Читать книгу Open Water - Caleb Azumah Nelson - Страница 9

2

These are winter months. A warm ­winter – the night you met her, you misjudged the distance from the station to the pub and, having walked half an hour wearing only the shirt on your back, arrived ­self-­conscious of the sweat on your ­forehead – but a winter nonetheless. It is the wrong season to have a crush. Meeting someone on a summer’s evening is like giving a dead flame new life. You are more likely to wander outside with this person for a reprieve from whatever sweatbox you are being housed in. You might find yourself accepting the offer of a cigarette, your eyes narrowing as the nicotine tickles your brain and you exhale into the stiff heat of a London night. You might look towards the sky and realize the blue doesn’t quite deepen during these months. In winter, you are content to scoop your ashes away and head home.

You mention the woman to your younger brother, who had been at the party too, building him an image from what you remember of the evening, like weaving together melodic samples to make a new song.

‘But ­wait – I didn’t see her?’

‘She was tall. Kinda tall.’

‘OK.’

‘Wearing all black. Braids under a beret. Real cool.’

‘Yeah, I’m getting nothing.’

‘The bar looks like this.’ You form an ­L-­shape with your arms. ‘I’m standing here,’ you say, indicating the crook of the L.

‘Hold on.’

‘Yes?’ you say, exasperated.

‘Will it help or hinder if I tell you I was steaming that evening and remember nothing, full stop?’

‘You’re useless.’

‘No, I’m just drunk. A lot. So what happens next?’

‘What do you mean?’

You’re both sitting in your living room, nursing cups of tea. The needle on the record player scratches softly at the plastic at the end of the vinyl, the rhythmic bump, bump, bump a meditative pulse.

‘You meet the love of your ­life –’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘ “I was at this party and I felt this, this presence, and when I looked over, there was this girl, no, this woman, who just took my breath away.” ’

‘Go away,’ you say, flopping back onto the sofa.

‘What if you never see her again?’

‘Then I’ll take a vow of celibacy and live in the mountains for the rest of my life. And the next.’

‘Dramatic.’

‘What would you do?’

He shrugs, and stands to flip the record. A firmer scratch, like nail against skin.

‘There’s something else,’ you say.

‘What?’

You gaze at the ceiling. ‘She’s seeing Samuel. He intro’d us.’

‘Huh?’

‘I only found out after we’d spoken. I don’t think they’ve been together long.’

‘Is that a definite thing?’

‘I mean, I think so, yeah. I saw them kissing in the corner of the bar.’

Freddie laughs and raises his hands.

‘Yeah, I’m not judging you, man. Nothing is straightforward. But yeah, you might ­wanna –’ He mimes scissors with his fingers.

How does one shake off desire? To give it a voice is to sow a seed, knowing that somehow, someway, it will grow. It is to admit and submit to something which is on the outer limits of your understanding.

But even if this seed grows, even if the body lives, breathes, flourishes, there is no guarantee of reciprocation. Or that you’ll ever see them again. Hence, the campaign for summer crushes. Even if you leave each other on an unending night, even if you find your paths splitting ways, even if you find yourself falling asleep alone with but the memory of intimacy, it will be a shaft of summer creeping through the gap in your curtains. It will be a tomorrow in which the day will be long and the night equally so. It will be another sweatbox, or a barbecue with little food and more to drink. It will be another stranger grinning at you in the darkness, or looking at you across the garden. Touching your arm as you both laugh too hard at a drunken joke. Breathlessly falling through the door, gripping onto folds of flesh, or silently trying to locate the toilet in a home which isn’t your own. In the winter, more times, you don’t make it out of the house.

Besides, sometimes, to resolve desire, it’s better to let the thing bloom. To feel this thing, to let it catch you unaware, to hold onto the ache. What is better than believing you are heading towards love?