Leda.
Author’s Note:
The following story was not written by me, but by the unforgettable Louisa Grace, who I had the incredible good fortune to meet in the summer of 1987. Our meeting was a total coincidence and yet for some odd reason over time, we became good friends. I believe through our correspondence, she entrusted me with her true self, outside of how she was expected to behave. This was long before the absurd media frenzy following her sudden death. I did not know that she was a writer, being so renowned for her singing career, and she surprised me by revealing that she had written her entire life.
I loved this story, and brought the typed manuscript home with the intent of keeping it forever. Unfortunately it was not to be, and the manuscript - the only copy, as far as I know - was destroyed completely in a house fire in 1994.
Below you will find my own poor attempt at re-writing the story. I felt the urge to attempt this from memory when I heard the news about my friend. I hope the reader will forgive bad writing and informal tone. It does not show respect in the least to my dear Louisa, and I sincerely regret that, but I felt that the story of Leda must be told.
Leda was seventeen, and she had lived with her grandparents ever since her parents died. Her grandmother was strict, but in good health and she managed a cultivated garden behind their house. They lived together with her grandfather, in a small stone village which was perched very high on a tall hill, and which stood opposite another tall hill with an identical small stone village at its top. Between the two hills barreled a large river, which was split by a small, proud island made of bog moss and forest, where a small church stood next to a cemetery. That island was called Blue Pine Island.
It was Leda’s daily responsibility to gather water in aluminum buckets for cooking and bathing. She fetched her water the same way everyone did - at the far edge of the village was a large open terrace overlooking the cliff’s drop into the rocky valley. Every day, she lowered her buckets down until they dipped themselves into the river and she could hoist them back up, full of water and heavy as sloshing lead, and finally over the edge of the terrace. The ropes were terrifically tight and tense with the weight of the water.
Lowering the buckets took just a minute, but pulling them back was exhausting. While she pulled them, she looked out across the valleys to distract herself from the tedious lifting. Directly across was the other village, far away but just visible, across the river valley with the forests and the cemetery and the rushing water. The other village was small, just like hers, made of stone houses built on top of each other. Around the cliffs of the village, where an identical iron railing protected people from falling into the valley, stood townspeople the size of ants filling their buckets with water from their side of the river on long ropes just as she was doing.
Beyond the village there were many more hills, but none with villages atop them. The valley led with bends and soft slopes up into the larger mountains of the north, still far away and dusted with snow. The snow was the source of the great river’s rushing currents, and in the spring it saturated the bog moss which composed most of the island.
The wind was strong that day and her bucket was being tossed about by the breeze as she pulled it up. She began to sweat from her efforts. When Leda looked back across the valley to the edge of the other village, she saw something flicker. She tried to fix her eyes for a moment. What was it? It seemed to be a person waving. Who was he waving at? She looked around, self-consciously, but she was the only one there.
She looked closer. It was a man in blue. She could barely see him. She thought of waving back to him, then brushed the silly thought away. He wasn’t waving at her. Whatever he was doing, she hadn’t the faintest idea of. He was too far away to see. She resumed tugging the buckets, pulling them up. When she turned her neck again to look out across the valley, he was gone. She stared out for a moment, but when he didn’t reappear, she finished pulling the buckets, placed them on her cart, and rolled it home without a thought through the bumpy stone streets.
The incident didn’t weigh on Leda’s mind, and by the time she had returned she had already forgotten it. Her grandmother was there. When Leda arrived, her grandmother left to finish some washing. Her grandfather stayed in the living room to chat. She was happy that the evening had begun, and she was home. That night, they had a quiet dinner by the fire.
Later, with her grandparents asleep and her work finally finished, Leda lay awake in bed and stretched her legs out. Every evening ended this way, in a clean bed with her tight sheets and two blankets pulled to her neck. It was cold outside, but she felt protected and complete. There were no more chores bearing on her. This time was her own.
She twisted her foot and thought about her father’s smile - the one her grandmother said she inherited. She couldn’t picture her father anymore in any other pose than the one from his photograph in the living room, the one with a black frame that her grandfather bought somewhere in Serbia. She wished she could remember her father with the same clarity that she remembered her dreams. She tried to imagine him casually smiling, maybe winking. It was most fun to think of him as a young man, sure of himself, catcalling the women from their ships, laughing with his friends.
* * *
The following day, Leda returned as usual to the village edge to lower her buckets down the high hillside into the rushing river. She had forgotten all about the man from the day before who had been waving from the other side. He was just a dot, and it could have been anything. Most likely it was the sun’s glint against the buckets she was seeing. The sun was rising uncomfortably on her right. She squinted her eyes and looked down to see if her bucket, which had just hit bottom, was full.
When she looked up again, he was there. A dot, for sure, but there was definitely a person waving. She stopped and stared. Her jaw tensed as she tried to concentrate on him. She looked quickly around and saw she was alone. There was no one else. He was waving at her.
She looked again. He continued to wave. Then she watched as the man took something out of his pocket and brought it to his lips. Something red. And then, like an orb in the air, it floated. It rose up and then riding on an exhalation of the gentlest wind, it floated closer to her. It was a red balloon. Gradually it played in the air, leaping up and turning around several times as it floated gently across the valley, past the forest below and bog moss of the island, over the treetops and slowly coming to rest in the wispy bottom of a cloud. Then it dropped toward her, as carefully as one could only imagine in a dream. Like a thread wound around her wrist. She reached out her hands and caught it. It was a red balloon, and under the balloon was a rolled-up piece of paper, tied to the knot with a string. She carefully untied the string and unrolled the note. The note read:
Even from so far a distance you are the only light I can see. Every day I cast my bucket over the edge only to catch a glimpse of you.
Leda was confused. She read it twice, then a third time. She looked back, and her eyes immediately raced to find his figure again on the other side. But he was gone. She looked and looked, rubbed her eyes and looked once more, before her eyes refocused on her buckets. She folded the note twice over itself, put the note in her pocket, and very carefully let the air out of the balloon. Once she was done, she folded the balloon as well, and put it in her pocket next to the note and resumed pulling the water buckets up, her mind as far away as the mountains.
* * *
She didn’t mention anything to her grandmother when she returned. She wanted to sort out her thoughts. It was obvious to her that she had caught a balloon that was intended for someone else. The silly man could not even see clearly from such an incredible distance. She emptied her pockets in her room, placed the folded note and balloon on a wooden plate and slid it underneath her bed where it would remain undisturbed.
But after dinner, when the dishes were put away and her grandmother had her tea and went off to sleep, Leda retrieved the note from its secret place. She could barely wait to get back in bed, between her cool sheets, and read it. She touched the edges of the paper; she admired his handwriting with its loopy E and the depth and pressure of the ink. She was still convinced it was a letter meant for someone else, someone older and much more beautiful. But still she enjoyed reading it, enjoyed imagining it was meant for her, imagining what the future would hold if it contained her wildest dreams.
What were these dreams? If she let her imagination run free, then perhaps a cottage in town, with tall walls of brick on all sides, with green ivy growing over them. The tops of the brick walls would be white crown molding that bent outward and gave a little ledge for the birds to sit. A house with a driveway that was made of slightly mottled cobblestones and opened onto a type of open garage she had once seen. A driveway with an iron gate with swans at the top. A front entrance which opened from double doors within which a spiral staircase sprouted and bloomed through and across the second level of the foyer and provided a wide balcony for them to greet their guests from above.