The Greatest Lover of Last Tuesday

by Neil McKinnon

  I was obsessed from the moment I saw her. Previous loves faded from my mental album as quickly and quietly as morning dew fades from grass. My father introduced us. She looked through me and spoke only to him. “Don’t worry, señor. He’ll be speaking Latin like a native in no time.”

  My father grinned as he left the room. “I’m sure he will,” he said.

  I soon discovered that I didn’t exist. Philomena and I were alone during my lessons but when she talked she spoke past me and she never expected an answer. It was like I was invisible. Whenever she turned away, I strained to see my image in the glass on the door to prove that I was really there, but I appeared as a shadow with no more identity than a shapeless smudge.

  Flailing helplessly and miserably in a vat of intense longing, I desired beyond excess. Foolish me, I now know that desire creates first anxiety and then lunacy. It’s the reason women become calculating, neurotic, and self-destructive — why they get face-lifts, pierce their nipples, and dye their hair. It makes men obsessive, mean, and uncompromising. It’s why they also get face-lifts, pierce their nipples, and dye their hair.

  As time passed, even my shadow disappeared from the door taking my self-esteem with it. I began to talk and behave in the manner that I thought others expected. I lost all will and believed myself inferior. Soon, like a soft chair, I started to take on the shape of the last person to sit on me. Yearning and torment became my daily bread and I came to feel that there was no reason to continue on this earth.

  One day, near the low point of my existence, through the mist of my misery, I glimpsed the shape of my salvation. Philomena wrote Julius Caesar’s famous phrase, veni, vidi, vici on the blackboard. She said it was a well known tongue twister which meant ‘the venerable vicar’s vinegar’. She then followed with amo, amas, amen, which she translated as ‘I love, you love, the end’. I sensed that she knew little Latin. The fog started to lift and as it gained altitude, I regained some of my confidence. “Have you ever studied Latin?” I asked.

  Immediately, she began to cry. Soon her head was on my shoulder, tears staining my shirt as she confessed. She had been suffocating in her house and in her marriage. Claiming to know Latin was her escape. Her aloofness was a ruse, a disguise that she donned to keep me ignorant and so remain employed. The pressure of maintaining the charade had taken her to the edge and my question had pushed her over. The mornings spent teaching me were the only reason she was sane. Now she would be forced back to a bleak house and a bleaker marriage. I hugged her and did my best to console her, promising that her secret was safe.

  My father began the annoying habit of periodically quizzing me on what I was learning. In order to hide the fact that Philomena knew no Latin, I started to study in earnest. We became co-conspirators and learned together. I began to pass his surprise tests with flying colours and, pleased, he increased her salary.

  Every morning we were left alone and eventually the inevitable happened. One day Philomena wrote si vis amari ama on the board and then began pacing back and forth. I calculated that the phrase meant ‘if you want to be loved, then love’, and repeated it out loud. She stopped in front of me. “Well, do you?” she asked.

  “Do I what?”

  “Do you want to be loved?”

  At first I didn’t understand. I put down my pen. Then a great hope filled me and the next thing I knew we were out of control, kissing exponentially. Her body and my pent-up response came together in a radiant flare that left my knees weak and gave the room a surreal quality. There is no image that precisely portrays what happened. The best would be lying with eyes closed in the centre of a symphonic orchestra while music, dressed in shimmering colours, washes over you as the conductor lures dulcet note after dulcet note from each surrounding instrument until, at the crescendo, the music enters your body to become the organ with which you taste, feel, smell, hear and see. No nerve remains untouched. You vibrate in ecstatic harmony until every emotion coalesces into one enormous explosion.

