The Flat
You could meet her anywhere. In the park. In a bar. On the train. In the street. In a movie. In you. When something in you cries to erupt.
When you want to shout out loud to the world, so that anyone listening knows you love. You meet her by chance. She does not believe in chance.
She would be a woman like any other. A woman of the big city...
Swallowed and spewed out by the crowd, by history, by this story.
You would meet her at a club. Three in the morning. Only one thing you would see: her movements. She would dance alone. In dance she loses herself. This is the picture of her you would have.
The following noon, you would see her coming down the stairs to the subway. There would be other people. You'd go to her and give her your phone number. She would look at you and not say a word.
She is a woman with an ageless face, not young. She would not be young. Desire would have marked her face early. You would recognize it in the shadows under her eyes. Life leaves its drawing.
You could not tell anyone anything specific about her. Except: she would have shoulder-length hair, dark eyes, skin like marble. She would wear black.
She would walk as if each of her steps had a purpose. The liveliness of her expression would hit you like a knife blade.
You'd need days for a night with her.
You could meet her. Slowly and jauntily, she moves to the rhythm of your desire.
You could have no clear sense. Too much was coming from her. Too much of what you could not identify, but wanted to define.
You would have needed five months or three weeks with her. It would be the same. You would define where, when and how. She would be there.
Although she would be there, you would not gain anything from the experience. She would escape before your eyes. Maybe it would have nothing to do with her. Thus, it would be.
It would be unusual to be with someone who does not divulge something in her presence.
You'd be worrying because you had long been caught up in the demands of nobody wanting anything from you. A person who wants nothing concrete would be foreign to you.
Maybe you could therefore do nothing with her.
Nevertheless, she would be the only face in the crowd.
You would see her on the very day on which your forgetting had begun.
Your gaze would feel like the sea. Vastness over unfathomable depths: an internal pull up to the square.
Blue times black is your noise.
Something in you would rise.
1
When you meet her, what is the use? Closeness would not be there. Closeness is not there.
Only at night. If someone is whispering in your ear, if someone's hand touches your arm, when a desire older than yourself sets upon you like a thief.
What would all this tell you?
Is it about you when someone calls you to pick something up? A drill. To drill yourself out of your head.
Maybe there is something in the round thing.
Despite all your investigations and research, all your imitations – if you ever bother yourself with things of this kind, because you have a lot of things to do, if there were something to do.
Nothing you pretend to do.
Nothing you pretend to think.
Memories like waves overtake you.
What to do?
It came to nothing and nobody.
Nothing is sometimes beneficial. Nothing is safe.
Something stood between you and her, between you and the world. A certain number of words like pasts.
You want to see her again. You do not know why.
It might have been the touch of her hand. Nothing more.
A meeting of this kind you had long awaited. You'd be paralyzed when it took place. Your idea of reality and you as an individual would be a short-lived fiction. On and off in one motion.
You meet at night.
She would sit at the kitchen table. Cool wind flows through the open window. She would just sit there. Just like that, as if she had never intended anything else.
Who is she? Who are you? Who is responsible for her presence?
She says: We ourselves remain strangers.
You say: You're the stranger that I know.
She speaks: The Nameless want us to believe that we are nobody, because of nothing we desire here.
You answer: I feel a growing indifference in me.
She says: It feels like you've long been unaffected.
She keeps her coat on. She rummages in her pocket, a key rattling.
Silently, she stands up, turns around and looks at the window.
Then she leaves the apartment.
You would not stop her.
You know that there is nothing with which you can stop this woman.
Not yet.
2
She looks at you mostly a moment too long. In her eyes, an unknown openness. A look that reads into you.
In it you'll find a stimulus. It makes you irritable.
The distance remains between you and her. Even when you talk to her and she answers you, the silence remains indissoluble.
The self is born and dies alone.
Blankness takes place.
There is a silence that makes the hair on your body stand up.
You are with her in this room. You would not know for how long.
You do not know for how long.
You say: Why are we here? Why are you here?
She says: I need rest from the words.
You want to hear her voice. It does not matter what she says. Sounds should leave her fragile body.
Her eyes penetrate the space.
She looks at you and says: Somewhere along the way we wanted the same thing. Now we are separated owing to our conception of time.
You ask why she stays.
She says: So that the initial expectations cease.
You hear yourself say: What do you want with me?
She says: Be silent.
You stretch out to meet her hand.
She takes it.
3
You wouldn't answer her questions.
Nobody has talked to you in the way she does.
Answers to questions are not the answer to the question.
You have no answers.
You hear the raindrops on the windowpane. The water follows its own rhythm, falls and falls; in the way the water falls, you do not come to a decision.
You’re absent when she directs the word to you.
She would disappear before your eyes. You would not notice anything.
