DARK Spider's Silken Song

Scott Amour
664 Tamalpais Ave.
Novato, CA 94947          
415 892 5941
         





DARK SPIDER’S SILKEN SONG
by
SCOTT AMOUR



         A Santa Ana was blowing its hot breath across the Bay and into the city. The dry, electric heat and blue skies had been with us for two days. Today I’d been writing in my Chinatown studio since long before the sun crept over the East Bay hills. Later in the morning my creative juices finally dried up. I needed some exercise to recharge my batteries. The sun hadn’t reached my front door on Ross Alley, but it drenched me as soon as I reached Jackson Street. I walked up Jackson to Stockton Street, the artery that keeps Chinatown alive. I reveled in the exotic and the mundane available here. Did I need a huge, alligator skinned durian, the only fruit in the world that attacks one’s olfactory senses with the odor of sewer gas even as one spoons out the creamy, delicious fruit? What about dried sharks fins, wrinkled mushrooms, and shriveled sea creatures, stored artistically in big apothecary jars, and selling for up to five hundred dollars a pound? Could I use a quart of pork blood or half a fish, chopped in two before my eyes, and still thrashing convulsively in the plastic bag the butcher hands me? Imagining myself in Kowloon, I passed the Sun Kau Shing Market, the Tang Fat Hotel, and the Hing Lung Meat Market where rotisseried ducks and puzzling delicacies I couldn’t identify hung and dripped golden fat behind the smudged and steamy window.
         No matter what anyone else says, the junction of Stockton Street and Columbus Avenue, where Chinatown and North Beach converge, is the heart of San Francisco. I walked a half block down Columbus from that confluence of cultures and sat in the sun at a sidewalk table outside the Caffè Puccini with a cappuccino. Three middle-aged men were at the table next to me, conversing loudly in Italian. I read the Chronicle, perhaps the civilized world’s least informative newspaper, and finished a second doppio cappuccino. The last bit of foam, despite vigorous shaking, wouldn’t detach itself from the bottom of the big deep cup without a spoon, which I used to finish it off.
         With the paper read, my coffee finished, and no more pressing business there, I decided not only to continue my walk but to make it a robust one. I crossed Stockton and headed west up Vallejo Street across Powell and Mason. Vallejo dead-ends a half block above Mason at the base of Russian Hill, where a steep concrete stairway would carry me all the way up to the hill’s summit at Jones. I mounted the steps and reached Taylor Street, half way to the top. By this time I was huffing and puffing like the old man I never want to be, which made the wooden benches set in a small park a welcome stop before I continued. I picked a bench that provided me a panoramic view of the Bay, Berkeley, Oakland, and the hills beyond them. The Bay was studded with hundreds and hundreds of sail boats, like white-winged insects that hatch at the first sign of spring. An immense oil tanker, so low in the water it appeared ready to founder, plowed through them, helpless to change course if one of the little white bugs came too close. The East wind had blown smog, soot, smoke and dust out to sea and the air was dazzlingly clear. The scene was breathtaking, even to a jaded City person like me.
         Ten minutes later I was ready to attack the next set of stairs ascending to Jones a block above, when a voice startled me.
         “Hello, sir.”
         I turned and saw a vision of the sixties standing behind me, a young woman, not yet twenty. The first thing I noticed was a hint of madness in her hazel eyes. Then my gaze was drawn to her long straw-blond hair blowing wildly in the hot wind. She wore a thin dress and nothing else.
         “Hello, yourself,” I said.
         The madness receded when she smiled.
         “My name is Spring Breeze, and I have something for you,” she announced.
         Spring Breeze? Something for me? Careful, Toby. This might be an apparition, but since I was stone sober, I doubted it.
         “I’m Toby, and what is it you have for me,” I said, bracing myself in case she drew a sharp knife or some other weapon from a hidden place, although I couldn’t imagine where she could be hiding anything. Her flowing ankle length dress was a delicate, pale blue, gauzy material, easily transparent enough to show her small breasts and a triangle of blonde hair below her flat stomach.
