Taxi to Paris

by Ruth Gogoll

  "Privately, anyhow... Well, like I said, I didn't know anything else. Even when it got harder and harder." I really didn't know whether I should allow her to continue. I remembered our first encounter, her fear in bed. I tried to look in the other direction. She leaned over and placed a finger on my chin. She turned my face around to her. "You remember, don't you?"

  I raised my arm and placed my hand gently on top of hers. "Yes," I confirmed quietly. "You don't have to tell me the rest if you don't want to."

  She slipped her fingers into mine and let them stay there. "I want to. It's always been very painful for me, and I've always repressed it. Perhaps this is my last chance to become clear about who I really am and why." She became more distant again and turned away. "Why I am what you so despise," she said softly, in the direction of the couch cushions. I raged. I'd heard that statement from her once before and disagreed vehemently. If she still thought that, I must not have been very convincing.

  I took her in my arms from behind and rested my head against her back. "Do you really believe that?"

  She made a hollow sound. "If not now, then later. I haven't told you everything yet."

  "Then tell me everything, so I can prove to you that the opposite is true," I grumbled ill- naturedly. My impatience began to bother me again. That was hardly called for in this situation.

  She turned around, so that I had to let go of her. "I'm sure you can already imagine most of it." She pressed her hands together as if to pray and said nothing. She looked over my shoulder and into a distant past. "In the beginning, she only hit me sometimes. Just to increase the arousal, she said. Pains of lust, she called it. But I didn't feel much lust with it. Only once, and that embarrassed me. When I told her that, she hit me again. So I just let it happen and didn't say anything else. Then one day, instead of her hands, she used a belt. My parents had never hit me. I had no idea what that meant. I screamed - so she put a gag in my mouth and hit harder. I bled where the buckle hit. But she did it very carefully. The places weren't visible when I was dressed. I was surprised and ashamed. I was ashamed that I let someone do that to me, but I didn't dare try to stop it.

  The fact that she was ashamed of something someone else did to her was nothing new. I didn't wonder about anything else. It all seemed to follow simply.

  "She said it was a sign of my love for her. Every scar a symbol. How could I defend myself?" She looked at me trustingly. I could barely stand it anymore. This calm expectation! I could've screamed. She continued. "The next time it was a whip. And then handcuffs. The gag. The shackles." She had begun to speak more softly, also. Maybe I should stop her, after all. How much worse could it get? "That was the worst part. Having my hands and feet shackled. On my stomach, until I couldn't breathe and begged her for mercy. And she just laughed and hit me again. Again and again and again." She started beating a pillow. It was like an unstoppable flow. "And again..." I held her hands back. "Come," I soothed her, "stop. It's over." She let me hold her. But her arms still jerked.

  "And then - one day - she was gone. Just like that." She still said it with wonder.

  "But...?" I couldn't see that as anything other than a great stroke of luck. "Weren't you happy that she was gone?"

  "Happy?" No, she obviously didn't see it that way.

  "Yes, since you were free from her then." I would've thanked everything I believed in.

  She repeated one of my words. "Free?" She changed her position on the sofa. Now she sat a little farther away from me. "I was horribly lonely," she explained sadly. "She was all I had. And I loved her."

  I trembled visibly. This word out of her mouth, and in such a clear state of mind, told me everything. "Well, then..." I sank back into the sofa. That was then, and it was over. She would never say that to anyone again. Not even to me. I suddenly seemed horribly old and alone.

  She realized what she had said. Perhaps that was what drove her to say more, to explain to herself and to me why things were as they were. "The loneliness was the worst." Her tone leveled again. "I couldn't be alone anymore. She had been with me every night. I was used to that."

  "To everything?" I asked. My voice must have sounded a little harsh. She looked up, startled. "Pardon me," I followed quickly. "I have no right..." I was just tired. It was her life, not mine. And the future looked more and more like that separation would always exist.

  "Yes, you do," she said, suddenly gentle. "Yes, I had gotten used to almost everything. But it wasn't like that everyday. She didn't hit me or shackle me everyday. But she slept with me everyday. It was like a ritual. I didn't matter what we had done before, when we went to bed, we had to sleep together. And sometimes the rest." She fell silent.

  I was unsettled again. "How old were you when she - left?" I asked carefully.

  "Nineteen," she said. "But I didn't feel that way. I still felt like I was fifteen. It was as if I hadn't matured at all since I'd met her. My peers all seemed older." She laughed again unhappily. "Maybe that was the attractive thing about me. In any case, I could hardly escape all the offers."

  I could well imagine how that had proceeded. She needed someone to care about her.

  "I was so inexperienced," she explained. "Except for the one thing. I noticed that very quickly. That which was already second nature to me was still relatively new to the others. And they thought that what they experienced of me in the one area must carry over into the others. I behaved in such a way that they would have to believe it."

  "You mean they paid you from the beginning?" The idea would never have occurred to me while practicing with a lover. I must really be naive.

  "Well, no, they didn't exactly pay me in the beginning, but I received gifts. Expensive gifts. And I was usually the second woman. The one for the bed." She said it very disparagingly. And I couldn't blame her, as much as it horrified me as well.

  She let out a resigned sigh. "Anyhow, they didn't make it difficult for me to live that way. And at some point, I got used to it. I didn't expect anything more."

  "Until Maria came," I said clairvoyantly. That must have been a mild shock for her.

  She looked me in the eyes. "Yes," she confirmed. "And then you."

  I couldn't take it. That was all in the past. She'd used up her love on others, wasted it on her torturers. There was nothing left for me. I made a dismissive gesture. "I'm not that important." I wanted to get up off the sofa. How did that go in Casablanca? We'll always have Paris. That fit here perfectly. We were only missing the airplane into which I could disappear, flying away to leave the evil behind me.

