Love and Garbage (29 page)

Thus he stood, motionless, his forehead almost pressed to the glass, as if awaiting our arrival. I was surprised to find that he was still young, his hair, where it peeped out from beneath his fool’s cap, was dark and his skin was swarthy. We looked at him and he looked at us without giving any sign of seeing us, of taking any notice of us.

‘Well really!’ Mr Rada was outraged. ‘That’s a bit much!’

But I was aware of sympathy for the unknown young man who offered himself up to our gaze, who had no hesitation in exhibiting his misery, longings and hope. Hope of what? Of fame, of being understood, or at least of getting somebody to stop, look, and see. Standing there with my orange fool’s vest – in what way did I differ from him? In my misery, my longings, or perhaps in my hope?

So I waited for my lover at the small railway station in the foothills. All round me half-drunk gypsies were noisily conversing. A total stranger, smelling of dirt and liquor, invited me to have a drink with him.

I escaped to the very end of the platform and stood waiting there for the train.

Was I waiting for it with hope or with fear, out of longing or out of a sense of duty? What was there left for me to wait for, what to hope for?

At the most for some conditional postponement that would briefly prolong our torment and our bliss.

The train pulled in, I caught sight of her getting off the last carriage, a bulging rucksack on her back. She saw me, waved to me, and even at that distance I could see that she’d come in love.

I was suddenly flooded with gratitude; undeservedly rewarded, I embraced her.

It was getting dark. The station had emptied, and the lights of some train were approaching in the distance.

I wished it would be a special train, a train just for the two of us. We’d board it, we’d draw the curtains across the windows, we’d lock the door, the train would move off, speed along through the day and the night, over bridges and through valleys, it would carry us beyond seven frontiers, away from our past lives, it would take us into the ancient garden where one might live without sin.

Along the track clanked a tanker train, filling the air with the stench of crude oil. I picked up her pack and we walked out of the station.

That evening I phoned my wife from the hotel where we’d taken a room. In her voice too I was aware of love and of her pleasure at hearing me. She told me she’d been invited to an ethological conference somewhere near where I was staying. No, not just yet, in a week’s time, but we might meet then, that would be nice, I must be feeling rather blue being on my own for so long, besides, we’d been to the place she was going to before, surely I remembered, on our honeymoon . . .

I was in a panic. I wasn’t sure. How could I tell, a week from now. And she too seemed taken aback; of course, she said, if it didn’t suit me I needn’t come to see her. She just thought that I might like to, but she didn’t want to push me or make things difficult for me.

I promised to phone her to let her know, and hung up.

I was finally trapped. My mind, trained on those lines, was still concocting excuses, but I suspected that I wouldn’t escape this time, nor did I wish to.

Why hadn’t she asked straight out? Why hadn’t she objected? The strange humility of her voice still rang in my ears. I was seized by a sense of sadness and regret, I also felt tenderness towards my wife who wanted to comfort me in my pretended solitude, who promised me from afar that we’d walk up among the rocks, where so long ago we’d felt happy, where we’d started our life together. If I were here on my own I’d go to her at once and tell her that, in spite of everything I’d done, I’d never stopped being fond of her and that I didn’t want to leave her. If I were here on my own I wouldn’t have had to put her off, I’d be glad to have her come.

I couldn’t bear to stay indoors. The moon was shining on the flank of the mountain and a hostile wind blew down its slopes. Daria wanted to know what I was doing. But I felt ambushed by my own emotions – I felt unable to assure her that I longed to remain with her.

She faced me on the narrow footpath: But you invited me here! I beg you, maybe this is the last time I’ll beg you for anything, that you should at least behave like . . . at least like a decent host!

The wind was blowing her hair into her face. Now she really looked like a witch, like a sorceress who’d emerged from some depth of the mountains.

But I’ll pack my things and leave this instant if that’s what you want!

There was no need for her to leave immediately. We could stay here a whole week, just three days less than we’d intended.

You want to bargain with me? Amidst the silent noctural landscape she screamed at me: I was a coward, a liar and a hypocrite. A trader in emotions. A dealer with no feelings. At least not for her. How could I be so cruel to her, so shameless?

She was right.

I took her by the hand and led her further along the path below the mountain. In the dusk we stumbled over projecting roots and stones. I tried to talk as if nothing had happened. We’re here together, after all those months we’re together at last.

The following day we left for another place in the mountains.

I felt humiliated by the knowledge that I was fleeing, fleeing belatedly, at a moment when I no longer wished to flee from anywhere or from anybody. Except from myself.

Spring was exceptionally beautiful that year. The meadows turned purple with wild crocus and clumps of coltsfoot sprang up along the paths. But we climbed to higher altitudes, we were climbing side by side for the last time, we waded through drifts of hardened snow, clambered over great rocks, watched the flight of the eagle and the leaps of the chamois, and when we returned to the twilight of the mountain chalet we made love just as we’d been making love over the years whenever we met.

Then she fell asleep, exhausted, while I lay motionless on the bed, listening to the soft drip of water outside and gazing through the window at the mountain glistening in the moonlight, wondering what I’d do when I got back home, how I would live, even if I could live, but my thoughts stumbled at the first step over the huge boulder that lay in my path.

Then I listened to her quiet breath, and remorse overcame me: What have I brought you to, my pet, where have you followed me, where have we set out together, we stride across snowy wastes, the night is deep and frosty, the silence of the universe is engulfing us. You wanted to save me, I wanted to be with you at all your difficult moments, I probably didn’t love you as I should have, I was unable, I was unwilling, to love you more. I am still very fond of you, you’ve grown painfully into me. If I were stronger, if I were wiser, wise enough to know everything essential about myself, I would have driven you away as soon as you’d come close to me because I would have known that I would not remain with you the way you wanted me to, how happy I would have been if I’d remained alone, because I wouldn’t then have met a woman I longed for so much. I didn’t decide to drive you away. I wasn’t wise enough, and I was moreover afraid of your pain and of my own, I was afraid of a life in which you weren’t present; I believed that with you my life would be full of hope, that I’d found another safety net to spread out between myself and nothingness.

