Читать книгу Wild Woman - Marina Sur Puhlovski - Страница 8

I’d already noticed him, he’d already caught my eye at the first lecture, in the huge lecture hall, the college amphitheatre, with its semicircular rows of benches, and down below, in the middle, a table called a lectern, and behind the lectern a green board to write on. I noticed him when I briefly turned around to see who was sitting behind me, I always turn around, because I can, and he was leaning against the wall by the door, tall, thin, all bones, nice looking but nothing special, I decided, glued to my bench as I turned back to face the lectern. The lecture hadn’t started yet, the students were still settling down in their seats. So I turned around again to get a better view, and he was still there, leaning against the wall by the door, exceedingly fair-skinned, which I didn’t like, his hair thin and lank, like mine, which I didn’t like either, the only thing I did like was that he had dark hair, but standing next to him now was another guy of the same height but much healthier-looking, he was more the athletic type, he didn’t look tired, or melancholic, or tubercular as they used to say before tuberculosis was eradicated, with thick fair hair that had no intention of falling out, but for who knows what reason I rated less attractive than the first one.

They gave no sign of wanting to sit down, like the rest of us, they doggedly stood their ground by the door, as if intending to run off, because I could envisage them opening their mouths, waving their arms, nodding, laughing, as if they knew each other from before (and, as I was later to find out, they did, they went to the same high school, there was a two-year age difference), and I was slightly jealous that they had each other, compared to me, I knew nobody there, everybody was a stranger, and I was one of those people who didn’t know how to bridge the gulf between two bodies with the ease of a smile, I’d accept a smile but wouldn’t give one, and as a result I was the person always sitting on a chair in the corner whom nobody approached.

Admittedly, one student did approach me, all fair and blond and bearded, he introduced himself as Adam, but two girls, smiling ear to ear, immediately dragged him away, as if they owned him, and as there was nothing for it, he shrugged his shoulders and disappeared.

Meanwhile, the double act disappeared as well – I saw that when I turned around again, at the end of the lecture, and I decided that they were rude. That they had some nerve. That they had no respect. They had come to study something wonderful and lofty like literature, not technology, economics, medicine or law – so boring you wanted to die, just thinking of the syllabus was enough to make you go numb, but they had scuttled out like rats caught stealing. I wrote them off right away, but they reappeared on the evening of the same day, and stayed. And so I felt more kindly disposed. Amazingly, they kept coming regularly, in the morning and in the evening, with the other one taking notes, like me; but my guy didn’t, he didn’t even carry a notebook with him, ignoramus, I thought, but I didn’t hold it against him.

I usually went to classes with Flora, my neighbour and childhood friend, who was studying English and History, and we often waited for each other after lectures; we talked about boys, and soon also about the double act, because she had noticed them, too, especially him. I also got to know two or three other girls, one of them, Petra from Kutina, ambushed me on the tram, I think you’re the most interesting person at uni, she said out of the blue, and would I like to hang out with her? Of course, I answered, what else could I say, flattered, but also surprised by her manner, by the way she belittled herself, I’d never do that, I thought to myself.

I met the other one first; Filip: he introduced himself before a lecture, my guy wasn’t there and I was with Petra, who immediately glued herself to him, and I thought, never mind, I’m not interested in him anyway.

***

For a while I vacillated, yes I do want him, no I don’t, some things attracted me, others put me off; his eyes were big and blue, like forget-me-nots, but when you looked into them they weren’t warm, they were cold, like blue ice; you’re going to melt that ice, I said to myself, always stupidly believing in my own power to change things, as I know now but didn’t then; his regular features gave him a beautiful profile, but when you looked at him en face, one side of his face seemed to overshadow the other, like bad over good, or the other way round; his legs were too short for his body, but at least he had no fat on him, I didn’t like them chubby, and then there was that odd walk, tottering, sluggish, he shuffled along like a sixty-year-old, his shoulders stooped, all he needed was a tail like the Pink Panther, I thought, checking him out in the university corridors, in the café, outside, on the way home, in those wonderful days before anything happened.

Inwardly, I was attracted by the very things that put me off, the look that needed softening, the smile that needed coercing, and then the weariness, especially the weariness, with its hint of something tragic, of the predetermined downfall of the novel’s hero, he exuded an unhappiness that needed soothing, a pain that needed easing, a wound that needed healing, it was all written there in his eyes and on his brow, especially on his pale, high brow... Suddenly he became gorgeous.

Outwardly, nothing had happened, except that our eyes would meet, collide, avoid each other, underestimate each other, overestimate each other, working surreptitiously, spinning a web that you’d be caught in, and weren’t counting on. That day I was powerful, prancing around in a new dress, a striking maxi, and offered a choice, which one do you want, this one or that one, but by tomorrow I’d be helpless, everything would be slipping out of my hands, as if the previous day had never happened.

If you don’t want him, I do, Flora says as we walk home together one day, it’s so out of the blue that I’m startled, the kiss of death to my power, but I’m also stung, because, what the hell, somebody is prepared to snatch him away, just waiting for you to take your paws off him so that she can pounce; so he has to be protected, and that from somebody who, when you were kids, became your blood sister as a proof of everlasting friendship; even if you hadn’t wanted him, you do now, you don’t want him snatched away from you, you’re not generous, you’re selfish, and that’s something you’ll have to pay for, starting with valuing him more than he deserves. And that immediately sharpens your senses, you see something you may not have noticed in your previous role as queen, which is that suddenly his mind is elsewhere, he’s in a hurry, ignoring you with a bleak look as he rushes off, he doesn’t even come to the lectures anymore... Disaster, horror; what’s happened, you ask your rival of only yesterday who shrugs her shoulders, no idea, she says; so it’s true, you tremble inwardly, because you were expecting her to try to persuade you otherwise. She finds it odd, too, she says, still cutting you with her knife; all that interest I showed in him and nothing, he never even approached me – she tells me indifferently, not realising that she’s hurting me – nothing except for that something in the corner of his departing eye, I say to myself, but not aloud, because it’s pathetic to grasp at such straws when somebody is ignoring you.

