A face of still water
Three Pond Face has a pond for each eye - splendid dark green water, rolling with weed. For the whole mouth area (no physical nose), there is a third, browner and bigger pond. Inside, TPF has many pond organs and pools within pools of ecosystems and micro-biology.
I always make sure to wave when we see each other out and about. Of course TPF’s wave, seen from across the field, looks like a scream of pure horror. I’m supposed to be used to it by now, but I still feel drained after one of these waving encounters. The long mournful waving action of their arms does not help. Nor the silence coming from the ponds in their face.
Naturally, the ponds are small when TPF is in what I call ‘upright mode’, but things change when they lie down. The body is absorbed into the land, and the three facial ponds swell into one large garden sized pond.
TPF told me they once lay in an avenue garden for a whole spring and summer. They had walked away from their home, walked and walked, with the three face ponds streaming and guttering after a final shattering of trust that could not be reconciled. Inside, their pond heart overflowed. Hot pond water streamed and sloshed rampantly throughout their body. Exhausted from walking and staying upright with a flooded heart, TPF found a bright clean avenue and lay down.
That very day, a lonely man from the neighbourhood allowed his cat to escape through his front door. The cat sped across the avenue and pounced into the new, unexpected central pond. TPF absorbed that cat without realising, and had it complaining and nagging for weeks before its spirit gave up. It was like a toothache, apparently. If you can imagine such a thing, but a toothache caused by a cat slowly losing its willpower inside the water of your face.
Despite the set back with the cat, TPF soon settled down to life in the avenue. Other lives dared to enter the water, and were not absorbed and drained of spirit like the cat was. Many fish prospered, which TPF found inspiring. The fish bodies caused TPF to have wondrous, many-arcing dreams, full of flashes of gold and tumbling pearls. For a while it seemed fine on the avenue – the body of TPF rested and regenerated as turf, pebbles and daisies etc. The body made no demands at all.
These restful days were interrupted when a family that resembled three pond face’s own family came. The lone parent and the two kids sat on a bench and looked at the water. They ate lollipops and other sweets in near silence. The youngest, a child in green shorts, tapped the water with the flat of her hand. After a short while, spent in yet more of this pendulous silence, the children and the lone parent rose up and prepared to leave.
Three Pond Face did not react, though they knew this was the moment to rise up and join them. To apologise and resume family life. It was time - and yet - rejoining the family would never be possible. Pond or person, it did not matter, TPF was no longer capable of being a true presence in this family life.
As the sun went down that day, and the moon shone on the water, three pond face made a decision. With great effort, they rose up from the avenue garden and painfully extracted the things that had made their face a home.
Leaving behind a sodden bordello of fish and cat bones on the lawn, TPF strode away, with only the painful sting on their eyes, caused by the slap of that young child’s hand on the surface of the water.
TPF bought an inter-railing ticket and went inter-railing around Europe. Sometimes staying in hostels, other times lying down on lawns – in Antwerp, in Dresden, in Hamburg, in Limoges, in Delft, residents woke up to discover an extra large, mysteriously inviting pond. Families would come and look into the still dark waters of three pond face’s pond face, and reflect on the heavy things in their lives.
I have never asked how this roaming lead TPF to the village. They have never explained their journey here, but I do know they were among the first.
I know also that though I yearn for it, I can never be allowed to kiss Three Pond Face. Or even to look for too long into the depths of their pond eyes. We just wave and horrify each other at a distance, and like everything else, I am content with this situation.