  That was our lovemaking. We were like gigantic balloons filled with beauty that burst daily to envelop us in layer upon layer of enchantment. It became our habit each morning to rush into each other’s arms and begin anew the cycle of ardour that we had created. We played and replayed the possibilities of sensual delight. We created new techniques of gratification. We danced naked and memorized each others’ bodies. We whispered, then shouted our secrets and intimate thoughts. We relished our complicity and ignored the risk of an unlocked door, forgetting the world, my parents, her husband, and my lessons. In this blissful state, we slipped through weeks until one day, without the encumbrance of clothing, we were experimenting with new methods of arousal by trying all the permutations of veni, vidi, vici, when I looked up to see my father and Don Rodolfo standing in the doorway. In the ensuing confusion, Philomena mistakenly put on my trousers which left me with no alternative but to cover my bare essentials by wrestling myself into her tiny dress while I explained that acting out the Latin phrases helped me retain them in my memory.

  My explanation was dismissed and so was Philomena. We were warned never to see each other again. Of course, for someone as in love as I, that was impossible. That very evening, I stole from the house and made my way to Philomena’s. Keeping to the shadows I tossed pebbles at the only lighted window. Soon the front door opened and Don Rodolfo stepped out carrying a shotgun. “I have been expecting you,” he said. “Philomena is not here. I have sent her to live with the nuns at a mission that is so far away that you will never find her. She will not return until she regains her sanity. Now, go home and do not bother me again.”

  I could not believe it. I felt as though my heart were ripped from my chest and hurled into my stomach. A hundred devils with tiny hammers began pounding my brain. Much as I begged, Don Rodolfo would not reveal the name of the mission. Instead, he promised to reveal the contents of his shotgun if I did not go.

  I know that it is impossible to kill passion by arguing against it. Nevertheless, an argument that contains buckshot is a powerful persuader. I ran home convinced that life, for me, was over. There I pined, feeding my sorrow with brandy stolen from my father’s liquor cupboard, and rarely leaving my room until it came time for me to go to university.

  It was dark on the patio but I’m sure I saw a tear on Adriana’s cheek. “It’s a heartbreaking tale you spin, my naked nincompoop,” she said. “The story of young love ripped asunder is always sad, although sometimes a little melodramatic. What did you do?”

  “Nothing at first. I knew I would die. How could I not? My one true love was torn away. How could I ever desire another?”

  “You were probably surprised at how easy it was. Are you sure Philomena didn’t come to your house with low expectations and leave disappointed? Did you ever see her again? Did she return to Don Rodolfo?”

  “No, my curious crone. Don Rodolfo died and she never returned. I didn’t see her again until recently when I attended a lecture on dead languages given by a visiting professor. When the professor entered the theatre, I immediately recognized her as Philomena. After her talk, I introduced myself but she did not seem pleased to see me.”

  “It’s been a very long time,” she said. You know I waited months for you to come to the mission for me. I was watched twenty-four hours a day. When I finally reconciled myself to the knowledge that you weren’t coming, I devised my own plan to escape.”

  “What did you do?” I asked.

  “I was assigned to work planting a vegetable garden. I’m quite artistic so I arranged my garden in a manner that when the vegetables grew they formed an image that could be viewed from a small hill behind the chapel.”

  “What kind of an image?”

  “An image of our Lord. It caused quite a stir. You may recall, it was written up in the press all over the country.”

  “I didn’t know that was you,” I said.

  “The garden was termed a miracle and it wasn’t long until the faithful from all over the world arrived to
view the image, although by then it was not exactly as I had designed it.”

  “What do you mean, not as you designed it? Was there divine intervention while the garden was growing?”

  “Not exactly. It was Mother Superior who intervened. She said the image was too realistic, so she cut out the cucumber vine.”

  “I see. Perhaps her action was divinely inspired. How did you escape?”

  “It was easy. In the confusion created by thousands of supplicants, I simply walked away.”

  “Tell me the rest,” I said. “What did you do?”

  “At that time I still believed I loved you, but I didn’t return because it was necessary for our relationship to end. We could not give up our lives for each other, and I could no longer live with an old man who wanted me only for work. I didn’t know that Don Rodolfo was dead. My time at the mission allowed me to think and my eyes had opened to the possibilities in life.”

  “But we loved each other.”

