Tuesday, November 11, 2008

The Flabiol Cobla Trio

When Lela was a little girl her grandmamma met a muleteer on the road leading from there to here. The muleteer, a swine with a colossal head, asked Lela’s grandmamma how to get from there to here. Lela’s grandmamma, her eyes blinking said ‘…its all the same, here or there…’. …Oh…said the muleteer, ‘…neither here nor there…?’ ‘…yes…’ said Lela’s grandmamma, ‘…neither either…’. With that the muleteer went on his way, neither here nor there, nor somewhere or nowhere. Lela remembered how here grandmamma spoke in a low hushed voice when she talked about ‘them times’, times that were neither here nor there, there nor here, but somewhere in the beyond, beyond. ‘…my dear...’ she said grumbling, ‘…you will never get anywhere other than there, and there, no one wants to be…’.

One morning, after rubbing the night’s furies from her eyes, Lela left home for ‘there’. The first place she arrived at was Sapientia, a small northerly village with a population of 27, perhaps 29 people, all of who were goat shepherds except for an old woman with black hair and blacker eyes. After staying on in the village for a few days, where she tended the old woman’s cankers and boils, Lela moved on, arriving at Mrida, a northwesterly village with a population of 29, perhaps 30, the smallest to the biggest no bigger than a lapdog. Leaving the village of people no bigger than lapdogs, Lela arrived at the gates of Norrbottens Pite, a turreted town surrounded by a ditch deeper than the deepest ocean. She stayed on there, helping the people slough the guck and death from the ditch, for 30 days, being rewarded for her toil with a carpetbag full of whore’s gloves, some so striking and bejeweled Lela thought they’d been given to her by mistake, and offering to return them was shooed away by an old woman with black teeth and an impulsive tick.

The village band was made up of a Xeremier, his flabiol player and tamboril, together they were known as the Flabiol Cobla Trio. They played in the square in the middle of town, surrounded by marble statuary and a wildflower garden. The flabiol player, Don de Monde, played facing the courtyard, the tamboril, Vivo Vico, crouching under a winding hibiscus bush, and the Xeremier, Ibanez the Great, standing with his back to the crowd, all three playing with joyous abandon. The Flabiol Cobla Trio were to play at The Feast of Octave of St. Camillus, a great honor, so the Xeremier told his compatriots, but on their way they came across a muleteer and an old woman kibitzing over which way was here and which way was there. Confused as they were, already having made a wrong turn here and a wrong turn there, the Trio failed to pay heed to the warning, ‘never trust a man with a colossal head’, and fell in with the muleteer who lead them astray, to places and people they never dreamed existed, here or there.

1 comment:

Joanne said...

Laughing out loud from here...or perhaps that should be from there. Flabby old cobbler, huh??? or perhaps I'm spending too much time trying to sound out kiswahili words in the hopes they'll suddenly begin to make sense!

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"Poetry is the short-circuiting of meaning between words, the impetuous regeneration of primordial myth". Bruno Schulz
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