at last gave way, and whispered:
‘I met someone.’
She was going to say more – someone from our past,
someone you know – but her words got lost
in a swallow or a cough.
Besides, for her sister, that was enough:
‘You met someone?’ Olga choked.
‘Well, that’s not good timing!’
‘I know, right?’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What does he do for a living?’
‘He’s a consultant.’
‘Where did you meet him?’
This conversation, like a staircase,
led dangerously to an attic of archives,
all dusty and mouldy,
and above them, a roof
that was treacherous.
Cautious,
but no liar,
Tatiana mentioned some mutual friends.
‘But he knows about San Francisco?’
‘Hmm.’
‘He knows you might just get a job there?’
‘Well, nothing’s actually sorted.’
‘I thought your supervisor had fixed it.’
‘Can we change the topic? I don’t want to jinx it.’
‘And how does your new boyfriend feel about all this?’
‘Nothing. It’s not like that.’ ‘Why not?’
‘Nothing’s really happened yet.’
‘Nothing?’ ‘Nothing.’
‘You haven’t slept together or anything like that?’
‘No, nothing like that.’
‘But then how do you know …’ ‘Olga
Olga, please
don’t pretend
to be denser than
you are. I just know.
You always know
that kind of thing.’
Olga nodded, glancing at her husband
who was stuffing his mouth with a Camembert bread boat
the way you might shove something in your pocket.
The affection in Olga’s eyes
moved like an ocean,
waves crashing down on
this man who was listening
to the chirpy TV host.
‘In that case,’ said Olga, deeply moved,
‘you know what you have to do.’
‘Really? What?’ ‘Oh, Tania …
if this is true passion, if you feel that this is really what
you want, I mean, if this is the kind of thing that happens
only once in a lifetime, then you have to go all out!
You have to sacrifice everything for it.
We’re talking about love. It’s no laughing matter.
You can’t mess this up or you’ll regret it forever after.’
And as she spoke, Olga contemplated
this very nice man whose name was Anthony,
who wasn’t ugly
and who was a pretty good father to the girls
(well, not a bad one, anyway),
who worked at a bank and who,
feeling himself observed,
unglued his eyes from the TV
very slowly
by degrees
as if reluctantly
before smiling
agreeably
at the two sisters who were watching him,
one curiously,
the other less so.
‘What do you think, hun?’ Olga asked him.
‘About?’ Anthony replied.
‘Tatiana’s in love.’
‘Uh-oh! Now we’re in trouble,’ he joked.
‘So I was telling her that love requires sacrifices.’
‘Well, of course.’
‘If not, she’ll regret it for the rest of her life.’
‘Oh yeah, absolutely.’
‘Whereas, with you, when you decided not to take the job
in China …’
‘I never regretted,’ Anthony declared,
‘not taking that job in China.
What would I have done in China anyway?
Here I’ve got my three sweetie pies.’
He looked at Olga and their eyes met in a gaze as sugary
and shallow
as a stretched-out rope of pink marshmallow,
while on the walls,
the countless pictures of them and the twins
oozed gooey syrup as invisible violins
vibrated in the air,
and Disney lambs and fairies and bunnies
danced over rainbows and the happy pair
continued to stare
at each other
as if time had been suspended
in a treacly cloud of sentiment,
and Tatiana was so disgusted by the sound of the words
‘sweetie pie’ coming from Anthony’s gormless lips
bloody hell if Eugene ever said that, I’d kick him in the nuts
that she wanted to say no that’s not what I mean
you don’t understand
we’re not talking about the same kind of love
what I mean is
well, imagine an old love, buried in a trunk
a love that had been serious, dark, baroque,
as epic as the Napoleonic wars,
something impossible and sleep-disturbing,
not some cheap imitation love like yours
are you kidding?
she didn’t want to be insulting,
but clearly there was some basic misunderstanding
not some crêpe-paper school-fête hand-in-hand romance
I mean the kind of love you read about in books
and it got worse when her sister exclaimed:
‘Look!
You have to live it, that’s the thing!
You have to live it, Tatiana, you hear me?
You have to live it completely,
thoroughly resolutely interminably even
past the madness of the first few months.’
‘What madness?’
‘You know. At the beginning,
when it feels like it just keeps
growing and growing;
but you know, even when it all stops –’
‘Stops?’