Well, now you’re in a position to grasp at what’s allegedly been caught, which upsets you and keeps you awake, you wait day and night for the moment when you’ll see him again and catch that something in the corner of his departing eye, your stomach knots when you unexpectedly run into him in your neighbourhood, and you immediately think it’s no accident, you are the reason why he’s here, although it’s a busy street, and so an ordinary hello becomes an event of universal magnitude that you take to bed with you and all atremble dissect it down to the smallest detail, looking for hidden messages that work in your favour, what he said, how he looked at you, was he flustered, did he turn around to look at you, and by morning you’ve gone completely crazy, your chemical make-up has changed, you’re incapable of judging, of separating the wheat from the chaff, ready to eat the chaff as if it were wheat, until it poisons you to death. That’s what happens if you fall in love with love, with the possibility of love, with the perfect setting, the kind found in books that men don’t read, like in The Witch of Grič, for instance, whose instalments I still keep in the storage compartment of the sofa, if you fall in love with the unreal, which will never be confirmed by reality, because it can’t be. Because it doesn’t belong to it.

There’s also the other side of things, hidden behind the visible, the other story, which unfolds before your eyes, the other one’s story, which you don’t know, because you know only your own story, you imagine the other’s only in relation to your own, beyond that the other’s is empty and you imagine yourself filling that void, just as I imagined it when I ran into him in my neighbourhood and he was flustered. He even blushed as if he had been caught on a secret assignment, following me, as if we didn’t see each other at uni, where we could have settled everything, but didn’t, as if he hadn’t simply said hello and moved on, but rather had taken advantage of the opportunity.

He’s shy, the nineteen-year-old idiot decided, dancing home to dream of the future, while he rushed off to a small afternoon party at a nearby flat, to his thirty-five-year-old mistress, he later confessed, who had a tail at the end of her rump, a stunted tail; imagine, she’s got a tail several inches long, he said with a mocking laugh, taking demonic pleasure in somebody else’s deformity, I should have left him as soon as he said that, it was so indiscreet, and he loved it.

But I didn’t. Something inside me prickled, something went dark, something shrank and went cold, and then finished up with a sheet thrown over it, like unused furniture that’s covered to protect it from the dust. I started building my room for the unspoken, un-discussed comments I kept to myself, afraid that talking about them would force me to draw conclusions. And then to act accordingly, which was the hardest to do, which was why these comment rooms were created in the first place, so as not to have to act. Until the room filled to bursting point, and life boiled down to one single comment, ending with the word: enough!

At that time, we were still only sending signals, it was all still innocent, I was at home going crazy, my tonsils inflamed and I had to stay in bed, feverish, sweating, aching, taking caramelised sugar for my sore throat, our next encounter at uni ruined, an encounter that would resolve everything, I felt sure, after that encounter in the street, when he had blushed to the roots of his hair. I’ve been dying for two days, feeling more and more miserable, more and more desperate, with only books to keep me company, and then Flora appeared, my blood sister; there’s a party at Ria’s tomorrow night, she says (Ria and she attended the same courses), he’s been invited, too, she says, it’s Ria’s doing, she says, she’s being generous because she’s given him up. And, anyway, she’s interested in somebody else who’s coming, she says... Ah, Ria, that red-headed, scrawny witch with the imposing nose, dragging around some pretty-boy whose eyes can’t get enough of her and she doesn’t know what to do with him because the pretty-boy is dumb, and even his good looks don’t help; plus, she has a strange brother who’s already been in prison, and he isn’t even eighteen yet, I mused; it gives me the chills just to think about the future that’s descending on me; I’m a mess.

That was three o’clock now, and I had to get better by seven, I decided; a bath, do my hair, make-up, I had my work cut out for me, I jumped out of bed with a temperature of thirty-eight, by the evening it dropped a whole degree; I never recovered so quickly in my life as I did that day when I had to worry about my own ruination, I muse now, seeing myself in the dining room all those seven years ago, when it was still a kitchen, before I moved the kitchen to the pantry, and traded in the kitchen cabinet for two rustic-style cupboards – ready to go to the bash. In my brown maxi dress, with its patterned details in the same colour, tailored to flatter me, not the opposite, as it eventually transpired, you’d think the devil had personally stepped into the story...

Everything worked out well, as I had imagined, the dancing, the groping, the gazing into each other’s eyes, time stopped. At eleven in the evening he walked me home, that was my curfew, and on the way it started to snow. Out of the blue, after a warm day, so early, we were surprised by the big wet flakes of snow that melted as soon as they touched the ground, and I looked up at the sky, shielding my eyes with my hand; I didn’t see anything around me anymore, it was quiet, solemn, taking me outside of the world, to a place where everything was possible, where miracles happened. He took off his jacket and put it around my shoulders, because anyway I had a cold and had forgotten my cardigan at Ria’s, I was just in my dress. At the door he kissed me, a wet kiss, I could smell his saliva, and I didn’t mind. I died of happiness.