A Distant and Awesome Beacon
Tuesday, 6 July 1847
[ … ]
She rose to her feet with uncanny agility, as though pulled aloft by strings. She saw the other sailor at the far end of the pier, where he had found a ladder. She turned to look at me; I can remember it now as though seconds had become minutes. Her long dark hair, loosened and liberated by the blows, swirled around her head as she turned. The light of the next world now fully illuminated her sapphire blue eyes. Through the two holes in her head, I thought I could see a realm where impatient figures were moving about and casting shadows in the blue light of some distant and awesome beacon. Where girls are not nurtured, women do not grow. I was transfixed with horror.
She pulled up her skirts forcefully, and as hundredths of seconds zoomed by, they billowed outward and upward. She sank into them slightly, as her body coiled like a cat’s, preparing to take flight toward her last victim.
I was strangely aware of the slow-down of time. I perceived keenly the details of my surroundings for the first time: The unevenness of the wharf, the salty sea breeze, the calls of sea-gulls, the excrement in the harbor, the drying fish, the passing carriages. I had entered her world. A world of objects reflecting light, emitting sounds, releasing odors, all caught in a matrix of distances and trajectories. Dozens of events were happening at different time-scales, participating in a symphony of reality.
Without a thought, I resumed normal time and grasped her skinny wrist. “Please come with me.” And for some reason I’ll never know, she did.
We ran away from the wharf, leaving the wet sailor to care for his friend. At the livery stable at the end of Middle Street, I turned in our ticket and paid with the coins Mama had given me. Ophelie’s face had begun to swell from the beating, but I saw in her no sign of discomfort. While we waited for the horses to be bridled and hitched, her eyes mechanically scanned the scene, identifying possible threats, predicting possible paths of motion, and estimating time to reach possible weapons. She is a native speaker of reality.
One may pass 99.9% of her time living a life of leisure, but there will come very brief moments, like being trampled by a horse, or becoming pregnant, very brief moments, that define all those moments which are to follow. She who manages that 0.1% is mistress of the rest.
I saw that Ophelie lived in that 0.1%. In the space of seconds or fractions of seconds, she practices her vocation. The rest of her life is a holiday to which she has no real attachment. Nothing has value to her, other than being present and awake for that 0.1%. I looked upon her and I felt something move in the depths of my soul, a second time.