Madonna of the Wasps

Some years ago I had a dream which went much as follows:

I dreamed that I was an artist with a Van Gogh-type beard, living in a white tower surrounded by a small orchard in a field in Normandy. It was an unusual tower, because it had no door. I was based on the middle floor, in a big round room that had two large sash windows: a north-facing one, where I kept my easel and my brushes, and a south-facing one which I usually left open. On the easel in this dream was a portrait of a lady in a purple velvet dress. She wore a pearl necklace around her dainty neck and had the iridescent head of a dragonfly. I wish the real me could paint that well…

It was late summer, on the cusp of autumn. I was standing in the centre of my circular domain, wearing a grubby white smock and black breeches that were smeared with oil paint. From the open window I could just see blackberries ripening on the brambles in the hedgerows - or, at least, imagine I saw them - and russet apples swelling on the branches of nearby trees. The air was hazy with dusk, summer-warm yet autumn-piquant. I fancied I could see the granulated air like grains of rice. The orchard nearby and the stubble field surrounding it; all of it seemed as still as a painting. Clouds hung in the sky like jellyfish, and a motionless column of smoke hung on the horizon.

Almost the only movement came from the wasps that burrowed in and out of the apples. I could hear them rather than see them: buzzing, humming and hovering around the fructose spheres. Indeed, one apple was suspended from a branch so near to my window that the tree itself seemed to be offering it to me. I could just discern through the thickening air a couple of these fruit-seeking insects burrowing in and out of the russet globe that dangled a few feet from my eyes.

I found myself leaning out of the window, my white smock billowing over the sill. My beard now hung all the way down to the ground: I could see it almost touching the nasturtiums that flowered in an enamel sink at the foot of the tower. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. Then I felt something tugging at my beard. I opened my eyes again to see a woman’s face rising up from below: she was climbing up my beard!

It was a beautiful face that she had, framed by a curtain of wavy copper hair, and two green eyes glimmered in her alabaster skin. She was smiling in a way that made me wonder what she was smiling about.

Next moment her face was level with mine, but my attention was wholly diverted by the two transparent wings that grew from (I guessed) her shoulder blades and, beating fast, held her aloft in the autumn air. She had let go my beard and hovered before me like some mischievous angel. It was then that I saw her elegant striped yellow-and-black abdomen tapering down from her waist, the way that fish scales do on a mermaid. She was a wasp woman. Above her auburn locks glowed a low-watt golden halo.

For a moment she hung there, grinning in the twilight. Then she was tearing open my smock, and, grabbing my head as if it was a jug, (using my ears as the handles), she pressed her soft enchanted lips to mine. She had sweet apple breath. It felt like a dream - which it was - yet it was so vivid, I could have been watching a 70mm print in an art-house cinema. Next moment, even as my mind succumbed to the erotic, I felt a sharp pain in my own abdomen. I looked down to see that the Madonna of the Wasps had curled her long lower body around and stung me hard in the gut.

I must have blacked out. Next thing I knew I was lying alone in the stubbly field. It was cold and it was sunrise. Flecks of frost clung to my beard. My stomach hurt. A little way off I could see the white tower, over by the apple trees which had lost half their leaves and all their fruit overnight, it seemed. I also noticed a door in the bottom of the tower which I swear hadn’t been there before. Ivy curled around the base of the building, and the occasional late nasturtium made a dot of orange in its dark green clasp.

I turned my head to see a figure lying several yards away. Like a crashed aircraft, the Madonna lay in the frosted stubble. Her white face already had the perfection of an effigy on a tomb, and her lovely wings lay crumpled beneath her. I crawled over to where she lay and knelt next to her. She was still breathing, in a shallow way. I clasped her dying hand:

“Goodbye darling, I’ll love you forever,” I said.

The crashed Madonna rolled her green eyes open one last time.

“You’ll love me for a whole week, Raymond,” she whispered faintly up at me.

“Then you’ll love somebody else… for another week.”

Even as she drew her last breath, I woke up.

The dream was over. Why had she called me Raymond? That was my father’s name, not mine. I felt desolate but liberated. She had freed the dream me from my prison and set me loose in the world. Already I could feel my relationship to life transformed, and for that I had to be grateful, despite my getting stung in the process.

But she was right. Within a week I had completely forgotten to keep loving her.

A few years later, I did a small drawing of the Madonna, of which, natch, I can find no trace now. And then, not long after that - mid 1988 or so - I made up the song. It’s been with me ever since.

Love on ya, Madge!