The Gaze (21 page)

The restaurant was very bright. It was a big place bathed in blond light. The light shone superficially and amply in order to provoke the stubbornness of those who flowed deeply and methodically; it jumped enthusiastically from the silverware arranged according to size to the rows and rows of customers, from food that was pleasing to the eye to conversation that was pleasing to the ear, from the salmon-coloured ribbons on the table-cloths to the black bow-ties on the waiters, from the pastel-toned paintings to the shrill tones of the seasonal salads, from the overwhelming smell of perfume to the heavy smell of anise. The light shone like a filled sail in this glittering seaside fish restaurant that defied the night.

I was the one who chose this place. This evening B-C was quiet and obedient. We thrust each other forward and looked in through the glass wall that separated the restaurant from the street. For a time it didn’t seem as if anyone noticed us; that is, until an almond-eyed woman eating across from a well-dressed middle-aged man raised her wine glass and made eye contact with B-C. Then, some things began to change on the other side of the glass wall. From where we stood we could see that the mouthful the woman had been chewing daintily somehow wouldn’t go down her throat. She was right to be uneasy. It must have been unpleasant to eat with us watching. We wondered what she would do. A little later, the almond-eyed woman, with a dejected expression, nodded her head forward; and found herself looking at the eye of the dead fish on her plate. Perhaps she too was thinking about what she would do. When she lifted her head again, she’d gone pale, and her eyes were lifeless. First the well-dressed middle-aged man and then the head-waiter became aware of the situation. After telling them to get rid of us, she didn’t take another look; neither at us nor at the fish on her plate. That evening, in that bright restaurant, for reasons I didn’t know, I felt a closeness to the almond-eyed woman who had informed on us.

The head-waiter was inclined to settle the matter quietly, but the well-dressed middle-aged man wanted to kick up a fuss. Thanks to him, the whole restaurant was soon aware of our presence. Before long, two enormous men had come up to us and told us not to press our noses to the glass and watch the restaurant. When we objected, we were quickly sent on our way.

But since we were in disguise that evening, we had to return to the place where we mustn’t be seen.

Unseen, we lay in ambush in a cul-de-sac from which we could watch. Because the diminishing halo of light from the restaurant ended not far away, we remained in darkness. B-C was constantly repeating it. These overgrown men had taken him by his wispy moustache like a dead rat and had sent him flying. Now, his narrow eyes burning with anger, he watched the restaurant intently. With his nose, he watched the smells of food and drink that wafted on the breeze; with his fist he watched what his fingertips hadn’t been able to touch. He watched with his grinding teeth.

‘All right, they’ll do!’ exclaimed B-C, seeing a couple who had left the restaurant and were waiting for their car to be brought. Both husband and wife were wearing a sour apple-green. I ignored him. We continued waiting. Before long, a family wrapped from head to toe in orange emerged from the restaurant. A mother, a father, and two grown-up girls.

B-C and I emerged silently from our hiding place.

‘Knife!’

B-C, excited, extended his knife. The orange coloured family passed down the dark street quickly. I hadn’t known beforehand which one I would choose. They were shaking. Each one was shaking differently. I chose the wildly trembling mother.

The woman didn’t stop begging us to let them go. But when they saw the knife, their fear silenced them. This evening I’m not just hardened and cold-blooded, I’m a practised and experienced thief. I went calmly about my work. I stripped off the orange peels the woman was wearing, without injuring her at all. After I’d taken off her outer orange peels, she stood before us wearing only a light-coloured, dainty lace inner orange peel.

Then I dragged the man into the middle and asked him to look at his wife. Squinting his eyes stupidly he looked first at the orange peels on the ground, and then at me. Finally his eyes caught sight of his wife, though in fact looking and seeing happen at the same time, but because the brain is slower than the eyes it’s necessary to wait a little. If it had been a stranger in front of him everything would have been easier. It’s easier to see strangers than it is to see those we know. But a little while later, the man knew what he saw. He saw his wife’s irredeemable nose, her sagging double chin, her flaccid breasts, her spreading fat, her varicose veins, hair that should have been dyed long ago, the crows-feet between her eyebrows. ‘How the years,’ he murmured, ‘wear a person out. How beautiful she was when she was young. Has it been easy? All these years she’s been sacrificing herself for us.’

The sediments of mercy darkened the night.

‘Dagger!’

B-C had overcome his excitement and brandished the dagger calmly. Meanwhile, the woman had started sobbing pitifully. I’d stripped off the inner peels, without injuring her at all. The man had to become accustomed; he looked at once. He saw that his wife’s lips had shrunk from pursing them at everything, that her mouth was turned down from constantly nagging, that her eyes were wrinkled from regarding everything with malice, that her expression had darkened from seeking other’s faults, that her evil heart had drained her body of life, that even though she said malicious things about the beauty parlours she continued determinedly to spend time and money shaping her body, that as her unhappiness grew she tried to get more control over her children and wouldn’t let them out of her sight for a moment, and secretly went into their rooms to sniff their clothes and read their diaries, and that for years she had been watching him in the same secret ways. And he didn’t like what he saw. With a sour expression, he took a few steps back. At this point the woman had covered her face with her hands, but the man wasn’t looking any more.

It was much easier to strip the man of his orange peels. His rough outer orange peels were an amazing optical illusion. When I cut away the thick outer orange peels, a tiny little body appeared. All of the water in his body had melted away. There was no water left to melt, and his body was getting smaller every day. But because of his outer peels, nothing was apparent from outside. His inner, second layer of peels had become separated thread by thread and had taken on a spongy appearance. What we touched broke off in our hands. Meanwhile, before we could say anything, the woman approached the man and looked at him. Years ago she’d married the man with the certainty that he was the right choice for the future, the father of her two daughters, but now with his outer orange peels gone she looked at her diminishing husband appraisingly. ‘What a shame,’ she whispered to herself. ‘How he’s collapsed. Was it easy? He worked himself to the bone all these years. All for us.’