‘I mean the madness part.
When you start
feeling yourself again,
and not just a big ball of desire,
it just keeps getting better.
The wonderful thing about really loving someone is that
even
when the first fires of passion have died
even
when the honeymoon is over
even
when you’re no longer head over heels
– and yes, of course it’ll happen –
you’ll be friends,
you’ll build something durable and tender,
a trust in each other;
that’s not something your career will ever give you,
so don’t even bother.
I’m talking about something solid,
that the two of you have built.
From that moment on, you’re no longer living just
for you,
but for the other person too,
and for the children that you’ll …’
The children! thought Tatiana, with horror.
No, seriously, Olga
does not understand.
‘It’s not that kind of relationship,’ she replied,
‘I don’t think
that’s what we have in mind.’
Olga and Anthony smiled a complicit smile.
‘Not straight away, of course not; first you’ve got
those months of passion, when everything is hot,
but things will calm down eventually.’
And suddenly Tatiana remembered the day –
how long ago was it now?
seven years?
eight? –
when Olga
had brought Anthony home after their third or
fourth date,
(he had more hair on his head then than now)
and it’s true, they were – or at least they
appeared –
superficially, to those who don’t know, the way Tatiana knew,
just how wild love is when it’s true –
to be, well, in love
(truly madly deeply, etc.)
in almost the same way –
let’s just say
that the difference was not especially obvious
to the naked eye –
anyway, what I’m saying
is that this love, between Anthony and Olga,
did bear a certain resemblance,
a little, at least, to what Tatiana
felt now for Eugene.
Of course, she could see now
that it had been merely an illusion,
a cheap imitation, the kind of affiliation
celebrated in tacky Valentines;
she could see now that Anthony’s sacrifice
had been a huge mistake,
that Olga’s pregnancy
had been the end of everything,
condemning them to decades
of nightmarish evenings
of Sisyphean boredom,
him stuffing his belly, glued to the telly,
her going through her list of Things To Do, stocking the
(admittedly adorable) twins’ backpacks with snacks,
but the strangest aspect
of all this was that, back then,
you never would have guessed
that the love they shared was only phony –
it seemed quite real – and stranger still, even
now,
even in the farcical fiasco
of this mass-produced cheese chewed to the
sound of the weather girl’s squeaking
in the too-bright light
of the living-room ceiling-lamp,
in this excruciating state of existential
famine,
they did appear … happy odd, this –
it seemed to Tatiana that they’d simply failed to
notice
that their lives consisted of opening tins of peas,
teaching the girls to say ‘please’
and picking up Lego from the carpet
because shit it hurts when you stand on it
don’t swear in front of the kiddies hun
oops sorry sweetie pie
oooooooohhhh I heard
Daddy say a rude word
Tatiana grabbed hold
of her glass of wine
to stop herself falling backwards,
her Stark chair transformed to a rocking chair,
the black and white tiles a skating rink,
as she felt herself begin to slip and sink; no,
I don’t believe it, it’s impossible,
to go straight from the sublime to the ridiculous,
from passionate lovemaking and transglobal backpacking
to child-in-bed-tucking and Blu-tacking
pictures
to the wall
in the hall,
it’s impossible isn’t it
after so much love and intensity
to talk about the weather
to be bored together
bored together
This phrase echoed in her brain like some sinister refrain
heard long, long ago.
It turned the blood to ice inside her veins.
‘we’d be bored together’ no
it’s impossible
She felt a bitter melancholy
soaking through her,
something between sadness and hate,
as she remembered the origin of those fateful words,
struggling against the weight
of the past
it’s impossible
he was wrong not that not us it’s not possible
well of course it is in fact, it’s even probable
replied the sad refrain,
you were warned, right from the start;
it’s even inevitable.
You’d be bored together, it’s irrefutable;
and you know it. He told you before.
But things have changed! We’ll be in love forever!
No, Tatiana.
The ending has already been written.
You’ll be bored together.
And while these memories marred and scarred her:
‘It’s worth every sacrifice,’
continued Olga,
‘and you work too hard, you always have.
You just keep working harder and harder;
I know your work gives you satisfaction and
your successes make you proud,
but watch out for the excesses,
Tatiana, you know you’re allowed
to think about yourself at times too.
