The Day I Found You
Page 20
Today I need to tell you that only small loves can survive on small words. On a simple ‘I love you’, on a sweet ‘you’re so pretty’. Only small loves can survive on small words. Ours is too big even to survive on words like other words, on words that already exist, on words that somebody once put, so often had they been used, into a dictionary. No. Ours demands new and big words, like ‘Iloveyoulikefuckohmygod’ or ‘Iloveyoutothedepthsofmybonesfuckit’, and so many others that every day and every night, in bed, on the sofa, on the street and so many other places where we’ve loved each other (and we’ve loved each other everywhere, thank God), we’ve been inventing to say to each other. It’s our way of making ourselves in words. And we’re not at all healthy, not at all advisable, not at all balanced. We want total belonging or we want total absence. It might be impractical to sustain this strength, this arousal, this intensity, this ‘itsnowornever’, this ‘eitheryougivemeeverythingoryougetoutof here’ for ever. Deep down, you know and I know that we can easily be impossible. But what fucking use is what’s possible?
Pretty soon you’re going to love me, I know it,
after the beer, and the game’s almost done, but I start busying myself with tidying up the kitchen, there’s some washing-up to do, clothes to wash too, sweeping the floor just real quick, starching your shirts and that’s it, I think about the hug you’ll give me, I’m so happy when you hug me, did you know that?, the way your body protects mine,
it won’t be long before you’re mine, there are lots of ways of loving and that is yours, I need to understand that.
Pretty soon you’re going to love me, I know it,
after the dinner with the friends from work, you’re the most valued employee of all, that doesn’t surprise me, it’s natural that they should want you present at everything, you even tried not to go, to find some excuse or other, I did see that, but it didn’t work out, they insist on your being there and when you come back that’s when it’ll be, I’m so happy when you touch me, did you know that?, you’ve got to come quickly so that I lack for nothing,
it won’t be long before you’re mine, there are lots of ways of loving and that is yours, I need to understand that.
Pretty soon you’re going to love me, I know it,
after waking up, you promised me that on the weekend you would be mine, it’s four in the afternoon and you still haven’t woken up, you’ve been so tired these days, the firm concluding a big order and you feeling totally swamped, right?, but you won’t be long waking up, I’m sure of it, I like cleaning the sleep from your eyes, you see, making you look so handsome for me, I miss the depth of your arms, the inside of your mouth, I’m so happy when you kiss me, did you know that?, just a few more short minutes and you’ll be here, I can’t bear it, I’ll admit,
it won’t be long before you’re mine, there are lots of ways of loving and that is yours, I need to understand that.
Pretty soon you’re going to love me, I know it,
after that orgasm, you were so distant when you wanted me, you grabbed me far away and I wanted you so close, you barely looked me in the eyes, you’ve been really tired, your life’s not easy, of course, but when the need is over then the love will come, you’ll hold me tight in that way you have of saving me from the world, I’m so happy when you hold me that way, did you know that?, you’ll say to me I love you down to my bones which you haven’t said for such a long time, and everything will go back to making sense in this sweaty bed, I’m sure of it,
it won’t be long before you’re mine, there are lots of ways of loving and that is yours, I need to understand that.
Pretty soon you’re going to love me, I know it,
after the frustration, these things pass, I have no doubt, you feel I’ve been an absent husband, and I have, you want everything to be different, that’s all, today I sent you flowers and a kiss in the mail, I wrote you ten or twenty messages, maybe about fifty, I mean, you didn’t reply and you don’t need to reply, you’re totally in the right but this rebellion will pass, you’ll come back home, to our home, remember?, I don’t even recognise it since you haven’t been there, I’m so happy when you’re at home, did you know that?, another day or two and you’ll come back, definitely,
it won’t be long before you’re mine, there are lots of ways of loving and that is yours, I need to understand that.
Pretty soon you’re going to love me, I know it,
after signing this, you’re insisting I do it and I understand why, your sadness demands it and I respect that, I’m not going to give up, I’m going to continue with the notes, the messages, the flowers, today I demanded that my boss give me a regular schedule, I want to arrive home in good time to love you, you just need to come back, please, I’m going to sign this so that you understand that the most important thing for me is your happiness, I’m so happy when you’re happy, did you know that?, and mostly so that you look at me like the person you love once again, do you promise?, it’s signed, here you go, you’re a free woman now, free to love me again, go any time you want because I’ll be waiting for you in the same old bed, I’ve put new sheets on it and I’ve been sleeping on the sofa, they’re going to have their debut with you, whatever it takes,
it won’t be long before you’re mine, there are lots of ways of loving and that is yours, I need to understand that.
