FICTION
Another Love Story
It was the end of summer and I was sitting on the terrace of one of my favourite bars, under a lime tree, feeling rather good, there was a light breeze, and she came over and kissed my friend Anton, an actor, and sat down at our table. He tapped his cigarette in the ashtray, it flashed, he introduced us, and she extended a long tanned arm. Her name was Ana. She looked good and smelled even better. She was dark, her eyes liquid and shiny, the movements of her hands graceful when she spoke. Had you said then that within a month we would be in love and living together I couldn’t have believed it. I had long before stopped believing in magic.
But, to cut a long story short, that’s exactly what happened.
One bright weekend in September we moved her things over to my apartment overlooking
the park, from where by day you could always hear children’s voices
through the open windows, and from where you could see old people and young
couples on the benches, immune for a moment to the harsh momentum of the city.
Inwardly I breathed a sigh of thankfulness, that life could become so good,
and I knew that it was because of her. I became more patient, gentler, with
other people. I gave more time to my family, and my working days passed more
easily. I even once suggested to my friends, slightly embarrassed, that it
was not necessary to use vulgar language when they referred to women. They
laughed at the difference in me and I laughed along.
In the evenings I would stand at the open windows, the last warm light of the year falling across the park and over the people walking there, and I would think how simple life was. We made it hard for ourselves, by our struggling, our ambition, our stupid vanity, but it was in fact simple. There was nothing ugly in the world but what people did to one another. The warm air carried the sounds from the park, blew through the scented trees, washed my face. I was in love and the world had become pure.
We were good together, everybody said so, and women friends – particularly the girlfriends of my male friends – would tell me they always knew that in the end I would find the one. Everybody likes to see the loner hitched. It tells them everything is right with the world.
The first time I noticed the smell was one Sunday morning when we awoke together. Sunday, the most beautiful morning of all, when there was nothing to do but lie in bed, make love, then shower, then lie in bed again reading the newspapers, books, and watching television until we got hungry. Then we would stroll to the market and buy food, for the fun of buying things and strolling as much as for the need for food. Then we’d come home with bags full of food, and unload them, and start to cook something good. That morning we rolled over to face each other. She gave me a sleepy smile. I smiled too. My hand slid along the long hard line of her thigh, over the rolling curve of her hip, down the soft valley of her waist and finally cupped her uppermost breast, as much as could be taken in one hand, which I then kneaded gently. Then the head went down for a suck of dark nipple and the hand went down to caress the hemispheres of her backside. I wanted it all. I was greedy. This was not a prelude to any immediate sexual activity, there was no rush on that score, there would be a visit to the bathroom first and brushing of teeth and throwing water on the face. This was just by way of saying good morning.
I realised something was not right when I buried my face in her hair. She sensed my unease.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I said. I sniffed her head again, conscious I was behaving rather like a dog. “Just your hair. It smells … different.”
It wasn’t bad, or strong. But it was unusual. It was not her. There was a hint of staleness where her hair met her temple.
“Different? How?”
She was a little worried. People are always sensitive about smells.
“It’s nothing,” I said, then kissed her lips.
We took a shower together and she washed her hair and it was gone. We had coffee and walked through the park then went to the market. It was one of the mildest autumns anyone could remember and the leaves were turning pale gold. They were turning bright yellow and rusty orange and blood red.
The next morning I rushed out to work. When I got back to the apartment that evening it was there when I entered, as soon as I opened the door. She took the flowers I had brought her - tulips – and put them in water. I opened a window. It wasn’t a terrible smell. But it troubled me, and I moved about the rooms like a nervous cat sniffing at things. It was exasperating. It was everywhere and nowhere. It was in the dirty laundry, in the bedclothes. She came up to me and embraced me.
“What’s wrong,” she asked. “What are you thinking about?”
Most of all, it was in her.
“Nothing.”
We made dinner. Peppered steaks fried in butter, flambeed at the end with cognac – we turned out the lights to watch the blue flames – and then a little cream stirred into the frying juices. And a salad. It was excellent. We drank a strong red wine and I forgot my unease.
After several days the smell had not gone away. If anything it had got worse. The weather had turned colder and I had less excuse to leave the windows open. It was not overpowering. I can’t even say for certain that it was unpleasant. But it was there, where it shouldn’t be, and when I had nearly forgotten it she would walk past me and it would hit me harder. It didn’t seem to come from her, exactly, but it was definitely stronger around her, and that made it more confusing. I was withdrawn and uncommunicative that week. It was enough to distract me, to take away my ease. It is like you go to a concert, are listening to beautiful music, but you have an itch on the sole of your foot, or the beginning of a toothache, or you can’t remember if you left something cooking in the oven or a tap running, and the music does not work its spell. Ana repeatedly asked me what was wrong. I would say there was nothing wrong.