The sediments of mercy darkened the night.

‘Dagger!’

B-C brandished his dagger in a threatening manner. When the second layer of orange peel was gone, the woman looked again. She looked and saw. She saw that he deferred to anyone stronger than him, or even to anyone of his own strength, that he fills his wallet and his stomach through trickery, that he spends money on pretty boys, his favourite game to play with them is be-the-other-hit-yourself, he dresses the boys in his own clothes while he dresses as a woman, then derives great pleasure from having the boys abuse and humiliate him, then he wants the boys to beat him but constantly cautions them that these beatings must leave no marks, how amazing it is that he’s been playing these secret nocturnal games all these years without them leaving any trace on him, that when the beating starts going too far and the blows become harder he takes off his garters and beats the boy hard enough to make him bleed all over, that whatever dirty business he enters, he emerges smelling like roses, that if anyone were to learn his secrets, he would be compromised, that he had risen to his position by compromising and stepping on others. And she didn’t like what she saw.

B-C was really enjoying himself. He wanted to bring forward the girls who had been watching their mother and father with anxiety, though I was tired and bored. After a short argument he was convinced that we should return to the Hayalifener Apartments. But he insisted that we burn the orange peels before we left. I didn’t say anything. With B-C’s beret in my hand, I withdrew to a dark corner to watch.

B-C was circling the burning orange peels, which gave off a wonderful smell. It was as if his excitement was rolling down a steep hill, gaining speed and strength as it rolled. He was banging on what looked like the lid of a garbage bin, though without a handle, and was making enough noise to wake the dead. He dropped the lid and held the knife in one hand and the dagger in the other, lifting them both into the air. He moaned as if he was wounded, and trembled like an epileptic. I held my breath, and watched him. I’d never seen him like this before. I watched in amazement as the light of the flames played in his hair, and his lips curled, and his burning eyes refused to witness the world. B-C was a witch who had lost not only the recipe for poison but also the recipe for the antidote as the wind ruffled the pages of the book of spells; who turned into a fly and infuriated the ox from around whose neck the world was hanging; who poisoned all of the cisterns of the city with his anger; who cursed the goddess just before the moon turned full but would not allow anyone else to do so.

Each member of the orange-coloured family watched him, their eyes wide as saucers with surprise. Their pupils were dilating moment by moment from their delight in the knowledge that they would soon be set free from the struggle with the darkness of the pain of the moment; and also…and also a barely visible stain…a stain as small and unimportant as a flea that had bitten, a tick that had attached itself, a caterpillar that had chewed, a leech that had sucked, a moth that had eaten, a worm that had emerged from an apple remained in the pupils of each member of the orange-coloured family.

Tonight, pruning his bright yellow hallucinations with the sharp edge of his heart, hopping and jumping on the flames, making the most of being someone else on a night of disguise, B-C extinguished with his own sweat the fire he had lit with his own hands. When he left the orange-coloured family in the cul-de-sac, he was still holding the smoke deep within himself. Later, we walked arm-in-arm through the side streets; we walked calmly, without saying a single word. At one point I looked, and saw that he had filled his pockets with orange peels. ‘Why did you do it?’ I asked.

‘Since we’d disguised ourselves as thieves, we had to steal something from them,’ he answered. ‘How much do you think these orange peels are worth?’

I smelled of oranges. As if everything smelled of oranges. The first thing I had to do when I got back to the Hayalifener Apartments was to throw myself in the bath. This time I’d spent so long in my corset that my body was rebelling. It was an effort to move or to speak. I felt worse from moment to moment. I asked B-C for help as loudly as I could, but he didn’t hear me. He’d long since started working on the computer. From the way he was writing, he had to have found new material for the Dictionary of Gazes.

My body was waiting for me in the bathroom. I stepped in front of the mirror and took off my disguise. The corset was causing me a lot of pain. I unfastened the straps and opened the clasps one by one. The fat that had been confined all night should have started spreading out as soon as I opened the corset, but I didn’t feel any difference. Something strange was going on. I took the corset off completely. There was another corset underneath.

I didn’t remember having put on another corset like this. I hurried to unfasten it. There was yet another corset underneath it. I was struck with terror. Each time I unfastened a corset, there was another one underneath it. And each corset resembled a grapefruit peel. Just like the orange-coloured family, I was stripping off peel after peel. But at least their bodies appeared after two layers of peels; whereas I seemed to be made up only of peels. I wept as I stripped them off in front of the mirror. As I stripped off layer after layer, mounds of grapefruit peels were accumulating around me.

Finally, after stripping off I don’t know how many layers of peels, I was left with something that resembled a fish skeleton. It was so frightful that I didn’t have the courage to look at myself in the mirror. I turned my head. It was then that I realised I was standing in front of a restaurant again. But this wasn’t like the fish restaurant of earlier; nor was it chic. In the wide display window, rows and rows of chickens were turning on spits. A little behind them there were kid goats, and behind these there were lambs, and at the very back huge cows were turning. All of the animals were turning with the same slowness. Suddenly, I saw my usual body among the meat. It was enormous. It was sticky and glutinous. It was as pitiful as vanilla ice-cream melting under the sun. Wearing an apron, and with a fork in its hand, it was testing each of the cooking animals. At one point it turned and winked. ‘Our evening meal,’ it said when it came to a large animal that, from its hump, was apparently a camel. ‘I’m on a diet,’ I said in a low voice. ‘Of course, of course,’ said my body. ‘I forget so quickly. You’re on a diet.’