‘I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m going with you.’
Her, sitting on the bed, floral-print pyjamas, the sweat of a night of pleasure running down her back.
From afar, the morning.
‘Freedom is a blind whore, who opens herself up to me the way hell opens itself up to death.’
Him, still lying down, his body with no clothes on and the sheets covering only his legs and the start of his stomach.
Next door the neighbour is scrubbing her floor.
‘I need to free myself from your body. Whenever I think of pleasure I think about the touch of your skin. Whenever I smell orgasm I smell the wild taste of your sex. Whenever I want to be happy I imagine you in me. I can’t bear myself without you. I can’t handle myself without you. I need to free myself from your body. To go far away, to where you aren’t. And hope you don’t come. Hope that the start of everything is in the body.’
Her, already standing up, in f ront of the bathroom mirror, eyes damp with sweat and maybe the beginnings of tears.
In the living room, clothes scattered on the sofa.
‘And what’s the point of health if we don’t have pleasure? Why do I need me if there aren’t orgasms?’
Him, grabbing her from behind, the mirror starting to steam up.
In the bedroom the empty bed.
‘I needed much more than your arms, much more than your skin. I needed much more than you if all you can give me is this. The inadequacy of all this. I needed much more.’
Her, turning towards him, lips reaching out and the image in the mirror of two excited mouths.
On the window the rain beating.
‘Why are you thinking about more if this is worth everything?’
Him, his arms wrapped right around her, his whole body ready to love.
Next door the neighbour is doing her washing-up.
‘To be a whore, then your whore.’
Her, the bed occupied, sweat on her back again.
And then him.
‘To be incomplete, then worth everything.’
And finally love.
And finally love. All lives should start like this.
You ask my advice, now that I’m going, now that this bed holds someone more dead than alive, and I think there are so many things I can say to you, I could say so many beautiful words, to inspire you; I could even quote you a poem from Pessoa or Rilke, a thought from some famous philosopher or other; I could tell you how important it is to make the most of every second, or something about the magic of knowing we love; I could be the most cultured old man in the world but I prefer to tell you just to look. So simple, just that. Loo
k.
Look. Always look. Look a lot. Look with eyes that touch, with eyes that feel, with eyes that embrace, that love, with eyes, even, that hate. But look. Never stop looking. It’s through the eyes that life happens. Even if you’ve got them closed, even if they cannot see. It’s through the eyes that life happens.
Look at the empty space between a dream and reality. Fill it. Try to fill it with everything you are. There are great difficulties to overcome, moments when you’d rather not look. Those are the moments when you have to look even more, those are the moments you have to open your eyes even wider. To see what you can do in order to see something different. The secret of success is seeing well. Realising who you’ve got in front of you, who you’ve got beside you, who you’ve got behind you. You need to see well if you are to choose well, to decide well. Even if it hurts, even if it comes at a cost, even if you’d rather not look. Look. Always look.
Look at what you’ve got. And you’ve got so much. You’ve always got so much. Look at who loves you. Look at who wishes you well, who seeks out your happiness. And look at the crowded street, thousands of people you can vanquish. Grab what you can. Nothing less than grabbing should do, never give less than everything, never set about any task if you don’t mean to devour it, consume it, lick it, taste it without leaving a single piece intact. Look with eyes that live. Look with eyes that want, that kidnap, with eyes, even, that steal. Steal the world that is your due and even more than that steal the world that isn’t. Look at everything you can, everything you know. The happiest people are those who see best, those who see first and fastest – and above all those who see from the right place. Everything has a correct place from which to be seen. Find yours. All looks have a place that is happiest. Look from just the right angle. You might even get tired, you might weaken because weakening is human. But never stop looking.
