Spell of Blindness

by Lori Tiron-Pandit

“Weird. Although, it was probably just an illusion of candlelight and shadows,” I say, thinking that it had been probably more than that.

  “Yes, that was probably it,” Ilinca agrees unconvincingly, turning toward the kettle in which the water is bubbling. “We can’t see things that aren’t there, can we?”

  I turn toward the window. The trees are bending under the power of the storm, and giant snowflakes explode inside the patch of light from the street lamp then vanish in the night. Who is to say what really is there and what isn’t?

  .

  First, there was the call from Mama. “Happy birthday, my baby. I hope this year is a happy one for you, my darling. May God protect you and help you find a man who deserves you.”

  Then, it continued at school. “Thirty? What are you waiting for, young lady? You should not let life pass you by like this. You are an intelligent, beautiful woman. Take advantage of it and grab some lucky fellow quickly.”

  “You should get married and start a family while you are still young. It is not good for children to have an old mother. And it is not good for you, either, to wait for so long. Time is running out. Tick. Tick.”

  “You don’t have any excuse, Ana. There must be a man somewhere who is not all that bad. You can’t afford anymore to reject all of them. I hope you’re doing something for your birthday. Don’t spend it alone! Don’t stay at home like a princess waiting to be rescued. Nobody is coming for you. This is real life.”

  These old women assume that they can say anything, not matter how hurtful, because coming from them it’s wise advice, not insult.

  I didn’t dare say anything in front of them, but nothing held back Ella, the new math teacher. “Oh, come on. You ancient creatures can’t think of anything else but marriage, marriage, find a man, where are the babies. What’s wrong with the old people always trying to control our lives? This is why our world is so messed up. Why don’t you give us a break? Big-mouthed old crones.”

  Nobody ever wants to get into a polemic with Ella. There is no way to win with her. She’s wild.

  After work, we went for drinks together. We are both the same age. Her birthday is coming up next week. We talked about life. She is in love and happy, but doesn’t plan to get married, because marriage “just doesn’t sound like fun.” Her boyfriend is apparently a famous musician that I should know of: Calin Toma. “He’s great. I’m lucky, I guess,” she told me looking down at the shiny bar table that reflected the overhead lights and the melancholy in her eyes.

  .

  I love you so much, Amon, and I love myself so much. How incomprehensible it is, this self-love that is born out of the love for another.

  I feel so much, and yet I cannot feel you. I cannot touch you. I cannot transform you into matter, and it is this palpable, earthly matter that I long for now. I look at you through my eyelids for a second, only to lose you again, only to torture myself, to struggle and bleed, building you fiber by fiber and cell by cell, love, paradise, fluttering angel wings and all. I feel like a god creating you. But creation hurts. The burden is too big for me. Imperfect I am for my too-great love.

  I feel I cannot breathe where you don’t exist. This air doesn’t pass through your lungs and your dreams. I’m tired and useless in a dream that has no sense. I can hear your steps and your breathing every time my heart beats, and I lose them with every thought. And I don’t know what name to give to this growth inside me. I don’t know how to live with it anymore.

  Can you hear me? Come. Tell me that you love me, hate me, hear me. That you have a mouth and vocal cords like all human beings. Please, tell me that you breathe, and blood is what’s running through your veins, too. Tell me that I have not lost myself in this world where I wake up every morning.

  .

  Ella’s apartment is not for the faint of heart. I always leave that place with a headache. The agglomeration of violent colors and mismatched furniture and art create a very disturbing space. Her living room is painted bright yellow, and she has a wall-size abstract painting in shades of violet. All the other walls are decorated heavily with framed or just taped-on pictures, theatrical hats, feather scarves, Romanian folkloric masks, and mirrors. She has an obsessive collection of mirrors, hanging in every corner of the apartment, all framed beautifully and repeating the same interior into a different, unreachable dimension.

