The Peaceful Belly Kitchen
Instalment 3
You can an introduction the book I’m writing and instalments 1 and 2 here.
The Peaceful Belly Kitchen
Instalment 3
Reading time 3 and a half minutes.
When Pierre reached the bottom of this hilly part of the wood he found a path running horizontally. Alongside this there was a trickle of stream, ambling across pebbles and small rocks, glinting in the sunshine that peeked through the tree branches. He walked over to the stream and just beyond saw two more. Trickles so slender he was able to leap over them all, landing onto a mound that was almost a tiny island of muddy ground; dark wet earth with a few wild garlic plants and ferns growing out of it, the rest of the ground covered in trees with branches swaying, this way and that, in the gentle summer breeze.
The stream was going somewhere, thought Pierre. He looked to his right and could see a slender trunk of tree had fallen across the three streams further up. The streams were wide enough and deep enough to paddle in up to your ankles. Pierre walked over to that fallen down trunk and sat on it, taking off his shoes and socks and rolling up his trousers he plonked his feet into the cool, slowly gushing now, water, and breathed a deep sigh. Looking up at the trees above him he scrutinised their branches, wondering where all the birds were. It was absolutely silent; apart from the gentle gurgling of the water.
The sun glittered through the branches as one butterfly the colour of golds and orange, landed on a fern near to him, sat for a moment, then flew off. Pierre, the trees with no birdsong and the smell of wild garlic, wove a kind of tapestry that hadn’t finished being woven yet and Pierre, could feel that. As he stared ahead, partly taking in the widening of the stream further on where all three streamlets came together, he thought about what he had left behind, and how he had done that. A shadow passed over the sky above his head. Pierre looked up and saw a crow, black as black. Not a sound did it make, gliding; and then gone.
Pierre, was a good man. He had lived his life well doing everything that was expected of him, and there had been many good things in that. The ones he felt really good about right now were his children, three daughters.
Pierre looked at the water between his feet and felt something. Something stirred within him. It was distant. A distant kind of feeling. He thought it was regret. Regret at the way he had brought things to an end.
He had needed to get out. He had needed some space. He had needed to let everyone know things could not go on, not now. And so he simply wrote a letter early one morning and left it on the kitchen table. The letter just said, I’m going, my whole life has been a lie. And that was it. That was all he left his wife with, as well as all the material things of course, but what do they mean when your heart has been broken, so badly the shattered pieces can’t all be found.
Pierre didn’t leave any part of himself behind. He took all of him, with him.
To be continued.