We didn’t make love that week, except for once when I
was rather drunk.
It had to be coming from her, I reasoned that Friday evening.
I sat on a bench in the park from where I could see our apartment, delaying the moment when I would have to go home. Leaves were falling around me. Winter was coming and the days were drawing in. She was home and the light was on. It shone redly, warmly, through the almost bare branches of the trees, and I had that strange exiled, nostalgic feeling that I used to have when I was a teenager, when I walked at night through the lonely town, looking in the lighted windows of the houses, enjoying imagining the perfect lives of other people being lived out in those comfortable rooms. I loved her and I knew I was being foolish. Perhaps it was a medical problem and I had to overcome my awkwardness and talk to her about it. This was very difficult for me. For one thing, it would break down a distance between us that I valued. We were still a little bit of a mystery to each other and I did not want that stage in our relationship to end. But my behaviour was making her suffer. I walked home, resolving to speak to her the next day.
The next day, because that evening we were having people around, and with that on my mind I opened the windows and made myself a strong gin and tonic and decided we would have garlic bread with a kick to it.
I was nervous about our friends arriving, embracing and kissing her, that they too would notice. Anton came first. He didn’t comment on the smell, just started talking about a production he was involved in. After a while – Ana was busy in the kitchen – I interrupted him. I leaned over the coffee table:
“Anton, there’s a funny smell. Don’t you get it?”
He thought I was suggesting he had introduced something and looked at the soles of his shoes.
“Not you! Didn’t you notice a strange odour when you walked in?”
Yes, he had smelled the aroma of the peppers roasting in the oven. It had reminded him of the autumn evenings of his childhood. And he was very hungry.
I leaned back in the armchair, confused, and he recommenced talking about the theatre. I found it hard to concentrate on what he was saying.
Next to arrive was Nick, an old friend of Ana’s. He embraced her warmly. He had been drinking already and was in a good mood. Nick is very big, his huge torso is getting round, and every time you see him his facial hair is shaved differently, or else his head is shaved. He leads a successful rap group with aggressive lyrics. People are always very surprised how soft-spoken he is in person.
“Nick,” I said, when I’d got him alone, “don’t you notice something unusual in this apartment? An odd smell that wasn’t here before?”
He didn’t. He praised my garlic bread, though.
And so it went. It was a wonderful evening. When the others had arrived the six of us sat at my big wooden table and my friends devoured my food - I like to give my friends good food – and we were all in good spirits. We drank and laughed and I drank and laughed more than anybody. Ana looked beautiful. I put my hand on hers.
“You know,” I told them, “I kept getting this strange smell in my nostrils all week, and it wouldn't go away. I started to think I was going crazy. And do you know what? Nobody else could smell it!”
Nick had built a big joint and it had gone around, and this
seemed quite funny.
“What kind of a smell?” asked Anton.
I tried to explain. It was something sour, clingy, something gone a bit rotten somewhere. Mouldy blue bread. Damp, like a tramp’s coat. Cheese. Smoked fish. Public transport. A common annoying sort of smell. Like lots of things but at the same time not quite like anything in particular. The harder I tried to describe it the more ridiculous I sounded and the more they laughed.
“Really,” said Ana, “he’s been going around sniffing like a dog all week. He was starting to worry me.”
“It’s gone now,” I said. I was relieved.
“There’s this old woman who lives in my building,” said Anton. “She knocked on the door and said she’s being choked by fumes of toxic waste, that it’s burning her eyes and throat, coming through the ventilation shaft and the plugholes. Says she can’t stand it any more. She said she’s going to get the police. It wasn’t right, she said. It wasn’t a civilised way to behave, please could I desist from dumping toxic waste down my sink.”
“Did she call the police?” Ana asked.
“Don’t think so,” said Anton. “Some kinds of mad people know they are mad somehow, know how far they can go.”
That night I think I laughed myself to sleep.
It did not make it any easier from then on, let me tell you, knowing that I was the only one who could smell it. Yes, it occurred to me that maybe there was something wrong with me, that I was a bit mad, but that didn’t solve my problem, or make it any easier to live with her as the stink got worse. I would do anything to avoid sitting at home with her. I would come home late, already drunk, and drink more in an atmosphere growing heavy with rottenness.
