Paul Klee and the Ant

Colonist MyrmidaAleph201 has embarked on her third excursion of the morning. She leaves the nest in the flowerbox and wanders up the warm bricks of the house. The trail is strongest here; the pheromones as bright as a boulevard set ablaze. Her fellow incoming Colonists stop to stroke her antenna briefly as she passes. She can taste their enthusiasm.

The path is clear. She wanders briefly on the sun-baked sill, distracted by a desiccated ladybug wing. Then onward. Glory to the Colony. Glory to the Queen.

***

Paul Klee is eating a peach. He and Felix had found them in the market that morning, early for the season but already perfectly ripened. Some juice trickles off his chin as he stoops over the open notebooks, and one drop lands on the smallest, the black one in which he keeps his thoughts on Goethe’s color theories. Next to it, is the larger sheaf of aquarellpapier, and the beginning of today’s sketch, the bright ribbons of paint already drying.

He glances at Felix, asleep at last under the table. This month, his son has begun to nap later and later. Now the boy is curled up with the cloth puppet head Paul has made for him. It has no body as yet, but Felix seems to love the tiny zebra-striped devil just as it is. One chubby hand clutches it to his mouth as he sleeps. Paul has soaked part of it with clove oil to soothe him. The child is teething.

How is it possible, Paul thinks, to love someone so much and yet resent how that love stands in the way of one’s personal journey? The boy’s naptime has become so precious to the artist, those scant hours when he has a thought to himself, can pursue the deep mystery he feels to be widening in his soul. Despite himself, he thinks of the long afternoon ahead. Dishes to be done, the leek and potato soup he’ll prepare before Lily returns from the conservatory. He sighs. He takes another bite of the peach. A second drop of its sweet nectar falls to the floor.

***

MyrmidaAleph201 has reached the great plain. The stucco stretches wide before her. The great expanse of the wall is a desert. The pheromones here are weaker. She knows many Colonists have died on this trek before her; she can taste their last footprints. There are too many cavities to explore, cracks in the old house’s wall that lead to the Mazes, filled with lathing and fibers. A Colonist might lose herself there, the path as faint as the breath of a ghost.

Still onward. She hunts the bright pooling of fructose below. She knows it is there. She knows her duty. She continues.

***

Paul observes the ant exploring his watercolor. Is nature drawn, he wonders, to the warmer of hues or cooler? Goethe has declared that indigo is darkness lightened, and scarlet lightness obscured. But Paul is not so certain. Would the small creature be drawn to the triangle of crimson or the crescent of mauve?

***

The houses in this suburb of Munich are quite old. A generation before Paul and Lily moved into their home, a master goldsmith, named Ernst, lived there. Because the neighborhood of his shop was so crowded, the security of the doors so poor, and the materials of his craft so expensive, Ernst had no faith in banks. He trusted in what he could touch. Each night, he secured his supplies and currency beneath a panel of loose wainscoting in the kitchen.

Over years, Ernst had stashed gold scraps wrapped in cheesecloth, many Deutschmarks, and his greatest of treasures, more than $20K American, received in exchange for a commissioned dolphin broach.

One day he would exchange it all, surprise Marta with their wealth and they would travel like royalty to Paris. She would kiss him on his mouth with surprise.

That day did not arrive for Ernst. Just short of 53, he died from complications after a fall from a carriage. His trove lay dry and silent in the wall, nestled in horsehair.

***

If only, thinks Paul. If only I were the man that might unlock this sealed place in myself and paint what I know but do not yet know. On weekends, it pains him to see Lily return from piano lessons and embrace him with a weary sigh.

Money could change all that. Under the table, Felix lets out a half coo, half-laugh. What is the boy dreaming? There is a living eye in the dreams of a child. It sees the moon as burnished as a doubloon. A blue horse strolls over mountains, on its back a blue rider with a pale harpoon made of flowers.

Paul places the peach pit on a saucer. He tries to focus again on his notebooks. Where is the ant? Gone. How long has been woolgathering, his mind adrift? Perhaps he should surrender and scrub and cut the leeks.

***

MyrmidaAleph201 must find her way back. She carries an atom of peach on her mandible, A Colonist with a treasure. Her joy trails behind her, but ahead is fatigue. On the long march to the nest, she becomes confused. She pauses, feelers sifting the dust.

She crawls into a small crevice. There in the musky deeps of the wall, she ascends a plank. The territory is undiscovered. The path is lost. She waits on a bundled stack of dry paper she has found and a knot of cheesecloth around a lump of metal. She waits and waits. The heat here is like a kiln. It’s an archangel’s terrible, blazing sword that can pierce a carapace and fry limbs. She stops moving.

***

“Guten Nachtmittag, Felix!” says the funny leek, with his father’s voice. It sings a little ditty dancing by the sink. Felix shakes the puppet’s striped skull head with glee. His dream is still around him, a dream of prisms and paths. It mixes with the smell of turpentine on his father’s skin and a trace of peach.