had warmth of the most summer December of the last 60 years and she took of her shirt, living her hips covered with her big African green blanket. I am used to see the royal couple nude. I must confess that I got used faster to the king nude. I don’t know any body that met the Badulina queen and didn’t fell immediately in love. As same as I don’t know anybody that hates Dolphins or disguised from flowers. Any way, I’m watching her now and wonder if we are not in love with young lady that is about to get insane or maybe is retarded. She notices my shrieked eyebrows. I decide to speak straight directly from my sub- conscious stream: “His royalty at list is total connected to this world, you can put him on a talk-show with a politician, scientist or a rock star and he will communicate with everyone. You I think will not say a word.”
She didn’t say a word like Hologram. Some people think that she is an invented figure. At that moment I wondered as well.
“Maybe you are not real. Maybe you’re an optical illusion?”
She wetted her hair shake it and covered me with cold water drips. “Is that feels real?”
“Yes. Yes. But where is your contact to the world? You know about the
“These names sound familiar.”
“That’s it, your royalty, I don’t mean to hurt but you live in fantasy, you are disconnected from reality.”
She sprinkled me again, “That is the reality Dum-Dum. I never got lost in my life. Never was hungry. Never been miserable. I adjust to any place. I understand people regardless their language, I have no concepts about the world, I have nothing to say on TV but the world is very simple, nothing here to understand, just enjoy, leave good. Why do think I’m more disconnected then someone who takes interview for TV since all his life he read books on war-missiles?”
“When I watch you I can’t seriously say even one second that you are disconnected. You are attached to every send piece or any creatures that pass by you then any other person I know, but then I watch what I call ‘my world’ and over there you have almost no attachments so what does it say about my world?”
She was not on the conversation any more. This is the world where we are not connecting: the words. The Badulina language has very few words and the queen is hardly speaking even considering Badulina’s language. And right, Ok, that doesn’t makes her more disconnected then a nuclear missiles professor , but it does make her more disconnected then the regular person: the one that wasn’t digging all his life in a book shelf but knows about Saadam Husein> But what does it help life to know who is it Saadam Husein? Is that gives someone a practice benefit over the queen who lives so easily like the entire world is her play ground> And is the fact that someone knows who is Saadam makes him more beneficial to the humanity then this queen who lives around her constant line of smiley peaceful people?
The more I thought about that the more it became shivering clear to me: I am deeply in love with the Badulina’s queen and I lost my judgment sense and I wish the king will catch that boar already and will return before I make fun of my self in the eyes of everyone.
I returned to the tent to make sandwiches. I heard the queen giggling from the royal tent. I came to see. Their sleeping bag was covered colored leafs that the king managed to spread before he went hunting: wild roses, primroses, and yellow orchids, golden falling leafs.
Outside the queen made us bread with Avocado and Garlic and Hot Pepper. I drank beer and on the second beer I dare again: “On one hand he is decorating your bed like a Latin lover and on the other hand he gets up and walks whenever he feels like with no questions for limitless time. You can’t know what to expect from him.”
“I don’t want to know” she laughed with pleasure, “I want a king. Someone that lives with no rules and limitations.”
“What would you do if instead of boar it was a woman he liked?”
“It happen sometimes, much more then boars.”
“And you don’t care?”
“One month after the crowning celebration we were in a market at Tangier. In ocean of colors. Spices, sounds and smells we hear a flute. A high Sudanese with long curly hair and shiny chocolate skin and white teeth like the sea’s fume. He sells two flat. His royalty checks them. The Sudanese plays around me scurf of hot chocolate and you know how I am with chocolate. I dance closing my eyes melt and taste sweet sweet.”
“And the king?”
“When I open my eyes the king wasn’t there he bought the two flutes and went.”
“Went? Where?”
“Went. I love chocolate he likes meat.”
“One second your royalty, why did he bought the two flutes?
“He liked them he says that was one of his best purchases in his life.”
“And he left you alone, dancing closed eyes in front of a Sudanese god that just sold all his products and finished his working day?”
“Exactly”
“And something happened?”
“Something”
“May I ask what?
“Chocolate”
I felt heavier and heavier with this situation. Until that day I barely looked at her and here we are talking about Sudanese chocolate and if it was only me I was frozen and couldn’t say a word, a sound, but I was on a mission, public mission and it was my duty to explore for truth:
“But now with the boar, it has nothing to do with me right? I mean… He didn’t waked to live me alone with you right?”
“Also then he didn’t by the flutes for me and he loves boar meat but he saw me and you having fun together and I’m sure he is happy.”
She stared me like a puppy: “why?”
Courage you are on duty…
“Your royalty, I don’t commit the sin of low self esteem but I can read reality You two: king and queen so sure so connected and Me with my question argue doubt not understanding I have nothing to offer that the king don’t have already.”
“The king is my best companion right now he is my chocolate but I don’t eat only chocolate and he doesn’t eat only boars. He isn’t here right now and you are and I see you, all of you, you are curious you are open you make his royalty bloom you are a very sweet presence.”
“Sweet presence, that’s sound like biscuit.”
She already was sitting very close, with two long fingers she touched my eyelashes and instinctively I closed my eyes.
What to do now to close everyone eyes? To darkened the screen? Or maybe I should be persisting with fighting media, non-compromising seek after the truth? The right to the public to know, I believe, canceled any other judgment: I closed my eyes and breathe. I felt an echo of breathing on my right temple two light palms on the cheek bones. I smelled Avocado and “Kit-Kat” little round lips kissing the forehead above the nose. In the place where she kissed a silver circle opened. Very real. Hundred years later I felt her smile rub for a moment on my lips and I smiles as well.
The king returned after the sunset, dusty all over, unexpectedly there was no bleeding corps of boar on his shoulders: “I chased him hours, miles until we arrived his cave. He stood there with his back to the wall snoring and pointing his sharp teeth at me. I prepared my knife and suddenly I heard more snoring from the side. From the corner piped at me female animal with 2 little puppies and they watched me fearless. I said good night and walked away.”
“And so the Badulina’s king became a vegetarian?” I asked.
“Not so quickly” he opened his backpack and snatched out a big fat partridge. “Very convenient animals, patiently waits until the stone hit them.”
We roasted it with Lemon and Rosemarie and ate vegetables salad and roasted potatoes. The king played the flute I drummed on my knees and the queen sang. Later this evening we sat around the fire letting the coffee boil.
“Did you have a good day?” asked the king.
“Fantastic” answered the queen.
“Great” I answered along.
The king watched me for a moment and smiled. He turned to me.
“I hope you didn’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
“No” I smiled back at him “Nothing that you wouldn’t do.”
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