But she wouldn't talk about this anymore, she said, interrupting herself abruptly; she found it ridiculous and in bad taste to be discussing this with me, of all people, but then who should she discuss it with?
I didn't want to distract her with questions or friendly, consoling words; anything coming from me would have stifled her; I knew she wanted to talk, but would have understood if she hadn't said another word.
In the fragrant puffs of her voice bouncing off my face I felt she wasn't talking to me, she was sending words to the surface of my body, whose mediating reverberation turned them into the purest form of address directed at her self.
She had to stand up, but she did it as though her body had been filled with a single thought of anger that wouldn't let her straighten out her knees, making her look stooped and ugly.
The skin on her chin grew taut.
No, she said, this wasn't true either.
She said this and then bit off the rest of her words, also squelching the meaning of the unsaid words.
And this may have hurt me more than it hurt her; at least she had the courage to say what she wanted to.
But she wasn't interested in any kind of truth, in anybody's truth.
Sometimes she could make herself believe there was no such thing as humiliation.
There was a time, soon after they got to know each other, when she thought she could throw everything to the winds for him, but fortunately, she was more sensible now.
And for him she could have killed her husband, Arno, who snored away all their nights.
And yes, she admitted, it was she who kept calling Melchior at night.
And she came up with this stupidity about being old because her body was going to pieces in this humiliation which had been going on for months, and her mind could concentrate on nothing else, no matter how much she told herself she was over it; she was becoming like an addle-brained teenager who can only think about how ugly she is.
These stupid feelings would never leave her, and then, on top of it all, she had to look at our disgustingly happy faces.
And then I would have liked to tell her that the happiness she saw was indeed real but that I had never felt a more persistent suffering than this happiness; but of course I couldn't tell her any of this.
She wasn't jealous of me, she said; it was disgust she felt, rather than jealousy, the kind of disgust that makes men scrawl on toilet walls things like Castrate the fags, she said more softly, placatingly; of course she knew it wasn't the same thing, she said, as a matter of fact she felt a certain approval regarding our relationship, and despite all her swearing and rage, she couldn't be jealous of me as she would be of another woman, she took it almost as if I were her substitute, but that was humiliating, because she didn't want to come between us, yet she just had to keep calling him on the phone, she couldn't help it.
Now that she said it, maybe she wouldn't be calling anymore.
And if in the midst of this constant state of turmoil she could retain a modicum of sanity, then she could feel that maybe she had chosen this impossible predicament because she didn't really want him anymore, she wanted something else, equally impossible; and that really put her at a loss, for that couldn't possibly be happening to her, she really was too old for that kind of perfect impossibility.
She didn't want anything anymore.
Not even to die.
Why did her life fall apart and why couldn't she put it back together, or rather, why did all the pieces she still had left add up to nothing.
Even as she was talking she felt her talking was nothing, her words were nothing, it was only habit that made her say these nothings out loud.
And now she was going to stop altogether, we should really get going.
And I should get up, too.
She wasn't talking loudly, and I can't even say there was passion or excitement caused by suppressed tension in her voice, yet she wiped away invisible drops of perspiration above her lips.
And in that gesture there was something an old person would do, which younger people wouldn't be caught doing, for they wouldn't find it aesthetic.
I stood up, our faces were again very close, she smiled.
Well, I had never seen her in an open-air performance before, she said, and tilted her head to the side.
This last, awkward attempt at ending things and distancing herself sobered me up, perhaps because it was so awkward and self-conscious, because she seemed to have bitten into herself and, though painful, that prevented her from revealing a far greater pain; once again I was aware of the coolness of the air, the pungent autumn fragrance of the pine trees, the reassuring smallness of our bodies that only moments earlier seemed magnified in the vastness of the flat landscape.
And I felt an increasingly impatient urge to leave the place, get back to her car, lock ourselves in its safe, confining space; at the same time, from so close, her gestures and words suggested unmistakably that I was treading on very dangerous ground if I gave her the impression I was trying to hold her back, since, in reality, with my sheer presence I was hoping to thrust her toward something; the wish to murder her that had flashed through my mind moments earlier was more than an innocent play of my imagination; consciously repressed sexual desires produce such violent impulses; but even if I did reach my goal and manage to get the two of them together, what would I have done with such an impulse— save using it to kill myself.
Or maybe it was the other way around, I thought, inverting cause and effect with a casual shrug of my shoulders: the reason I wanted them to get together, wanted to get away from them and get closer to a woman, any woman, felt a man's body to be insufficient, too little or too much, was that I wanted to kill my love for Melchior; and the reason I couldn't make anything last was that deep in my soul I feared the punishment which others, in their great anxiety about their own sexuality, scrawled as warnings on bathroom walls.
But I couldn't run away, or escape, not yet; there were still words hanging on her lips that she would dare formulate only after turning from the intimate proximity she had created between us to the petty world of practicality full of cold calculations, only after this alluring and circumspect introduction.
I waited, and she could see in my eyes how this waiting was wearing me down; she had the upper hand, she could ask anything, say anything; she was vulnerable only while talking, but what she told me made me the more vulnerable of the two of us.
This mutual vulnerability began to affect us: the emotions emerging from a consciously controlled desire, my defenselessness, and my secret wish to reach her through the very man she loved drove me to the edge of helplessness and ridiculousness, to the verge of tears — yes, my futile exertion sent tears to my eyes, and she, pressing her advantage, stroked my face, kindly and with restrained excitement, as if making herself believe that it was her story that had moved me so, and didn't or wouldn't see that the tears had just as much to do with helpless, frustrated desire; still, her fingers trembled on my skin, I felt it and so did she, and we both knew that we were entering the time of catastrophe we had dreaded only moments earlier; this meant a renewed fear, or rather a cause for recoiling.
But she managed to grab my arm, as if holding on to her own advantage.
If the ethics of love were not stronger than love's desire, I wouldn't have left time for this move, I would have reciprocated the trembling of her fingers with a kiss on her lips; and if that had happened, she would not have demurred, I'm sure, but would have dissolved her own helplessness on my mouth, but since this didn't happen, her lips quivered for the lack of contact, for the shame of this lack.