SQN - Sine Qua Non - Issue Two - Journal - Page 35
SINE QUA NON
was calling her home by playing Chopin9s Nocturne in F Minor, Op. 55. He had bought her
the sheet music from the music man in Rashaya in the autumn as a surprise. |e notes were
printed in a deep black ink. He told her the Octopus would have wailed in agony to give up
such colours, but oh what pleasure it must get from hearing the notes.
She slept amongst the ruins of a bombed house. |ere was no food to be found, or
working electrical outlets, but there was, by God, a bed. A single mattress with sheets and a
pillow meant for a child, but it was a place to sleep all the same. A mattress! She could see
the place had been left in a hurry, probably not long before her arrival. Strikes had severed
the pipes for the indoor plumbing, and under the bed still sat the chamber pot. |e callouses
on her shoulder blades and clavicle stifened her neck. |is child9s bed, abandoned with the
strikes, was like a butterny9s cocoon. She could black out the moon and emerge anew in the
morning.
But when morning came, she just walked away, and did not look back.
