Which reminds me. I gave you that money on the understanding that it was just a two-month trip, to get yourself together. You were supposed to be coming back to me afterwards, one month ago yesterday to be precise, to be my assistant, not that I need one or that you could tell a Louis-Quatorze armchair from a Woody Woodpecker tattoo, but it would be a way to share my life, for God’s sake. It was never the plan to shave off your hair and join a monastery. Is that the thanks I get? I could sue you, if I wanted to, for the money plus interest, if I wanted to get vindictive. Which I don’t, but I’m just saying.
Something else has just occurred to me. Do you have somebody over there? I’ve always wondered about those monkish types, all men together sharing showers and whatnot. There must be quite a lot of sidelong glances going on in the prayer sessions. Because I’ll kill you if you are up to something, Wouter, and you know me, I will find out. Please, please, say it isn’t so. Write to me one more time, just to ease my heart. For your information, you bastard, I’m not considered completely undesirable myself in certain quarters, in fact an undue amount of interest has been paid since your departure by that ginger-haired queen downstairs, the one with the two dachshunds. Not to mention the snaggle-toothed number who manages the local Pick ‘n’ Pay. But I don’t care about them, I have eyes for only one man, his name is written on my soul, W, O, T, fuckitte I mean U but what am I doing you know how to spell your name. The point is, Wouter, no, I’ve lost the point again. The point is I’m broken. The point is I’m missing you terribly. The point is PLEASE COME BACK WOUTER what do you want me to do I’m down on my knees and pleading. If it’s possible to lose all dignity long-distance by airmail darling there’s not a shred of self-respect left. This morning I started weeping in front of a client, a very sweet woman who actually thought I was moved by her fake Biedermeier side-table. Truth is I started drinking around breakfast that’s how it’s been the last few days. Wouter if you don’t answer I’m going to come and get you I promise you I’ll fasten myself on to your foot and won’t let go until you give in but to do that I’ll have to close the office and fire Beauty and liquidate some assets money has been a little tight lately but what the hell I’ll do it interior decorating has never been very big in this part of Germiston anyway. But what I’d prefer and I think you would too if you only knew it is if you came back here and lived with me and we just started our lives over the way they were supposed to be if I don’t know what if things were different you weren’t so afraid or your father hadn’t been such a prick why can’t it be simple. Actually it IS simple just the world that makes things complicated. But the world is all we’ve got my dear there is no spiritual truth no second chance just this one life with all its mess. Please answer me Wouter. And if you’re wondering what these marks are on the page they’re tears the real thing except for the big splotch in the corner where I spilled my drink.
Always –
Neville
AUDREY NIFFENEGGER
September 1, 2005
Dear Sylvie,
I’m writing you this letter because I don’t know what else to do. Your cellphone is dead. All I get when I call you is a computer voice telling me to call back later. You haven’t answered my emails. I’ve been watching the news for hours, days. Water everywhere, bodies floating down the streets, collapsed highways, abandoned pets. Where are you, Sylvie? I want to go to you, but I’m afraid that if I leave the apartment you’ll show up and I won’t be here. I know that you won’t read this. There’s nowhere to send it any more.
Last night I dreamt that we were together in your parents’ house when the flood came. In my dream we crept up the stairs quietly, as though the water could hear us, as though it would find us – we were its prey, and we went upstairs so silently, holding hands like little kids. And the water rose just as silently. We were afraid to touch the water, or to let it touch us. It was formidable, evil. If it touched us we would die. You kept putting things into my hands, things you wanted to save. We went into the attic. It was full of your mother’s clothes and I knew you were sad that the flood would ruin her extravagant dresses. The water kept rising and we climbed out the dormer window and on to the roof. We sat side by side on the roof, and the water washed everything away. We saw cars, trees, bodies in the water. All the birds were gone, there was no noise except the sound of the water lapping and swirling, now and then a dog would bark, but there were no other people there. It was an empty world. The water had taken everything. We sat on the roof and looked out at nothing. We made love up there because we had no food or water to drink. The roof was our island. Then I saw the rough green asphalt shingles of the roof through your hands. Your body gradually became transparent, and I was alone on the roof, watching the water invade, watching the city disappear. I looked at the things you had given me to save. I was holding your glasses and a tennis ball.
Sylvie, I hope you aren’t in the city. I hope you evacuated. (Though how could you have left the city with no car? Did you ever find your mom? And why haven’t you called?) The TV is showing horrible things. There are reports of killings, rapes, looting, old people dying in nursing homes because the staff left them behind. Why haven’t you called? I don’t know what to do, Sylvie.
