I’m sorry I spoke so harshly — and I heard my voice sounding more frightened than I actually was.
What surprised me was that I didn’t accept a single one of her sentences as true; I gave her more time, but in fact I wanted to challenge every one of her words.
Come on, she called back quietly. We can’t do everything all at once, let’s take our time. We can tell each other everything calmly, without getting upset. She gave the impression that in our deadly embarrassment she thought we were simply striking out in all directions.
That was true.
For lack of anything better to do, we took off; we had become like a defeated army. Her glitter was gone, her heels pounded hard on the stone stairs. I let her walk in front of me; as she was going down I saw her a little from above in the pale-yellow light; she moved as if she were being made to drag her discouraged limbs across an infinite desert of grief and mourning. All this was familiar, streaming into me like blood and aching, aching terribly. As if, with waning strength, she had to make her way from one place, where despite her hopes she had found not a mite of goodness, to another unknown place, and to do this without knowing what was in store. I didn’t understand where we were going or why in hell we were going anywhere. No, she is not hoping for anything, but I felt as if that too was my fault. If I didn’t go with her, if I didn’t accompany her, if I didn’t protect her, I would suffer damnation.
Yet what I felt was not empathy for but frantic curiosity about her.
Her beauty was gone, though I wouldn’t say that her being was any the less touching and engaging. As if the pores of her skin had suddenly shed the powder covering them, the lipstick had turned into foreign matter on her lips, the borrowed fur coat was hanging from her shoulders as from a hanger, and her stupendous hairdo showed mainly an effort to be eccentric. She became gray and crude, bare and undistinguished, depleted and needy. When she had first appeared in Andria Lüttwitz’s fur coat at the top of the stairs, she had shown how dazzling she could be. Now I could see how empty and futile her attempts at strutting and showing off were.
I also noticed that the leather on the heel of one of her shoes was torn and crinkled. That often happens when the high heel of a shoe like that gets stuck in a damn grating, hole, or crack. Her body was emitting rebuke. And I kept staring reproachfully at her shoes. She was waiting for something, she was hoping very much for something, and again she did not receive it. It was as if I had to sniff the air to learn her desires. Her fragrance was the only thing that had really changed.
I followed her and despised myself for this.
I became her servant. Ten minutes earlier I hadn’t been her servant. Why do I wind up serving everyone I meet.
We were inundating each other with blame and rebuke; we almost drowned in them.
I asked if she’d noticed that she had already used the word deadly twice this evening.
She did not reply but made a tiny movement that generated a series of other movements with which she once again managed to dazzle me. She just barely shrugged her shoulders and looked back at me with a single sharp glance. I’m talking nonsense. Then she grasped the coat collar with her gloved hands and raised it a little, maybe so from that moment on I’d see nothing but absolutely nothing of her neck, nothing uncovered, and she quickened her steps. That was her reply. That is how we crossed the stinking entrance to the building; that’s how she stepped out ahead of me onto the street, where the wind was raging even more strongly.
She clasped her arms above her head to protect her hair. The long fur coat opened and as she took off its two wings fluttered lazily behind her. Much as I disliked furs, I had to admit I was enthralled by how the soft, uniform longitudinal patterns rippled down her back. That’s how her own body became the image of an animal’s body. Then suddenly she stopped at the curb, turned to face me, I almost bumped into her, and we found ourselves only inches apart in the lashing wind. I had the feeling she was completely naked. I hadn’t counted on taking the car; I thought she’d lock it and we’d get on the bus. Her full, powerful, yet somehow still little-girlish body was straining toward me as from an opened shell.
It was straining forth from the opened shell of animality. I couldn’t tell how many transformations she had gone through that night.
The wind blew her fragrance into me with renewed strength, her new indecipherable fragrance.
Almost nothing kept me from slipping my arms under the shiny lining of the shiny fur coat and pulling her body against mine. Now she was flirting with me, inviting me, luring me, opening herself up like a seashell, like a deep-brown chestnut.
We were shouting and screaming in the wind, which felt especially good because it was as if we were throwing sounds into each other’s laughing mouth.
Not to let the wind blow them away.
She asked, actually she screamed whether I’d dare trust her with my life.
Not willingly, but without hesitation, I screamed back at her.
Because she didn’t have much experience in driving, which is to say she had no experience at all, she screamed, and for the first time in my life I could smell the scent of her mouth — lipstick, her sweet saliva, and the cleanliness of her flesh.
But I hoped she had a driver’s license.
She laughed, she’d managed to get one, but just barely. She had seduced at least three policemen for it.
I screamed congratulations, I screamed that I’d be happy to die with her.
The street around us took wing and was swimming. The shining arc of the roadway spread over our heads, the worn facades of old buildings fluttered and rose, the heavy sky slipped under our feet.
She turned the words back toward me, yelling them into my open mouth; yes, she too would be happy to die, in bed, among pillows, but not on the street.*
Her fragrance I caught not with my nose, her screaming not with my ears; they assaulted my groin directly. I had nothing to defend myself with. Because now it turned limp, now it hardened a little, sperm kept dripping from the constant pulsing.
Don’t, please don’t talk like that, I beg you, and my screams no longer vibrated in my vocal cords or touched my throat but burst straight from the rising and falling depth of my chest, from the throbbing flesh of my heart.
How shouldn’t she talk. She laughed, she laughed at me and screamed, in what way not talk.
I am scared, I screamed.
And that put an end to the laughter; she nodded that of course she was scared also. The brilliance of her eyes shone through every darkness for a long moment. She could see everything, both my future and my past. The wind had whistled, howled, pushed and lashed at everything while we were still in the stairwell; it had besieged the city with renewed force. There was before me a face clouding over and a body thrust toward me. I saw everything too; it made me dizzy. I saw how forlorn I had been for close to twenty years without her, and now this would end. I felt immensely sorry for myself, for my passing forlornness, as a child would, heartrendingly, pitifully, tearfully, helplessly. As if not daring to leave my desolation; this was odd, quite odd. And the dizziness vividly reminded me of that long-ago moment when, not far from here, on the balcony of the apartment on Damjanich Street, everything began to go around, slip away, become distorted, and heaven and earth slipped into each other. I didn’t want to, I did not understand why I was remembering an experience that did not belong here at all. And why is it interfering now. Why did I go limp because of it. She too needed to lean on something, and that made everything even more improbable. What I felt inside I could see on her. She was no longer protecting her hair with her arms; she leaned lightly against the car and I thought that in response to that positively inviting movement I would swoon at the sight of her.