The Shine Journal
Exceptional Flash, Poetry, Art and Photography!
Elena
by
Gabriella Natal
photo by Sarah Young
What was it about her? Elena wore no perfume, little or no make up, jeans and faded tee-shirts. Far from flamboyant, Elena did not think of herself as beautiful. Looking in the mirror, piercing brown eyes and a thin, angular nose, she knew she was not. All things considered, however, she felt that people did not respond to her as if she were plain-looking.
Elena realized she had the face of someone who strangers would pick out among a crowd to approach for directions to a nearby shop. She had learned early in life that a boy would scarcely be deterred from gathering the courage to approach her in the midst of a party, in a school hallway, or at a dusty college bar. She wondered if she wore a message etched on her face that read, "This person will not be rude or heartless."
At times, with morning coffee clasped between both hands, contemplating the sunrise magnified against dew on the garden outside her kitchen window, Elena reflected. "How does this mute language work? Is it an ingrained, universal calligraphy of the mind? Or is it even more primitive, like the bone script carved on fossilized tortoise shells used to decipher the future. Was there something to the notion of an aura that is unconsciously detected by other human beings? "
In the brighter light of day, Elena nestled with her lunch on a sun-warm bench at the marina near her office. Watching sailboats drift on the cloudless wind, she considered the Mona Lisa. "Looking at her objectively," Elena thought, "she has a face and features, that are remarkable in their plainness. Yet generations have flocked to see her, wondering what unknowable passion compelled Da Vinci to commit her to canvas."
Elena recalled moments she had studied that face, in glossy coffee table editions, or from afar, above the variegated heads of so many onlookers at the Louvre. She contemplated the subtle glimmer in her eye, a shuttered aperture suggesting a spirited mind and playful wit. The diffident tease in her smile hinted, also, at an open lens to an ardent heart. "These are what capture the eye," thought Elena, "drawing the observer to linger over the portrait. These are what stir a bewildering urge to try and discover the enigma."
In the evenings, however, in those moments before sleep when the sheets wrapped in against the throat still bear a coolness of first touch, Elena felt more like prey than Mona Lisa. She never went into to a bar alone. Meeting a friend for a drink after work, she would design to be late. She had learned to avoid the epochal delay, alone at a cocktail table, in which a young man was bound to approach her, smiling confidently at the luck of his find. She perfected a habit of not looking a stranger in the eye. She hoped the tactic would avert any mistranslated telepathy of an unintended invitation. Yet, Elena wondered whether it sometimes held the opposing risk of making her appear shy and conquerable.
When she did notice a man who's dark eyes made her curious, with round, upheld shoulders and a certain poise in the motion of his hands as he spoke, that soft space at the base of her ribs would voice a soundless prose. Somehow, he would be powerless to resist. Elena wondered at this, also. Was there an involuntary scent that drew men, breathlessly, toward an unintended target?
Those rare infatuations that had not succumbed, Elena realized later, were not the men they had seemed to be. Thinking back, she could recall a moist odor of Philodendron. In order to pollinate, Elena had once read, the sterile male flower gave off pheremones at dusk; a process called female anthesis. This was followed, the article explained, by male anthesis. "The sense of smell", Elena thought, "is not so reliable in our own species.".
When she did take a lover, which was usually accidental, but routine, she gave herself over completely to the heart. "What was the point, otherwise?" she surmised. She found sheer exhilaration in the deeper exploration of emotion and character offered by ties of vast intensity. She rationalized that, perhaps, this unparalleled window on the soul might be instructive, might somehow prove to be useful in life.
An affair commenced, after several months, for reasons unfathomable to her, Elena often found herself having to decline a proposal of marriage. She did not want to be possessed. Her mother, Elena thought, had always supposed it was her lack of craving to commit that made her all the more appealing. "As soon as men realize you're not the one who desperately wants them," mother had said, "you're a tantalizing challenge to be overcome... challenge to their ego."
At night, enveloped within the pale blue walls of her bedroom, when sleep cloaked her eyelids in its conscious stroke, Elena dreamed about a Victorian story she had read before bed. The story told of a woman with a grey eyes and a pair of small grey gloves. The woman said to a newly avowed admirer, "I am not a beautiful woman. I never was. But there must be something about me, there is in some women, 'essential femininity' perhaps, that appeals to all men. What I read in your eyes, I have seen in many men's before ... "
The woman told her admirer she would go away and cautioned him not to try and follow her. She said, "I must learn, first, to think of myself as a free woman," but she left behind a single grey glove. The man kept the glove tucked away in his vest pocket, waiting her return.
My Bio: Gabriella Natal was born in a college town in the US Midwest. She has lived in
My Motivation : I was inspired to write this story after reading "A Little Grey Glove", a Victorian short story written by a woman under the pen name of George Egerton. The story lead me to reflect on the nature of attraction, what it is, how it works, and the often baffling affect it has on people.
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