I loved you, dear, for eating that big juicy peach in
the museum of hunger.
The museum of hunger! Oh what a grim place it was. My
stomach was growing small by the second. The palpitations it produced killed the
hushed whispers of the guide – the lovely chap in a sailor's uniform who could
not stop looking at your legs. But then I guess he was just so happy to see us.
Even that odd German couple who had seemingly wandered here by accident. Every
chance visitor was his personal triumph, and each time he spoke I feared he was
going to swallow us. You and me. The German couple. But most importantly – your
legs.
Me, I kept staring at the black and white photographs
pinned to the walls with those horrible rusty nails. I was trying to find a
face that would resemble mine. It makes no sense, I know, but that's what I do.
And then there was the smell. The smell of the famine and the rotting corpses.
And, of course, those heartbreaking letters from desperate men fleeing to
America. Boarding the ships filled with deadly diseases and the leanest of
rats. Children, too. Babies.
In the meantime, the juice from the peach was
dribbling on the wooden floor, streaming silently through the cracks in the
dark boards beneath our feet. I could not resist the audacious simplicity of
the act and so I loved you for that. I loved you for the juxtaposition. I loved
you even more for the German couple that was looking at you in fear and
disbelief. They kept whispering something to each other, that anxious cooing
neither of us could catch. They looked at you as if you were some exotic
creature, possibly a germ, that had invaded their privacy and could infest
their young family for many generations to come.
And then, later, I loved you for stripping naked on
the beach, in front of a dozen suburban kids playing volleyball or just sitting
on the sand counting the seagulls. You stripped naked. You never cared for one
second what any one of them could be thinking (I did!) the moment they saw your
breasts and your thighs.
But that's what you did. You took off your sunglasses,
then you took off your summer hat. The dress, the bra, the panties. In that
order. You only kept that enormous childish wrist-watch that was currently all
the rage. And the boys? Oh the boys. Sixteen (that's right, I had to count them
all) Leopold Blooms sitting in the distance, ogling the fireworks. Your
fireworks, dear. Stacked against my lust, jealousy, pride.
It was cold, too. This was late August and the sun was
doing its cynical round over the city. But again, you cared not. You just
walked over to the edge of the sea, straddling the fine line between erotica
and pornography, and dipped your toes into the freezing water. The gooseflesh
was palpable. The gooseflesh tickled my chest and was felt in every household
that side of the sea. You gave a scream, turned around and walked back. While I
was trotting by your side, feeling like an idiot, wondering if I should hide my
head in the sand or else shoot up like a kite. Which is a metaphor that works,
and I believe the beach boys (pale, as pale as a Winchester ghost) were lucky
that day. After all, in those five minutes stretched into eternity you gave
them all the sexual education they needed. And still they had more, because you
took three full minutes to dress.
What else? Because there was more.
Ah yes, I loved you for going off in the pub. This, I
think, was in the evening, and you pushed me through the black door. The
football season had just started, and this being Saturday afternoon, the place
was mayhem. We were lucky to find a place at the counter which in my mind was
no luck at all. The counter was covered with a million layers of invisible beer
patches and my fingers stuck. On the screens, it was Liverpool versus some
newly promoted fodder who apparently stood no chance.
But looking at the score (scousers were 2:0 up) and
the sea of red scarves soaking the room wet, you held on to your Swedish beer
and you stood up. They were chanting glorious abuse and it took a while for
them to notice your presence. You said you wanted to have a bet. They winced at
your dress, wondered how exactly they were being fucked over (it was a
beautiful white dress, remember), took a minute to think it through and then
burst into laughter. At which point you put your glass on the floor, took out a
fifty-quid note and said Liverpool would lose. That simple. And I loved you for
that.
The one wearing a Steven Gerrard t-shirt, he was the
one who shook your hand. There was less than a quarter of an hour left in the
match and everything unfurled like a classic Buñuel film. Which is to say, it
was surreal. In fact, you barely took a second to blink or smack your
full-blooded Sicilian lips in those insane fifteen minutes when Liverpool let
in one, two, three goals. It wasn't football, it was genocide, and if the
Gerrard guy could utter something, anything,
it would have been a whimper. Instead, he offered you his fifty pounds,
crumpled beyond disfigurement, but you just finished your beer and told him he
could keep that. It was charming, and there was nothing discreet about that
kind of charm. You joined me at the counter as the sniveling hordes were
leaving the premises, turning the place into an empty used condom. Me, I loved
you for that.
And later that evening – of course I loved you for
hating the umbrella. Any umbrella.
Because the moment we left the pub, it began to drizzle with the softest of
needles. I took out my umbrella but you just waved it off. With your
wrist-watch working. With your hair tightly done. With your white dress looking
as hot as it did in your Instagram account.
You simply did not care, and you continued doing so
when the giant aquarium above our heads was shattered and the rain scorched us.
You said it was fine,
and I loved you for that. In the meantime, we could not find the bus stop,
either because it was too dark or else we were too drunk to think straight. At
some point an old man raised his head from the pavement and asked for
cigarettes. Instead, we gave him the umbrella.
I thought that night, for it was night already, that
there is nothing in the world as moving as helpless, unprotected beauty. And
occasionally, when the street lamps split the darkness and I pulled out
your tiny figure, I could see exactly that. You were looking so vulnerable, you
were sugar melting. And we did not even have an umbrella to give us a fake
sense of protection. So what happened next was you grabbed my hand and screamed
(because everyone has to scream in the rain) that anything would grow bigger in
such profuse rain. Even modern lovers like us. But instead, what I saw was not just your dress but your
whole body shrinking from the rain. Inch by inch. Until the dawn broke and you turned into nothing. And, again, I loved you for that.
from 'Stories for Modern Lovers'