  The kitchen, though, is a paradise of light and luxurious indoor plants in terra-cotta pots. There are no shadows in Ella’s kitchen, and even on the greyest rainy days, this is a spot always favored by light. Ella moves inside this place naturally and with ease, and she seems to belong to it more than it belongs to her.

  Earlier today she was wearing one of her glamorous silk house robes, and I was fascinated by her metamorphosed personality. She was not the same woman I knew from school, but a mysterious entity with multiple masks and a wonderful gift for playing different roles. Ella is always charming and good-hearted in all her appearances, though, and the hurt little girl is always there, too.

  .

  “There is something that I don’t understand. So you believe that only love can make us reach our full potential as spiritual beings, right? I like that, actually. What I have trouble with is this man whom you see. Why would you think anyone could be him? Don’t you see his face? Can’t you tell if someone looks like him or not?” Ella was discussing my life’s philosophy in the waiting room of the clinic where she had an appointment for an abortion. She was just trying to keep her mind away from what was happening to her, and I was happy to help.

  “I don’t know, Ella. I’m not certain of anything anymore. Yes, at first I did think I would recognize him. I thought he would come like a thunderbolt and hit me out of my reality, but that never happened. Now I believe that his coming might be almost imperceptible, like late summer mist, almost as if it is emerging from inside of my own body, not from the sky.”

  Words came to me as I spoke them. I didn’t have to think. She needed to hear my voice, like a lullaby. Maybe for just a few minutes, she could forget.

  “So you think that God is playing with us a game of find the lady—well, in this case, find the man? Maybe you’re right. I didn’t think of God as much of a scammer before, but I guess he might get some giggles this way. He is probably a really bored fellow, all by himself up there.” She was laughing and throwing her long hair back in a seductive way, although there was no man in sight. She was looking so beautiful, and I wished I didn’t know about all the pain hidden there behind the bright smile and the deep eyes with perfectly shaped brows.

  She had told me everything that morning. I was putting my coat on to go home after my last class when she came toward me in a rush and asked if we could talk privately. We went into the chemistry lab, which was empty at that hour, and there she asked me if I could accompany her to the clinic. “The nurse told me that I shouldn’t come alone. It won’t take long. Not more than two hours. Please. There is nobody else I can ask. I will be forever grateful to you.”

  I agreed immediately, of course. There are things you just don’t say no to.

  “I have multiple sclerosis,” she continued. “Nobody knows at school, so please don’t let that change. I want only you to know. I am fine, though, don’t worry. Haven’t had any bad episodes in more than six months. So, really, it’s nothing. But children are not in my future.” Her forced laugh said that it is everything.

  I didn’t know how to react, so I just embraced her.

  She clung to me, and her nails dug painfully into my shoulder blades. “Thank you for doing this for me. I cannot have a baby. The doctors don’t allow it, which is fine with me. A relief, actually. I am not ready for this. Calin thinks I’m being selfish, but he doesn’t have any idea what he’s talking about. You are the only one I can count on, Ana.”

  The procedure was much shorter than I expected. After she came out, I waited next to her bed for one hour, until they let her go home. She didn’t say a word after coming out. I couldn’t talk either.
Not until I left her home, safe and very alone.

  I hope she’ll be fine. She had no choice, after all. She had no say in this. So many things in her life happen without much say from her. Her life is driven by many unseen forces. She cannot stand up to them. She can only fight them and be crushed on the battlefield, or befriend them and live a full, though not entirely real, life.

  I believe in the world as a safe, magical place, where we are cared for and protected. It is proving me wrong almost each day. Then I believe that at least it all has purpose and meaning. And I can only scream inside my head for all the agony that we endure on blind faith alone.

  .

  Laura has vanished. Nobody knows where she is. Her mother just called me to ask if I know anything. She hasn’t heard from Laura in over three months. Nor have I, if I think about it.