Life doesn’t have to be a sad ballad.
When it comes down to it,
you have to live your life for you.
Anyway, who wants the rest of the salad?’
*
She really had to get back home.
Her flight left early the next day.
‘Well, let me know what happens,’ said Olga, ‘and I hope,’
she added with a simper, ‘that you will introduce us to your
boyfriend one day soon.’
In desperation, after refusing the last piece of quiche,
when Anthony went to the toilet,
Tatiana attempted to reach
out to what perhaps remained of the teenager
Olga had once been:
‘Don’t you sometimes think your life would have
been better with Lensky?’
‘Len-sky?’ repeated Olga, as if those two syllables had
never before left her mouth,
‘What on earth made you ask that?’ And she laughed.
It was laughable, after all.
To ask a question like that! It was mad.
It was sad –
there were better topics with which to end an evening.
Tatiana insisted:
‘I just think that back then when we were younger,
it all seemed more intense, your feelings seemed
stronger,
bigger, truer, if you know what I mean.’
‘It’s funny you should say that,’ said Olga,
‘because just the other day –’
she stood up –
‘I found my school journal –’
she opened a drawer –
‘look, this is hilarious,
look at what my friends wrote in this.’
Tatiana looked. Page after page, day after day,
between another bloody maths test
and geography p.68
English find definition of ‘Sunday best’
were many impassioned messages, written in gold
or glitter ink, or in those inks that were scented,
but which had since lost all their scent,
Olga I luv u so much best frenz forever
(‘That was Philippine,’ said Olga,
‘you remember her?
I have no idea what she’s up to now’)
and hearts made up of lots and lots
of coloured dots, stuck to the page,
and vaguely manga-like sketches …
Beatrice + Olga = amour toujours
(Olga: ‘I have no memory of who Beatrice was’)
The +++ gorgeous in the Cou-cou City Club
‘The name of that club means nothing at all to me.’
Olga kept laughing.
‘Crazy, isn’t it? We must have been convinced,
or at least a little part of us must have believed,
that at fifteen years old we’d already discovered
our best friends forever, our immortal lovers.
Don’t you think it’s sweet how important it all seemed?’
But suddenly she grew serious again.
‘Lensky … Lensky …
that’s a much sadder story, of course.
You know what his tragedy was, poor boy,
his big mistake? It was his blindness …
you might almost say
his madness …
anyway, his total trust, his absolute faith,
believing religiously
in those feelings we wrote in four-colour biro in the break
between History and Biology.
Alas, poor Lensky.’
Olga closed the diary, using a fingernail
to smooth down a Linkin Park sticker
that was coming unstuck,
and whispered to Tatiana: ‘Look,
you know, I do sometimes think
about his death …
you remember how devastated I felt?
But not because I loved him. No. Don’t you see?
It was because I’d never loved him, not really,
not the way people can love. I mean, I did try,
but I just never had it in me, and nor did he,
for all his promises and poems,
all his sky-high sentiments …
The truth is: we were young, and we
didn’t understand love yet, we had no idea,
and he killed himself so stupidly,
for a teenage crush.
That’s what upsets me – even to this day –
so much
when I think about it: what a waste, what a shame,
to kill yourself for a love not worth the name.’
Moved by this memory,
Olga dabbed with the corner of her sleeve
at two tears as they ran down her cheek
and, eyes red, nose very white,
she hugged her little sister very tight
as Tatiana tottered,
lashed by a blizzard of cold grey words
boredom waste teenage
nothing promises boredom stupidly crush
children sacrifice boredom
Olga continued to hold her in her arms,
comforting, warm, soft-skinned, full-breasted,
and Tatiana, engulfed in her merino tube-sweater-dress,
shivered,
wondered if it was true, what Olga had said,
if all passions were doomed to wither,
if it was true that we’d be bored together,
and all the while the scent of her sister filled her,
a smell she knew so well:
some Chanel,
a costly one, dark yellow like amber.
The same perfume as their mother’s.
One that comes with experience.
One with no citrus fruit in it,
no hint of summer,
no chance
of an exit.
*
Not for a second had Eugene believed
that Tatiana wouldn’t write to him while she was away.
In Paris With You Page 15