Before you left last week I said Please don’t go. And you said She just wants me home for a few weeks, Nancy. I’ll be back in Chicago when classes start. I sit in front of the television looking past the reporters, trying to see your house in the wrecked scenes behind their freaked-out faces. I remember the garden in your mother’s backyard, the yellow gladioli and the bright red canna lilies, the honeysuckle that engulfed the garage … I remember the scent of the garden at night, how it came in through your bedroom window, so strong I felt almost nauseated. You kissed me in the backyard; I worried that your neighbors might see. You laughed and printed your lipsticked mouth on my white blouse just over my left nipple … And in the afternoons, I remember how everyone sat on their porches in the heat, and they all waved at us when we walked to Jimmy’s to buy cigarettes and beer. All under water now. Whole blocks, whole neighborhoods. I stood on our front stoop this morning with the newspaper in my hand, looking at Hyde Park Boulevard, imagining it all under water.
Do you know how to swim, Sylvie? I never asked you. It’s amazing to me how much I don’t know. After two years you’d think we’d know everything there is about each other. But I guess you never can tell what will be important. Why would it matter if you could swim? We only talk about what we’re reading. We eat and sleep and take baths and put on clothes and take them off again and fuck each other delirious and go to classes and all around us the air fills up with words about books. If New Orleans was flooded with words I would not be afraid for you, Sylvie. I know you can swim in words. But water … can you swim in water, Sylvie?
The apartment seems vacant without you, even though it’s crammed with your stuff. Since you won’t read this I’ll admit that I’ve been crying over the stupidest things. Tonight I opened the junk drawer in the kitchen and found your old key ring with the little plastic Pink Panther and that set me off. I can’t explain why. It was just pathetic, I guess. Your possessions seem like they’re expecting you; they don’t have the slightest doubt that you’ll come home. I feel superstitious. If I close my eyes while the phone rings it will be you. If I take a shower, then the phone will ring, and it will be you. But when the phone rings it’s always other people asking if I’ve heard from you yet. No, I say. Not yet. There’s not much to say after that. We’re all embarrassed by our own politeness. Call me if there’s anything I can do, they say. Sure, yeah, of course, I say. I want to scream at them. I want to howl, like a baby, until you come to me. Oh, Sylvie. You have to be safe, because I am wrecked without you. My levees are breached, and you have flooded me, and I am a city under water now.
Ugh – I’m getting all metaphorical. Come home and make fun of my bad prose.
It’s almost 5 a.m., Sylvie. I’m sitting at the kitchen table, looking towards the lake. It
’s funny how we think of the lake being there, a presence even though we can’t see it because of all the tallish ugly buildings. The sky is getting lighter. I remember when I first met you, and you thought it was weird that I always knew what direction the lake was, no matter where we were, as though I had an internal compass that points east. How strange it would be if the lake rose up one day and came into the city. It would be like a fairy tale, as though an enchantment had caused the city and the lake to merge, silently, like a painting of a city in a lake. But that’s not what I see on TV, Sylvie. On TV there are dead people slumped in folding chairs in the baking sun, and people spray-painting Xs on the houses, and everything is either in motion when it should be still or stranded, stopped.
It flooded here once, Sylvie. Someone knocked a hole in the bottom of the Chicago River, and it drained into all the basements in the skyscrapers, the deep basements below the basements. I’m not making this up. It was a flood no one could see, a sort of conceptual flood, except to the people who had to deal with it; for them it was probably pretty real.
The sun’s up, Sylvie. I’m going to bed. Maybe when I wake up you’ll call. Maybe you’re on your way here. At least maybe I’ll dream about you.
Nan
JULI ZEH
Translated by Judith Orban
First Chapter
We could have been happy if only we had met. The day on which we didn’t meet was fine. Pouring rain at a time when only the rain was holding sky and earth together. You took refuge in a café, I too sat at a window in the warmth. It was the season of grog and gingerbread. We played at telling our future fortunes by pouring the molten wax of the candle on the table into water. The future consisted of flat red bloblets floating on the surface of a glass of mineral water. A woman crossed the room with small steps, holding a brimming cup with both hands. It was beautiful.
Second Chapter
Even as children we had similar interests. I gathered snails off paths so they wouldn’t crack like hollow hazelnuts under the shoes of walkers. You rescued frogs into which neighbourhood kids had stuck straws to blow them up. We liked to stand in the corner, we liked the fashions of the decade just past, we were interested in big fat books, and particularly enjoyed saying things no one understood. So we both became objects of people’s derision. That’s the best prerequisite for lifelong happiness together.
Third Chapter
You were my type, I was yours. Both of us blue-eyed with dark hair, an unusual combination. Because we were shorter than average, we liked to take holidays in Asia. Birds of a feather flock together. We loved long walks and quiet evenings at home. Out of timidity we preferred most of all to be by ourselves. We had difficulties getting to know people, and it’s particularly important to be in agreement on such a sensitive issue. But neither did we ignore the fact that opposites attract. That’s why you were male and I was female. We didn’t have any problems with that. We had been brought up to be tolerant.
Fourth Chapter
Like all true lovers we drew closer to each other in a roundabout way. We were young and nervous. We didn’t want to hang around waiting for life to begin. You slept with a bewitching peroxide-blonde hairdresser, I possessed a hearing-aid technician. Soon the blonde was merely a hairdresser, and my acoustic technician took deafness to be an economic blueprint. All the while we knew we were destined for something else. For being the knight in shining armour and the princess in the tower. For each other. For happiness. The days provided distraction, the nights consisted of waiting. Longing taught us to believe in true love. We liked to think of each other, particularly while masturbating.