  “What I had called love was a desperate attempt to become real, to escape. My life had dipped to the point that when I looked in a mirror, I could not recognize the person looking back. The day my image disappeared was the day I first made love with you. Our sex had a practical aspect. It kept me in touch with reality. I truly think that I was close to vanishing completely.”

  I felt my knees weaken as she cut away the illusion that had coated my self-portrait for so many years. “You mean that you made love only to maintain your equilibrium — that you had no feelings for me?”

  “Not at all. I said our affair had a practical purpose. I didn’t say that I was aware of that purpose. At the time I sincerely felt that I loved you. Our sex was an expression of that love and, most important, it was also pleasure. It’s not unlike reading a good book. We do it for pleasure but it also has the practical purpose of increasing our knowledge.”

  “What made you step back from the edge?” I asked. “Surely it was more than a vegetable garden.”

  “Oh, yes. It happened when the cover was lifted from our subterfuge. Only after we were caught and there was nothing left to hide, did I realize that I didn’t need my family’s, my husband’s or anyone else’s approval. You were my escape and for that I thank you, but I became real only after I was able to make my own choices.”

  “How did you live? Did you get a job?”

  “Although Latin was not my strength, I was educated. I had a relative who helped. I returned to university and worked hard. Eventually I added dead languages to my resumé, just below dead marriages and dead memories. But enough about me. What did you do? Did it take time to forget me? Did you get another tutor?”

  “There was no other tutor and yes, it took time. After a few isolated days I soon realized that I would do the world no good confined to my room so I wrote the entrance exams for university. I could not pine away the rest of my life. Back to you. Did you re-marry? Do you have a family? Did you find love?”

  “Yes to all. I found a man who was secure enough to be my equal. It was difficult because my anguish had caused me to stereotype men in the same manner as men stereotype women. He brought life into my life. We have a grown family and, though I am retired, I still lecture occasionally. I’m happy, although like everyone, I sometimes wonder what could have been.”

  “What about us? It seemed more than just escape.”

  “Of course it was,” she said. Our relationship was like Latin. Although it is a dead language, it is not extinct. It doesn’t grow or shrink by adding and dropping words like a living language … but it has functionality. Our love was like that. It was useful but it could not grow.”

  I took a small notebook from my pocket, wrote si vis amari ama in it, and handed it to her. “Do you think we should finish our experiment with veni, vidi, vici?”

  She made a face like she had just tasted old fish, took my hand, and introduced me to her husband who had been sitting in the audience. He seemed a decent man and it occurred to me that she had indeed found her life while, in a way, I was still searching for mine.

  Adriana smirked. “So sex with you is like reading a book. I’d wager that she was thinking of short fiction. But seriously, have you considered that, often when we search for something, it’s nearby, unnoticed as we stare into the past at something we thought we had?”

  I missed the import of her words and she continued. “You said that at times you felt as if you didn’t exist. Maybe it was a lack of self-esteem. You were ignored and as your infatuation limited the size of your world, you didn’t exist in that world.”

  “I understand that, but what about Philomena?”

  “Philomena was living an unnatural existence, trying to conform to the standards that society, Don Rodolfo, and her family had set for her — she valued herself according to the degree of their acceptance. She knew of no other standards. Her attempt to escape through you caused guilt and confusion, because daily she was thrust back into a restricting environment. You were her deliverance but you were also the instrument of her guilt and that conflict made the world seem unnatural — a place with no space for her, hence a place where she could not live.”

  I left Adriana’s in a sober mood and walked home beneath a silver moon. What she had said made sense. The search for love is the pursuit of something missing in ourselves — a desire to slip away from our own company and mesh with another. Finding it produces ecstasy, rapture, and intoxication — not unlike those other hazardous antidotes to aloneness — alcohol, drugs, and religion.

  I had not recognized my relationship with Philomena for what it was and I felt regret, not for my lack of understanding — at the time I was young — but regret that the barriers that surround us are so opaque that they cloud our vision of what might be.

