Villa del refugio
Inspired by the article "Catalonia" on Wikipedia
She was blue-eyed, Mediterranean wild and skin as fair as Caribbean skies. Her mother was from Spain — Spain but would throw a tantrum whenever someone spoke of the Spanish. Catalana. Catalana. She’d lunge out from her tobacco encrusted lungs as wine spilled onto her Moroccan caftan. We’d bend the knee. No one wanted to disrespect the lady of the house. The mistress under whose auspicious dominion we had set foot in.
We all wanted to be guests in her home. Guests in the home of the Catalana who had dammed the blue-eyed star-child. I still remember her smile - the star-child’s. Iridescent. You didn’t want to be caught within her field of vision. Many a man let go of hopes, dreams in the name of worshipping at the feet of the divine. Iridescent.
Once… Just once, I saw her. Watched her from atop a balcony as she sat by her lonesome on a grassy knoll. Iridescent. Know what that means, right? Means you never truly see a chameleon. Of course, it’s all crystal clear in hindsight.
No one knew her father but there was a rumor about town that when enemy forces marched through way back when, a man or two had their way with the Catalana. No one stood by to protect her. No one would run over and help a stranger, a filthy foreigner, the townsfolk once said. It was just a rumor. Just a rumor that we’d use to explain away the blue eyes. Blue eyes that had boys swimming to their deaths and leave married men incapable of loving their wives as, they thought, they could love blue eyes.
Johnny is still in jail. Won’t be out till I’m well past 40, they said. He blamed them blue eyes and the Catalana giving free reign to a monster. A monster, he said. Ain’t nothing you can do about a monster ‘cept kill it. ‘cept kill it.
But she’d welcome us into her home. Make us guests in that liberal utopia away from mom and dad and teacher and priest. Away from eyes that sought to find fault in kids being kids. Eyes and lips that wanted nothing more than to ruin cheap thrills with tales that filled us with spite, jaded our young minds. I walked those halls, ate from their plates, drank (don’t you tell nobody) from their vines. Didn’t see no monsters. Nothing there but the Catalana and her blue-eyed love child. Star-child.
We all loved her. Every single one of us dreamt of a day when we would hold hands knowing that we were hers. Strange. Looking back, it seems as though I wanted to be hers. To be swallowed whole and surrender all volition to the chaos of love, the liberal way.
Either way, we all wanted her. On the walk back to our wound up homes with a father who was a loosely strung together cluster of masculine tropes and a mother marred by a finely tuned resentment, we’d speak of dreams. Dreams of a life away from that town living in a house where we’d all be free with our woman. No one ever said it. No one ever said her name but we knew what woman meant. Blue-eyed star-child.
The blue-eyed star-child found me all by my lonesome one day. It was what you’d expect. She spoke of music, travel and that special place… that special place she was yet to see. That place called Catalonia. She used manufactured words. Words that she stripped and duplicated from her mother’s lips. Words like Pyrenees, Montserat, Sagrada and Barcelona. Words that had no home on her lips. Oh blue eyes do glisten when they speak. I hadn’t realized. I hadn’t realized that her hand was on my knee. Right there on my knee. Little ol’ me with an angel lauding my being. I knew what it meant… and so did she.
I was not going to walk back home with the boys that day. Didn’t have no headspace to rant or chant or sing those childish hymns dedicated to unrealistic dreams. Blue-eyed star-child had me baptized. I was no longer like them. No longer walking in a haze of what ifs but living in the maturity of it is. It is, it is, it is.
But alas, a boy will be a boy will be a boy — and whatever maturity was acquired will be squandered on command.
The Catalana never left her abode. Not once. Apparently, that was so since the birth of her star-child. She knew that the townsfolk had conflicting ideas about her kind. The townsfolk?! It was the women… the women. The women who saw olive skin, almond eyes, inspired contours as threats to their simple lives. It was the men who, given time, put a stop to flattery and romance and turned their women into wives. Given time, nothing is less appealing than being a wife. Thus, the wife seeks an object to blame. Something or someone to hate. A vessel upon which all their ill will can be thrust. Oh, poor Catalana.
And it was that same distaste for the Catalana that motivated women — wives — to tell their young sons to stay away from the blue-eyed star-child. Why don’t you ask the neighbor’s daughter out for a date? They’d say and their sons, having already been guests at la casa del catalana knew there was more to the world than good girls in long dresses that keep in polite company. That same disdain shared by wives was passed on to their daughters who saw the blue-eyed star-child as the reason no boy in town would give them an ounce of that special gift that girls craved so much; attention.
Johnny’s folks still lived in the town. Lived much like the Catalana — never set a foot outside their cabin that was slowly being taken back by the earth. As we’d walk to school, we’d pass by their home. Haunted, we thought. Haunted by the ghost of shame and guilt and contempt that warped and bent their walls into an altar of pain. We knew they were still in there. Still in there wondering where did we go wrong? Maybe, definitely, saying it’s that Catalana’s fault.
Maybe it was. I don’t know. I don’t know. But Johnny was right. He was right. The Catalana gave free reign to a monster. Free-range cattle do better. They do better. But what of the feedlot cows? What happens when, from their cages, they get to hear, maybe even watch, their counterparts roaming wild and free?
I walked in on the blue-eyed star-child one night. Walked in on her as a baptism was taking place. There was no shock, no repulsion as I stood there in awe. Not from her. Not from her as I thought, how could you do this to me? How could she? I thought… I thought I was hers.
The master seeks not approval from his servant. The servant remain silent as their master engages in vicious, cruel acts lest… lest he’d be set free. Set free to roam the deserts unable to bear the heat.
Johnny. Johnny. You were simply trying to break free, weren’t you? Wasn’t he? She’s… The monster’s fashioned new chains, Johnny. There’s no where for me to go. No way for me to run. I live in Utopia now. I live in Utopia and it’s so… it’s so beautiful that I cry myself to sleep every single night.
Just beautiful. I loved the concept of forbidden fruit personified by the blue-eyed star child (the repetition was perfect, it felt like a soft whisper.)The baptism reference is amazing. The whole story feels like a surreal dream, like a vaporous memory inside the mind of an (older now) adolescent. It’s chilling, almost like a very elaborate horror movie (like something out of Ari Aster’s films)