Gudrun, My Cream-Puff-Valkyrie
by Andromache Kokkinou ︎︎︎The National Opera in Amsterdam is infested with specters. From dead composers to revolutionary heroes, they make a fuss at Death’s door, stubbornly demanding to get back to the living world and haunt familiar places.
I am not ready to do this specter-busting operation all over again. Instead, I walk down to the port and look at the boats singing on the deepest waters. They’re moving coyly from side to side, swing swing splash splash, as if embarrassed of their curvy shapes and female names.
Gudrun’s presence looms over me like those big boats; she’s a whole fleet of heavy cargo ships. I know that without her persistence and bravado we would hardly have any specter-busting work to stay afloat. I call upon the names of gods I spot on the ships to appease my lover’s warrior spirit: Neptune; Aphrodite; Cyclops, the one-eyed giant.
“This is an urgent case” Gudrun’s words circle back to my attention, as my field of vision is flooded with images of motherships and babyships and their umbilical ropes dancing tied to the port. This endless motion is making me seasick.
“You are my last hope” she said, “my everything”.
The most cliché of all exaggerations.
What does “everything” even mean?
I think of my uncle, and how he would take those personality tests to impress me as a child. He managed to get equal results in them all. He was Inventor, Idealist, Opportunist, Neutral Evil and Lawful Good. How can you be everything, all at once? All-in-one, shampoo and conditioner, blender and juicer. “I guess I’m a chameleon,” I sigh loudly.
Gudrun was one thing: a Valkyrie.
With her towering presence, Gudrun looked like a real Valkyrie, a Brunhild who stepped straight out of Wagner’s imagination. She was a giantess with back rolls and starry dimples on her face. “This belly roll is our April” she said when I got back home and curled up with her in bed, grabbing straight on her belly fat. We sure ate a ton in April, during her opera performance break. Glory, holy objects, sacraments, a miracle in confinement. Mollusk moist, now in front of me, Gudrun is sipping oolong tea from her clear IKEA glass, burning her fingertips, while I choose a modest mug with a handle to drink cocoa from. We eat lemon curd out of the jar with a spoon, bake crunchy choux and fill them with zesty cream that drips on our chins.
“How was work today?”
“I clean and clean and clean and they never go away”
She puts on Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries and sings to me softly:
Listen closely.
This is the ride of the Valkyries. They come every one hundred years, chew on and spit out the clean bones of old ghosts. Then they go back to resting, dressed in mirth, rosy pink joy, and metal helmets. They are messengers of death for those who have forgotten they’re dead. You might be cleaning, over and over again, dusting the past away, but at the end of the day, you come home to the real deal. Me! How cool is that?
I nod as I chew on her bubblegum flesh, a milky substance dripping from my eyelids. There is one Valkyrie in the world who doesn’t go away when her song is over, and she’s all mine.
