Spell of Blindness

by Lori Tiron-Pandit

  “Did you read all of them?”

  “Yes. Actually, I’ve read most of them several times. I am a freak, I’m afraid.”

  I laugh, but he is a freak. My house has never been so clean. I become curious and start checking for dust, very subtly.

  “Who is in this photo?” No dust. “Can I sit on the floor?” Spotless.

  He gives me a tall glass of lemonade with two mint leaves and ice. He doesn’t drink alcohol, but if I wanted something, he could get it for me in no time. Lemonade is good, thank you.

  We sit on the floor cross-legged. He smells of mint. We talk about literature and drama. It’s elating. I’m an intelligent being again, for a few minutes.

  Then he cooks dinner. Nothing spectacular, he apologizes, only chicken with sesame-lemon rice, and tomato, basil, goat cheese salad.

  “You can make that? How did you learn to cook?”

  “I am an autodidact, and not a very good one, I’m afraid. But cooking can be a truly meditative and grounding experience.”

  Okay. Whatever.

  Cooking takes a long time.

  I could drink something. No problem. Wine? There is a bottle here somewhere. A Bordeaux or Chardonnay? White is fine.

  He looked like an old man in that blue apron, bent over the stove, checking the rice. Time seems to have a special bond with him: I don’t mind you, you don’t mind me, that sort of thing. He is absent. He can disappear minutes at a time. I forgive him. When he’s here, he is more present than the present itself.

  We sit on the floor and eat at the coffee table. It is delicious. I wish I was hungry.

  .

  “The perfect boyfriend” title goes to Petru, for his imaginative and caring efforts on my birthday. He came before everyone else to help me arrange the house for the party. He took care of the drinks, greeted the guests with me, and brought a very thoughtful gift.

  He seems to care. I don’t want to hurt him.

  .

  I knew there was something wrong with him. There had to be something. A reason why he is so preoccupied with what he is eating. A reason why he keeps his world so clean and calm, so set in routines.

  He has a brain aneurysm. It can rupture, and he can die any moment. He barely survived a previous aneurysm hemorrhage five years ago.

  “I have been living a dying man’s life for five years.”

  He was sitting on the armchair, palms on his knees, looking me directly in the eyes when he told me. Smiling. Confident.

  “I didn’t tell you until now because I wanted you to know me better first, to know that I am more than this disease. It’s actually been a blessing. Isn’t that a horrible cliché?”

  Not in my world. “How are you feeling?”

  “Oh, don’t worry about it. I haven’t had any attacks in two years. I’m healthy and well, both in mind and body. That’s how I feel. I am just telling you this because it’s fair that you know and also because I want you to understand me better in order to put up with my idiosyncrasies.”

  There are many of those, I have to say. I said nothing.

  His hands suddenly looked long and transparent, restless on his pointy knees. His hands told me that this man is not well. I cannot bear that.

  “This disease only gave me a new life. It sent me searching for a new spirituality, for new meanings. I have learnt more than any healthy person out there. The disease gave me motivation. I am grateful for it.”

  His whole image flickers like an unstable hologram in my mind. It dissipates. I am alone.

  .

  Last night, I knew that Petru was expecting me to say something nice, to make it all good, but I couldn’t. I felt scared, as if all his problems were suddenly on my shoulders now, and I realized that I could not handle such a burden. I finally told him some stupid things, that he will be all right, and the disease could not conquer his spirit.

  I am sorry I cannot be that angelic being who can easily sacrifice her own life for her beloved, who would welcome such hardships just to prove the strength of love. Maybe because I don’t love him. I wished I did. He is a dream. Just not mine. Somebody more worthy will come along for you, sweet Petru.

  .

  Petru invited me to a party today in the afternoon. It was at a friend’s house. The friend had just returned from a three-month trip in Cairo, and he called everybody over to listen to his stories and adventures over a bottle of wine and finger foods.