  Lilacs Have That Effect

  MY FATHER’S WEALTH HAD BEEN ACQUIRED when he was young so his portrait of life had a more elegant frame than my mother’s picture of the world. She came from an area of town known as Hump and Dump Alley. It is from her that I acquired my passion for the earthy side of life, although this was an aspect of her nature that she kept secret from my father, a stern patrician who never smiled. He believed that having sex for enjoyment made as much sense as breathing air for its nutritional value or sleeping in order to lose weight. He was fond of saying that everything should be done for a purpose and pleasure did not qualify. His main interest in life was finding shortcuts and he banked time the way a squirrel hoards nuts. He kept his hair short and wore a beard to save the few minutes each day it would take to comb and shave. Every evening he arranged his clothes along the hallway so that in the morning he could dress en route from his bed to the bathroom — and, once in the bathroom, he used a stopwatch to time every activity from brushing his teeth to emptying his bladder.

  I never understood how my mother and father tolerated one another but somehow their marriage succeeded. It has been my lifelong fancy that more than serendipity was responsible for my creation — a magical waltz perhaps, a beautiful sunset, or even a romantic poem. Both died carrying their secret, however, and I’m afraid I shall never know.

  Of course Adriana has speculated. “You must be adopted,” she said. “It would be impossible for your mother’s good looks and your father’s intelligence to combine and produce someone like you, with a face that would frighten a statue and an IQ that is less than the temperature on a cold day … and speaking of IQ, how did someone with your obvious limitations gain entrance to a university? Did you bribe the registrar?”

  “No, I didn’t … but you have accidentally sailed close to one of my secret islands.”

  “What island? Tell me,” she said.

  “Very well, but only in the interest of full disclosure. I don’t need a lecture on the rights and wrongs of my past.”

  “I make no promises. Tell me.”

  “I said I wrote the entrance exams for university. I didn’t say I gained acceptance.”

  “I know you attended. How did you get in?”

 
; “About the same time that the university failed to recognize my academic potential, my parents ended their lives the same way that they met, in an automobile accident. The sadness came with a silver lining: the key that unlocked the front door to higher education, but only after the university set out the welcome mat.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I arranged an appointment with the president of the university, told him the sad news and that in Mother’s and Father’s memory, I intended to heavily endow the institution that I attended. I further explained that I had been considering both Harvard and Oxford but that I harboured a secret soft spot for his academy as it was located in my home country. I was enrolled that very day.”

  Adriana raised her eyebrows. “How much did that cost?”

  “Nothing, my academic airhead, not even tuition. When the president enquired why my cheque was not forthcoming, I explained that it would be unseemly for me to endow while I was still a student and they would have to wait until I received my degree.”

  “I imagine you graduated Some Come Loud.”

  “No, you’ll be surprised to learn that marriage cut short my academic career.”

  Adriana kicked off her sandals. “This I must hear,” she said.

  I was nearing my third decade when I made the mistake that all would-be lovers make. I decided matrimony was an appropriate course of action. The success of my parents’ marriage had left its mark and as I had not yet realized that I was destined to be a lover to the world in general, I was predisposed to the idea of a permanent relationship.

  Her name was Elena and I first saw her in my Histrionics for Introverts class. She was exquisitely packaged and I, in the manner of a child on Christmas morning, couldn’t wait to unwrap the parcel. Like a teenage fool I became enamoured by large breasts, pouting mouth, and shapely legs.

  She had a way of tossing her hair and thrusting her chest at the horizon that gave the illusion she was walking uphill. Her thighs, pushing purposefully against a tight skirt, caused her hips to rock so that, viewed from behind, it was possible to see cheek jiggle with every step. She wore no brassiere and the sight of her chasing a pair of perpetually alert nipples across campus never failed to attract fawning admirers. Her perfume smelled like spring lilacs and I came to associate this fragrance with her appearance to the extent that whenever I passed a lilac bush I immediately developed an erection.