(An old Wordpress post republished, slightly modified)
She always awoke with
the dawn. That dark hour before the first light appeared, before the dew
evaporated and the dust got unsettled. Lie
in bed for a few seconds until the moment of full awakening. Get up, don’t make
any noise, open the bedroom door as noiselessly as possible, but most
importantly, don’t wake him. Slow and careful steps, tiptoe, close the door
gently behind you.
“Out for a walk”, she
wrote on an old phone bill. Then she tore up the paper and scattered the pieces
inside her pocket.
Many summers ago when
she lived near the sea, she would take her dogs out in the morning, letting
them run on the beach, unleashed. Her
face always turned towards the sun, towards the light, to what she called
freedom. Running along with the dogs
gave her a sense of nonexistence, as if there was only her shadow, and she was
an invisible weightless body floating very close to the ground.
The city was big, and
it blinded her at night, crowding her, making her feel trapped in a jungle of
lights. Sometimes the noise of the cars honking on the street below their
apartment left her disoriented.
“Is it always like
this? Always this raucous?”
“Most of the time. It
will get quieter at Christmas, when the students go home.” He did not look up
from his book, something about space explorers getting lost in another
universe. He had probably borrowed it from his students.
And there were the
voices inside her head. Who were they? A
long forgotten lover? That lost tourist she sheltered for a week? Or could it
be her father, lost at sea, his body never found. The voices had come on and
off, sometimes mocking her, sometimes laughing maniacally, sometimes a low
murmur. She restrained herself from replying, from screaming at them, telling
them to shut up and go away.
I am not crazy. I am
not crazy. I am not crazy.
I am not.
There were good days and bad days. Sometimes, on the bad mornings, he would hear her stifle a cry when she
thought he was asleep. He’d lie there, not daring to breathe or move, not
wanting to embarrass her. He knew her
eyes were red, her lips swollen from biting, and could almost feel the hot
tears that bathed her face.The crying
sessions were always followed by a deep sleep, as if she had exhausted the
supply of tears and had to recharge the batteries.
Summer mornings were
her favourite time of the year. His too. Some mornings she
would wake him, and together they would watch the sky change colour, from a
nightly black to a metallic grey, then to beautiful pinks and oranges, until
the sun turns a hot yellow, burning everything in sight.
They had not watched
the sunrise together in two years. He loved the mornings as much as she did,
but something held him back, something about her demanded solitude, and most of
the time he was simply too tired.
That summer was
cruel. At nights when it got too hot he dragged the mattress down from the bed
and slept on the floor near the big window. The first night was wonderful, but
in the morning he was woken by the sun coming through the window, hitting him
right on the eyes. From the next night he slept facing the other way round, and
a small problem solved.
She was not the type
to cuddle, hugging her folded knees, rolling herself up embryonic ally. But her
physical presence made him happy, happy that she was there, in person, that she
chose to be with him.
He vividly remembered
the night he felt the heat coming through her thin cotton shirt. There was a
wide gap between them in the bed, yet he could feel the heat rising from her
back. He got up, soaked a towel in cold water and wiped her neck and chest.
That look on her face, that half asleep half smile was something he captured and locked away in his memory,
like all the other good things he stored deep in his private happiness box,
somewhere deep in his brain, which nobody else could access.
In the morning she
was gone.
It was true, he never
expected her to stay, but he couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed to
wake up to find all her belongings gone, including the Shrek ashtray she liked
so much. He would have loved to keep that, clean it and keep it on top of the
TV. Then he could look at it from time to time when the TV programs get too
boring.
“Ogres are like
onions”, was always her favourite movie line. He finally understood what that
line meant. There were parts of her, layers which he would never unravel,
mysteries he would never solve. And she made him cry. Yes, he cried. But he was
not ashamed. For the first time in 15
years he let the tears slide down his cheeks and watched the world turn hazy.
He lifted the
mattress and placed it back on the bed. The big window was open, and the smell
of the wet earth floated in. A
comforting, earthy smell. The rains had come. He smiled; life would go on.
