The Blue Book

The first chapter. Blue "Titania"Eyre.

The river Medina ran outside the window peacefully but barely visible since the oaks and hazel trees clouded the quiet view where it ran silently and beautifully. Loyally strolling along the course it had been given. The rocks and the fields beside it where upon our house rested old and tired were vast, grey and yellow all the way until they ended by the horizon. Across the room, Mr. Golovin sat and knocked his pen repeatedly in the table for a small while before turning around, gathering his papers and facing me.
'There. All set. What do you think, beautiful?' He smiled sadly and chuckled to himself. I wanted that miserable look on his face gone, seeing him talking to himself, muttering formulas and hypotheses, watching my friend... well, actually, friend is a strong word to wield. One should take care not to misuse it. The thing is, I hated it, to see him like this. Naturally people have their good days and their bad, their happy days and every other day, though with Mr. Golovin the happy days got so rare and short-lasted that every single person who met him thought he was strange and eccentric. Which he completely was, but there was nobody to love him for it. They wouldn't know what he was like during his happy days, all the days he made a joke nobody laughed at, every song he hummed nobody joined in with, every time he had a brandy or a sandwich nobody ate with him. During every other day, he rarely smiled because something was funny, if he smiled it was to keep the me happy. What people saw when he went out, which never happened anymore was that every line in his body was tired, most of his hair lined with steel and that the area beneath his eyes had almost blackened. The things they didn't see was his brain screaming for company and connection, and his teeth longing to be smiled with.
'Soon, dear, it won't be long.' He promised optimistically. 'You will take their breaths away, my little cherub.' Cherub? That's new. 'Oh, yes, very soon indeed.' A minute later he proceeded with his mumbling and scratching of his stubby chin and creating a troubled furrow on his wrinkled brow.
Eyes dark from years of sorrow and rare but bitter-sweet joy darted back and forth over his complicated sloppy handwriting. I wanted to take his hand, like all those friends in the novels he read for me did, but... Oh. Right, my bad, I apologise, he's not my friend. Even so, I wanted to reach for that fragile withered hand with dark blue veins like rivers in a dried out land. Just for a second, long enough so he'd know he mustn't lead his whole life all alone. I think he has. Lived alone, I mean. He had his family when he was small and maybe a friend when he got older, but other than that? Nobody. I pity him.
His face is the only face I have ever seen. And he is the only one who's seen me. He wears the face that I cling on to as the rays of this day and every new one penetrates through the fabric of this rooms massive, heavy navy blue curtains. With them I see my entire body lightening up by a strong, and yet wicked sun. I see how Mr. Golovin's movements relax, how the tension he unconsciously upheld his body with disappears, and he seems to bathe in the calming feeling of the rays that the gaps between his curtains allows to escape. Letting the sun soothe his pain, he sighs, looking up for a minute or two to fully let his mind rest before turning his head down and continuing scribbling unreadable equations.
A part of me does love the sun for easing his lonesomeness, even for just one hundred and twenty three second, or less, but somewhere, I loathe it for each and every day reminding me that nothing has changed during the night. The sun will rise, I find comfort in that, and the sun will set, in a way, that is also comforting, but neither for me nor Mr. Golovin has anything changed. Nothing will change just because the sun is rising every day.
Suddenly he started humming. A familiar melody he'd played for me while he was gone and I'd been left to be covered in dust until his return. I loved this tune. It reminded me of nothing seeing as I have never seen anything but this poorly lit, somehow smoky, cosy hall covered in different nuances of blue.
That's my hope, that one day something will change when the sun rises, that I'll be someone who has a specific memory linked to all kinds of music. Songs sung by beautiful voices and ordinary men and women. Soon, very soon, he'd promised me. And against all common sense, I do believe him.
In all my life I have only ever seen one other person, and I don't really know how I am related to him, if he is family, or, well, we've already ruled out friend so what is left?
I live in this room which I don't really know where it is. It's a beautiful room, though.
Everything is covered in blue. I think it's an important colour to Mr. Golovin.
From the bondi-blue cushions and azure coloured pillows in the steel-blue couch. The navy curtains and woven aquamarine carpet. His desk lamp drowned in different shades and patterns of ribbons sown over one another. The walls, the high, high walls painted in indescribable shapes of figures and creatures of the sky and sea. I wonder who painted it. I wonder what it means, I wonder where the creatures come from. It has to mean something. Mr. Golovin is a man of logic and sense and even though in the eyes of a stranger this obsession with the colour may seem unreasonable, I know it must mean something. Perhaps it's a memory of his time before me, or a promise he's been made long ago that things will be good in the future, either way when he is ready and I am finished he will share it with me, as always.
The time will come, just like Mr. Golovin has promised.

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