The mountain tops were beginning to emerge from the darkness and the sky above them was turning pale. The mountain rose straight up, it towered, virtually eternal, into a sky that was even more eternal, while we mortals , here only for a single winking of the divine eye, have, in our longing to fill our lives, in our longing for ecstasy, filled our brief moment with suffering.

On the tenth day we returned home, each to our own home. We said goodbye, we kissed once more, and she hoped I’d be strong and not do anything against her.

But I am not strong, at least not in the way she meant. I don’t wish to demonstrate my strength towards the woman who had for so many years shared both good and bad with me. I go back, in my mind I turn over some sentences attempting an explanation.

What a fool I am, my wife laments, to have trusted you again.

She is standing there facing me, dropping her eyes. She doesn’t know what to do, what to say. She says she’s decided to move out, she’s looking for somewhere to live.

I ask her not to do anything silly.

The silliest thing I ever did was to trust you again.

She wants me at least to explain how I could do what I did, while I assured her that I never stopped loving her.

I loved the other woman too!

You see how embarrassing it is! There’s no sense in it any more. How could you deceive me so?

I keep silent. I have no answer other than that it just happened like that. But I won’t deceive you again!

Supposing you do mean what you say, how will you prove it to me?

I don’t know how I can prove anything – I’ll stay with you.

That’s what you tell me now, but what will you tell her?

I’ll tell her the same thing.

Very well. We’ll go and see her and you can tell her straight away. I want to be present.

No, I can’t do that.

Why not? Why can’t you tell her in front of me, if you really want to tell her?

I am silent. I am trapped.

You see, you wanted to deceive me again. I didn’t want to deceive you.

You expect me to believe you?

There’s nothing I can say. I can’t promise or swear.

I’m an idiot, how could I have been such an idiot! Even if I wanted to believe you I can’t any longer.

Again she asks to go and see the other woman. I can say whatever I like to her, but maybe at such a moment I would be speaking the truth.

At the moment, however, it isn’t the truth I’m afraid of. I simply know that I cannot part from the woman I’ve been in love with for so long, with whom I’d made love without witnesses and with whom I’d forgotten my loneliness – I cannot part from her in a theatrical scene.

I’ll tell her on my own. Or I’ll write her a letter.

And why should I believe that you’ll do that?

I shrug.

Night. My wife is sobbing in the next room. She’s waiting for me to come to her. I’ll tell her I’m sorry for everything that’s happened, that I’ve realised that I can only be happy with her. And I’ll tell the other woman to her face so that she too will hear it, so that everyone who knows about us should know that we love one another.

But I can’t do anything of the kind, I can’t even say any more than I’ve said already. I can see myself, I see myself from a great height. Not yet stooping but greying at the temples, I’m standing at the corner, in the familiar spot with a single tree against which I can lean. The clock at the corner has stopped. I wait and wait, no one comes, I wait for her, at least, to show up, but she is not coming.

I kneel down on the ground and press my forehead against the tree-trunk. I can’t manage to cry. I embrace the trunk, I hold it frantically as though someone might wish to tear me away from it. I’d whisper her name, but I can’t. I notice that the clock has moved, but I know that this is the only movement – no one will ever come again.

So what are you waiting for? What do you want? What do you feel? What are you longing for?

The following day I wrote her a letter. I won’t return to a life of lies. I won’t leave my wife, and I can’t live by her side and torment her by informing her that I also love another woman, even if she herself were able to live like that. I also wrote that what we had together will be with me all my life. I would have liked to add something tender, such as that there might be a time when I would come to her at some difficult moment, though differently from the way she’d imagined, also that what we had together couldn’t have been devoid of some meaning, that some part of it might cast a light into our future lives, that I would never hide that light in myself – but I felt that all words were pointless and in vain, that I was perhaps improperly comforting myself and her.

After two days I posted the letter. As the flap of the postbox dropped back I was conscious of the familiar old vertigo getting hold of me.

I knew that I’d never see her or hear her voice again. But from time to time, in the middle of the night I would start up from my sleep and with my fingertips touch her high forehead, and feel a strange distant pain enter into me, and then a soft snapping sound. My net was tearing, I had no idea how many threads were still left, but there couldn’t be many.

I should have liked to know if the man in the window experienced anything similar, whether he felt a sudden sense of relief from this unexpected meeting. I thought that he might step out of his frame, open the window and perhaps ask us in, or at least wave to us with his flower, but this would probably have disturbed something delicate and mysterious that was extending between us, between me and him, he would have crossed that invisible, barely perceptible boundary that divides art from mere tomfoolery, so that I was actually glad to see him remain motionless.

‘They don’t know what to think of next,’ was Mr Rada’s judgement on what he’d just seen.

His remark seemed unfair to me. Before beginning to judge and condemn one another, people should do more to understand one another.

We got back to the office. I thought that perhaps that little idiot Franta might already be inside, but it was the same woman as always. She accepted my vest from me, returned my ID card, and handed out my final pay to me.

‘You’re right,’ Mr Rada said to me in parting, ‘we’re not here to judge others.’ But I was sure he was thinking of his brother rather than of the strange artist.

I followed him with my eyes. He stopped at: the bus stop. He was a tall, well-built man, with just a slight stoop, as if he were carrying a load on his back. Even if he took on his burden for others he possibly took it on needlessly. Who can see into the soul of another person, even the one closest to him, even his own son or his brother who was like a son?