A Story
We were madly, clumsily, shamelessly… and agonizingly in love with each other. We were hopeless, I must add, because that fury of mutual possession could only be tamed by truly absorbing and devouring every particle of each other’s soul and flesh…
There beneath the soft sand, we would languish all the while in a rigid peak of desires, and we would take advantage of every blessed whim, in time and space, to touch one another.
The spiritual was blended within us with a perfection that might remain incomprehensible. All the while I felt his thoughts floating through my blood and the sea of my feelings… We had the same dreams… we compared notes, we found strange similarities. A lost canary had fluttered into his house and mine… in two places very far from each other, in two souls that sang to one another… that felt each other’s soul even from afar…
I leaf through the memories… the gloomy memory…
I leaf through the miserable memories again and again, and I keep asking myself questions.
“Why did I tell him this is our last conversation?…
Why did I lie to him? Why did I tell him I was going to get engaged to someone else?…
Why did I lie to him that I didn’t love him?…
Why did I hurt his soul… but also mine?” After that came many other whys… many other whys…
I have kept in my memory an unsuccessful meeting of ours!…
One night I went out to meet him… In a grove of timid, thin-leaved mimosas behind my house… we found a shelter there in the ruins of a low stone wall… we sat there and became one body… he kissed the corner of my parted lips, and the hot lobe of my ear… my trembling mouth, shaken by a mysterious potion, with a whistling breath, drew closer to his face. I tried to ease the pain of love by bringing my lips to his… then, I pulled back with a nervous toss of my long hair, and approached again blindly, and allowed him to feed on my open mouth…
A cluster of stars shone faintly above us, amidst the silhouettes of the long, thin leaves. That trembling sky looked as bare as I did in my light clothes… I saw his face in the sky, strangely clear, as if it emitted a faint radiance of its own… I was startled when a light turned on in my room… I heard my mother’s voice calling me…
Hmmmmmm!… They wouldn’t even let me daydream… and so, annoyed, I left my room…
The next day I went out to the beach!
I thought it would help me bring back my daydream… my dream…
On the beach I started walking, walking slowly toward the rocks. The heat was heavy and made it hard to walk, and whenever I felt its hot breath on my face I gritted my teeth… I tensed up completely as if to defeat the sun.
From afar I saw a rock draped in a blinding veil, and I immediately thought of the cool spring behind the rock.
But when I got closer I froze, I was surprised… I was stunned… my legs wouldn’t hold me…
He was lying on his back… his hands behind his neck… his forehead in the shade of the rock… and his whole body in the sun…
Was it the heat of the sun scorching my cheeks, and the beads of sweat gathering above my eyebrows… or?
All the veins were beating hard beneath the skin.
I couldn’t stand the scorching sun anymore, I took a step back.
I knew I was being foolish, because one step back wouldn’t save me from the sun.
From the sea came a thick, scorching breath.
He stood up, surprised by my presence. He approached me but stood timidly…
Three times he hesitated to say something… I read it in his eyes… which were fixed on mine.
Suddenly he threw himself into my embrace… He held me so tightly, as if he were afraid I would run away from him… I was frozen… I didn’t know what to do… finally he pulled away from my body… took my small hands and began to speak:
“Every summer I come to this rock… Every summer I have carved a letter…
Look here!… it’s your name… This is the place where I find peace and weep over the memories of you…”
I had been left bewildered… I couldn’t believe my eyes and ears… I just looked at him… I felt his every word… I began to tear up… I was trembling all over. From trying not to cry out loud, my breathing started to grow deeper…
He let go of my hand that he was holding tightly, and touched my tear… Then he brought his warm lips close and kissed it… Tears of longing and love, he called it.
Then he began to speak again:
“Are you married?”
With a ‘no’ that barely left my mouth, I answered him…
“Then why did you break off our love?… please tell me… don’t let me suffer… tell me the truth…” he too began to sweat all over… it seemed he had come closer to his dream than ever before…
“I!… I!…” I began to stammer…
“I thought our love would never come true because of the distance… that we would never meet… so to let you live your life I lied to you… but first and foremost I lied to myself…” and I started crying again…
Kissing my tears the whole time, as if to wipe all the past pain from my feelings, he whispered to me with his trembling voice, “My soul! Great loves overcome even great obstacles.” Then he kissed my hand, my forearm, and then it felt as if the kiss engulfed my whole body. I fell into the arms of the one I had once dreamed of… the world seemed small to me… the sun of love had burst forth everywhere. Under the watering of his kisses I resembled a tree that had begun to feel the spring again and had burst into a new bloom, whose roots lay in the past…
