ANISOPTERA'S ESCAPE
The plains are black tonight beyond the edge of town.
Sitting on the flat roof of the tower block, Anis watches the last embers of
the cloud bars fade and day rolls over the horizon. He unfolds his legs and
rises to his haunches, gibbous as the waxing moon.
Anis likes spending his days up here, observing the scything
gulls and crows, the aircraft taking off and landing. The glistening of the reservoir.
It is the only place where he can feel unsullied peace and joy. He looks over
the edge and, sixteen floors down, a man backed against the railings by a streetlamp
bends steel wire into insect shapes for children. A cue: Anis gets to
his feet, checks the clasps on his dungarees and picks up a battered leather
holdall. It is time now for his walk.
First he must negotiate the stairwell, the walkways,
the recesses, slipping by unnoticed. He is not good at this - a man of such
ungainly bulk is prone to being seen. Before he’s taken three steps down he’s barged
to the wall by a young man hurtling to the roof before the fire-door swings to
again. Perhaps he hadn't t seen him. Perhaps the young man was rushing up to shout a
warning: ‘Anis – look out, he’s on his way!’
Anis waits, presses his back into the wall and
breathes in time with the warm air gusting through a vent in the bricks. Steam
as a bathroom window creaks ajar. A girl twangs on the floss she’s pulling
through her teeth.
He moves on, descending past the flat where the seamstresses work, plucking stray threads from their cloth; past the dancers lined up at their bar. He wishes he could watch and linger to absorb their grace, but he knows that is impossible. Water drips from a concrete beam, skips the neck of a green glass bottle and puddles on the floor.
Out in the street, Anis hurries from the estate, cocooned
in his coat and careful to keep close to the buildings. Paving soon gives way
to open ground and he can push his shoulders back and lift his face up to the
night. The walk is not a long one, but he appreciates each pace of it: the scented
drifts of mayflower, the scuttling life among the hedgerows, spits of evening
rain upon his brow.
Anis’ preference is for freedom, not enforced
seclusion – he has tried so many methods of escape. Once, he crossed the metal
bridge above the ring-road, stood among the shattered hub caps and the dirty
piles of snow with thumb outstretched. He waited there all day, until the light
vanished into the grey of the verge and he could be seen no more. Not a single
person stopped, slowed down, or even beeped their horn.
Then there was the time he rowed a boat down the
canal. He made the coracle himself, bending willow for the laths of the hull and
hazel-wood for the weave. He even learnt to steer the craft in clear, straight
lines. But soon he ran aground on a dam of soft drink cans, a traffic cone and
matted clumps of straw blown from the park-keeper’s cuttings.
Undeterred, he had no choice but to make a bid for
airborne liberty.
Anis reaches the door of the lock-up, takes out his
key and rolls up the shuttered entrance, taking in a draught of grit and
grease. He puts his holdall on the table and flicks the light-switch on.
Overhead, brightly coloured stalactites hang from the curve of the roof. Anis
takes down a blue china cup from the dresser and fixes himself some tea before
setting to work on the finishing touches to his project. It has been a very
long day.
Tomorrow has been chosen for the launch of his
escape. Long before the local residents start shovelling cornflakes into their
mouths or spreading marmalade on toast, Anis will be gone from here.
His desire – no, his need – to flee had started with the hissing. Twins in matching
sundresses swinging from the railings: they faced outwards, arms locked behind
them, heels braced on the low wall. Convex grotesques.
‘Pssssstttt, hisssssssssssssss,’ said one.
‘Here, it’s the adder’s servant!’ said another.
‘Pssssstttt, hisssssssssssssss.’
‘Get him, get him, get him!’ they chanted.
He cannot recall a single daylight outing since that has not been soured by hisses.
His favourite part to work on is the cockpit – more
properly, the thorax - weaving bright cavities that house the heart and hold
the legs and wings together. It is delicate work, but Anis possesses a
dexterity and patience that is startling. He has built a loom in the lock-up,
strung with a sturdy warp and wefted with fine threads. The silks he has chosen
are jewel coloured: emerald, garnet, sapphire, roseate pearl. Dazzling patterns
emerge as he works the treadles in the quiet of the night and likes to imagine
how life would be if things were different, can almost think about this place
as home. Almost.
But then the mothers with their wagging fists and
tongues flock back into his mind. They have accused him of poking and snatching
the eyes of their daughters, of sewing their mouths and noses shut while they slept.
It was even said he’d weigh your soul and sell it on for scrap. He never
understood their gibes and leers, why they chose him as the object of their
bile. He guessed the twins’ taunts had got so out of hand they’d turned a
rumour into fact. And he accepted people looked at him and didn’t feel surprise,
with his bulbous, florid nose, his giant’s span. But Anis had no courage to fight back or to ask questions, and let himself be bullied into
silence.
It is true that Anis didn’t always know success.
There have been many failures in the way of his creations: legs that got up and
walked off by themselves, eyes that shrank and failed at the light, wings that folded
when they were meant to propel. His attempts to revise the blueprints were
protracted, agonised over by the glare of a head-torch. Again and again he ran his
diagnostics on the lift and drag, assessed dynamic pressure, accelerated all
six degrees of freedom, but always test flights turned to wreckage, time trials
stuttered to a halt. He looked to birds in flight for the answers to his
problems, queried the fall of sycamore seeds for clues.
Anis almost gave up, but then the fathers began to take their turn, attaching rocks to each end of a rope and flinging it at his ankles as he passed. They dragged him to the ground, then set him free again. Afterwards, they allowed their sons their sport – chasing Anis with hooked poles, made sticky with birdlime. There was nothing he could do but press on with his escape, watch as hatred sunk its roots and flourished all around him, firm as weeds in stones.
‘Pssssstttt, hisssssssssssssss.’
At last, one Tuesday afternoon, Anis found hope circling
unaided in the skylight and saw that it was possible: the gold flashes of the wings, the majesty of flight.
Success! Even with his heft, he felt the lightness of his designs and flung the
shutters wide in celebration.
Then, a pass of grief as he watched them go their
own way, darning air above the children on the path, who turned and squealed
with glee. Would that they weren’t blind to the humanity of their maker, to his
gifts, to his capacity for wonder.
But they were. They are. And he must leave.
Tonight’s no time for sentiment.
He has replicated his best prototype and now readies
the new fleet, one last frantic assembly of legs, wings, antennae, bodies,
heads. Fixing, adjusting, finishing.
When he is done he surveys the work, grabs up the battered
holdall and packs his dragonflies in careful, tissued layers.
Sunrise and Anis sets off for the roof. He can
afford to be less cautious in the mornings, deserted and still as the benches
and the courtyards are at this time of day. He makes his way back up the
stairwell, pushes through the fire-door and sets his bag down gently on the
ground.
One by one, Anis plucks the hairs from his own head
and lays them out. When he is ready he unclasps the holdall, reaches in and
takes out a single dragonfly. He takes a hair, wraps it round, fastens it like
a rein, then repeats the action until a thousand Skimmers, Hawkers, Chasers,
Darters, Thorntails and Dropwings are harnessed, ready to take flight.
Anis takes a needless run-up to the edge and notices
the distance is unusually clear today. Still no sign of any souls below, just the electric thrum of a milk-float on its rounds.
His final checks complete, Anis does not waste a
single minute more. Eagerly he flicks the reins, watches his fleet rise and
takes one final leap of faith.
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