  By now, I have become used to her vanishing acts. She hasn’t been around much since we finished school, but I like to think that we are still just as close, even if we are other people now. She’s always on the run, elusive, like everything else in my life. I know that Laura just wants to focus on her journey. I admire her for that. In a way, we are doing the same thing. She’s searching for a god; I am searching for love. We might take different paths, but we’re both doing the same thing. She’s just braver and more determined and doesn’t compromise at all. Laura doesn’t let anything stand in her way.

  I never worried before. She’s probably on one of her meditation retreats. But why do I feel this overwhelming fear now? I’ve been so self-involved that I’ve hardly thought of her lately. I need to find her.

  .

  Laura hasn’t replied to my e-mails, and it’s been over a week. I am seriously scared now. I recognize it—the same feeling I had the first time when she went away to a meditation retreat in India for one month and she returned determined to drop out of school and become a Buddhist nun.

  I found in the old notebook a letter that Laura sent me from India.

  Dear Ana,

  I am writing to you from paradise. I’m exactly at its core, with my notebook and pen, with small orange birds buzzing around the tree blossoms, sitting on the patch of grass from which it all irradiates. If you could see this place, Ana, you would understand.

  I was taking a walk on the beach a few days ago, deeply lost in my internal dialogue, when I entered this miraculous space. I stepped into a new dimension. I am not exaggerating—for a moment I thought it was all a metaphysical experience. Laura had been walking in the sand, the sun mercilessly stroking the top of her head, the air smelling of mud and crustaceans, another step, and suddenly she was in a shaded garden, surrounded by enormous palms that frame above her an impeccable blue sky. The tree trunks are covered by the red and orange blossoms of luxuriant vines, and the air smells of nectar. It’s hard to believe that this place exists.

  I love it here. My day-to-day life is very simple. Everything I do is rigorously regulated by the retreat, from what clothes I wear and what I eat to what thoughts I go to sleep with at night. My days are quiet, yet full. I don’t talk to anybody for days. Not that I couldn’t—there is a quite flourishing social life at the retreat, if that’s your thing. It isn’t mine, as you know. I’ve settled for only chatting inside my head, and not even there if I can help it. I’ve never felt so much light. There is nothing else I want. Do you know how amazing that feels, to have found everything that you can ever need? I hope this feeling never ends.

  I am thinking of you all the time. You would love it here. Hope you are doing well.

  Love,

  Laura

  It was at that time that she started meditating intensively. As soon as she was accepted, she left Bucharest and went to live in a Buddhist center where she felt she could practice undisturbed.

  Laura spent a year in that place, and, for a few months, it was all she had dreamed of. We exchanged letters and talked on the phone once in a while, but I was starting to accept that maybe she had found her way, and although I missed her, I was resigning myself to the idea that she was gone from my life. Then, one day I opened the door to my house and there she was, shaking, with a burgundy-colored shawl soaked in tears. She spent two weeks locked in my spare bedroom before she decided to tell me what had happened.

  It was all about a man. Rus was a very experienced meditation trainer, and although not one of the monks, he did have the respect of the entire community. Laura trusted him completely until the day when he professed his love for her and declared that he couldn’t go on without her. When Laura told him that she was not looking for a romantic relationship, he couldn’t accept it and continued to insist that they were made for each other. It had been revealed to him during meditation, he said.

  He sent Laura daily letters and found ways to be around her at all times. She ignored him for as long as she could, unable to think of a way to resolve the situation without jeopardizing her position at the monastery and her practice.

  One day, however, it became clear that things were not going to return to normal. During a guided group meditation, all the participants were sitting in a circle in the middle of a large hall, and Rus, who was the facilitator, was sitting on Laura’s right side, five or seven people away from her. He instructed everyone to think of their spiritual master, view that person in all the holiness, and accept the tests of determination and perseverance on the spiritual path that the master might have for them. His words were followed by a deep silence broken only by gentle breathing sounds.

  It was that moment when Laura felt a presence right behind her. She opened her eyes and turned to notice that Rus was sitting right behind her. He had his eyes closed, but his hands were reaching forward, almost touching her shoulders. Laura jumped from the floor and walked out the door as quick as she could without disturbing the other meditators. She felt angry, terrified, and betrayed, but most of all, she felt sad for the loss of a space that could have nurtured her love for meditation.

