Twisted Lullaby VI-VII
jellyfish juice, bulletproof bubbles, other words
This continues the thread of Twisted Lullaby I-V
VI
If Goddie were a child, I would be his sister, and he would love soap bubbles. He would love everything soapy, except for unchildlikely soapy, for instance grown-up shampoo that stings your eyes without mercy and tastes bitter on your tongue for hours, as if it’s made not from liquid soap but from the juice of jellyfish that were caught in the seas and oceans and squeezed, bottled and sent to all the children of the world, both to poor families and to rich ones, so that all the children of the world would be supplied with such jellyfish shampoo, could wash themselves, splash about in the foam, and blow soap bubbles, sturdy ones, bulletproof ones, that drift on the wind like jellyfish in water or dandelions in air, from which sometimes they also press juice, make dandelion wines, and also add to shampoos, so it would be bitter with a particular dandelion flavour, and your eyes would sting as if it were late May now, the teachers about to hand out the year’s marks, and the summer holidays about begin with joy.
I would make bubbles for him from children’s shampoo and sugar syrup, I would wake up early in the morning, I would read somewhere how to make soap bubbles at home, I would mix them up in a glass, I would find my old bubble-blowing wand as well, I would wake up Goddie and we would go together to blow bubbles, the kind that don’t burst even when they touch the ground, because I would have mixed them very well, I would mix them every day to learn, to become a professional mixer of soap bubbles, so that Goddie would always get good bubbles and he would never cry, neither from them bursting, nor from them getting in the eyes, neither in his, nor in mine — in no one’s, perhaps only in nasty teachers’ and bad people’s. He would blow them very well, he would do it every day to learn and become a professional blower of bubbles for me and for himself — enormous ones, shiny ones, rainbow-iridescent ones, like light, airy and transparent pearls. They would become as precious as real pearls, and all the adults looking down at us would run after them, jump and catch them with their hands or even with a net, like butterflies, but the bubbles would dodge away from them, and the adults would get angry, swear, but there’d be nothing they could do, Goddie’s bubbles would be ever so nice, everyone would praise him, kneel down to him to become his friends, and so he’d blow them more bubbles, and he would tell everyone that it was his lil’ sister who made them for him, and he? He what? He just blows them for his own pleasure, not even because he likes bubbles so much (that goes without saying), but because he likes blowing them, and everything else that happens with them he hates with a black-very-black hatred — both the crowds of bubble-catchers running after him, and the fact that they’re not interested in exactly how he blows them, only interested in why, as if “because” weren’t enough, and that they — whether deliberately or accidentally — pop them, the earth gets covered with soap, it begins to sting, dandelions stop growing on it.
They would call me the guilty one, because I’m always the irreverent, irresponsible, irrational, completely-irr-anything silly girl who put the idea into poor wayward child’s head to blow bubbles. They’ll never let me sit with him again. They’ll put me in a dark-very-dark corner, where I’ll stand and stare resolutely and dutifully, they’ll take away the glass with soap from Goddie, and they’ll put him in hospital, because without the possibility of blowing bubbles he’ll get completely upset and fall ill, after all he’s ill inside out (a sickly boy, just give him a reason), he’ll be with a cold on a hospital cot in a ward with a sign “Here Lies Goddie” under a heavy old blanket, he’ll lie there, eat tasteless hospital porridge, sniffle, stream with snot and blow bulletproof bubbles from it. World society will lose all interest in such completely non-pearly and non-precious bubbles, and then in Goddie himself, and then in me, they’ll lose interest so strongly that they’ll forget about us, renounce us, and Goddie will remain lying in the ward, and I’ll remain standing in the corner, thinking about my unacceptable behaviour, until I understand the full implications of my mistake, that we both needed to fall ill and at once, so we could sit at home together with my lil’ brother, watch Brazilian soap operas and make snotty bubbles.
VII
If lil’ brother had such a lil’ sister, he would call her his heroine. “My heroine” — that’s what he’d say, like Hera, queen of gods, goddesses, and goddies, like heroin needles around which Hera laid out their joint path to school, over the bumpy bumps along the little paths, so as not to go “ploop” accidentally into a pit full of needles, so as not to perish by the tragic death on the determined way to first grade. There, at the first assembly in line formation with the other first-graders under the onslaught of teachers, they’d definitely ask him, tell us, and who is this with you all such a radiant queen, to which he would answer just so “My heroine”, and he himself would introduce himself to everyone as her hero, so that everyone would know for certain who was who out of them. Because she would be everything to him, she would find him a path across any landscapes, whether it be the path home, the path to school, and even the path past the boys’ toilet at this very school, a place overgrown with all kinds of disgusts and detestations, from whose smell your eyes stung, a place he was afraid to go and instead always ended up in the girls’ toilet, whilst no one was there, whilst his heroine guarded the entrance from all sorts of invasions.
Without her there would be no him, and without him there would be no her. Their existence would be mutually conditioned and mutually inevitable, despite the fact that they wouldn’t be twins and would be born several years apart — first her, then him, and if it had all been the other way round, everything would have remained exactly the same, they would have been born anyway, would have found each other and become lil’ brother and lil’ sister to each other, would have taken each other to school and guarded each other from all sorts of worldly miasmas. Yes, that happens too. So the heroine said in an oath, and the hero answered with an oath back.
When he walked through space devoid of any friendliness, and bits of paper with name-calling, giggles, and nasty looks flew at him in flocks, each and every one of them had to meet the protective bubble, smashed at full speed against its bulletproofness and fell down dead, sometimes in such quantities that a little heap formed around lil’ brother, and he’d step over it and walk on. There, into that bubble, only his heroine could enter, because it was she who had heroically created it, or rather was creating it by her presence, as if it arose by itself, naturally, simply when she turned up nearby, as if someone was blowing it for them. She would take him by the hand and lead him further across the landscapes, and he would be silent and not make a sound, because he knew that she heard him anyway, though sometimes he was afraid that this wasn’t so.
That’s exactly how he wanted it to be, that there would be him, his heroine Hera, and around them — a bubble, even if a soapy one, the main thing was that it should have a reserve of strength and special bitterness, so that no nasty creatures would dare to touch it or bite it, because the bubble would sting them, burn them, dissolve the attackers into substances, as if it were made not from children’s soap, but squeezed from the jellyfish themselves. When it became really sad, he even wanted this someone who was blowing bubbles for them to blow such a special bubble that they could hide inside it together and fly by the will of the wind far-far away to the edge of the world. There they would sit down, dangling their little legs, and send into open space flocks of soap bubbles for ten thousand million years, until finally all the jellyfish juice in the world ran out, and all the jellyfish, unfortunately, were extinct. But even then they together with his heroine would continue blowing them, now snotty ones. “Would” continue, anyways.