Did I still love her? Of course I loved her, and of course I could have shown it if I had not been so distracted all the time by that odour that seemed to come from her pores and cling to everything. I began to love the cold cleansing wind of the impending winter, how it cut through my clothes, bit me to the bone, stung my skin, how it killed the stale organic stench that clung in the rooms I slept in. And I would sit down on the park bench and think: How can this happen to me? This is ruining everything. Is it possible that there is such a thing as a curse? Then this is it. And as long as I feel this person choking me I can not be happy. She can not be happy. Faith is necessary to maintain the spell of love. Doubt breaks the spell. I have waited and waited and it is not getting easier. Yes, I wanted to save my love. But I was poisoned.
Have you even been sick in your stomach, feverish, waiting to vomit? And do you, in such a state, feel love? All a person does in a moment of suffering is to suffer. There is not room for anything else. And this was my position. All I wanted to do was to be free of misery.
I went to a bar and had a few drinks and went home. It hit me as soon as I came in the door.
It was becoming vile.
I had mentioned the smell several times but she thought I was just trying to change the subject and I was perfectly aware that all I could demonstrate was that I was not right in the head. I couldn’t bear it when she touched me. I felt bad after I pushed her away. But I always had to push her away - it was an almost physical reflex – before I could create the space in which to consider how my actions had made her feel.
And then all those words! Having to explain what could not
be explained. Talking increased my frustration until I could have cried like
a little boy. I had violent fits of temper which frightened her and which
would fill me with guilt the next day when I was out of the house and in a
more rational frame of mind. And then there were my absences, which filled
her with jealousy. Why was I avoiding her? Why would I not speak to her? Why
did I not love her any more?
I drank. Of course, I knew the conventional wisdom that drinking is bad if
you are depressed. But in this case drink was the one thing that made it easier.
The smell disturbed me less, then finally not at all, and sometimes we were
able to be together like before. It was like surrendering, falling back into
our love as it had been. And, at the same time, in a distant numb way, I felt
it was dead and I was already living it through nostalgia.
Nobody knows where love comes from, or what it is, that magic. And nobody knows where it goes.
Thank God for bottles full of medicine, I thought, as we hung together a little longer.
Our sex life was dead. The last flowers I had given her had shrivelled and been thrown away. Where once there was generosity now there was only bitterness. I sat in the park with the shiny naked trees and the winter wind and looked at the window where the light of our home shone. Sometimes I would see her figure, or its shadow, move against the glass. To watch it from a short distance, realising how close it was, was heartbreaking.
I went home, knowing that it was drawing to a close. I poured a straight vodka. It was very cold outside. I drained the glass and then opened the window a crack and leaned there and drank deeply from the icy foreign air.
I heard her behind me. Her footsteps on the parquet.
“I can’t stand it,” she said. “It’s like you hate me. You don’t even touch me.”
I turned around. I felt so sorry for her. For us both. It was easier to feel there was hope when we were further apart. I stayed by the window.
“You don’t even say anything. It’s cruel. It’s cruel what you’re doing.”
I took a big drink.
“You’ve changed,” she continued. She was pacing about. She was not the kind of woman who enjoys emotional scenes. But my behaviour over the past weeks had put her under considerable strain. She paced. There might be tears before it was all over. Perhaps mine.
“Look at you!” she said. “Say something!”
I could not. The cold breeze grazed my cheek. I remained there, watching her.
“This can’t go on,” she said. Her normally graceful movements had become disorganised. When she spoke her face and hands moved so quickly I was unable to focus on her.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t explain.”
She laughed bitterly that this was the best I could do.
“I’m getting out,” she said. “I’m not staying here another night. Don’t try to call me.”
My heart flipped. I had made it happen. I moved toward her. Rottenness was in my nostrils and still I didn’t want to lose her. I hated her. My fists were clenched. I could have hit her if she said the wrong word.
“You bitch! You rotten bitch!”
I pushed past her to the door.
I went to the park and sat for a long time watching the window through the black lacing of the branches, now bare and leafless. I sat there even after the lights went out and she had finally left and I had begun to shiver. Then I went back.
I opened all the windows. Clean air blew through. I was no longer forced to explain to another something I myself did not understand. I walked through the rooms, looked at the familiar objects, the furniture, pictures, books. It was all very concrete and simple. I was alone again, and it was a relief. Back to nothing. Back to zero. And at the same time I felt a dirty trick had been played on me. The icy air was cleansing the stink and already nostalgia and loneliness were setting in. I wanted impossible things. I wanted my life with her before it all turned bad. What I had been given had been taken away and now I was even less than before.
The cold wind blew everything poisonous away. Outside it began to snow. So much motion, and so silent! It was amazing. I began to cry.
