Chrysalis

by Jeremy Welch

  She pecked at her wine as if to finish it would end her recollection.

  “The relationship between the designer and model was turned upside down. Normally the model complements the design but for me, because of her, I tried to create the most beautiful clothes that I could. I tried to capture and enhance her beauty. I don’t know why I tried it as I knew it couldn’t be done.”

  She wasn’t speaking to him, she was explaining to herself.

  “With each attempt and failure the designs went to our shops for resale. I didn’t care who wore them. It didn’t stop me trying. She was really the inspiration for all the clothes I ever made, even the ones I made before I met her. You do understand, Sebastian, don’t you?”

  He nodded.

  “What happened to her?”

  She reached for her glass and took a mouthful, swallowing quickly. Her face reflected the distaste of too much wine at once. She sat in silence and squared her shoulders.

  “She died, Sebastian, she died.”

  She didn’t look at him but raised her palm off the table top to stop him speaking. She needed to tell it all without interruption.

  “We had moved to offices in the Mitte district in Berlin, the design studios on the first floor, my office on the third overlooking the street. It had a wonderful view. It was late autumn, the grey sky was sunless. It’s the time of year you feel as if you are living inside a cloud unable to see out. The weather was cold, frosty, the streets had small glaciated puddles of icy rainwater. It was just after the rush hour, she was always late. I saw her walking whilst searching in her bag for something. The man in front her had just stopped to light his cigarette, I remember the brand, it was a West. He held his yellow plastic lighter in his right hand, his left held the red packet with the red lightning strike through the black lettering. He wore a heavy navy overcoat and I could see his blue shirt and his paisley-patterned tie pulled slightly to the right of his collar. He stopped by the curb waiting for the traffic to clear. A yellow single-decker bus blocked my view of them both. It was a bendy bus, you know the one divided by the rubber seal. It wasn’t full, well it wouldn’t be at that time of day.”

  Her hand reached for the glass but she didn’t raise it, she held the stem.

  “I heard the screeching of brakes. I couldn’t see anything, but I knew. By the time I got there she was surrounded by people, no one doing anything, just looking. I pushed my way to the front of the crowd.”

  She picked up her glass and swallowed.

  “At the inquest the man with the cigarette said she had slipped on the ice while trying to cross the road. She was hit by a Mercedes, a grey one. It was no one’s fault. That’s what makes it harder, no one to blame.”

  She turned her head from looking out of the window to face Sebastian. He expected to see tears in her eyes but there were none; her eyes were dry.

  “I’ve relived that day every day since it happened. It’s odd, you know, when you first think about it it’s like being stabbed in the stomach, the pain is sharp and spreads. Later on it’s like being punched, a dull pain. Over time the pain is the same intensity but for some reason it doesn’t take over the whole body, it’s as if it’s localised but it’s not really, it’s not contained. The pain lives elsewhere.” The red-painted nail of her forefinger tapped her temple. “It lives here.”

  She finished her wine and reached for the bottle to top up her glass. The neck of the bottle hovered over Sebastian’s full glass before she refilled hers. Sebastian struggled for something to say; he thought and dismissed every fleeting reply.

  “You want to know how I became who I am now, don’t you?” It was said kindly with no hint of the pervasiveness of his thoughts.

  “You don’t have to tell me, only if you want to, I mean if I’m intruding there’s no need.”

  She didn’t look away to the window, she just looked at him knowing he would understand.

  “It started with one of her cardigans, a soft cashmere emerald green one. She had gone and I was bleeding, my soul was bleeding and drop by drop it was disintegrating. The only things I had of hers were her clothes, I mean her clothes not the ones I had made for her. Her clothes were all that was left of her. They had her scent and when I touched them I could see her, I could feel her. To be close to her I slept with some of her clothes. Over time her scent got weaker, I had to bury my head into her clothes, deeper and deeper to reach her. It was harder to feel her, harder to visualise her. I could only conjure her up feature by feature and never the whole, never the essence of her. I couldn’t let her go, to let her go was to let go of myself. If I could just be part of her we would survive.”

