I have a confession to make.
I’m envious of my neighbour who received a visitor late afternoon. It’s not the fact that she got company. It is the interesting presence that immediately charged an extravagant imagination to gather from a few distorted sentences overheard during their prolonged conversation a picture embroidered with golden thread.
No eavesdropping allowed, but I could simply not miss the trail of uncommon accent and deep voice of a woman of foreign descent wafting in through the window from where they must have been seated on the veranda during their soiree of sorts.
She somehow sounded Russian and fabulous. I gave her pale features and red hair while catching a thing or two she related about her travels in Europe. An older woman. Lots of diamonds on her fingers. The clutch she would have carried with her could have had a bold gold chain and the perceived match to the little black outfit – tight-fitting designer top and stovepipes with pumps - she was wearing, sourced by an assistant long before online catalogue shopping could ever have been a thing.
Marlena. She is the woman who could have owned the swanky knee-length faux fur leopard print coat I recently picked up for not quite a song from a thrift store in the big city. It took my breath away the moment I spotted it in the corner of a photo posted by the store owner on Instagram one Saturday afternoon. I had to have it. An investment that was more of a guilty pleasure. A short-lived hunt with the help of the google tool ensured a phone connection and the piece being reserved until the next weekend. The rest is history. Not mine, but Marlena’s.
I envisage that same coat having been worn to operas at the national theatre in her country, or to the ballet to which she naturally would have been dropped by limousine. On cold winter evenings in the dimly lit drawing room of the old mansion in the company of cherished friends. Marlena, a rich middle-aged widow wallowing in old money, appeared comfortable surrounded by the splendour taking shape in my mind.
A three-course dinner enjoyed in a vast space off a dance hall where stuffed deer heads against the walls served as conversation pieces among burly huntsmen, who knocked away vodka on tap. Preceding it, aperitifs on the balcony overlooking the woods in the distance before slipping indoors to avoid the worst chill.
There would possibly have been seared salmon for mains with delectable sides, served on curved platters by staff in stiff uniforms. Heavy silver cutlery scraping against grande gold-embellished floral-patterned plates, passed on from generation to generation. Conversations would go on deep into the night, topped off with espresso in dainty cups roughly placed back on their saucers before bedtime. Again, precious stones and jewellery pieces flashing in the light playing up and down the patterned walls.
Once the guests in the stay-over party would have retreated to their rooms, only the butler could have been able to tell what indulgences occurred in those spacious black-and-white tiled corridors when the varnish came off.
Aah, Marlena. What would have become of you? Sitting behind a laptop in the heart of the Limpopo bush, slamming away at the keyboard, I spare you a precious thought tonight. My champagne flute is empty.
Don’t believe them when they say you need a passport and visa to leave the country and you're not supposed to cross off-limit borders during a pandemic. Do it from a plush armchair.
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