  It was an old brick house on a quiet street, flanked by big chestnut trees. It had big windows and high ceilings, as if the house was made entirely of ballrooms. I had always wanted to see what the houses on that street looked like on the inside. It was everything that I was expecting: clear and serene space, a mix of old and new, of bohemian and expensively elegant. It was the perfect background for the people who lived in it.

  These people seemed to come from another time. They seemed almost impossible to me. The woman was a tall brunette, with very short hair and a fascinating jawline. She was wearing a tight-fitting green silk gown that clearly felt like jeans and tee shirt to her. In front of her, I felt like an awkward country girl in my too-tight black pants, too-shiny gray blouse, and too-generic blue scarf.

  “I’m Clara.” She looked like a Clara. I don’t think I was able to take my eyes from her the entire evening, trying to find the secret of her fascinating ways. She was very friendly and ready to talk about anything, from Dali’s art and life to the latest and most innovative lipstick on the market. I wish I could master this art of talking to anybody about anything, but I can only talk with few whom I know well, about things that are important to me. Otherwise, I prefer to just shut my mouth and listen to others, which makes the others feel uncomfortable. The uncomfortable conversation companion. This is who I am.

  Well, the dinner took place in an enormous dining room lit with crystal chandeliers. Clara’s boyfriend, André, was not as pleasant, although he did compete for most interesting. He was tall, dark, and balding, wearing very delicate, silver-framed glasses. From the distance, he seemed older, but he was only in his thirties, which was obvious when I could see up close his perfectly smooth and clear skin and his playful, penetrating eyes. I think the eyes were his most intriguing feature. He had the eyes of a five year old who could still see the miracle in all things around him, forever curious and amazed. If you can see the spirit of a man in his eyes, than you can certainly see it in André‘s. Compared to him, all of us, unfortunate beings, have been dead for a very long time.

  We spent four hours with these people and another, not memorable, couple. Halfway through the dinner, I already felt like running toward the exit to save face and sanity. The conversation revolved around traditional Spanish music and the fate of Romanian ballet. It was enjoyable for a while, but soon I started to feel out of place. I was afraid I would make a fool of myself if I said anything, although there were things I wanted to contribute. The overwhelming feeling of inadequacy paralyzed me, though, for most of the night. It is true, for a few minutes, Clara played nice and had a short exchange with me about the lipstick I was wearing and the latest trends in nail polish. I didn’t enjoy that turn of the conversation more, but at least it made me feel less pressured to prove myself. For most of the night I sat nicely, kept silent, looked dumb, listened to them, and hated every second of it all.

  On the long way back home, I told Petru everything that needed to be said. “It’s been a wonderful evening. Your friends are very nice and interesting, but I feel like they exist in a different world. My life is simple and possibly boring, but I like it the way it is, and I don’t want to try so hard to belong with people who live differently. And it’s not just your friends. This evening only made me realize once again how huge the differences between the two of us are.” I think this was how I started. He seemed to understand immediately. He nodded, and he didn’t look into my eyes again.

  He didn’t try to make it easy for me. “I have been expecting this. It took longer than I thought for you to make the deci
sion. I have to admit that I was also hoping that it wouldn’t happen. It’s fine, though. I could tell that you haven’t been comfortable with my situation. I hope you know that I had a very good time with you, and I enjoyed every moment we spent together. I wished we had more. I understand, though. I wouldn’t ask anybody to tie their life to a man like me.”

  “It is not that, Petru.” But it was exactly that.

  “It’s Okay. Anyway, for now, I really need to concentrate on myself more, I guess. The invitation to next week’s piano concert still stands, if you are up for it. We can go as friends.”

  “Yes, I’d like that. We’ll keep in touch, Okay? I don’t want to lose you as a friend. You are very special to me.”

  “Thank you. I appreciate your kind words. I could settle for special. That’s nice. For me, you have been the prelude to paradise.”

  He said those words, and I never felt more devastated and abandoned by fate. Who broke up with whom? I was the one whose tears darkened spots on the city pavements all the way home. I was the one who needed consoling.

