Four-word Fiction.
By MICHELENE WANDOR.
peacocks pig orchid tomatoes
La bella donna is la belle dame sans merci, is she who walks in the night and in the shade of day. She blushes rosy red, as if cultivated by the Aztecs. She has a role in pollination (not a bee in sight); she melts honey with tomatoes to sweeten her acid tongue.
She is a witch; no two ways about it.
Who can resist an Aztec carrying a pot of orchids. The oldest flowering plant in the world. In polite society we blush at the Greek word for the shape of the underground tubers, if you look closely at them. Ballockwort, to that, says the witch, not one to mince (beef or pork) her words. I’ll call them whatever I like.
The Aztec struts his feathered stuff, cock-o-the-walk (watch your language, says the witch), like a peacock fanning his tail (watch your language, repeats the witch). The Aztec invites the witch to perform a stately pavane. Love must be courtly or it is nothing, he says, bowing in a courtly fashion. Would you Adam and Eve it, laughs the witch. Finally, a real gent. She takes his hand and together they dance by the light of the moon in the night, to the tune of a runcible spoon (no Learing allowed).
They dine on a belladonna feast of potatoes and aubergines, and the Aztec bows and asks the witch if she thinks she has bought a pig in a poke? Mind your language, she says softly. No, no, insists the Aztec, you should not buy something without trying it out, without seeing if it is any good. Watch your language, whispers the witch. I am la belle dame, and I will have no mercy on you, if you don’t behave.
This is my language, says the Aztec: I met you full beautiful. A faery’s child. Your hair is long, your foot is light. Look: I’ve made a garland for your head, and bracelets too. Well, says the witch, have some wild honey and sip some dew. And with one voice they say: ‘I love thee true’. That John Keats has a lot to answer for, says the witch. You betcha, says the Aztec.
And they dance into the night, two peas in a pod, a peahen and a peacock. I told you to mind your language, said the witch.
♦
MICHELENE WANDOR is a playwright, poet, short story writer, reviewer, broadcaster, theatre historian and musician with degrees from Cambridge and Essex universities and from Trinity College / University of London. She has taught in Britain at the Guildhall School of Drama, London, the City Lit, London, London Metropolitan University and at various universities abroad. She currently teaches on the Distance Learning MA in Creative Writing for Lancaster University. She held a Royal Literary Fund Fellowship from 2004 to 2008. Recipient of many awards and nominations, particularly for her radio dramatisations (see her ‘Dramatising Mrs Dalloway’ in the Fortnightly). Michelene Wandor is also an accomplished musician, performing Renaissance and Baroque music with her early music group, The Siena Ensemble. Her latest poetry collection is Travellers (Arc Publications 2021).
In October 2021, Odd Volumes, the Fortnightly’s book imprint, published her Four Times EightyOne: bespoke stories, in which she invited family members, friends — and some passing acquaintances — to give her four random words, as in the example above. These quartets signal each story as a kind of riddle: the solution in the title, the clues, Marple- and Poirot-like, embedded in each brief narrative. The language becomes and is becoming: transformative and serendipitous in the writing and the reading.
