The waiter appears through a side door carrying a glass and a narrow bottle with a metal cap. He sets the glass on the table, opens it, and places the bottle near the glass. Now, finally, comes the moment for her to be alone: pulling the briefcase near, passing her hand along the notebooks, using two fingers to draw out the sheets prepared for correspondence, opening the top buttons of her blouse, straightening the edges of the paper, delaying the pleasure for a few more seconds while rubbing her puffy fingers over the little sheet that awaits the rustle of words. The caress of a child, the doltish innocence.
The fire in the Apuseni Mountains and then at the Hotel Dracula — when you hurt me so badly and I forgave you — was never consuming. It burned intermittently somehow, and it used to light my life like a fairy tale, but ephemerally. When I was without it once for four months, once for six, I was on the way to believing that it had gone out. I didn’t feel it was consuming me more and more powerfully. The memories that link me to Dănuţ are spread over five sporadic trimesters. A person can’t live on sporadic memories alone, let alone sporadic ones with question marks.
The beginning of a smile. The fat lady reads the words, seems discontent with their absurdity, so modest and monotonous, and digs a thick red pencil out of her briefcase: thinks and writes a word, and then another, and goes on repeating the well-known game — writing a word, correcting, erasing. Let’s say it was all about burning somehow intermittently at a low, never tempestuous level. There follows a moment of hesitation, finding the right gimmick, and quickly adding: to a certain extent.
Looking at the sheet, the effect seems weak.
It burned intermittently somehow, at a low, never tempestuous level, and to a certain extent, it used to illuminate my life, in a magical way, like a fairy tale, but ephemerally. When it was lacking. . it gnawed a little from the shore, but assiduously, and then it came to sweep everything in its path. I saw the danger all too late — nor had I ever counted it as such — conquering me ever more powerfully, lighting that consuming fire, and then there was nothing but a final blow. I became a drunken boat through the spell of the waves, under the eyes of the wharfs, ablaze, crushed.
With her right hand, she pushes the briefcase away and continues looking at the sheet. The infantile jubilation captivates her.
. . conquering me ever more powerfully from all points of view, lighting the consuming fire and then there was nothing but a final blow. I became a drunken boat through the spell of the waves under the eyes of the wharfs, ablaze, crushed — the waves hurling aside the last barriers that blocked our reunion. When you talked to me over the phone we still belonged to one another.
There’s someone behind her. The bottle should have been drunk already. A quick pour. Moistening her lips. That feeling of being watched from behind. Turning to look: confused, frightened. The waiter smiles.
— Would you like anything else?
— No, not yet. For the time being, no. I don’t want anything. No, nothing.
Breast lifted, contemplating the words, mouth pursed, her body temperature rises, lips throb, eyes revive — hate, pleasure, play — and the pencil stabs between the words till arriving at the master correction: “When you talked to me over the phone we still belonged to one another, bodily.” Miraculous! The word had made a place for itself, mastering the line with the smell and taste and distaste of provocation. The sheet trembles between her fingers. These are lucky moments, repeatable anytime and anyhow, especially when there’s no longer any point — when it’s too late: only then is it paid back, revenged.
Again, the strange gaze from behind her: better rush. That’s how it always happens, the pleasure stops just as it begins, hurried, driven away by hostile conventions without being able to linger in the words, in their revitalizing cleverness — how can there be time for anything but words, to be among and between them, to knead, to inflame, to shape them: tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday — again, from the beginning?
The waiter has gone — the fingers move by themselves on the corner of the dog-eared page, nervous, uncontrolled fingers trembling with the impulse to counterfeit.
And you will never be able to throw me in another’s arms again. Isn’t this so? Yes, that would be perfect, but there is no more time. As they say about porcelain, once broken, never fixed (more about that later). Tensed, the pencil moves like lightning across the page. A broken piece of porcelain can never be glued back in place — it will be very ugly and will have lost its value (more about that later). This calls for a slurp. The pleasure inflames her. Today, your rhetorical talent overwhelmed me and I accepted that I still have memories of him — after you left I understood that it was only a matter of the past. I resist neither the destructive waves nor the consuming fire. Unexpected and condemnable, you will say, this fickleness of mine. Perhaps unexpected but not condemnable, too, say I (say I!). An earthquake can destroy everything in a matter of minutes. (Yes!) On certain occasions a night was sufficient to destroy an empire. Sometimes it only takes a few minutes to destroy a relationship.
The waiter is idling behind her chair again. She rises, closes her blouse and her overcoat, hesitating with the middle buttons. I may come back to this. I may come back? I may come back to this. . I may come back to this with concrete examples! Sure, that’s the ticket! With concrete examples! A finger pulls nervously at the second button, hurries to the third that closes the top. Shoved into the stuffed briefcase, the sheets of paper crumple between her puffy fingers. Money on the table, a hand signal, and slinking out, eyes aimed at the ground so the waiter won’t see two flushed cheeks.
And now the door is flung open, then closed with her elbow. On the threshold, she smirks naughtily, offering the slightest trace of a smile.
• • •
Body leaning on the door’s edge, Comrade Sebastian Caba slouched against the leather-padded doorframe. Then, imperceptibly, his head, neck, and shoulders slumped along with the rest of his body. Forming peculiar stripes, his white fingers had glued themselves to the dark wood. The bent body, a long, pallid streak against the door’s black border. His dreamy gaze follows the one now running away, as far as possible, in frantic haste, far from the silent office.
For the fugitive, it was an experience of running down the wide steps to escape that gaze burning into the back of his neck. Only, at every step, Sebastian Caba’s face would appear again, on the wall to the right. Sebastian Caba was following him, sprouting from the walls, motionless and omnipresent, with his body bent slightly to the left, his long, attenuated fingers monstrously white on the door’s dark wood. Charging downstairs without making headway, gaze fixed on the white wall, the same tableau hanging always before him: a tall, brown-haired young man, pallid, slouching in sad resignation with his left arm stretching down the length of the doorframe. The long, pale fingers kept poking through the frozen surface of the tableau.
Always at his back, that gaze followed every convulsion of his flight. If only it were possible to escape, to run faster, leap down all the steps, if only each step weren’t broken by the tableau floating before him: the bent man with his thin-fingered hand on the doorframe. The tableau was multiplying, proliferating with every footstep, and it was moving, too, descending at the same rate as the fugitive — doubling and redoubling: dozens of identical tableaus had remained behind, projected onto the walls at the height of the gaze that followed the descending staircase. Always the same tableau rising again in front of each new step, or perhaps there was only the single tableau, a single image springing down the steps like a horrifying shadow moving across the wall, continually enlarging his dread.