Three Moments

I. The Chimes
	The ringing lasted through the night.  The wind would not stop and those damn chimes, that contraption of rusted tailpipes, resounded from hell.
	With brilliant insight, she resolved to pull them down.  They didn’t belong to her, but that didn’t matter, for they dangled feet from her bedroom, far from anyone’s ear but her own.  Hung to unnerve, no doubt.  I am completely and morally justified in removing them.
	Once down, where to hide them?  Close to their source?  It would seem accidental but leave them easily found, and hung again. Further away, the owner might never find them, but could suspect her role.
	So. Near the original location, yes, that’s it. I won’t have to lie if the old bat asks me. “Those damn squirrels tear up everything, don’t they?” and that would be that.
	But the chimes would not go away. In her mind, they went up with more bolts, wires and chains. They multiplied in the trees like harpies. The old bat set up a chiming village, with floodlights and colored gels and halogens, a nightly guided tour with caged bears and hay rides.
	The chimes, the chimes.  She had to get rid of the chimes.  She acknowledged the gravity of her situation, karmically speaking.  If she tore them down, she risked exposing herself to cosmic justice. Could I live with that? Could I live with the infinite tinkling of a never-ending, sleepless night?
	She stared at them and focused intently.  She would drive them away with her mind. Fierce and determined, she imagined them falling, their cheap fishing line attachments disintegrating and their corroded clangers hitting the ground.  She envisioned animals climbing on them and dragging them down for good, she dreamed of hail storms destroying them.
	As she gazed at the dangling tubes, the clinking became more bearable, and she thought she heard a melody. A glint arose that reflected onto the trees, then illuminated her house and the marshland behind her.  Warm and shimmering, the luminescence embraced her, pulled her closer, comforted her.  The chimes became a door and she walked through it, into a world of silver, black and gray and from there, to a lake of deep, rich cobalt blue. Swim, swim, it called and when she put in her foot, it became like mercury and, desiring more of this burnishment, she dived into it.
	Later, she awoke in her own bed, calm and at peace.  Her hair had become entirely gray; she saw it reflected in the globe of her bedside lamp.  Her nails shone metallic, her skin gleamed, aluminum. She imagined him, next time, in the cerulean sea.

II. The Love Letter

	How to react to the letters -- read them?  But how, when he had no code, no dictionary, no Rosetta stone?  Just letters.  And those, single.
	A large S appeared.  The enormous letter lacked its usual serpentine attitude and so unsettled him with an emotional response that he failed to question it.  Instead of snaking, it insisted, lonely and heavy with story, sheltering some delicate meaning.
	More letters appeared, h and n and other big S’s.  Related, he imagined.  Part of the same story.
	Next, a stately B, refusing to add anything and boldly suggesting, with its large shoulders, a military turn.  Then R appeared, graceful and generous, to counter it.  Maybe R could reveal the meaning he was struggling to guess.
	The pregnant S showed up again, seducing him with mysterious meaning-laden curves.  Then, smaller letters and vowels, e-o-a, entered the discussion, attendants to the giants above them.
	Unsupervised, he imagined the S without her literalness, without her posturing and usual message and wondered, if he concentrated, could he understand what she was telling him?  He thought the letters might be speaking their own language and felt touched by their honesty, now that they were no longer bound by the sentences others wrote with them.
	In those chains, they felt trapped by the grammar imposed on them, the rules and principles they never agreed to.  They had their own meanings, each letter an epic, a tragedy, a Russian novel, if only they were free to tell it.
	Another letter, this time a tall W.  A waterfall of sentiment rushed into him, and in his depths, weeping.  At its insistence, he sensed a force, a desire fueling the letter’s appearance.  It called to him like a sea beacon that would soon perish.
	Should he respond to them?  But in what voice?  If they didn’t understand his language, what would they understand?
	The large S reappeared, followed by the B, R and W and he knew what he had to do.  He closed his eyes and dreamed, imagining the curves of the letters, their graceful arcs, their insistent lines, their speaking.
	He saw her singing a beautiful melody that could only exist in his mind, a single thread of silver he could not break down into notes or chords, and listening to this filament he imagined he understood the language of the letters.
	As he floated above the room he entered their world of shapes and music and there, standing on the banks of an otherwordly ocean, she stood.

III. L’Histoire de Annie K.
	OK, now concentrate.   Eyes straight ahead, level with the tracks.  Wait for the train, watch the wheels, fall forward.  Fall?  No, wait.  Jump?  Get on all fours and roll?
	That won’t do.  Slip under the car almost as an afterthought, an apology?  No.  Toss yourself from the platform in front of the rushing train.  Quick, dramatic.  Watch and time, leap and cross the bridge, and thwack, it’s over, the dress waving in the locomotive wind.
	Anything less would be ridiculous, with all this balancing and timing and worrying about the handbag.
	But where?
	Certainly not the Obiralovka station, outside of Moscow.  Who would see it, who would know?
	Another platform, another time.  She withdrew into the long ago places of her mind.  Could she return to St. Petersburg and live as she had, as she wanted, even with Karenin?  It didn’t matter.  He only delivered her to Petersburg, but at least freed her from her childhood demons.  
	With Karenin’s rubles she commissioned furs and silk gowns of European design until she was safe in the love of all Petersburg.
	Petersburg.  The city protected her, entombed the streets with snows and grays in an iron embrace that saved her.  Walking past the palace she dreamed of men captivated by her dark eyes, wild curly hair, graceful saunter, striking manners; of the nights lost dancing.
	Then, the sickness, the obsessive heart-dreams of Vronksy.  That was her ruin, wasn’t it?
	But Vronsky breathed spring into her and released her from the vault of winter.
	Another locomotive.  No, too complicated.  Let’s see:  Scarf, hat, evening dress and skirts beneath.  Red handbag with telegrams inside.  Ticket to Obiralovka.  Snow.  How could she ruin a dress like that!
	Did Vronksy destroy her?  Was the passion too draining?  No job.  But wealth!  And what name, Anna Arkadyevna.  Acadia.  Alexander Nevsky.  The Winter Palace.  The Decembrists.  But what part for Anna in the romance of her own name, her own life?
	Women’s hysteria, no doubt.  The rest -- her beauty, her wealth, her lover -- failed to sustain her.  What keeps me from jumping now?
	Another line of cars, bump-bump, bump-bump.  Eyes level with the wheels, give me a second chance, I’ll drop the bag, this time I’ll make it.
	But in this grim station?  Can’t I find somewhere else to go in this dress?  A handsome soldier, somewhere?  What about Portsmouth?  The Navy men are there.
	Here comes a locomotive.  Front?  Beneath?  Breathe in and go….

Ï