  That evening, after dinner, he stopped her in the hallway and sobbed like a child, asking for forgiveness. He promised not to bother her again in any way and to stay away from her if that was her wish. Laura, who felt she risked losing as much as he did if she didn’t accept the offer of peace, tried to put everything behind her.

  For several more weeks, he kept his word and stayed away from her. The whole time, however, she felt apprehensive and afraid of his next move. She was right to be scared. One evening, when she entered her room, she found him inside. She wanted to scream, as she had planned many times in her mind, but the expression on his face stopped her. It was not the face of a violent or dangerous man. It was the face of a man who had lost everything and had given up the fight.

  That night, he told her that he had decided to leave the retreat because he felt the place was too small for the two of them. He wanted her to know that he realized what he had done was reprehensible, and he would never forgive himself for it. He had made plans to go for a three-year, silent meditation retreat in a remote Buddhist center. He told her that he couldn’t recognize the man he had become, and he asked for forgiveness.

  Laura listened to him and, for the first time, felt that she was not the only injured party in this story. But that last intrusion into her personal space made her feel too unsafe. The next morning, she packed her small bag and left the retreat, the town, and Buddhism.

  .

  Another Sunday is over. I spent it in my room, watching TV. No human contact at all today. Only my ghosts—my trusty companions.

  . .

  The notebook has been covered by hand with a scrap of flowery cotton twill. The paper is pale yellow and lined. Magazine cutouts are pasted on various pages: images of couples kissing, holding hands, riding bikes, running in the rain.

  I AM WAITING FOR MY ROOMMATE, Ilinca, to show up. She is studying chemistry. Her parents live in the same apartment building as Mama, in Vulturi, but I haven’t seen Ilinca in years. I remember playing with her a few times when we were children. She had a cascade o
f curly, blonde hair that I envied beyond all else and once convinced her to cut. Her mother intervened, and the beautiful hair remained to taunt me. I always had my hair cut short as a child. Easy and clean. Marta’s words.

  I don’t know much about Marina, my other roommate, but I hope we get along. We don’t have to become the best of friends.

  This dorm is heavenly. Happy Ana. I won’t have my own room anymore, but I won’t miss it. Anything is better than Marta’s house of darkness. I can finally be my own woman, make my own decisions, live by my own rules. Everything has changed.

  This small room that I have to share with two other people is as big as an entire universe. Who cares that we barely have space to move around? That the bathrooms are far away down the dark corridor? So what if it will never be quiet enough to study in here? If people come and go like in the railway station? (It certainly seems like they are all on the move permanently.) So what if nobody will clean? Who cares if it smells of everything: kitchen, public restroom, and beauty salon, all in one? None of it matters to me. All I need is a piece of paper and a pen, and I am complete. I am myself. I am happy.

  Oh, these girls are really late! What is happening? It is starting to get dark, and the room seems gloomy now. I can hear noises from the hallway. Music. Voices. Furniture being moved around. Shouting. Running. Screams. A second of quiet. Steps.

  Finally!

  .

  “Hi there! I am Marina. I’m so happy to finally meet you, Ana.” She gave me a strong hug and twirled around the room. “We are going to have so much fun here! In this room, we can have at least ten people for a party, I think. We’ll give one next week, what do you say? Oh, by the way, this is my boyfriend, Andru. Andru, say hi to Ana. Don’t worry, he won’t be staying around here too much. He has a room in the Poly dorms. His roommates were already dead drunk two hours ago. It’s a wild place there. You have to come with us tomorrow. Many cute boys over there.”

  This is how my first conversation with Marina went. She talked non-stop for half an hour while walking around the room and smoking cigarette after cigarette. All this time, her boyfriend was carrying luggage inside: six enormous duffel bags. She’ll take up a whole closet.