         “It’s a poem.”
         “Oh! Well, I’d love to hear your poem.”
         She hesitated and her face became worried. “I charge one dollar to read a poem,” she said apologetically. “It’s my livelihood.”
         I fished around in my pocket, but she put out her hand to stop me.
         “You don’t have to pay unless you like it. I’ll read it first, and if you like it you can pay me a dollar.”
         “Okay, let’s hear it.”
         “Do you like haiku?”
         “Yes, I do.”
         “Mine is a double haiku.”
         “A double haiku? I’ve never heard one.”
         “Now you will. Are you ready?”
         “Yes.”
         She opened a small, well-thumbed journal she’d been holding in her left hand and, with a solemn frown, read:
         Butterfly, don’t heed
         old dark spider’s silken song
         rise swift to heaven.
         His lovely threads hum
         tantalizing melodies
         that mask his hunger.
         When she finished, she closed her book and looked at me with a mixture of expectation and dread.
         “That was wonderful,” I said, even though I deemed it a bit macabre for haiku. I took a five dollar bill from my pocket and offered it to her. “Please take this. I don’t have anything smaller.”
         “Oh dear,” she said, her whole face contorted in bewilderment. “I don’t have any change for you.”
         “It was well worth it. It’s a lovely haiku.”
         “Really?”
         “Yes, really. Please take it.””
         She carefully tore out the page with the poem, handed it to me, took the money, threw her head back in joy, and started dancing and twirling, waving the five dollar bill in the air. I sat on my bench, watching her and wondering if I should take the opportunity and head down the long flight of stairs to the bottom of the hill or wait until she finished. I wished my friend, Dr. Dave, could be here. Would he diagnose her as a bipolar personality at the peak of her manic period? I thought he would, but what did I know?
         She twirled back to me and asked, “Where do you live?”
         “Chinatown.”
         “Do you want me to come home with you?”
         “It sounds nice, but I have a friend living with me,” I lied.
         “Is it a woman?”
         “Yes.”
         “I’d love to be with you both. Do you think she’d like that?”
         “I don’t think so. She’s Catholic.”
         Her face turned suddenly sad, and she stopped dancing. “Oh,” she whispered, and without another word turned and skipped up the path to Taylor Street.
         “Watch out!” I yelled after her. We were at a plateau at the top of Taylor where twenty feet in both directions the street dropped off at such precipitous inclines that cars were invisible until the very moment they came flying over the summit from one direction or the other. Spring Breeze didn’t hear me and bounded, dancing, off the sidewalk just as a big silver Jag accelerated over the top from the north.
         I yelled “STOP!” and shut my eyes as tight as they would go. Brakes screeched, and then it was silent. After a long moment I realized my eyelids were pressed together so hard they hurt. I opened them and looked at the scene. The Jag was stopped, the middle aged, silver-haired woman driving was slumped back against the seat, repeating over and over, “Oh, my God, oh, my God!”
         I looked for Spring Breeze’s body but didn’t see it. I sprinted over to the other side of the car but still couldn’t find her. I ran to the brow of the hill, looked down, and there she was, skipping and dancing down a frighteningly steep Taylor Street at breakneck speed, her arms akimbo, her blonde hair flying and glistening in the sunlight, her journal clasped in one hand and the five dollar bill clutched in the other. I watched her until she reached Green Street and, again without looking, crossed the intersection heading down the hill into North Beach.
         As I walked past the Jag on my way back toward my bench, the woman raised her head and asked me, “Did I kill her?”
         “No.”
         “Is she all right?”
         “Yes.”
         “The crazy idiot!” she blurted out angrily before she
jammed her foot on the accelerator and disappeared down the
other side.
         As I walked across the street and continued up the
stairs toward the top of Russian Hill, I wondered what the
hell that dark spider thing was all about, anyway?