  She let out a resigned laugh.

  “Of course I couldn’t be her, I knew that, but I could be part of her. If I was part of her, she would be part of me and together we would still be alive. The process was slow at first. I knew what I was doing and I knew where it would end. In my apartment at night I started to wear her cardigans and jumpers. I bought and started to use her perfume. It wasn’t long before the makeup, then the wardrobe of new clothes in the same style as hers. The first day I went out there were looks from passers-by but over time I learnt more and now most don’t notice anything untoward. You see, Sebastian, we had to survive, we were made to be together.”

  Sebastian looked at Anneke and saw the woman from the photograph, not exactly as she was in the photograph but almost her. He couldn’t decide if the familiarity was due to Anneke’s physical appearance or if it was the result of her telling.

  “Do you feel and see her now?” He hoped.

  Anneke closed her eyes.

  “I feel her. I can sometimes see a hint of the essence of her when I look in the mirror or catch a reflection of myself. Most days I can form her from others. When I sit early in the morning watching the passing women I can see a feature, an expression and sometimes a gesture. They all remind me of her but only individual parts of her. I can never see her whole, as she was, I never will again. I am as close as I can get to her. It is as simple and as complex as that.”

  Sebastian touched his earring and remembered Anneke’s comment: “There is only love, Sebastian, there really is nothing else, nothing.”

  His hand reached out and covered hers.

  “Anneke, I’m so sorry she died, I cannot imagine ever losing a lover, someone I loved as much as you loved her.”

  Anneke looked down at his hand and then upward to his face. Sebastian saw the untouched tears fall from her eyes as they rolled over her cheeks to dampen the collar of her blouse collar. The Kryolan remained intact, her eyes as beautifully made-up as if she had just completed her toilet in the morning making the tears seem unrelated to the pain etched on her face. He reached out and with his finger wiped the drops from her cheeks. She turned her head to the window to speak to the unseen listener.

  “I never told her, I waited too long, I missed it. Oh, I could have, but I wanted so much to create the perfect design for her, to complete her beauty, then it would be time to tell her.”

  She turned to look at him with moist eyes. She squeezed her eyes shut as if to close out a memory too painful to recall and as she did two perfectly formed tears ran from the side of each eye down her cheeks.

  “I loved her so much but we were never lovers,” she whispered.

  Chapter 21

  He was awake when he heard the soft clunk of the Yale lock close; it had been pulled softly so as not to wake him. She had asked him to stay over, she didn’t say why, but he knew it was important to her. The early morning sun was bringing the photographs to life. He lay in his bed and watched the sunlight creep along the wall opposite, the photograph slowly illuminated. It had been taken from an aisle seat; firstly the seated crowd was revealed and sitting in the middle was Jurgen in his customary uniform: black suit and open-necked white shirt. On the catwalk the clothes seemed to flow from her almost like a silk we
b extension to her limbs; her eyes stared straight ahead almost devoid of emotion. His efforts had not fulfilled his aim and the clothes hadn’t complemented her beauty, Sebastian could see that in the perplexed looked on Jurgen’s face. A face not of frustration but a face that expressed the daunting scale of his task.

  Looking at Jurgen’s face he found it difficult not to see Anneke now. It was as if their roles had been reversed; in the photograph Jurgen looked like Anneke concealed as a man, their roles symbiotic. He was undecided if this symbiotic relationship was mutually beneficial or a parasite-to-host relationship where only one of the two benefits.