Fifth Chapter
We also had some hard times. I grew flabby around the hips, your hair turned grey. How were we to recognise each other in this condition? A long succession of days passed in bitter silence. When the sun shone brightly we cursed as we looked into the mirror. The weather should not be lovelier than the person, when everything else – as we all know – is so relative. But the hate faded away, I knew you so well. Your despair was the salt in my soup. My suffering was the sugar in your tea. Your thoughts were mine. We had learned it was inner values that mattered – and just how much they did.
Sixth Chapter
Once I almost lost you. It was winter yet again, the whole city was treading on thin ice. You were widowed, I was divorced, snow pelted us with light from all sides. You were crossing the street on which I was driving. I was singing a love song along with the eight o’clock news on the radio when a flash of light from your glasses hit my retina. My hearing aid stopped working, your cry was lost in silence. You bent down behind some parked cars to search for your cane. The road ahead of me was empty. By a hair’s breadth – I tell you, my darling – I just missed hitting you by a hair’s breadth. For years I couldn’t shake off the feeling that something strange had happened.
Seventh Chapter
We grew old together. For a long time already sex had become irrelevant. We took pleasure in cake and falling leaves. Our rooms were pungent with the aroma of the past. The cleaning lady came once a week and mopped the floors. On her raised flowered buttocks I saw a hilly spring meadow, you didn’t see anything any more. Together we were the lame, the blind, the dumb and the deaf rolled into one person. We understood each other without words. We fingered similar photos, we ate the same porridge. Outside our dingy windows migratory birds revealed the future in ever identical formations.
Eighth Chapter
A great love conquers all obstacles. Great love shies away from nothing. On that very day when we didn’t meet each other we were sitting in different cafés. The future consisted of flat red bloblets floating on the surface of a glass of mineral water. A woman crossed the room with small steps, holding a brimming cup with both hands. As so often, my beloved, we had something in common. You remained alone, I remained alone. But I don’t even care about that. For time and again, day after day, my whole life long, I shall forgive you.
LEONARD COHEN
You’re going to leave me. I know you’re going to leave me. Like you left Laporte. Like you left Arif. I’ll be someone you call by his last name. Laporte didn’t look too good tonight at the Alhambra when he limped over to say hello to you. He didn’t want to give me his hand because it was so wet. He took the tips of my fingers and he smiled cheerlessly, as if to say: The greatest fuck you’ve ever had, the deepest love you’ve ever known, and she’s going to leave you very soon, you poor stunned sonovabitch. In the car you told me that his hands always get that wet when he has to meet people. You know his terrors, don’t you? As you know mine. We haven’t seen too much from Laporte lately, film-maker of a certain period, when you were his juice, when he was allowed to tie you up, and you commanded him to treat you like a slave. Then you told me to look at the moon, so I looked through the windshield at the moon. Then you told me to be impressed by the colour of the sky, so I applied myself to a study of the royal blue Paris sky. The turbaned Sikh assigned you, as he always does, the most impossible space in the garage, and when we walked past his window, he said, as he always does, The Champion of Parking. In the room you did sail so sweetly into my arms. I’m yours. For tonight. Your big joke. And my heart still leaps up between the declaration and the punchline. Like you left Laporte. Like you left Arif, and then slept with his twin brother. I leave them just before they leave me. It’s better that way, no? Not to have a crying girl on your hands. Okay, darling, you’re sleeping, the night has come to an end, and I’m nervous as hell. You’ll either read this by yourself one day, or we’ll be reading it together.
1980
PHIL LAMARCHE
Baby,
When you reached inside the shower curtain when I didn’t know and turned off the cold water and burned me terrible, JESUS, I still don’t even know if you were pissed or did it for a laugh, but you know the hot water heater could boil eggs, you KNOW that, and when I punched in the wall and busted my hand, it wasn’t you I swung at, I PROMISE I didn’t even imagine
your face on the square pink tile that cracked and caved in (and don’t worry about that, I’ll replace the whole wall when I do the remodel) but that night, when I tore down the shower curtain and came freaking into the hall, naked as an ape, it wasn’t you I expected to see, and what I said, JESUS what I said, I didn’t mean it for you at all, I thought I’d find some bastard friend of mine, or even your brother, that fuck and his jokes, but you took off and didn’t give me the chance to explain and I couldn’t follow, being naked, and you went and went to your parents and you KNOW how that makes me feel, I’ve told you, it’s like you’re on their team and not mine and when you wouldn’t take my calls and I didn’t stop calling and your father finally answered and told me QUIT IT and I told him to go to HELL and GET FUCKED and that I’d be over to get you, over his broken ass if need be, it was all only because I was so afraid of losing you and because I LOVE you so much. I know, I KNOW I’m no good at ‘communication’, you don’t have to say it AGAIN, I get it, OKAY?
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