Of Noses and Feet

Chantal Schaul, 2003

The plants that Carmilla grew in her garden were all very tall, so that she could attend to them easily. They were lofty creepers, mostly beanstalks, peas, and tomatoes, giant rhubarbs, berry bushes and fruit trees carrying plums, cherries, mirabelles, apples and pears. Carmilla did not cultivate root vegetables or strawberries. The only flowers she could connect to were sunflowers.

Although Carmilla was graced with absolute beauty she was profoundly unhappy because she was seven feet and nine inches tall. She cried herself to sleep every night. She hunched her shoulders and slouched her walk, in the hope of shrinking an inch or two.

Since her adoptive parents’ death, Carmilla had led a very secluded life. Her parents had always done all they could to alleviate her height complex and protect her from the looks that people would invariably cast her. Her existence had always been in and around her parents’ garden. But when they died so suddenly –in an agricultural accident – Carmilla found herself compelled to receive customers and go out into town on shopping errands.

One day Carmilla discovered the conveniences of the Internet and, little by little, rebuilt her life. She shopped only online and kneeled in the doorway when the delivery van arrived. To hide her tallness from her vegetable customers, she received them from behind a special desk which had the seating area sunk into the ground by one storey.

But there was one aspect of her life that Carmilla had not solved yet, and that was her increasing loneliness. She had her daily work and felt safe within her house and garden, but she craved a soul mate and potential father for the children she so desperately longed for.

The answer came when Carmilla was ordering two identical pairs of trousers, which she would stitch together for double length. She stumbled over a dating website and jumped with joy. Now she would be able to search for an eligible male without ever leaving the house and with the additional benefit of knowing his height prior to meeting him.

For a few days Carmilla was fluttering with exuberance. She shied no effort to search the country, high and low, for a male match to her tallness. But as the days went by, her hopes shrivelled into dusty gloom. No man even remotely lived up to her elevation. The highest one was still only seven feet and five inches tall.

Carmilla did a world search. She ransacked every single country between the two poles. A hit popped up. Carmilla cried. He was Italian, his name Severino.

Severino was exactly the same height as Carmilla. His photo displayed a thoroughly charming and wonderfully good-looking young man with opulent dark hair, large and accommodating hazel eyes, and generously plump lips curved into a welcoming smile. He was a tax collector in Napoli.

Severino was the man of Carmilla’s dreams.

Carmilla took extensive pains to compose an email to this Italian divinity. She went over it a million times, straightened out any blemishes in her prose, polished her uneven syntax, enriched her ideas. Finally, with a mixture of anticipation, fearfulness and devotion, she sent the message on its way to her god.

Waiting, waiting and waiting for an answer, Carmilla sought distraction in pea-grooming.

The reply took three days to arrive. It was worded in the most gallant and charming of ways, proving its originator to be a real gentleman.

“A million thanks for your enchanting message,” it began, and went on to weave metaphors around Carmilla’s eyes, nose, lips and teeth, in an all Petrarchan vein.

The words that Severino used to address Carmilla made her melt away. They were all taken from the world of vegetation: ‘sweat pea,’ ‘sugar plum,’ ‘cherry blossom’ and ‘berry bee.’ She fell for him completely and wrote back at once, using the most flourishing prose at her command, pouring out endless trickles of honeyed rhetoric and casting forth clustering clouds of sugar-dusted phrases.

At the end of a month of correspondence, Carmilla and Severino felt certain that they were meant for each other. They shared the same interests – landscapes and foliage – adored the same music – Mozart and Nik Kershaw – liked the same colours – rose and crimson – indulged in the same pastimes – wishful thinking and bird watching – and were both keen on having a whole horde of children one day.

They called each other ‘darling,’ ‘beloved,’ ‘adored,’ ‘wonderful,’ ‘miraculous,’ ‘enchanting,’ ‘lovely.’ They agreed on all matters, except for their attitude towards Liechtenstein, on which they sorely disagreed. But that remained the only point of dissent.

After three months of devoted emails and a million photo attachments, all taken from the waist upwards, the virtual lovers were so eager to meet in the flesh that the tectonic plates of their respective countries could hardly withstand the magnetic force that emanated from their two souls. Severino finally got some time off his tax collecting duties and offered to visit the land of his inamorata.

The date was set, the deal was struck, and Carmilla’s anticipation was of such vehemence that her soul almost fluttered out of her elongated ribcage. Her heart ached for Severino with such vigour that she feared she would wither away if she could not soon hold him in her arms.

She wondered which vehicle would deliver him to her door, knowing too well how difficult it was for a being of their height to fit into a car of any size. Would he be walking? Or would he tuck himself into a specially hired bus?

She peeked out of her window as a car pulled up outside her front door, and she was dumbstruck by the fact that it was an ordinary taxi. Had he, perhaps, reclined the front seat and angled himself into the boot?

When she saw the man who emerged from the taxi she wanted to sink into the ground. He had the godly face of her beloved Severino, but a body of average height. She didn’t give him more than five feet and nine inches. He almost looked like a weed. And yet it was unmistakably he, radiating divine beauty and emanating pure manliness.

Severino rapidly approached Carmilla’s front door. In a panic, Carmilla fled into the garden. He must never be allowed to see her like this. In her trepidation, she grabbed a spade and dug a hole between the beanstalks, deep enough to stash her legs into. She threw her father’s old mackintosh over her shoulders to cover up her disproportionate physique from her angelic visitor.

