FABLE (?) - draft 1 - 23/9/05

A woman stands on a beach in a sleeveless dress facing a large white stone block similar to a slab of marble. Six children play at her feet, three boys, three girls.

The woman is in awe at the beauty of the stone. She thinks how alien it is and yet how familiar. She believes there are other selves within it connected to her dreams, her instincts, and to things she has seen:
a green dog in a fighting pen having bets placed on it, a horse and a cow together on a road encircled by armoured vehicles and soldiers who think they might be suicide bombers, a blue jewel thrown east to west, a line of starlings escaping flames across the horizon, her husband’s arm across her shoulders. Two men carried his body aloft – they placed it on a tier of wood before they cremated him.

The stone gives her hope. She believes it comes from a source beyond the land she lives in, from beyond the earth itself.

The children stop playing and watch their mother.

She asks the stone a question: how long will the war last?

The children ask her what she is doing and she tells them gently to be quiet.

The stone does not answer straight away but she knows it will eventually, so she sits on the sand and waits.

The eldest, her daughter, takes the rest of the children home to eat.
When the sun sets she returns to the beach, taking some food for her mother. They eat together in silence. When they are finished, the daughter sees something in her mother’s gaze and, understanding it, departs with tears in her eyes. She tells the other children not to think of their Mother any more, that she has become their Mother from that day on.

Nine years pass. The children grow; become young adults. The eldest daughter works as a teacher. The next daughter marries a journalist. The youngest daughter is still at school, and they say she will be an artist, a sculptor, when she leaves. The eldest boy and the middle boy join the militia and die in a street battle. The youngest boy loses the power of speech. Each day the eldest daughter takes a bowl of food to her mother and tells her about her children and the war. Each day she asks if the stone has answered the question and each day the Mother replies with the same simple gaze.

Unbeknownst to the people, at the beginning of the tenth year the western generals call upon their president to end the war. There are no men left to fight; they have emptied all the hills, filled all the caves with rubble, and rewritten all the books.

One evening, the woman is visited by the ghost of her husband. He walks along the beach toward her, waving. He is still as he was when he died, still handsome. He touches her hair and the woman cries. They talk about their old life together, their happiness and their adventures before the war began; of their studies and their travels before they were married; of their beloved children.

“I wanted to give them an answer,” the woman says. “To give them hope. I’ve waited every day for it but it hasn’t come. Does it mean the war will never end?”

“It is coming,” replied her husband. “Soon, it is coming; from where you least expect it. That is all I can say.”

The man kisses his wife gently on the lips and returns from where he came. The woman sleeps as she has always slept, there at the foot of the obelisk, kept warm by it. But when she wakes the following day she feels different, full of the desire to talk. She is restless and excited and when she spies the familiar form of her eldest daughter arriving with her bowl of food she cannot help calling to her.

Her daughter is surprised and runs, spilling the precious food. She asks if the answer has come, if the wait is over.

“I don’t know. But I do know it is time to leave and be with you again.”

“Look Mother, look at the stone!”

Behind the woman the stone grows dim, turning grey, shedding its crystalline brightness.

The Mother and daughter watch afraid.

All around them they hear the howl of war sweeping past – bombs falling; citizens wailing and crying; metal, glass, and brick smashing; the reports of gunfire, and the crackling of radios and orders being relayed. The stone absorbs it all.

The Mother and daughter hold on to each other suffering the noise there together until it stops.

“Was that the answer?” the daughter asks.

“I’m not sure. Perhaps.”

“Maybe we can ask it.”

“Yes, yes.” The Mother rises to her feet resting her weight on her daughter’s shoulder and, just as she did so many years before, she stands in front of the stone and repeats the question. But still the answer does not come; at least not directly from the obelisk.

The daughter touches her Mother’s arm. “Look,” she says and points along the beach where the three remaining offspring hurry towards them.

The Mother chastises her daughter, “You told them where I was!”

“No. I promise you. Never.”

When the family arrives they greet their Mother with shy recognition and tears.

“All these years we thought you were dead,” says the youngest daughter. She indicates the only son the mute, “He was walking to work when he saw his sister with the bowl of food. The guards had let him through the cordon by mistake. Normally he never comes this way. He ran home to tell us and we followed.”

The eldest daughter asks, “How did all of you get through?”

The three youngest look at each other and smile.

The Mother steps forward, “It’s over isn’t it?”

The second daughter replies: “No, Mama. They’ve just found somewhere else to go now.”

“And who won?”

“Nobody won and they say nobody lost, Mama.”

“But that’s not right. We lost three. Oh, my children look at you. Such serious eyes. The stone was meant to bring you an answer. I wanted to give you hope that it would all be alright, like any mother would.”

“But we have you back Mama. That is enough now.”

The youngest daughter walks over to the stone and touches it, her palm open against the surface. She lets out a slight gasp. She turns to look at the rest of her family. It is the same look the Mother had given ten years before when she knew she had to stay.

“No!” says the Mother screaming at the stone. “You can’t have her. Not now. You lied to me. Promised me things you could not give, why should I let you have my daughter.”

But the young daughter smiles and says, “Mama it’s okay. Bring me my tools.”