The Romantic Life

“Gunther should show up and act as if he’s learned something,” Rohana said. “But he has a very good situation where he is—I am sure. I don’t know why he’d want to come back here.”

Gunther had died young and she thought he visited the house whenever she traveled. This was her explanation for why a five-hundred-pound mirror had fallen off of the wall when she was in Cannes. Gunther was to blame. And his pet dog Spark—long dead too—had trotted out of the boxwood to greet her upon her return. However, unlike Gunther, the ancient Airedale had cho­sen to stay on.

Aunt Rohana offered me my favorite—her red porridge spe­cialty—a compote made from berries and served with heavy cream. “You can always cheer me up!” she said.

And, really—wasn’t this a lavish new world with new and possibly better rules?—so that I would no longer be sitting along the curbing. And, I thought Rohana loved me, whereas my own mother, her sister, did not.

 

I tried not to pry my thoughts away from my new surround­ings, because I had been left alone for a few hours—and I was almost successful.

As I was a young woman without a sexual partner—aware­ness of the deprivation was not half the battle—I was thinking about sex and at the same time I was moving my attention to the furniture, the fireplace—the walls and all of the doors that bore oak carvings in art nouveau.

Then I saw Gunther!—or he could have been a replica of the lost original. A small bent male figure was on the threshold of my room, close by a tripod table.

He slouched toward me and there was something that was not eager in his eyes. But nevertheless, he looked determined.

“Why don’t you speak?” he said.

He was zipped into a fur-trimmed anorak—and not at all dressed properly for the hot summer season.

He kicked the table.

“Where have you been?” I asked.

“Dead,” he said. He made his way into the kitchen and the dog Spark and I followed him.

He put two hands on the sink rim to begin the maneuver and next he pivoted on his heels. He pushed in the upper dishwasher tray that had been left out and was overhanging.

The dog gasped behind me. I turned—and when I turned back around Gunther was gone.

My memory is that Rohana had run an errand that day to get a chicken to roast, a box of soap, and a ball of twine.

“Oh, God! What do you want me to say?” she said, when I told her.

I stayed at Rohana’s another day or two before I went home with a new backbone for my plodding along.

Sudden sounds didn’t frighten me and I didn’t mind the sense of being stared at when I was alone.

Rohana has a nerve condition now, such that if she sits still and doesn’t move her left foot, she is fine. Otherwise she needs to take a lot of pain medication.

And as Gunther has done—I have shown up in certain places with a bang. And when I come into rooms, it’s surely a relief to one and all that I am helpful.

I feel there is so much yet to explore about how people expe­rience a “pull” toward anyone.