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The naked man stood at the window, high above the village square where the weekly market was in full swing. No one below paid him much mind; he stood there every Saturday for a few minutes just before noon. You could practically set your watch by him.
Meanwhile, in the busy square below, Mathilde was busy at her family’s booth, stacked with colorful jars of homemade jams and jellies and compotes. As usual, she wore a yellow gingham apron over her jeans and pullover, her auburn hair swept up and caught in a barrette. As she made change for one customer, another walked up to peruse her offerings.
This customer, a man, was a few years older than Mathilde, perhaps in his early 60s. He wore a thick wool plaid shirt tucked neatly into his jeans. His cropped gray hair framed a nice face, Mathilde thought, a face that had been places and seen things. Laugh lines around his eyes, creases at the corners of his mouth. A kind face, she thought.
She caught his eye, and he smiled. A nice smile, too, she thought. “Have you any raspberry?” he asked. “Yes, certainly,” she replied, and gestured toward the jars at one end of the table. He chose one and handed it to her. “Thank you,” he said. “It’s been
a long time since I’ve had homemade raspberry preserves.”
Something else caught his eye, and he peered up, toward the man in the window. He turned to her with an amused smile. “What the heck?” he asked. “Oh,” she said, with a gentle blush. “He’s there every day around this time. He’s blind, you see, and I think he can get an idea of the weather by standing close to the window like that, so he can figure out how to dress. Plus,” she added, “I think he forgets people can see him.”
“Well, that makes a kind of sense,” the man said, still smiling. “By the way, my name is Jake.” Then he walked away, holding his raspberry preserves close to his chest.
Jake became a regular, finding her every week at the market, and as the days got colder, he would stop at the café on the corner and buy two coffees, bringing one to her. They would talk, about books, and films, and life. They became friends.
One day, in early November, he arrived at her stall with two coffees, but instead of his auburn-haired beauty, there stood an old man, leaning heavily on a cane. Jake was bewildered for a minute, thinking the old man looked a bit familiar, and then it struck him. He was the naked man in the window high above the square.
“Where is Mathilde?” Jake asked the old man, not naked now, clothed in a down parka and thick twill pants. “Oh, Mathilde,” the old man said. “My daughter. Why do you ask?”
“Because she is my friend, and she is usually here,” Jake said, a bit confused.
The old man smiled, turned, and pointed up to the window high above the square.
Jake looked up, and there, in the window, was Mathilde, clad in her gingham apron. Until suddenly, she wasn’t.
The old man pressed a key into Jake’s hand.
Jackie.
It all started over a bowl of spinach. I was washing the green leaves in a bowl of water and then as I always do after rinsing well put them in my wok with olive oil and garlic to cook quickly – the spinach remains tender and the vegetables are soft and not overdone – retaining their green parrot like color. He, who was watching corrected me insisting that I was wrong, proclaiming that they should be thrown into several liters of boiling water –then the soggy leafs squeezed out of their minds like old socks ….and served up as green mush looking like seaweed after the tide has gone out
The argument progressed to minor ways as to how I kept my kitchen clean, the traditions of French entertaining (you never serve spinach this way at a French dinner party) and why did I set the table like this and not that … and me finishing off by saying lets just check with the cookbooks and see who is right. So as in many times before we had a bet.
Such a silly gamble.
Now, a bet is a dangerous thing to do with the man in my life – as he always wins – I owe many bottles of champagne, a trip to New York and a cruise in the Seychelles. Never having the financial possibility of honoring these bets they have never materialized. Thank God. Once again though he launched a bet that once again seemed improbable.
So to recapitulate: I say spinach is pan cooked or fried in little or no water he says spinach is to be boiled to smitherines in a large pot of water.
If you win, which I doubt that you will, he said, I shall put up a photo of myself on Facebook and I shall be the Naked Man. If you win you will do the same. Horrified - prudish me I didn’t wish to see myself naked on Facebook or any other place.
He lost –ha ha - the next day for all to see there was indeed a picture of him naked on his facebook feed but it was slightly disappointing taken as it was from the back.
Annemarie's story:
The Naked Man
The chaise longue is traditional, green velvet, buttoned and very comfortable; I lie semi-reclined propped against softly-submitting cushions with my left arm casually draped over my knee. Beneath droopy lids my eyes travel down the length of my pallid, pullulating body, over the twin bulges of my flabby, faded chest from where sprout several fugitive hairs. My chest partially shelters the puckered furrows and flabby folds of my stomach. My belly sags sideways towards the outside of the green velvet, obscuring my view of my manly parts (droopy, reduced, insignificant). One long, stretched out leg, the colour an ombré of milky white to faded salmon; the other knee bent, offering support to my pulpy white hand with its elegantly draped fingers. My feet - pale but still strong and straight, nails hard, yellow and inclined to curl.
Without moving my head I raise rheumy eyes to survey the forest of easels and heads bobbing up and down like so many derricks in an oilfield - looking up at me then down at their easels - scratch, scratch, scratch, the rubbing of charcoal and pencil on countless papers, rub, rub, rub as they blur the lines. They call it a life class and me, a naked man and nearly dead! I briefly close my eyes and I am transported back through the centuries to 1492 when I was just a young man.
