The Mermaid

Traditionally clad young gal pacing by in simple linear patterning caught too late to see the face. Doubtful she had learnt anything of that gait from the moves on film or music video. Strictly, the dress was pulled in at the waist a trifle close, the movement not having been factored for the contours. Strict ulama judges observing would have their noses outta joint and upbraid the dear. Like the proverbial ghost in the machine, beneath the ever elusive, sinuous form was hinted: the surprisingly wide hips and broadly curved ridges of the bottom. Almost certainly still somewhere in her twenties, but one could never be sure. Old grannies well advanced in years could easily be mistakenly accosted and propositioned at the eateries here, at the bus stops and along the sheltered walkways. (Indeed, even without any error; such good cover and appeal did the garb deliver. Carried mermaid-swimmingly in that fashion….) How often was a figure like that rounded in front in order to peer over the edge of the scarf, only to find wrinkles and bleary, tired eyes? A little stabbing pain watching this sweet disappearing up at the Haig stalls never to be seen more. There she would buy the vegetables and fish, climb aboard her bus out front of the market and sit herself by the window, without anyone properly loving her the live-long day. Inevitably one thought of the village in the earlier generations, the men looking after the wrapped form of that kind climbing up the mountain sides. (The recent Chin technology might have difficulty positively ID-ing an individual with that particular gait that was shared by so many of the Malay women.) Ubi Boze! Slay (me) God! the lads uttered and muttered looking upon the like in the pre-war lull of the 30s above the bays of Boka Kotorska. F_ck me dead! in the vernacular Australian English—rather than Brit. or US—approximated in rather more rude form.