We are on the 13th floor in a block of flats at the “Suhata reka” residential district. A few people have killed themselves from here. The landlady shares this with us, although it is not difficult to guess how depressing this old built during the Socialism block is. On top of everything else we can see its twin opposite us. A few have jumped from it, too. Misfortune loves looking at its reflection. I remember how the first step we took into the flat revealed a view that sobered us up in a second and finally gathered the stubborn like spilled mercury reality. Mouldy brown curtains. Kitchen with broken whitish tiles. Smell of bleach which has failed to disinfect the memories of previous lodgers.
What happens during the next three years? What always happens with love. It either goes bad with the eggs or burns with the toast, but it always has something to do with the kitchen. And for what? To flee from us and from our innate instinct to tame it. Because if you want to keep such love, it will take its revenge on you at any cost. It will make your life bitter with the quinine of the habit and with the sulphur from the spoiled eggs.
ʻDo you remember the heart of petrol you lit on fire for me in that yard? Where did all that disappear?ʼ I asked him one morning while he was shaving before work.
ʻI don’t feel like making hearts. I just want to sleep together at night. Every night.ʼ
ʻBut we used to wander…ʼ I kept insisting.
ʻWe used to have money,ʼ he interrupted me and went out. This new life changed him. And I was left alone in hell to taste this change. We started watching too much TV. Sex itself was no longer enough. Ben wanted a real porno film. And little by little our dreams began to lose their immortality. I used to spend the whole day in the flat cleaning what could not be cleaned. I didn’t mind the smell of cat piss nor the falling plaster. I believed that our relationship would survive even in that misery. I cooked and the smell of food permeated us so deeply that we could no longer feel the smell of our own bodies. We didn’t know each other anymore.
Meanwhile his remarks about me grew bolder: “I can’t love someone whom I see everyday”, “How about a schedule for out dates”, “You are a lousy cook”, “If I really loved you, I would marry you”, “You are not passionate enough”, “I am not sure, maybe I want other women”…
After that we changed few more flats. But everywhere we went I felt like part of that film with Monica Bellucci and Vincent Cassel: Irreversible… The story went backwards and the message it sent was something universally true: Le temps de’truit tout. Time destroys everything. First kiss. First French kiss. First sex. First wild sex. The more things happened to us and the more time passed, the more the pulse of our love weakened under its own ruins. Le temps de’truit tout. We have to come up with a mathematical formula for that.
ʻPlease, read this letter: I want you to become your old self; and what is your answer? That I did not wash your clothes, you are still a child and you are not cut out for this life with me… For God’s sake, we used to sleep on the cold cement and now you are bitching that the sheets are dirty!ʼ
One can’t die from love, it will be forgotten, lisp the wise toothless old women from these lands; they say that men are like male storks, they greet every female that flies nearby with the clattering of their beaks, showing their readiness for raising an offspring with any of them. In fact, it is impossible to tell a love story. You can only keep silent about it. And when you suffer from it, you should be sent to the pharmacy with a prescription. Because it is older than cholera and plague, and it is more disastrous. Whoever has loved in such a way, knows: most probably His breath is the reason for global warming; and perhaps only His saliva can neutralise the petrol in the World Ocean… Well, that is my opinion, on my own with the reanimating memories. Without direction. At the terminal.
