The Rock Temple. Smoke, sweat, dreamy rhythm, the thick, velvet curtains where I embrace her in desire. The voice is that of a wailing violin, while she dances like a snake in trance, the way she seems distant, far away, when I take her.
To possess. She says, I'd stab you, with a small knife so that I don't kill you, but I will stab you in the chest and it will hurt.
The cold steel burning the flesh, the story etched in skin. This is not a love song.
Nodding in my direction, that's the lucky guy, the bartender whispers to one of his customers. The lucky guy – me. When she entered the room, black dress and crimson shoes, for a moment there was a tangible tension in the air. Men pretending they weren’t envious, their girlfriends annoyed.
She knows I know she knows I am watching her, framing her like an endless series of still pictures in my mind. She walks like a cat. No, she doesn’t walk. She dances. She always does, it is the rhythm of her mixed, boiling blood. This time her hair is let loose, flowing over her waist. And I am an easy, willing prey. Frizzy, curly, covering me at night when she is slowly dancing again, my fingers deep in her flesh, incontrollable lust. But first we will have our gin, laughing away the rest of the world.
A few distant lights piercing through the darkness. Storm. The penthouse shakes in the howling wind, hail raging against the large window.
I keep telling myself I should not want to cage this bird, clip her wings, for the beauty is in her free flight. Yet, when she is gone again, I become restless. Me, who never was possessive, I am struggling. Are these fears of betrayal the burdens from a past? Hadn’t I decided I would never let anyone in? Am I just afraid of hurt?
I should be stronger than me, but my obsession is overwhelming.
The Story of L. is a story of goodbyes. Of one last embrace, no, one more, please don't go, hold me once again. It is how this story started. But with each goodbye it gets harder, so hard, I never expected it to be this hard. It is slowly killing me from the inside. And I can see it in her eyes. There is a silent rage burning in me, and I don't know what to do with it. This losing game.
Spring rain. Here I was again, in this Northern country, this city I had visited many times before and liked well enough. Except, this time I had never meant to be there. Weary of another long, intercontinental flight, the jetlag, the less-than-exciting business that would await me, for a while I had carelessly been looking for an excuse not to make this trip. But when I finally wanted to bluntly cancel the engagements, post facto I found out that an overzealous secretary had already paid the plane ticket and hotel, that all other arrangements had been made. Grudgingly I accepted that I would be traveling after all.
The battered suitcase, in it two suits, five neatly pressed shirts and ties, the black toiletry bag always readily packed, and in my onboard luggage some books, writing paper and music. Tokyo's Narita airport, filling out the departure card, passing through customs, one last coffee before boarding.
With the blinding lucidity of rage I had a final inspiration to set fire to the house when the impassive figure of Rosa Cabarcas, dressed in a nightgown, appeared in the door. She said nothing. She made a visual inventory of the disaster and confirmed that the girl was curled up like a snail, her head hidden between her arms: terrified but intact.
"My God!" Rosa Cabarcas exclaimed. "What I wouldn't have given for a love like this!"
She looked at me from head to toe with a compassionate glance and commanded: Let's go. I followed her to the house, she poured me a glass of water in silence, gestured for me to sit down across from her, and prepared to hear my confession. All right, she said, now behave like an adult and tell me what's wrong.
I told her what I considered my revealed truth. Rosa Cabarcas listened to me in silence, without surprise, and at last she seemed enlightened. How wonderful, she said. I've always said that jealousy knows more than truth does.
Gabriel García Márquez - Memories of My Melancholy Whores
it is dark. And I am tired. So tired. A light rain, mist rising in the valley of meigetsu, Bright Moon, this quiet, hidden area of Kamakura. Obscured by the clouds tonight no moon though, no stars to navigate my wandering heart, my longing soul by.
I fought it, fought this loneliness, with all my might. But I lost. Now a journey of many, many years, is about to end.
Tokyo sucked the last bits of life, that little energy I had left, out of me. The concrete and asphalt, the people and the air stifling. This spiritless city - no good vibes. In the evenings commuting back home, looking at those pale, tired faces around me, I sometimes wondered if I really were not sitting in a carriage full of living dead, slowly becoming one of them myself.
And I made up my mind. Time to go.
We were never supposed to be. We were never supposed to have even met. But Fate dealt an unexpected card. At night, obsessed, jealous, possessive like a madman I take her, again and again, plant my seed deep, and stain her skin. But now I rest my head in her lap while she reads, and then writes a bit. The Tunnel, Ernesto Sabato - we share our books, with little notes to each other between the lines. Her stomach rising and falling in the rhythm of her breath, her scent, her warmth enveloping me. For a moment peaceful sleep is mine.
for we are creatures of the wind and wild is the wind so wild is the wind
She writes, "for you to find me, everything else you had to lose first".
