He has prepared everything, arranged the light, the film in the camera, laid out his tools, filled the syringe; everything is ready. As he regards the evidence of his careful preparation, he is assailed once more by a feeling of impotence, this feeling that causes his knees to buckle, to sense the void at the pit of his stomach; this strangely hollow feeling that he knows only from dreams, which allows him to glimpse his own core and – worse – realise it is empty.
It ought to have happened here.
It ought to have happened now.
If she were still alive.
The feeling of impotence remains and calls forth an image he thought he had long since cast to the bottom of the ocean, never to return to the surface. But now it emerges as he opens his eyes, spinning slowly, turning on its own axis, so that he can view it from all sides. Even with his eyes closed, he sees…
Even with his eyes closed, he sees Anna.
The contours of her face, her beautiful profile that is silhouetted against the bright window.
Her lips move softly, quietly.
It isn’t so bad, he hears her say.
Her hand moves to stroke him, and he recoils. Sits up. Turns away.
I love you, he hears. We’ll manage.
We won’t manage anything.
His first words after the failure.
We won’t manage anything.
He should have known. He had been hoping for a miracle, for love, for Anna whom he so endlessly desires. He underestimated the disease. It is stronger than everything else. He hasn’t vanquished it. How did he ever imagine he could? He will never vanquish it. The most he can do is forget about it for a while.
The disease has destroyed him, neutered him, he is nothing, a spirit wandering ceaselessly over the earth, a sexless spirit whom no one can set free.
We’ll manage, Anna says, we have time. Lots of time. I want to share my life with you.
Impossible, he says, I’m not normal. I’m not capable of being normal.
Normal? Who is? As doctors, we know that best of all.
There’s no point. I’ll never be able to be a real man. Never.
You’re a desirable man. Do you know how much our fellow students envy me? To say nothing of all the nurses who pine after you.
She laughs. Why is she laughing?
I’m a sham, an empty shell, I’m not a man.
She tries to take him in her arms, but he pushes her away.
Her cry as she bangs her head against the bedside table. Her hand that feels blood. Her disbelief, and the tears that flood her eyes.
He didn’t mean it, he never meant to hurt her, never, but he is incapable of going to her, of comforting her, of apologising; he sits there as if paralysed and just looks at her, until finally he averts his gaze.
He doesn’t see her dressing, just hears the door slam as she exits the room.
Her horrified expression, her eyes staring at the blood she has wiped from her forehead… It will be the last time he sees her.
He doesn’t return to university.
He never dates another woman.
A few days later he buys his first cinema.
He knows where he belongs now; the disease has shown him.
Paradise: a movie theatre in which a never-ending film is screening images from his dreams, complete with the voices and songs he hears in them. Sounding images that assuage his homesickness, which is really wanderlust, a yearning that has no purpose and knows no end.