Sometimes, love is meaningless. Anger. Pity. The torment of answering questions.
Love sometimes burns hotter than a branding iron. It can destroy and deface the earth.
This has opened a wound that I thought had healed. Was it not folly to believe that things remained unchanged, that I would recover from the disease with time, and regain my balance? Yes, he might be right in cloaking himself in unparalleled silence. His refusal to accept life with all its ups and downs, where time erodes desires and maggots abound.
I want to write about him until I am purged of him. Utter his name to saturation point. Wrench him from my body and fling him onto the ground. Why do I go to him like the sea dissipating into foam?
I do not understand this story that crosses my life diagonally, poisoning my existence and leading me towards hell. I do not understand this musty story.
We spoke of conquest. We spoke of destruction. We spoke of boredom. And he told me how he was finding life painful, of his interminable languor, and of his feeling of insatiable emptiness. As I looked at him the ground opened beneath my feet and I felt my spirit disintegrating.
The lassitude that fills his soul and makes him see the world askew, where does it come from?
Elsewhere, I might have tried to do something about it, but I am far from my source of strength. I no longer have the courage for those long battles that mutilate my soul. His wound is too deep. His dormant passion threatens my being.
It was madness to believe that bodies could banish loneliness, that pleasure could give birth to a fertile language.
She wants to remember everything since the present is too strong and makes her head spin. All she trusts is her memory. Today could be an illusion. It hurts to live from one moment to the next.
She must remember so as not to feel the emptiness. She looks for some shreds of the past. Memory will lead her to tomorrow and beyond. The present is far too short. It is only meant to knit together the hours.
She remembers the words she uttered with a sob in her throat. ‘You betrayed me.’ He looked at her and replied, ‘Betrayal, that is another matter.’ She remembered his departure. The aeroplane taking off on a humid night. Then she had driven off, gently, slowly, to the house. Directly. Hardly any red lights to stop her. She simply kept her hands on the steering wheel, changing gear with her eyes fixed straight ahead.
He returned later on of course, but they never broached the subject again.
She feels somewhat like an animal. She lives by her instincts and can feel what others are only capable of thinking.
She exists by desire although she can feel it leaving her. It seems that their urges are different, that their instincts no longer coincide. Sometimes she wants him, but the moment is not right. At other times he wants her, but her mind is on other things.
She knows that there will be other nights; in fact, many other nights. They do not need to arrange a date. She falls asleep beside him.
Her condition worries her. She no longer feels anything. Her thoughts become elusive. She feels dazed. She loses things. She breaks glasses.
This is not normal. She wonders whether she has not invented it all, whether or not she has gone mad. A dangerous game, a mortal knowledge. Juggling with her mind is like playing with fire, the same as taunting the gods who have nothing to do with it.
Yet she is in one of those moods again which she cannot control. She watches the world through the window. She feels removed, whatever she does. There is nothing she can do about it. She has to let it pass. She knows how futile her efforts are. Animated conversation, calculated smiles and then SNAP!—she loses it.
She feels helpless, imprisoned in this closed space. She knows that she is looking at the void at her feet. She knows that she ought not to, that there are many other reasons for leaving, that it is coming from her mind not her body.
Why not share? Belong? There is no shortage of struggles. There is no shortage of good causes!
I could have given her a name but she has too many faces. I am sure that she is somewhere. I have seen her, met her. She has even been my friend. I remember. The only thing is, as in those bad photo‐romances, a man came between us. Oh, not for long! but long enough to make me let go of her hand. I recognised her in that woman who lives alone. She inserts her key in the lock. Opens the door. The cat miaows. I have also discovered her through this waitress in a nightclub, bathed in neon lights. I have seen her on television, announcing her suicide mission. A young Lebanese woman opposing Israeli troops.
I know her well, and would have named her but for her many faces.