Yew San Cheah
Head Full of Hair, Spanish Mountain Girl Ode
In the late-summer of that time Cuzco was a fine place to be, and the town always smelled of morning and the night and moving around the people were dark and pretty and so was the tawny sun-gold statue of the great teacher about reading and literacy in front of the cathedral in the square. That year we lived in a room with a balcony that had a nice view of the garden in the square and the green tops of trees and the fountain in the center and beyond that the mountains. On the crest of the mountain there were always granite and white rime, and they formed a white line on the ridges of the pink hills, like a slow roller in the Aegan sea. In the valley there was also a small chapel on the other side of the mountain that was hard to get to. We knew about this only because someone had said it on the internet.
It was a beautiful bed in a beautiful room in a beautiful place and the girl too was very beautiful. In all of that she was white as a swan, as swans were. She was standing barefoot on the balcony and looking at her phone. I looked at the back. Her back was small and exquisite. Her back was a baby girl’s laughter in a natatorium when she first learns to swim. Her back was small and nice. Her back was a hill in the chilly winter, powdered and soft with snow, and the two sentient bones that were very visible were the blue peaks coming together at the bottom into a clear river, swiftly moving, with shingles easy-to-see on the water bed and of course around it a valley. That was where the mountain girl came from; this bucolic place.
I continued looking at her back.
When we went down for breakfast the streets were being sprinkled. The water made the town smell like brine and roseate. We went down a side street then out to the Plaza where breakfast was. We found a nice café with a terrace and told the proprietor we wanted to sit at a table upstairs.
The order came quickly because we were very early, and she had cocoa tea and me coffee with milk on the side and we had some nice Peruvian breakfast food and after more coffee and tea. I used my phone to take a picture of the square and the chapel of Ave Maria in the center of it and uploaded it on reddit/r/churchporn. Here the summer was blooming once again and it spoke the language of flowers so I knew the summer was starting once again. Intermittently I looked at the statue about the teacher about reading and literacy in front of the cathedral in the square. He truly deserved my admiration.
After breakfast we were in the room and she fell asleep and I went to take a shower. She was asleep already even with Bloomberg on and so I left it and went in the bathroom to take a shower. In the shower I could hear Betty Liu talking excitedly of the Shanghai Composite index corrections, a dreadful 20%.
I did the full routine; I put on some moisturizing cream and shaved and put on some shorts and a t-shirt and lay on the bed with my Macbook looking at the internet. I read some caustic-sounding article on Thought Catalog. I was being very cynical, which I found always began and ended with compunction, because being cynical was something of an apathetic and intelligent thing, but always in the end very useless.
I decided to go to the bookstore to keep my mind off thinking.
It was dark when I came back to the room. I could hear all sorts of different sounds outside. The door was unlocked and I hear her voice when I am inside. She says she is sending an e-mail. She says, the room is hot and she wants to know when it will be cold. She says, I want to get out of here. She says, I want to go to the countryside.
I say, now, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, the day after-after tomorrow, two weeks slash a fortnight?
She says, at night.
Then, she says, I am from the mountains. That is where I belong, Duane. Duane, don’t you miss being somewhere safe? Let’s go to the mountains, take me there, and we will find the most colossal, grandest, tallest mountain there is and I will stand on it and the sun will rise on my back every morning and you can be there too and we can hold each other over the valley that morning with the water running through it and in the distance a sea meadow and let’s be beautiful together.
I loved her then. I loved her when she said things that were self-conscious and very quaint.
You are my mountain girl, aren’t you, I say.
She says, though I am not really from the mountains, but a descendant of old and grand European cities, I am still a mountain girl, I have loved the hills and the stars above them on jeweled and pine-scented nights, and because of this am from the city of Spain, San Sebastian, and Budapest, Hungary, the continent of Europe, no more.
I am an indigenous uncontacted mountain peoples.
***
In the lobby I told the concierge to call for a cab. When it came I tipped him ten sols, to make friends when we were back, whenever that may be. We arrived the station damply and boarded the first train that came. I said to her,
“We’re going to the mountains now.”
It was a beautiful bed in a beautiful room in a beautiful place and the girl too was very beautiful. In all of that she was white as a swan, as swans were. She was standing barefoot on the balcony and looking at her phone. I looked at the back. Her back was small and exquisite. Her back was a baby girl’s laughter in a natatorium when she first learns to swim. Her back was small and nice. Her back was a hill in the chilly winter, powdered and soft with snow, and the two sentient bones that were very visible were the blue peaks coming together at the bottom into a clear river, swiftly moving, with shingles easy-to-see on the water bed and of course around it a valley. That was where the mountain girl came from; this bucolic place.
I continued looking at her back.
When we went down for breakfast the streets were being sprinkled. The water made the town smell like brine and roseate. We went down a side street then out to the Plaza where breakfast was. We found a nice café with a terrace and told the proprietor we wanted to sit at a table upstairs.
The order came quickly because we were very early, and she had cocoa tea and me coffee with milk on the side and we had some nice Peruvian breakfast food and after more coffee and tea. I used my phone to take a picture of the square and the chapel of Ave Maria in the center of it and uploaded it on reddit/r/churchporn. Here the summer was blooming once again and it spoke the language of flowers so I knew the summer was starting once again. Intermittently I looked at the statue about the teacher about reading and literacy in front of the cathedral in the square. He truly deserved my admiration.
After breakfast we were in the room and she fell asleep and I went to take a shower. She was asleep already even with Bloomberg on and so I left it and went in the bathroom to take a shower. In the shower I could hear Betty Liu talking excitedly of the Shanghai Composite index corrections, a dreadful 20%.
I did the full routine; I put on some moisturizing cream and shaved and put on some shorts and a t-shirt and lay on the bed with my Macbook looking at the internet. I read some caustic-sounding article on Thought Catalog. I was being very cynical, which I found always began and ended with compunction, because being cynical was something of an apathetic and intelligent thing, but always in the end very useless.
I decided to go to the bookstore to keep my mind off thinking.
It was dark when I came back to the room. I could hear all sorts of different sounds outside. The door was unlocked and I hear her voice when I am inside. She says she is sending an e-mail. She says, the room is hot and she wants to know when it will be cold. She says, I want to get out of here. She says, I want to go to the countryside.
I say, now, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, the day after-after tomorrow, two weeks slash a fortnight?
She says, at night.
Then, she says, I am from the mountains. That is where I belong, Duane. Duane, don’t you miss being somewhere safe? Let’s go to the mountains, take me there, and we will find the most colossal, grandest, tallest mountain there is and I will stand on it and the sun will rise on my back every morning and you can be there too and we can hold each other over the valley that morning with the water running through it and in the distance a sea meadow and let’s be beautiful together.
I loved her then. I loved her when she said things that were self-conscious and very quaint.
You are my mountain girl, aren’t you, I say.
She says, though I am not really from the mountains, but a descendant of old and grand European cities, I am still a mountain girl, I have loved the hills and the stars above them on jeweled and pine-scented nights, and because of this am from the city of Spain, San Sebastian, and Budapest, Hungary, the continent of Europe, no more.
I am an indigenous uncontacted mountain peoples.
***
In the lobby I told the concierge to call for a cab. When it came I tipped him ten sols, to make friends when we were back, whenever that may be. We arrived the station damply and boarded the first train that came. I said to her,
“We’re going to the mountains now.”