Art/Proze

The boy with a kite
Altin Topi
Alb-Club October 28, 2003



Something very strange happened to me yesterday. Do you know those dreams that leave you so perplexed and you do not know exactly what to make about? That's precisely the point. I dreamt about a place, where I haven't been since the days of my boyhood. It is a place where the beach goes on for mile, and because of the thick jungle of trees to pass through, there is no access from the road. The inlet separates one beach from the other; it is no other way to reach the other beach unless you swim across the inlet.

Well, yesterday in my dream happened exactly that, I swam across the inlet. It was an early morning, and amazingly later, a beautiful sunrise. I found the beach deserted; there were no footprints on the sand washed by the foaming waters. The beach still asleep had regained virginity during the night, like every night. I got the feeling that the beach was not even visited by any of the butterflies, it wasn't civilized enough for them. It was like being on the moon or on a new planet.

I saw the boy laboring over all morning; finally by midday I decided to approach him. "The wind must be greater than the weight of the string and its body." I wanted so badly in the afternoon to see the kite in the air. The autumnal sun was still illuminating the narrow strip of the sandy beach, while at the gathering of the clouds, the slow furiousness of sand was blowing at our feet. The tail of rags fashioned from sticks, newspaper, tape, glue, and bakery strings was being transformed into a kite. Around four o'clock my last advise to the boy, - "While in the air, give it some string and feel how strong is the pull."

The boy carried the kite running barefoot down the empty beach, trailing a tail of footprints through the wet sand scattering the big white shorebirds around him. I watched the birds, how effortlessly they mounted the air crying out from the heights, soaring off the sideways on the gusts of the ocean breeze. But all was futile; the kite stubbornly was refusing to rise. Despite the boy's efforts, it was no longer a day for launching a kite. However, apart the drag of the kite, the boy was running harder and faster. If the zealous boy were a kite, by now undoubtfully he'd be up there in the company of the birds.

The deep orange sunset was putting more pressure on the boy. With the passing of minutes, the launching of the kite seemed an impossible enterprise, - even if it was a kite, winner of the famous Thailand's kite race, made of women's Japanese silk underclothes, let alone a kite made of sticks and newspaper. Maybe was an underlying reason why the kite couldn't rise, it knew that flying was risky, and could tear it apart to shreds.

The boy for a moment stopped racing slowing his run to a jog. He was ready to acknowledge defeat, slowed to a halfhearted jog and turned at a cross angle to the wind. Miraculously, it was that moment when his luck begins to change. The kite sailed off on the gusty winds, twisting crazily, barely holding together, but climbing and climbing up into the sky. The string's pull was strong, very strong, propelling the boy towards the water. He with great efforts tugging the ball of string couldn't unravel it fast enough. Few seconds passed, the kite was flying out over the ocean. At the shoreline, the boy was squinting up at the kite as if he was trying to read the prints on the newspaper the kite was made of. Too late for the boy, the words were flying far away. Now the kite was barely detectable, a dot above the horizon. The deep orange of the sky was fading away and turning into a deep purple. It was too late for the kite and any word of advice. What will happen next? Should he set the kite free, and without any warning let it go? He never wanted the kite to go so far; he never wanted to abandon it in the falling darkness of the sky.

All of a sudden, gleaming like a sheet of bronze, the blinding daylight blazed across the curtains slicing my dream in two. Heat streamed into the room and I felt the wing beats of a bird failing for a hold in the air.

The bird falls to earth as if a shot had been fired at. The boy gathers it up gently, whispers softly, - "Try, please!", and tosses it back into thin air. Again and again, the bird flaps and falls, the boy gathers it up, gently folds its wings weaker from its failed attempts, and more violently tosses it up. The bird is helpless; it crashes to earth unable to defy gravity. The boy feels very sorry, - "I didn't mean to hurt you."

He's never seen a bird like this before, iridescent like a woman's slip in the gleam of an afternoon sun. It was the first time touching such smoothness, a life of a mysterious sphere, a habitant of air, an existence so different from his own. The bird's heartbeat intensifies the heat circulation. The boy is afraid, it might be blood, but the hands are still dry. He doesn't know exactly where to look for the wound, if he had inflicted one. True, he's shot at birds, but he's always missed before. Either he's a naturally bad shot or his nerves fail at the last instant. Perhaps, because that's what is heart demands. He could argue that he never hit them, and hitting this bird was the merest chance. He could argue that was just an accident. But to whom he could argue? Who's there besides the two of them? It would not do any good to tell to anybody. Look what he's done. What difference does the truth make now?

It was a dark purple and silver sky, tinged with spots of fading pink. When I and the boy reached the inlet the sky was nearly black. There were lots of stars out and three-quarter of a moon. The deeper beauty came after the sunset, came with the night when the whole word slid below water.

The boy kept walking into the water without changing his speed. A few seconds later I saw the boy propelling himself forward, not even ducking for the waves but somehow willing himself like a man walking into a wall, into the earth, until the water covered him. I heard myself scream. Why had I listened to him? Why had I come with him to this beach? What happened to me, to my childhood?

Then I leaned from the bed and released the shades on the window down. Before my eyes, secret in the sunbeaten shadows of drawn shades, the room was revealed for what it was, a rented apartment with a few stick of shoddy furniture. I hold my breath to listen harder, but all I can hear is the thrash of shades blowing in an echoey room.