The bell had rung three times already.

“The door is unlocked,” Carmilla shouted in her sweetest voice. “Come in my love, I’m in the garden.”

His steps approached.

“Where are you, my lovely?” His voice was more sublime than she had ever imagined it to be, mellow and yet alluringly masculine, rasping yet sweet. She almost lost consciousness and only just managed to keep her wits about her.

As soon as she glimpsed him, rushing towards her, her hitherto virtual love for him was drawn to a full circle and became so real that it hurt. When their faces levelled and one set of eyes pierced the other, both their hearts were welded together irreversibly and absolutely, heedless of their physical mismatch, in an eternal, if conflicting, unison.

Severino, yet unaware of the clash in their statures, tried to sweep her off her feet, but this proved an impossible endeavour. Instead, he kissed her for almost an hour. Carmilla’s inflexible position stood in the way of any more audacious moves. She was dying to offer him tea or at least bid him inside the living room, but was unable to do any such thing. She felt awful.

Severino did not comment on her immobility and, instead, showered her with gallantries. When he asked her for the toilet, Carmilla saw a loophole to escape and quickly prepared tea, fetched a cake, sat down on the sofa, tucked her legs under a throw, slouched, and awaited his return.

They sat on the sofa for hours, chatting, gazing into each other’s eyes, flattering each other, holding hands. The night came and went; they felt no hunger and no thirst, taking their sole nourishment from each other’s company.

When Severino finally fell asleep, still tired from his journey, Carmilla sneaked away to the bathroom to freshen up. She returned unnoticed and placed more food and drink within their reach for the impending breakfast.

Another day went by, consumed entirely by sofa conversations and kisses. Then Severino excused himself. He needed to go into town for an errand, he said, but did not enlighten Carmilla as to what this mysterious errand might be.

Mr Boscop saw Severino leave the house. He was a former lettuce customer of Carmilla’s parents and one of the very few people who knew of Carmilla’s tall existence. Ever since her parents’ death he had been upset that she had stopped selling lettuce.

Mr Boscop followed Severino into town and caught him by surprise.

“Hey, Mr!”

“Sí?”

“I saw you leave Carmilla’s house.”

Severino gave no response.

“I don’t know what went on in there, but don’t you think she’s a freak?”

“A freak? No-”

“You don’t think so? You must be joking. Isn’t she slightly too tall for you?” Mr Boscop laughed in a nasty way.

“What are you talking about?”

“Don’t tell me you didn’t notice she’s about three times as tall as you.”

Severino was unsettled and gesticulated wildly. He lost his fake nose. Although he picked it up and put it back on very quickly, Mr Boscop did not miss his move.

“Have you got a fake nose?” He laughed.

“Excuse me, sir, it’s a prosthesis. I lost my nose in an accident when I was a child. Now, would you kindly leave, I’ve had enough of your rudeness.”

Sniggering, Mr Boscop trotted off, right back to Carmilla’s house. He barged in.

“Carmilla, who’s that strange fellow I saw walk out earlier?”

Carmilla was violently awoken from her amorous fantasies. She had always disliked Mr Boscop.

“I’m sorry, but that’s none of your business at all.”

“Did you know he has a fake nose?”

Still laughing, Mr Boscop stumped off.

When Severino returned from his errand in town, awkwardness had installed itself between the two lovers. Carmilla was still tucked away underneath her throw, but Severino could not take his eyes off it, trying to assess the count of inches that lurked below. Carmilla, in her turn, had a hard time not staring at Severino’s nose and trying to work out if the tiny difference in colour could indicate a fake.

Severino was the first to make an attempt at resolving the unbearable situation.

“My dear Carmilla, I wonder if there could be a difference in height between us?”

She reluctantly nodded.

“And does it cause you any trouble? Because, I remember, in the beginning of our correspondence you expressed your delight that we were both of the same stature.”

“Yes, I said that. But it seems to me now that we must have made some kind of mistake. How tall are you exactly? Not seven feet and nine inches.”

Severino took a deep breath.

“No, my lovely, I think not. In metres I am one seventy-two.”

“That’s five feet and nine inches.” Carmilla knew her height charts by heart. “The website must have got the conversions wrong.”

They looked at each other in despair.

“And your nose?” she finally plucked the courage to ask.

He gingerly touched the tip of it with his forefinger.

“It is fake, my darling. The real one came off in a cycling accident when I was five years old. I’m sorry.”

“That’s no problem at all, my dearest.” A tear trickled down her cheek.

“Would you stand up so we can compare heights?” he ventured.

Timidly, Carmilla pulled the throw off her folded legs and unravelled herself.

“Let’s go outside into the garden, my dear. I can’t stand up in here.”

Outside, among high-reaching vegetation, Carmilla straightened herself. Severino only reached up to her waist. He looked up at her like a little boy eyeing an alluring fruit tree.

Carmilla wanted to sink into the ground. From her lofty position she did not see that Severino was angling his nose towards the concealing shade of a raspberry branch. The lovers’ realization of their startling insufficiencies crushed both their hearts. Perhaps, given a chance, they could have overcome their clashing physiques one day. But they did not get this chance. A harsh and cackling guffaw, laughed over the garden fence by Mr Boscop, shooed away their clinging souls like a couple of bashful birds.

Severino ran off as fast as his legs could carry him and lost his nose in his galloping flight. A small red case soon joined the nose among the ridged earth between Carmilla’s pea stems.

She found that it contained the most beautiful engagement ring.