  “Oh, Ana, why are you so upset?” His arms held me. His shirt smelled of forgiveness. I cried harder. His lips smiled.

  9.

  ANA’S TREES WERE STARTING to turn color. She questioned her ability to survive in the village over the winter, having to carry armfuls of wood to the stove, to go out to the icy cold outside toilet, but most of all, to be isolated and have nowhere to go—no cinema, no theatre, no stores, or coffee shops. When she was looking really deep, she could see she was not really afraid, and the questioning was just the old habit of trying to scare herself from doing anything worthwhile.

  She didn’t really have to think of winter yet, as the sun was winking at her through the thick tree branches and the air smelled of sweet grapes. It was winemaking season, and Ana had two enormous barrels (one head taller than her) full of grapes that needed to be turned into must.

  Her mother was going to come to Codresti that weekend to help with the winemaking. She pretended to be the only one who knew Ana’s grandfather’s secret of cleaning and fuming the barrels and storing them in a certain spot in the cellar. Ana’s mother was slowly starting to understand that this change had been necessary in her daughter’s life. She had a dream in which Ana was eating cherries from a large, white plate. In the dream, she ate many small and unripe cherries, and left for last a perfectly round, impeccably red one. Dream Ana picked it up and told her mother, “See, Mama, I couldn’t have found this perfect one anywhere else.” As the cherries looked like they had come from Ana’s favorite tree in her grandparents’ yard, Ana’s mother interpreted the dream as a message that Ana had made the right choice coming to Codresti.

  “Who knows, maybe you’ll find a nice man here,” she told Ana. Ana didn’t say a word, allowing her to hope.

  .

  Tanti Sofia, who lived in the green house across the street from Ana’s grandparents’ house, invited Ana to a feast for the dead. Sofia’s husband had died from a stroke thirty years before. She invited the whole village to eat pilaf, stuffed grape leaves, and coliva, the special desert made from wheat, nuts, and sugar that the dead request at their feast. It was a pity that this dish is associated only with the funeral tradition, Ana thought. She hadn’t eaten it in years, but could remember clearly the nutty sweet taste of wheat berries bursting in her mouth one by one. Ana dressed in gray and black for the occasion. She thought she was appropriately attired, but her Tanti Sofia asked her to untie the scarf she had used as a headband and cover her cleavage with it because she was going to be sitting right next to the priest, and a little more modesty couldn’t hurt.

  The priest, Father Gabriel, was a thirty-something smug city boy who had been disconsolate when the only parish available for him was this village at the end of all roads. He took a superior air and never allowed the beautiful place to charm him as it had many others before. The villagers felt the disconnect but still tried to win him over. They let their discontent show only when it came to the priest’s wife, who walked on the dirt roads in high heels and short silk dresses. She had a mobile phone in her hand at all times, and every other sentence from her mouth was a complaint about the poor mobile phone signal in this hole at the end of the world. Ana had never met her, but Tanti Vica had whispered all these details into her ear on their way to the feast.

  Ana sat next to the priest and smiled, avoiding eye contact. She wanted to be back home and finish the book she was reading, outside on the bench, with a cup of cherry compote. The priest started muttering a long prayer, and everyone lowered their heads and fell silent. Ana could almost taste the compote waiting for her at home. It had been a gift from Tanti Vica, who had made it with cherries from Ana’s tree, the one that she used to climb every June to come down only with a tummy ache and an exactly one-year-long disgust for cherries.

  The priest was served his food as soon as he finished the prayer. He asked for his glass to be cleaned again before he used it, and he demanded another fork after the first course.

  “In this village.” He took Ana into his confidence by lowering his voice and bending his head in her direction. “One has to lower one’s standards. People refuse to learn even a few basic hygiene principles. It’s incredible.” He looked at Ana, expecting to see a sign of understanding, which she didn’t give. He then turned toward the rest of the table and forced a half smile.