As through a veil, you see her movements. Clear as the structure of her skeleton.
She reveals herself to you as she gives herself, letting you into the sacred temple.
You could not follow her in anything.
No thing.
Her ideas are faster than thoughts, her voice fragile as glass, her appearance ephemeral as moonlight on the lake where you would bathe, in which you bathe.
Her silence is deeper than any silence you have known, her pain deeper than your indifference, because she has let go of what you never will, in any time that precedes you, in any eon, in what will follow.
Her words shine brighter than the day on which you will be awakened.
She would be able to go, because nothing belongs to her, because her desire is stronger than memory; strong as trees that watch longer with their crowns over us than we could endure, so that we might overcome the abyss to reality.
She is present as death in her body, because she has experience in renunciation.
She would be strong because she no longer recognizes the illusions.
She would have heard all the lies, these sweet songs, even the lies that tell us about the past.
Hope is nothing but extravagance.
4
It would be easy with her. Way too easy.
Her absence would not be noticeable to you. When she's gone, there is as good as nothing.
You would not miss her.
You would take her without having taken her.
You lose yourself in her body as you lose yourself in a landscape.
Your will would no longer be a category.
You hold her firmly in your arms.
The flowing shape of her body is so perfect that it tears you inside.
You want to scream.
But your pain is old, too tired to comment.
You'd be close to her. As close as no one before you, you imagine.
You are so close to her and still remain separated from her because another object, another sound, occupies your presence.
It would rain.
It's raining.
For hours. For days.
It pours against the window.
On the black road you distinguish yellow rectangles.
Voices break in. Distorted sounds of a conversation are in your head while you gaze at the body, as if molded from one piece.
A breeze moves the bright curtains.
She lies on the bed and sleeps.
Cool air raises the pores of her skin.
Just as she lies there, she has no past, no future.
You want to possess her.
She raises her eyelids; her body remains motionless.
Slowly she opens her mouth.
She says, as if to herself: Are you on the run?
You say: No. I'm here with you.
The lounging one falls back into the faceless silence ahead of the phrase.
Her strangeness is the stranger in you.
Darkness surrounds you.
The night has left its shadow on your face.
5
If you knew anything about her, it would be what you know about yourself.
But you had to go to the extreme limit.
The lies between her and you, as she lies there in silence, so you can understand it better, would have found no end, because no end can be found.
As with your ancestors, the unspoken would be a threat between you and her.
Because between what is said and the act is an abyss, as wide as the gap between reality and conception.
She would know about the lack of reality, the crack in realism, the weakness in people, the state that results from the unheard, a gap between what is and could be, and can never be, because it is the mind that speaks.
You hear that the otherwise busy street is quiet: cars passing by by chance.
You would hear steps, their echo penetrating the darkness.
People traverse the night.
Some live like the weather, inferior plants; you'd think they grow in the shade of their history.
Memories nest in the body and form a covering that separates them from the world.
People will not get rid of what they once identified; experiences are tattooed into the skin.
Unfulfilled desires, which were once the future, are lurking in corners.
Your days would intertwine.
Hours overlap.
Life does not find a way out.
There would be no reason why you are with her in this room.
It does not matter that you speak with her, look at her, lie by her side.
That is why it could take place.
6
Some day you would ask yourself who she is and where she comes from; this woman who needs nothing and nobody.
And what about you?
Would you want to be with someone who does not need anything?
What would you say?
No matter how much knowledge you collect, you would not know.
Only one thing you understand: she is with you.
You sit pondering the reason why she is lying there.
But you fall back into your silent shadow with your thoughts, your will, and your doubts.
In you, two are acting.
Again you hear her voice.
There is no speech.
For you it is as if she sings.
You do not know what she's talking about; you are only aware of her presence.
Probably you listen to her for this reason.
She says: What you do want, I have let go. A you will be a distant continent. There was a way to someone no one goes anymore.
You ask: What are you looking for?
She replies: Searching gets you addicted.
She gets up and crosses the room.
This woman continues talking: What we want is not what we desire.
As she walks through the room, she makes you think of an animal.
You cannot think of what animal it could be.
The floor does not exist for her.
She floats.
The movements of her body do not let go of you.
A familiar lust rises in you, saturating the depths of your innards.
You go up to her, take her by the shoulders and lead her around the room.
She lets you go on.
You instruct her to stand in front of the mirror.
You stretch her head back.
She lets you do it.
You see the main artery in her neck, her shoulders, and her eyes half closed.
Her mouth is open.
She might smile.
You see the body compounding with its own image.
The body's shapes stick to the glass.
You look at yourself in the mirror.
Her gaze crosses yours.
You see your face distorting.
Between you and the mirror glass is an immeasurable heat.