I am in Milan in a workshop; tables covered with drawings and plans; an intricate drawing of a dead bird with one outstretched wing; shelves bearing all manner of objects, half- sculpted heads, leather-bound books and ancient vases. There are assistants making brushes from boar’s hairs, preparing glues and grinding pigments in marble basins, mixing gesso, creating plaster and preparing canvases and pervading the air the smell of linseed oil and turpentine; and in a room removed, the master himself. I am his latest project. It is the first time I have modelled nude. First I must stand within a square he has constructed in his studio, my arms stretching horizontally to touch the sides. He has a string fixed from the midpoints of each side across my navel. One foot turned sideways, one pointing forwards, my head touching the top of the square, every part of my anatomy measured, calculated. Then I stand arms reaching upwards, legs apart reaching the confines of a circle. A good head of crinkly hair, a strong expressive face, well-defined muscles, sinewy robust neck, rippling carves and thighs, determined as I hold the pose. The perfect body (so my master said) I barely recognise myself in this long-remembered reverie.
A gentle tap on my shoulder startles; my naked flabby flesh wobbles as I take the mug of coffee proffered by a student. No, I will not peer at any of their drawings; I will remember the Renaissance days with Leonardo da Vinci and you, the world will remember the static portraits of the naked man of perfect proportions, the circle and square superimposed and I am a moving, living man forever.
Sarah's story:
Naked man 4 – ("Taking control")
(08.11.2021)
"Hello, Mother," said Nicholas over the phone. "Would you like to come by for dinner tonight? We've just received a paquet of lamb from Ewan, and Mariam is going to fix some abgoosht."
"Oh, I'm sure that will be nice," his mother said. "But tonight I'm already booked."
"Really?" Nicholas was less disappointed than surprised. His mother didn't go out that often in the evenings. In fact, Mariam had suggested the invitation partly to give her a change.
"I'm going out to the Naked Man."
"The what?" He wasn't sure of having heard correctly.
"The Naked Man," she repeated. "It's a pub, in Drayton."
"Are you sure that's the name?"
"Quite sure," she replied tartly. "I've been there before."
After he had swallowed his second surprise, he asked, "Who are you going with?" Perhaps he should keep a stronger control on his mother. She was getting on in years.
"With Harvey and Alice," Catherine said. "There's some kind of special something on tonight."
Oh well, he thought, that was all right then. Must be pretty harmless if those two were going. Probably some sort of seniors fête. Mariam, when he told her, only smiled and said that she thought indeed that this was good news.
"Time she got out doing things more," she said. "Since her accident she's been too often alone in the house of an evening."
So, although Nicholas felt in some ways he should become more of a parent to his elderly mother, he was reminded by the sight of his son Jafir that one day he would be in his mother's shoes, so to speak, and Jafir might start wanting to monitor his behaviour. No, no, better to let things be.
Still, when he called his sister, to ask if she and Jake would like to come that evening to a homemade abgoosht dinner, he asked her if she knew of The Naked Man.
"The what?" she asked, just as he had done before.
"According to Mother it's a pub in Drayton. She says she's been there before."
There was a short silence and then Ellen laughed. "Oh, that! She's mixed up the name again—she keeps doing that lately. She called the bookshop the Mental Block instead of the Writer's Block."
"So it does exist?"
"Yes, but it's called the Wild Man."
"Then why ...?"
But she laughed again and answered before he could finish his question. "It's the new sign. The old one, which was rather like a Green Man, needed replacing and the new one ... well, it's more like a gorilla except that it has the face of a man."
"And ... ?"
"Well, it has a penis in full view, and that's probably why she made the mistake."
"Good God."
Should he ... ? But once again, he said to himself, "Let things be."
A few days later he ran into a friend of his at his own regular pub.
"Saw your mum the other night," the chap said, with a sly smile. Oh no, he thought. He should have taken action. "She was having a great time," the other added.
"Er, where was that?" he asked, although he thought he knew.
"She was singing karaoke at a pub in Drayton."
"Karaoke??" If there was anything he despised, it was that. "Er, are you sure it was her?" He tried to imagine it and felt the heat rising up his neck and into his cheeks.
"It was her all right. I know your mum."
Good lord, why hadn't he taken control while he still could?
"She was really good. Amazing, in fact. You must be pleased your mum's still at it. Mine does nothing but sit in front of the telly all day, and goes to bed at eight."
When he told Mariam, she laughed aloud. "Good for her!"
That made two. Nicholas stood there, perplexed. And if Ellen took the same stand?
"What are you thinking?" asked Mariam. "Aren't you pleased to hear your mum's having a good time?"
He stood there still, as he did when the little cog-wheels turned in his head, shifting ideas about. It was time to take control, of that he was sure. But an idea was dawning and he caught hold of it before it slipped way. After all, Jafir was already telling him he was too old to play football and that he didn't like to see his dad making a fool of himself. Yes, he, Nicholas, definitely had to take control of the situation. If he didn't set the right example, it would n't be long before Jafir in his turn began laying down the law.
"Absolutely!" he said, with the firmness of true conviction, as Jafir looked on with rounded eyes. "I couldn't be more pleased!"
+ 786 wds
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