  He felt an overwhelming desire to speak to Zoe. Looking at his phone there were no messages, no reply to his asking about meeting next week. He knew that to wait was to take a risk. There was no time for procrastination, no new message to be sent and the reply awaited. He pressed her name and waited for the ringing to cease and her voice to answer. The ring continued; he knew where she would be, she would be putting on her makeup, hopefully placing the bracelet he had given her, the one she always wore, on her wrist. He could see the dressing table and knew she would still be in her towel, her hair wet. She would apply her makeup, blow dry her hair before slipping on her shirt. The phone would be plugged into her bedside table and his name would be flashing green.

  “Hi, it’s Zoe here, please leave a message.”

  Sebastian pressed the cancel button and retried, after ten rings he was no closer to talking to her. He didn’t want to leave a message, he wanted to talk to her, he needed to talk to her, he wanted to tell her that he loved her and that he was coming back to be with her, that he wanted to live with her and finish his book just as she had suggested. He didn’t want to make the same mistake as Anneke, he would tell her.

  “Christ, give me break!” he shouted to the sunlit room. The glass on the photographs reflected the sun’s glare making the individual figures hard to identify. He pressed the call button again.

  He felt his earring press hard against the phone; he pushed the phone closer to his ear believing it shortened the distance between them. He didn’t hear the door unlock or hear the footfall in the corridor. The knock at the door surprised him.

  “Sebastian? You awake?”

  He would wait to see if the phone was answered before he replied.

  “What?!” His voice angry and beaten as he cut short her answer message.

  The doorway was filled by the frame of Umuntu; his muscular presence. Sebastian put the phone down and got out of bed pulling on a jumper. Sebastian followed him to the kitchen through the hallway. Stacked neatly by the front door he saw his rucksack and holdall.

  “I got those from the Tulp. I think I got everything, I found an old book along with a photograph and computer and put them in that one.” He pointed to the holdall. Sebastian rummaged around to check they were in the bag.

  “I spoke to Rosie yesterday and the girls told her what happened the other night. I thought it for the best to get your stuff as you seemed to have made some dangerous enemies. It’s probably best you don’t go back there again. It might make things a bit difficult to manage, well I mean to arrange.” He looked as if he was withholding some information, his eyes not meeting Sebastian’s. “It’s really very important you don’t go back unless someone tells you to, do you understand?” He was looking at him now, directly and although it was posed as a question it was more like an order.

  Sebastian wasn’t really listening, his hands busy in the holdall. He also had no intention of going back to the Tulp or to the misery of the red light district, ever. He just wanted to go back to Zoe.

  Sebastian nodded as he rewrapped the photograph of Zoe in her scarf and replaced it carefully and safely in the bag.

  “Did she love him? The model I mean, did she love Jurgen?”

  “I don’t know, Sebastian, I’ve never asked Anneke.” He busied himself making a cup of coffee as Sebastian waited for more information; he had learnt from Anneke, to wait was to receive. “I don’t suppose it matters, does it? I mean he loved her, he still does. Just because someone dies it doesn’t mean that the love dies too. Perhaps he has to forgive himself for not telling her.”

  Sebastian interrupted, speaking quickly.

  “He should have told her.”

  Umuntu placed a cup of coffee in front of Sebastian; as his hand left the handle he let out a wry snort.

  “Oh Sebastian, all those missed opportunities! How different all our lives would be if we had spoken what we had thought rather than what we felt the listener wanted to hear. The course of our lives would be forever changed and we would all be different people now. Is it the unspoken words that make us who we are or is it the words spoken that make us who we are?”

  “He should have told her,” he insisted, almost angry. “She would be alive today. If he had told her she might have moved in with him. She wouldn’t have been late that day and the accident wouldn’t have happened. Even if the accident did happen they would have both died together, would that not have been better?”

  “Then there would be no love left, would there? No one to talk of his love for her. As it is the love affair goes on even in her absence. Jurgen holds onto her as Anneke and perhaps over time, maybe never, he releases her and forgives himself for those words unsaid.”

  “I would have told her.” Sebastian stared at Umuntu facing down the lie.

