Laura Frida Polyphony

May, Frida’s journal, age 20 (Julia -2 months)

I am cinder, burned within our love, your hands fill themselves with me, you spread me across your chest.

I am paraffin, consumed by the flame of a candle suspended in waiting, each drop weighs upon you, my vessel.

I am dust, breathe me in, wipe me away, your body is my surface, days without you, I touch the ground, you far from me.

Shape me to your desires, I take on every form of your soul.

First reunion. Frida, age 15 (Julia -5)

The father had severed all ties long ago, from the earliest years of Frida’s coming into the world. The mother, for her part, relocated several hundred miles from the place of her birth, settling with her daughter in a communal building in their current city. The little girl grew up always within the bounds of respect and dignity. No relationship her mother held ever crossed the threshold of their home. She worked as a cleaning agent for a large retail chain, one where Fynn’s parents held positions of an intellectual nature.

Primary school brought the two children of these two worlds together in the same classroom. They took to one another at once. The sharing of materials and recess lasted through the final two years of elementary school. Then the boy moved to a neighboring town.

The quality of their bond remained intact, while the presence of it vanished in a single night. So thoroughly that both were left without friends. The distance, compounded by the upheavals their entry into middle school brought with it, allowed forgetfulness to come and imperceptibly erase even the memory of the absence.

Three years passed in this way, at the end of which a chance encounter took place. The two young people, having reached an age at which they were permitted to move through the world with some degree of freedom, found themselves brought together by happenstance in a shopping center. This fortunate circumstance revived a friendship that had remained unfinished, and they resolved to maintain a connection, enriched by meetings whenever the occasion presented itself. The boy’s mother’s reluctance made itself known from the very first days; she attempted to convey it subtly to her son.

- Fynn, have you started seeing Frida again?

- Yes.

- Perhaps you could find someone at your school. She’s so far away, don’t you think? Around us, there are people who are rather suitable.

- Suitable?

- Yes. Haven’t you had the sense that her school is of a different caliber from ours?

- Yes, that’s true… But we meet in town mostly, never at her school.

Fynn was heading toward his room when he was suddenly reeled back in.

- Apparently… She lives without her father, in a neighborhood slightly removed from the residential areas. Those are the charming old buildings, recently renovated, aren’t they?

The boy turned around, and his heart sighed - a sensation invisible to the naked eye.

- Yes, Mother, the… city tends well to every neighborhood.

- Yes, of course. Oh, you have such wit. But do try all the same with a girl from your school. You know, their families were able to place them here.

Silence.

- May I choose any one of them?

- Absolutely. But there is nothing at all wrong with seeing Frida from time to time. I am not forbidding you.

- I’ll think it over.

- Yes, just think before you go out. You know, if she’s over there, it’s certainly because the school reached its quota.

- Yes, there were no spots elsewhere, she told me so herself.

- Perhaps next year.

For nearly a full school year, the two teenagers saw each other regularly. Despite the distance between their two towns, adjacent as they were, Fynn made his way with eagerness to meet Frida in the town center. The duration of their encounters remained constant - always three hours, time enough to reach the empty point of conversation. Over those months, not once did laziness make an appearance. His mother, however, did.

She learned of his disobedience during one of her outings, a few weeks after the first encounter. This gave rise to a new and more precise exchange - though one that did not last long. Aware of her son’s rebellious age, the mother resigned herself to finding her inner peace through shopping. Then, some two months later, no longer able to bear the relationship, she brought her grievances to Frida’s mother.

For a reason still unknown, Frida’s mother forbade her daughter all communication with her friend. Frida complied correctly with the restrictions and applied them. Communication forbidden - but no prohibition on meetings; that much was clear in her mind. And so the rhythm of weekly visits remained unbroken.

However, once the school year ended, the professional obligations of the young man’s parents soon necessitated yet another move to an even more distant town. A new opportunity had arisen within the same company, at another site.

The increased distance, the demands of their respective studies, and the formation of new friendships made their meetings ever more difficult to arrange. After careful consideration, and not without some regret, they mutually agreed to relinquish a bond that distance had already erased.

A long time - for Frida - passed quickly for her friends. The frequency of school holidays rang like the keys of a piano, note after note of a score whose verso revealed an unwanted new page. From the spring rains to the melancholies of summer, from the autumn soul falling piece by piece from the brown trees, to the warmth of winter for a heart grown cold far from home. The moments excluded from the joys of celebrations had rendered the young girl absent, silent. One evening, she took up her journal to describe her patience.