I’m taking from life what I’ve looked at. And when I close my eyes it’s what I’ve looked at that keeps me busy, that keeps me entertained when the pain hurts more and more and death approaches. I think about your grandmother that afternoon when I first touched her hand. And I look. Her hand, small and lovely like she was, and then the slight smile when my body, not deliberately and yet wanting to, brushed hers. All that’s left to me of life is what I’ve looked at. The vision of your mother on my lap, then you, your brother. I carry whoever I love with me inside the things I’ve looked at. Even the spaces. The neighbourhood esplanade where I’ve so often read the newspaper (I carry the newspapers with me, the printed letters, the most powerful headlines – I still sometimes look at the news about the old fire in Chiado, did you know that?), the park bench where I was the devastating domino champion, supreme lord of sueca (God help you if you aren’t a great card player yourself, our family tradition needs to be upheld), and the holidays far away, the sea, the sand and the horizon as far as the eye can see. What I have looked at is what I take with me. I take with me what I was able to look at. And that’s why, that’s the only reason why, I want you here, now that the moment for one last look is arriving. Let me look at you hard, hold you, consume you inside my look. Let me look at you for ever, will you?
The woman sits down on the bed, back against the wall, opens her laptop and writes, while wiping away, as best she can, the tears that fall on the keyboard.
‘I’m not a half-a-glass kind of woman. If it’s not full, I don’t want it. If it’s not full, it isn’t even a glass. I’d rather not drink at all than drink only what’s possible. To hell with what’s possible. What’s possible is too easy to get me excited.
This is just to say that you lost me on the day you left. I know exactly how it was, I feel exactly the way I felt. One minute you were there and the next minute you weren’t. Black magic, perhaps. You talked to me about life, that’s how it had to be, that people, sometimes, need to make decisions. And you decided to leave.
There are people who say it had to be, that the most difficult decisions are the most important ones, that you’ve got to choose, often, between the terrible and the unbearable. You chose the terrible and left me with the unbearable. But the good thing about the unbearable is that it’s already clear from the very start. It is not borne. Full stop.
Unlike what’s terrible, what’s unbearable does not leave you with any hope. You know that you cannot bear it, that there is no way to bear it. And you see other paths. The unbearable is more human than the terrible, I know that now, as I write you these words knowing you are miles from here and will never come back. I can’t bear the image of what we were, your smile when I told you one of my jokes no one else found funny, the way you made me laugh when you tried cooking like the great TV chefs do it, and of course, the way your skin seemed to be discovering mine. I can’t bear what we were and that’s enough to make me ready for what I want to be.
One day you’ll understand that loving at a distance only happens when you don’t love. When you love, even the distance of a kiss is too far. You wanted to test us, to put us to the proof. You made promises of eternal love and then what remained of you was so very little.
You remained of you.
It was hard for me, at first, to understand how life could exist if you did not. I would wake up, each day, searching for your body, searching for your lap, searching for your hand, and I’d end up like that, all night and all day, searching for you in all the places we were happy. Nothing is more painful than happiness that won’t come back, happiness you’ve lost which, whenever you recall it, afflicts you on the same scale that it made you happy.
But it does pass.
The best thing about life is that everything does pass. The searching passed, the hurting passed. And this is what remained. Me and this. Me and a bottomless hole in the centre of life.
And the courage has arrived. This very day, right now, at this very moment. I’m going far away from distance for ever.
If we need to be far apart, never let the body be left out.
From your past one,
Me’
The woman stands up, gets dressed, walks over to the study next door to the bedroom, picks up the sheet of paper she has just printed, puts it down on the bed, on the place where she has just been sitting, and leaves, no more than a minute before the man, opening his eyes, realises that he’s alone in bed and there’s a piece of paper beside him.
Melancholy is the philosophy of the body, the moment when I find myself entirely in order to reflect. I sit myself down within what I think and I start to challenge, one idea at a time, what it is that makes me alive. Melancholy is necessary for happiness to make sense, it’s important to understand each moment of distance for any presence to happen.
My cat’s eyes taught me life.
There are days, like today, when happiness consists of being like this, melancholy, understanding the reason for life. Writing a few words, like this, looking at the world that resists me and persists: the lady at the traffic lights, her eyes downcast, waiting for the green light to appear so she can escape from herself once again; the child who, indifferent to the rain, keeps kicking a ball against a wall where he imagines glory and a packed stadium cheering; the college student thinking about tomorrow’s exam while dithering about calling the girl he likes to ask her out; and me, reflected in this windowpane, waiting for this melancholic happiness to leave me.
There’s such a big space between what I see in myself and what I am.
Falling short hurts so much. I’d like to have been brilliant, to make these lines the screenplay for humanity, all the women and men saying my words as though speaking the laws of the world, and yet all I can manage are loose, empty ideas, when faced with the appearance of the flesh. In the beginning was the skin; that’s what God would say, if He only had a body. It’s in my skin that I live, and there that I find all the paths for whatever there is in me. The problem with the soul is that it needs substance, and ultimately suffering is the most physical act one can experience.