You cling to the flesh, there where you can grasp her well.
She would not move.
You are stunned by this calmness forming a curve.
Breaths obscure the mirror at the level of the head.
For that picture alone you would not let go of her.
Again and again, you do it until a sound leaves you.
You cry into the night.
You're alone.
You are with her.
7
She lights the candles.
The shadows of the objects dance with her.
Her shadow is dancing with you.
A phone rings.
She goes to the sofa, takes her coat, and takes the phone out of the coat pocket.
Words in the current of the unspeakable...
She would know herself. She knows herself.
She would have spent the nights awake, which is necessary to do so.
You recognize that in her voice.
The night has its own truth, its very own lucidity, as it disintegrates in the face of daylight.
Nothing is true; all is a picture puzzle.
These pictures you show others.
Nothing has been, because there is no time.
Just as your actions don't match your words.
An abyss opens up in which she seems to be.
She is in this abyss because she has her truth.
The truth of her sex, which you ignore, that you do ignore.
Time means nothing to her because she knows the time that does not pass.
Time stands still; only the skin ages.
Each is limited by the boundary of his skin.
The skin envelops the being.
She envelops you completely.
Her body would breathe calmly.
She lies awake.
You feel her breath, which would become your rhythm.
You would picture her as an animal on the prowl.
She asks: What do you see?
You say: A fire.
She asks: What do you hear?
You say: A song.
She continues: What do you feel?
You say: You in this moment.
She says, but not to you: There is always someone who knows better.
8
If she goes, she quietly closes the door, as when entering.
Not a sound.
Not a word in greeting, not a goodbye.
She would just be there.
Outside the door, she would stop.
You would hear her.
The key turns in the lock.
She enters and slowly puts on her coat and shoes.
You are stunned that she comes back.
The curtains would be half closed.
The scent of smoke and perfume lies in the air.
You stand there and observe her.
You would take a picture of her.
You had photographed her.
These pictures of her you keep.
She says: I belong to your night. You have defined it that way.
You say: What are you still doing here?
She answers: Nothing. All is.
The more I gave, the more the entire world gave me in return.
There is no logic, but a natural law to which everything is subject, to which I am subject, as you are.
Then you know nothing to say.
You've already lost the point.
She sits down in the chair you offer her.
She says to you: Do what you want with me.
Your gaze meets hers in the mirror.
This projection of you and her unsettles you.
It touches you when she has that look, directed only at you.
9
You watch her.
The more you watch her, the more intense your gaze gets.
A tempest breaks your thoughts.
Noises in your head, as if it were the breaking of waves.
A melody expands into you.
Someone sings a song.
You remain with her in this moment and fall asleep beside her.
Your fatigue wouldn't make her afraid.
You repose together until a dream tears you apart into awakening.
Tears are running down your cheeks.
You would weep silently in the middle of the day.
You look next to you.
She is there.
Her feet move under the covers.
These movements calm you down.
Suddenly you feel it.
It is there.
It is noticeable.
She is alive.
She opens her eyes and says: I dream you, you dream me.
When will we wake up? you ask.
She replies: Do you want to be free?
You say: You are intangible.
She says: I want to rest. Very shortly.
You ask: Did it cost you quite an effort to come here?
She replies that it doesn't matter.
She asks you: What do you think of me?
You say: There is no expression of what I see in you. My silence makes you beautiful.
She says: Don't you see that it started long before us?
You say: There is a blind spot shifting between objects.
She answers: We are two singing solitudes united in one cry.
She gets up and goes to the door.
It is a dance when she goes.
She dances with the world.
10
You would lie next to her.
You lie next to her and warm yourself on her body that you now know, whose shape you experience.
Its shape is flowing like time.
She exudes a scent of roses and wood.
It would make you not forget the ephemerality of being.
Still you do not know who she is, where she comes from, what she does, what her name is.
She says: Our inner being is refilled. It asks nothing, except to be.
Who are you, if you subtract what was told to you about yourself?
What remains?
Do you remember?
You say your name.
She replies: This is not you.
She asks you: Were you ever struck by a stranger's look while crossing a bridge?
Suddenly a different life takes you away.
You say no.
You, as a system of memories, lose yourself in her words.
11 | Epilogue
Late afternoon.
You breathe deeply.
You want to breathe in the scent, breathe in her perfume.
You walk through the apartment.
You stand in the bigger room.
The mirror is adjusted.
Your mirror image passes by you.
It flashed through you.
It is not a thought.
A bright rectangle is directed at the wall.
You just stand there.
You hold a key in your hand.
You're standing as if you are at the end of a road.
As in a hallway with no windows.
No room opens.
But you realize a long, dark impression in front of you.
Copyright
© Haverland, 2014