City and river (ll)
Why?
I remember now. Like a match struck in some prehistoric cave reveals the scratchy figures of hunters and prey, I remember. You were always asking me why and I could never find an answer. Now though, I see clearer. I see everything much clearer now. This - this is Paris, yes, some twenty years ago - it must be September now and
It’s raining. The old and rounded stones are slick with oil and mud. A thousand burnt corpses of abandoned cigarettes are slowly unravelling, like oft-told stories. Head down, I cross the street: hurried but still haunted by the spectre of that old man I saw getting hit by a speeding cab two years ago. Whenever I think ahead of now, ahead of me, I see that man half-flying, half-clawing at the sky. I see the blood; I hear the fierce and painful crunching of bone.
His senseless death has now become a Polaroid picture I carry around in one of the deeper pockets of my brain. I hug the wall when I turn the corner and there and then and suddenly I see the rising and familiar but always unexpected glory of the Sacre Coeur.
Now, in this new space, in this new time - here and now I know. Now, I understand; ah yes, of course…
The clouds, gathering above the church like a thorny, stretched out halo, try to reach down and touch its skin, take on the colours of its marble.
The rain that softly starts to fall now coats the Sacre Coeur in glistening splendour. It wears the rain and the gathering dusk like some Goddess wears her robe of silk and lightning. So beautiful, so beautiful…
So that’s what I should have told you then, what I should have known before: that you, in that first moment, to me were like the Sacre Coeur.
Maybe, if I’d known and if I would have found the words, maybe then you would have believed me - maybe then you would have stopped asking me why.
This now, yes, this is Prague - some twenty years later. We’re getting closer now. Too close maybe.
It is summer and it is very hot. This beautiful city of old, grey stones is like an oven. All that moves, moves very slowly. The old guy on crutches and his small, fat dog move as slowly or as fast as the flock of schoolgirls, moving like soft butterflies through heavy smoke, in the opposite direction, on the other side of the street. It is very, very hot.
Through the half-open door of some unassuming bar an old Jacques Brel song softly drifts onto the street:
‘Ne me quitte pas.’
I stop and listen - the song is almost finished anyhow:
Laisse-moi devenir
L’ombre de ton ombre
L’ombre de ta main
L’ombre de ton chien
Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas
Ne me quitte pas.
Before the song can finish on a trembling and protracted, melancholic chord, it and the stifling heat have already managed to deliver me into the smoky realm and rich, velvet shadows of the poorly lit bar.
The place is almost empty. One woman sits at a small, round table next to the bar. She’s busy typing something in fierce but sporadic bursts. She is so concentrated on her task it looks as if she is praying to her laptop.
I don’t speak; I don’t want to disturb her. By the time she looks up from her work and has noticed me standing at the bar, I have already fallen in lust with her - with you, of course.
Love follows softly and slowly in lust’s footsteps, as it sometimes does.
It’s coming too close now; the memories now flow through me, through these hollows of me. They empty me with cold, liquid tongues. I can see - I still can see; but the old clarity is no longer of help. It all but blinds me now. That first time - this first time that I remember again; that I see through this wild, hurtful light. I see…: you were…
You are wearing that red, whimsical blouse above practical jeans and tired, old sneakers. Much later I learn that that wonderful pendant that reaches from your throat to the slow rise of your breasts once belonged to your great-grandmother.
We talk about this and that. I say I come from Holland; you say you are half French:
“So that’s why you played Brel.”
“Oui.”
I tell you I lived in Bordeaux for two years.
So close now; so clear. It hurts so much now.
I don’t mention Paris; I’ve almost forgotten about Paris. I can see you perfectly clear and…
For the first time in my life I understand the miracle of clothing. How a pair of jeans discreetly tell you everything you need to know about legs, about hips and the curve of buttocks. How a blouse can fall loosely like fine drapes over a naked statue - the flesh revealing itself through movement under the softest of materials. How skin becomes more real, more like something you need to touch and smell, when you just see various bits of it, while most of it lies hidden.