  Umuntu returned the stare but kindly and asked, “Even if you thought that there was even the slightest chance that the unspoken words of love would not be reciprocated? Would you risk it, would you?”

  Sebastian sat in silence. He turned his head towards the holdall.

  “Yes, I would,” he lied.

  Zoe had made that choice, she had climbed up to the last rung of the ladder and from there, her feet firmly on that rung with her knees bent, she had jumped into the air with full belief that there would be something unseen to catch a hold of her; that something was him, Sebastian. He had not been there to catch her outstretched hands; he had placed his arms by his side holding his book in his hand and watched as she fell. She had shown complete faith in him, in his reply. He had failed her. She had wanted him unconditionally, as he was, but he had wanted to change, the book being the catalyst. Would the completion of the book change him, make him not what she wanted? He didn’t want to end up like Anneke, a surrogate life and lived vicariously because of a missed opportunity.

  “I’ve got to make a call.” Sebastian grabbed his phone, pressing the keypad as he retreated into his bedroom.

  He listened to the ringing. It was eleven o’clock in Amsterdam, ten in London, she would be at her desk looking at emails. Her phone would be at her side on the desk or in her jacket pocket; even if it was in her pocket she would hear it. What if she had put it to silent mode after his calls earlier?

  “Come on, come on,” he hissed into the mouthpiece.

  “Hi, it’s Zoe here, please leave a message.”

  His hands fumbled with the keypads, he punched in her work landline.

  “Hello, this is Pinkerton and Smith Auctioneers, Jane speaking, can I help you?”

  “Oh God!” Sebastian groaned.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi Jane, it’s Sebastian here. How are you?”

  There was a pause and rather alarmingly she replied brightly, “Oh! Sebastian, how nice to hear your voice.”

  He knew with that reply she knew something to her advantage.

  “Hi, I’m looking for Zoe, is she around?”

  Her reply succinct.

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “She is quite close by actually. Why?”

  Sebastian felt like a bull being jabbed by a picador.

  “I need to speak to her.”

  “I’m not sure she wants to talk to you.” She was triumphant as her lance struck him.

/>   “Well can you ask her please?”

  “No. She has left instructions that if you were to ring she didn’t want the call put through.” She had perfected her picador aim; he was enraged.

  “Put her on the line!” he shouted.

  “No.” Another tear in his flesh.

  Sebastian saw the red cape hanging on the Muleta and charged.

  “You’ll die a virgin, you know that! You bitch.”

  The earpiece echoed to a buzz from London.

  “Christ!” he roared into the now sun-warmed room as the doorbell rang.

  He smelt her rather than saw her. The scent of Stroopwafel crept under his bedroom door; the smell of syrup sandwiched between two waffles reminded Sebastian of somewhere safe and simple, the opposite of where he was now.

  He overhead a mumbled conversation and the squeaking of her soft-soled shoes on the wooden floorboards; it was like being a patient in a hospital bed awaiting the arrival of a nurse with a painkiller. She would always be able to soften the pain of a blow. The door opened with a knock.

  “Hello Sebastian,” she said softly, offering him the chance to share her nibbled Stroopwafel. “You haven’t got very far, have you?” She smiled as her tongue wiped the side of her mouth clear of syrup.

  “I don’t know, Rosie, perhaps I am destined to never get away from here. Maybe there is no point in leaving.” He spoke glumly as he pocketed his phone.

  She sat on one of the wooden chairs watching him pace around the room.

  “Well you will because you can, remember that. But before you do go I need to ask something from you. It’s just a small thing, it will help Sacha.” He knew he couldn’t refuse her; whatever she needed from him he would oblige.

  “Sebastian, stop pacing around, sit down.” She looked around for another chair. “There on the bed.” As he sank into the soft mattress he had to look up to her. Her tone was more business-like than her normal maternal speech; she had something to say, wanted it listened to and she wanted to hear the correct answer. He nodded his acceptance of whatever she would ask of him.