What reveals the abyss by its absence

What unveils in the flower its beauty

What persists between the shadows

It is not only light - it is love.

Two years passed. Then one evening, in a bowling alley in the town bordering Frida’s, during a game of billiards, she walked in and recognized a silhouette.

- Fynn? Is that you?

- Frida! What a wonderful surprise!

- Are you not far from home?

He smiled.

- No… My parents separated. My father and I now live closer to here. And you?

- Where you last saw me…

A second of silence passed between their gazes, then she continued:

- Are you at the same high school as I am?

He took the small cube of chalk and turned it in quarter rotations between his index finger and thumb, like a rooster courting.

- No… though mine is not far from it.

- Ah, that’s good - and you’re not far from home, I suppose.

- Yes, indeed. My father and I made every effort to find somewhere as close as possible.

She took the chalk cube from Fynn’s hand - their fingers did not touch - and lazily chalked the tip of the cue in blue.

- Your turn, Fynn.

- Advise me… Do you think this ball works in my favor?

He took the chalk back, without grazing Frida’s fingers, and chalked more carefully, while asking:

- So, any thoughts?

She answered, her eyes meeting his, arms extended, supported by hands laid flat against the rail:

- That depends. Is it the only one in a favorable position?

- The situation is such that I have very little choice - between two.

- What do you make of that one? I only just noticed it. Was it there before?

- Yes, it was… It moved into my line of sight just before you arrived. But you see, for that one a rake would be useful - it’s more delicate.

- The choice is yours alone. Do you prefer the one already set, or do you try your luck with the delicate one, perhaps better for the shot to come?

He positioned his cue and attempted to better calculate his angle. His friend intervened:

- Will you perhaps leave me a chance this time?

Fynn concentrated while Frida continued the conversation with the new boy:

- You’re both after the same ball, it would seem.

- Each of us had been advancing through open territory until now. But your arrival introduces a certain element of cheating.

- Oh, our old friendship is here only as an advisor.

- And I’m glad of it. Outside opinions change things. As for the balance of chances - one never knows which way the scales will tip.

All in suggestion, she sighed and offered:

- I’d say an advisor always hopes to have their counsel followed.

- In that case, there would first need to be one - on the table. Wouldn’t there?

Fynn struck the white ball, caught the head and glanced off - touching neither of the two coveted balls.

Frida: - Ah, a pity! Perhaps on the next attempt?

The friend: - Too late! He should have followed your advice! My turn now.

Frida to Fynn: - Do you come here often?

- Two or three times a week.

Surprised, she did not exclaim:

- Wow… Are you training for a competition?

He smiled:

- Not at all! I work here twice a week, and sometimes if I have the time, I come back once more - it pays very well for a student.

Given his parents’ comfortable financial situation, Frida could not account for Fynn’s working, and asked with all discretion:

- But… why? You don’t need to, normally, do you?

- I prefer to be as independent as possible.

She heard her friend’s words, but her own evolution - since the very first awareness, enmeshed in a net of financial restriction - clouded her understanding.

He just said “I prefer” - what does he mean, and what if he didn’t prefer?

She did not work for pocket money or to earn her independence. Her labor was the silent demand of hope. Since when must one pay to hope?

Independence, hope, dependence, demand - four dimensions intimately bound, connected to one another. Each calls upon the next to satisfy itself. One satisfied reveals the dissatisfaction of another, and so on in an acyclical curve, swinging the time of our lives from one to the next.

The game ended.

- Frida, I’m back on for another hour and a half - then we could talk, if you’d like.

She could not wait. Half an hour later, her small wave goodbye before leaving the room left the boy behind the bar in despair. Her new job was filling her free evenings.

After his shift, he went home. As usual, his father was still awake, reading.

- Everything go well?

- Yes… Frida was there.

- Ah. It was only a matter of time. There are only two bowling alleys around here.

- Mother didn’t think much of her.

- Yes. But Mother isn’t here anymore.

He went up to bed. She went to bed.

Lying down.

Eyes closed - not from the day’s fatigue, but from the flood of doubts. Gray phrases without break or period lined themselves one beneath the other on the white ceiling, lit by a yellow light fixed to a brass socket of a golden hue worn thin by time, which gave off its muted glow like an open secret through a lace lampshade, slightly rose-tinted - the shade of the lips of this evening’s encounter, as soft as the sensation of pollen on the petals of a rose, pressed delicately by the tips of fingers touching their velvet slowly, by nonchalance, from the interior of the flower to its deep-purple edges.

A single question weighed upon both hearts:

Should I try again? What if we were separated once more.

Should I try again? What if we were separated once more.