The old lady with her daughter choosing a
place to die.
The incomparable abyss of pleasure, the memory of what I was, the mute sadness of never again returning to the first time. The greatest cruelty in life is having just one first time, just that one appearance of the discovery, one moment you don’t know and the next you are; the greatest cruelty in life is allowing just one first time for one first kiss, one first time for a first chocolate; the greatest cruelty in life is that nothing more than this exists, a man or a woman and their proof, their paltry limitation. The greatest cruelty in life is being just one.
The baby crying as though it already knows it’s going to have to grow up.
These are the days when I forget to go on, and I prefer just to stand and watch what’s left of me keep moving. There’s a dogmatic construction in what I see, because the only thing that exists is what is sieved through me, because the only thing that exists is what exists in me. I think about the deepest place of intimacy, I shut myself off with no way back, but then I sit down at the table, the whole family together to live and eat, and I know I’ve got to smile and find out about the others, invent new happinesses for the new melancholies, and believe in the possibility of going on. The one certainty is that it’s going to hurt.
When the pain comes it’s good if it finds me jumping about around here.
I want to know how to survive the moment of your not being here, she asked him, the door already open and his steps. I want to know how to survive the moment of your not being here, she repeated, and he kept going, and the door open and his steps. Nothing happened apart from the end of everything. That was what she thought, alone, stretched out on the floor as in the past she’d stretched out towards him, an insane and unscrupulous rug. Love requires going past any scruples, beyond all ethics, behind every honesty, she wrote, hours later, on the wounded keys of a computer he had agreed to leave behind. She doesn’t remember having written what she wrote next, her hands on their own, abandoned to the precision of a touch, addicted to the need to possess him even if it’s only for the moment of a finger on a key. The size of your arms not even God can remember, because it’s only by squeezing the inside of what I feel that you can know how to measure an embrace. The tears, fragile as all tears are, and an empty bedroom and an empty woman and the letters on the keys and the keys wounded. How do I learn not to love, endless questions in the endless words, her and the doubts of someone who has suddenly lost any doubt. How do I learn not to need, how do I learn not to have you in what makes me live, how do I learn to seek salvation when you are not here to save me. With no question marks, with no questioning, because life-changing questions never require answers, because life-changing questions are never quite questions, just the easiest way to learn how to answer. I’d like to understand what makes you not be here, and the wandering neck, in search of his body, him coming in through the door, him coming in through the mouth, him coming in through the whole body. But there is no him, there never really has, perhaps, been a him at all. There’s the bedroom like the house, immobile as they watched a woman passing by, a bedroom and a house with no love inside, rather than there were a bedroom and a house with no love inside, as though a bedroom and a house were not, more than spaces for living in, actually spaces for loving in. The sudden hope for a telephone ringing, him at the other end, ‘sorry’, her at this end, ‘I love you and there can be no excuse’, him on that end, ‘I need myself again to be ready to love you again’, her at this end, ‘if you take more than twenty minutes to come back you’ll never have me, I guarantee it’, and her knowing it’s a lie, that if she’d only been able to tell the truth she’d have said ‘you have my whole life to come back, I guarantee it’, and him on the other end, ‘I need to understand myself in you to be able to love you’, and her without a word, the phone disconnected, the computer keys once again, and the questions once again, the answers once again, the tears once again. The cats lying there oblivious to the fact that the world has just ended. I want to love you without needing to love you, she wrote, and she thought these were the last words, so that she could invent a new body, a new person, she thought she wouldn’t need another word, that line would be enough, that sentence, for the justice of solitude to be pronounced; but there was another moment when everything would change, later she would call it, euphemistically, life, and the truth was it was more than this, probably the moment when everything that exists is concentrated in what is existing. There was an ocean, as great as the distance between those ten, fifteen minutes, separating them, until the door opened, he came in, and even the cats understood that no more words, at least not made up from letters, would need to be written. The cursor, in the middle of the screen, continued to blink, she embraced it as though embracing survival, and she survived. It was only later, a day or more later, that the final line was written. Nobody, she wouldn’t allow it, got the chance to read it, at least not until the moment when, more than fifty years later, the computer was found amid the debris of a dead woman. It was he, who wanted to die too so he might go with her, who found it. They say he stopped breathing at the exact moment when he finished reading it, but perhaps that’s an exaggeration. Everybody knows she never needed any words to stop his breathing.