  Tanti Sofia didn’t take her eyes off him the whole time. Whatever he needed, the priest was given in a matter of seconds. Sofia wanted him to see that he was dealing with God-fearing people.

  His wife made her appearance at the end. She didn’t sit at the table although Sofia tried to persuade her every way she could think of. The priest’s heavily coiffed and made-up wife didn’t even enter the front yard. She preferred to wait outside, in the car, until he was done. Sofia sighed and came back to the table, her shoulders hanging lower than before.

  When everything was over and the important guests had gone, Ana stayed to help clear the tables and clean the dishes. Many of the village women stayed behind to help. After showing their devotion and faith, they were now free to indulge in an extra glass of wine and a little gossip. Ana couldn’t keep up with the conversation, which involved people she didn’t know and events she had never heard of. But from her position as an outsider, she admired this gentle, hardworking and good-humored community of women. They all knew each other, each other’s families, and ancestors. They knew each other’s stories, pains, and joys. And they took it all lightly today, joking and laughing while never stopping their work. It was a day to remember the past and to forget it again, making space for another day, and many others afterward, to begin.

  At the end of the evening, Ana was happy to receive the big plate that Tanti Sofia had prepared for her to take home, on which she had expertly arranged small quantities of each dish from the feast. She also gave Ana a nice new cup painted with yellow flowers, just like the plate. The offering was for the dead, so he would have food and a cup for drinking the water of the other side.

  “So, what did you talk about with the priest?” Vica asked Ana as they were slowly making their way back home. “He is a good man, isn’t he?”

  “I don’t know, Tanti Vica. He seems so out of place here. And he doesn’t seem very saintly.”

  Vica didn’t hear the answer. “But have you seen his wife, Ana? She came to a feast for the dead wearing that short pink dress that you could see through.”

  Ana laughed. “At least she is not pretending to be the keeper of God’s word on earth, is she?”

  Vica covered her smile in a corner of her headscarf.

  . .

  The Year Before

  LAURA’S STORY IS LONG and very unsettling, but it needs recording. Tomorrow, neither of us might want to remember, but today, the story is going down on paper and there will be no more escaping from it.

  Laura left for Japan in February. She went there to work as a waitress and hostess in a club. She tho
ught that the clientele of the club would consist of young spiritual seekers like herself because the location was one with several temples and a Zen retreat in the vicinity. She thought she would serve drinks and have engaging, day-long discussions about God, chakras, and subtle energies. She was told that the trip would be an opportunity for spiritual growth and for supporting the Transcendental Integration Movement because all the money had to go to the organization that had, after all, paid for all the expenses, including her food and lodging in Japan. Laura had been more than happy to go with three other girls that she knew vaguely. The plane landed on that foreign land, and their joy never came down with them.

  The apartment that they shared was tiny in a way that she had never imagined possible before. Laura had lived in various places over the years. She shared a bathroom with thirty other people at one point and slept on top of her luggage in a kitchen for a week, but this apartment was soul crushing. There was one room with two beds, a small table, a TV on the wall, and, along a dark corridor, there were several closets that housed the kitchen, toilet, shower, and washer and dryer. There was a balcony, though, so she took out her sleeping bag and slept under the stars while the weather was mild enough. The rest of the time, she had to share the room with the other three girls, so she preferred to not come home as often, which was easy because her clients at the club offered to take her to hotels all the time. They were not as spiritually minded as she had hoped. Most of them were looking for the more carnal pleasures of life. She had been prepared for that, too.

  Griolaru’s group called sex in many euphemistic ways, like “connecting to the universal energy of love,” or “expressing your feminine essence,” and “expanding your awareness.” It meant taking nude photographs to shed inhibitions and having sex with the instructors and other members of the group. She had never really translated that language before the Japan trip. She knew others would, which is why she never told me about this part of their practice, but she could not see anything wrong there herself. She had been convinced that by opening her sexual channels, the vital energy would flow freely from and toward her, and she would become a more connected and more aware part of the conscious universe.