Seventh Guest
An autobiographical fiction
If you are a regular or if you have landed on Tarantula: Authors and Art welcome. This year, we hope that our stories and the artists that we present will inspire you to start your own creative journey, and our house team of writers will join you on this ride. This January our inspiration is Dutch artist Eva de Visser. Our contributor Maja Milanovic , a curious scribbler, was mesmerized by the tables depicted on Ms. Visser’s paintings without any people; who is missing, who was eating just a second before? The answer came on New Year’s Eve, and what follows is part fiction, part autobiography, with a fictionalized name. This autobiographical fiction was birthed on the first day of the new year, January 1st. If you like it, share it or why not subscribe?
It was New Year’s Eve and after much contemplation, Marlene chose the red table cloth with naive Scandinavian embroidery that she bought for Christmas. Christmas was not something she celebrated when she was growing up, but got married into the tradition. However, this year, Christmas was still lingering on her mind, like a beautiful sweet and sour dish. Sweet because what started as a depressing night turned slowly into magic, and bitter because the ageing parents and aunts didn't show up, all caught one virus or the other just a few days before. There was a vast amount of left over meatballs in the fridge, each rolled with so much love and care by her husband as well as ham; trying to cater to his parents’ wishes.
Now, New Year’s Eve was on the horizon - that was her holiday of gifts, joy, songs. When she was younger, also the holiday of laughter, parties, drinking, first kisses and dancing throughout the night. As she was placing the cutlery on the tablecloth, she anticipated what tonight could become instead: a holiday of tension, sadness …
To prevent a sad night, just the day before, she invited over their dear neighbours; she was ready to do anything to save New Year’s Eve. Anything. That was not easy, because as she was putting the plates on the table, the ones she brought from the USA for special occasions, she heard him deeply breathing in the kitchen, retreated into his own shell. Just after Christmas, his parents ended up in the hospital. Will they celebrate another Christmas together with them? The clock that should’ve been on the wall but was replaced by an iPhone, was nevertheless still ticking.
Seven plates now decorated the table. Another seven remained in the cupboard that evening. She looked at all the empty chairs, and smiled, remembering Eugene Ionesco’s play The Chairs, in which a very old couple surrounded by empty chairs greets all the imaginary guests sitting on the chairs. If her mind still served her well, the chairs represented all the family and friends that were gone. When she herself studied the art of playwrighting, the play left a deep imprint on her, just like the whole absurdist movement - like them, she also thought that the universe was irrational and meaningless. And it took some time, her entering the realms of middle age, to realize that absurdism is nothing more than reality; and these days she was desperate to hang onto any kind of meaning.
She was happy with how the table turned out, despite it being red, so she went to the bathroom for her New Year’s ritual of getting ready.
Her reflection looked back at her a bit longer. The two have not quite recognised each other at first. Her need for perfection always needed her to shave and enter the new year as a new born baby, wear pink or red underwear. But now her reflexion raised her eyebrows in a supportive frown: “Babe, what are you doing? You don’t have to continue with this unnecessary act, which you probably picked up in some magazine when you were a teenager, reading about all the best ways to attract a mate. Like anyone saw your underwear and then fell in love?”
Marlene would’ve never admitted any of this to anyone; all her life she was doing her own thing, being her authentic self, not easily influenced, a bit nihilistic, a bit anarchistic … but those stories from “women empowerment magazines” seemed to follow everyone at each corner, each moment of the day. She turned on the faucet and splashed her face with cold water. Now her reflection looked familiar again, the imperfections, the peri-menopausal weight around her belly, which no-one ever thought would be anything else but flat. There is also a raise in people who think the Earth is flat and not plump.
The shaving equipment went back into the drawer, a quick decision was made to enter the new year just as she is, not less perfect, not more perfect, just as is, perfect. Ok, she put a tiny bit of mascara and powdered her nose as they say, something that gave her a bit of confidence as the door bell rang. After all, there was a seventh guest coming that she didn’t know. She tried to repress this thought as it brought upon a bit of anxiety. After all, this New Year nothing is as usual, it might be hard for her to smile like a good hostess and just small talk.
His head was sticking out behind the neighbours, taller than all of them, with a red prickly beard and curious eyes. Dressed elegantly in a Givenchy suit and wearing a bow tie, as if stepping out of a time machine and visiting them from London or France when dandies occupied the literary salons and bars. “My god, I didn’t even shave.” “Babe you will be fine,” responded the reflexion that now moved from the mirror into her head.
They all sat at the table with all their hidden diagnosis, masks, unshared thoughts; friends, yet in many ways mysteries to each other, and a stranger. The night went on, course after course, not too much to eat, not too little … amazing precision actually in how much food was prepared. The 7th chair suddenly started feeling less empty, actually it was filling in quite quickly.
The champagne was open, and the last minute guest brought some poetry to the table. Yates anyone? What about Elizabeth Bishop? Reciting the poems, word by word from memory, everyone just sat in perfect silence. Whatever else was on their minds disappeared. The Muse entered their threshold and everyone was high on life in the room, becoming their true best selves, open for honest and heartfelt discussions, tears and fears released - all of that at the Christmas decorated New Year’s table. Pure magic.
As she was preparing to serve the silky Charlotta Chocolate cake, she noticed the guest and her husband, with a glass of wine in their hand, moving from painting to painting, which hanged in the living room. She smiled. Her husband started looking like his old self again, the one she fell in love with. Just what the doctor ordered in this moment when the passage of time was knocking relentlessly.
Midnight was celebrated with city fireworks just outside of their apartment, a bottle of bubbly followed by anonymously writing best wishes for the new year to each other. Marlene was surprised how her peri-menopausal body that usually falls asleep at eleven at night lasted until 4 in the morning. When the Muse hits, if you are not ready to take it in - hide!
After three hours of sleep, she woke up still high on life, and took the dog for a walk. The morning air smelled like gun powder from the lingering fireworks from last night, and the feeling that everything is going to be alright impregnated the air. The uninvited guests, just like a magpie, stole that which shined the strongest at the table last night, the endless worry and sadness.
Marlene wishes you all a Happy New year!
A POEM
Perhaps the World Ends Here
BY JOY HARJO
The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.
The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.
We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.
It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.
At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.
Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.
This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.
Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.
We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.
At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.
Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.