  She grabbed my arm. "Where are you going?" She could still sound like fifteen when she wanted to. Sweet and innocent. And somewhere - it seemed to me - she was just that. But I wasn't.

  "Home. I need to get some sleep. Tomorrow is going to be another long day." How the cliches poured from my mouth! I couldn't believe it myself.

  I looked at her, and I loved her so. But I couldn't give her what she already knew of in so many ways. I would only disappoint her. I felt empty and burned out. Dejected, I knelt in front of her. I could only tell the truth. "I love you. But that's all I can give you. You've earned much more. You'll find someone better easily." I sounded hollow.

  I wanted to stand up, but she held me down. "Tell me, are you completely out of your mind?" This wasn't the same calm tone of voice I'd heard before. "If you don't stop that nonsense right now, I'll really throw you out." She thought about it for a moment. "Oh, no, that's what you want. So I'll keep you here." Her words were full of energy. She took me wholly by surprise.

  "But -" I stammered, still entirely confused.

  "But what?" She slid off the sofa and lay suddenly on top of me. She looked down at me from above like a tiger with its prey. "What do you think, how many people have I told what I just told you?"

  I tried to think about it. It was difficult. I knew so little about her relationships. "Well, Maria for instance, and -".

  She interrupted me angrily. "Not even Maria. Don't even consider
‘and'. You're the only one. And why do you think that is?"

  I couldn't imagine why, not by my best effort. I fell silent.

  "I ought to thrash you," she whispered. Then she spoke again at a normal volume. "And that's not because of my occupation and not because of my past. That's just a normal reaction, as obtuse as you're being."

  I didn't think so at all, but if she did... She was heavier, she was stronger, and she was on top of me. It didn't seem like an opportune time to argue with her.

  "Mother of heaven!" She groaned loudly. "You want to hear those three words. You've fixated yourself on them so much that you won't take anything else seriously. Dammit already!" She swore. That was something new. "Don't you understand? I just confessed everything to you that there is to confess." She shot me an icy look. "Something I can't say about you, by the way. And your only reaction is that I'm not good enough for you? I ought to have a thing or two to say about that, don't you think?"

  "Yes. No." I didn't know what to say.

  She looked lovingly down at me again. "So remember this: the time where I let myself be controlled by my shame and guilt is over. And you're not exactly free of responsibility for that." I couldn't really argue with that. "My self-esteem has recovered somewhat. And a certain person has definitely had something to do with that. Right?" She stared wildly into my face, but the tenderness glowing in her eyes took away any hint of danger. I nodded to the degree that I could, given that I was pinned to the floor. "And why do you want to leave now?" She propped herself up with her arms and increased the space between us so that I could breath a little better.

  I had to answer her, I knew that, but I didn't know how. And I told her that as well. "I don't know." Softly, I added a few seconds later, "I feel so small."

  "Aha!" She let herself roll off and lay next to me. She talked to the ceiling. "How about if we talk about that sensibly? What works in one place might work in another. Did you ever think of that?"

  To be honest, I hadn't. And that didn't make me any bigger. Sooner the opposite. Everything I'd demanded of her, I hadn't even thought to question in myself. Big adjustment!

  She propped herself up on one elbow and watched me curiously. "What kind of woman are you, really? Have you ever let me look inside like I let you?"

  She pushed me into embarrassed confusion.

  "Or is that not compatible with the sublime ethos of the knight in shining armor?"

  She was so right! But what I most wanted to do was flee. She noticed that immediately.

  "I won't really hold you against your will, you know that." She laughed softly. I felt horribly transparent. "And you won't really go." Now she looked earnestly into my face again. "So, why don't we discuss what we really want to do?"

  Yes, why not? I was sour. "How am I supposed to know that? You want your profession..."

  "Here goes the broken record," she sighed. "I should've known it." But this time, she was less angry than any other time we'd discussed that issue. In actuality, she didn't seem angry at all. And not even so uncertain. "You know that that's not an issue at the moment. Nothing has changed about that."

  "Yes, at the moment..." I emphasized.

  "Yes, at the moment," she repeated decisively. "Leave it at that. Do you want to force a decision that I can't make right now? What do you expect to accomplish that way? Even a decision would only be temporary in a case like that."

  She was doubtlessly right about that. But what was the alternative?

  "You see everything in black and white, too. You accused me of exactly the same thing. How about if we both try to get away from that?" I barely recognized her anymore. What had happened? She reached one logical conclusion after the other. She laughed when she saw my baffled expression. "Sometimes I can think, too," she smiled to herself. "I've just been distracted by your presence most of the time." She leaned over and kissed me. Nice distraction! More of that... She stopped and I opened my eyes again. That loving look, that tender mouth. What kind of creature was she really?

  She rolled on top of me again. Her lips brushed delicately against my cheek. "We have so much time," she whispered.

  I believed everything she told me. At that moment, a light came on. Could it be that my own stubbornness had caused just as many problems as it had helped to solve? And what would happen if I told her no now? I could barely imagine the consequences.

  I cleared my throat. "Can you imagine us still being together in ten years?" I asked her. Her lips froze right on the spot they were kissing.

  "Who knows?" she answered honestly. At least the idea didn't horrify her; I could tell that much. She continued her thought. "I don't think it'll be much different for us than it is for any couple." She was calling us a couple - it kept getting better! "But what do you say we start with the next three months first?" She smiled down at me. Those eyes, how they caressed me just by looking. How could I have refused that willingly? I must have been crazy!

  She was still smiling. "You were already my taxi to Paris once. Do you want to try it again?"

  At first I didn't quite understand her correctly, but then I knew what she meant. Her lips neared my mouth.

  "Yes," I said, right before she kissed me.

  THE END