Here though, in this shadow land, where everything now hurts; here, I can see all things. I stand before the Sacre Coeur in Paris, lost in wonder. Here, I can see - but now I’m in Prague and drunk on the miracle of clothes.
I am fiercely jealous of the silk and the cloth that cover you. I see all of that but I do not see, this me in Prague - this fragment of me cannot see what I also know waits round the corner:
how the Sacre Coeur bathes in its own light, its marble so flesh-like in the thin velour of rain.
Here, where I am wound inside the past, locked like some old movie reel and held against the light - here I see the Sacre Coeur unveiled - and here I see an old man dying - here an old man crossing the road. I see everything. I see you and…
Your left hand seeks the cigarette you abandoned minutes earlier. Half of it is still virgin white; the other half a perfect, grey pillar of ash. Your eyes are again fixed on the screen of your laptop. Your mouth is half-open and your hair is almost touching your slightly raised eye-brows.
“Goodbye then;” I say, from the half-open door; “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
You look up - swiftly, like a bird that has heard a brittle leaf break under the paw of a crouching cat.
“Oui, au revoir - Ã demain.”
Ah, that smile; that smile… It hurts too much. There is too much light. Too many memories. I can see - yes…
So strange, this life - so strange are we: the prisoners of our days and nights. We are never free of ourselves and yet, we know so little - almost nothing about ourselves; even less about the ones we love.
So strange, to be here with you, in bed. That I can touch your hair with my fingertips; that I can see your flesh as through a microscope - each detail convincingly near and perfectly clear. That my lips can reach for you and find your skin without the slightest effort, while your fingers move through my hair and your mouth leaks soft, moist warmth upon my shoulder and your teeth gently tug at my flesh.
So strange that I can see all of that - and all of you and yet: only minutes before you drifted off to sleep, you asked me again why I loved you. Again, I had no answer. So strange.
It hurts. Here, in this light that is worse than the deepest darkness, I am in Paris, I am in Prague. I see you for the first time. I see your great-grandmother’s pendant against your naked breasts. I see that old man clawing at the air, screaming in silent, dreadful hurt, blood coming out of his mouth. I see the rain in the street. I feel the burning sun of Prague and I hear Jacques Brel again, singing:
“Ne me quitte pas. Ne me quitte pas. Ne me quitte pas. Ne me quitte pas.”
But everything is moving now, moving away from the light. I want to hold you again; see you again - but all I see is blood and the sound of a taxi door slamming. There are curses and moans. Someone almost whispers:
“Stupid old fuck.”
Then all - all is passing. Now, in the dying wind, in a moment of grace and soothing shadows, on the other side of the tearing light, I feel the moving of lips close to skin; I feel, before the binding sleep, her voice, her breath - and…
I have risen from the desert; like a ghost I travelled through the air; I crossed the sea and drifted at the mercy of the wind. Then I came upon the mountain and I clung to the rock with each drop of me, till all my strength deserted me and gravity took me down.
I trickled down to the valley, slowly finding a murmur voice, slowly learning to touch the stones and leave them with these rounded memories of soft, impersonal caresses. Going down I slowly gained some strength and learned to carry these old songs.
But all of that was nothing more than the pull and noise of gravity - until the land flattened and the clouds fell sharply towards the earth and all of me slowed down towards some strange surrender. And my strength and my voice once again abandoned me.
I slowed down to the point of dying.
Stretched to some breaking point, I felt a burning shadow cover me.
And finding eyes to see, I looked beyond my skin, beyond the shadow heat into the light.
And there you stood and there you rose. Your stones and spires and the gold on your roofs and the sun in your windows and the flowering of your trees; your churches and statues and graveyards; your memories and hopes; your stories and songs.
You, you took me in and you called me your own; you called me home.
You guided me through you and taught my banks to touch you - as I learnt to catch your reflections and wondrous beauty on my skin; city and river now one.