Letter: January 21 - Blue Flowers

My darling,

I ended up returning the movie without watching it. I went by the rental place and returned it, not making a big scene. Why am I telling you this? I don’t know, perhaps to please you, to redeem myself. To redeem myself for some unexpected mistake, something that might happen by accident, those things that are impossible to control. And at the same time for things that had always been planned, the worst crimes, the worst plots. To confess something, not even just to please you; I would do anything to please you. However, even if I’m spending my days thinking about everything I say to you and about the effect of my words, will anything change? Will I in any way be a part of your life, or just the contrary, will we move further apart? Because it’s always possible to be further apart. Could there be some limit, a border to halt the process of distancing? Could there be a maximum distance between us, or is it something that continues to expand, uninterrupted, as time passes? At first, absence is everything that absence means: pain, joy and, who knows, even fatigue, then only a name, an image, then one day not even that, just a suspicion, an empty space.

And once more I wonder what you might be asking yourself, what’s this whole thing for, after all? Maybe you ask this with each letter. Without really understanding the reason for these interrogations and memories and strategies. Why all this going round and round? You sit there, on the sofa, in the armchair, holding this letter and you’re irritated at my lack of concision. So I will be clear. I will answer you, without any circumlocutions this time, without repetitions, simply and without a big scene, which is the way the most extraordinary things really happen, important things: I’m writing for you to read me. Simple as that. For you to read me and turn back to me again, for you to read my words and think that there is something surprisingly beautiful inside me, something you hadn’t seen, something we’d never noticed. And so, to be even clearer—is that possible?—for you to read me and love me. Why not? Someone else reading these letters might love me, don’t you think? Even if loving isn’t as easy as all that—you’re probably thinking, Love isn’t as easy as all that. When you’re no longer in love, after love has appeared and lived and died and turned into something like a plant or any other organic matter, you think, Love isn’t some organic matter; love is something else. It won’t turn into a seed, you say, that’s not all organic matter is, gardening, working the soil, love isn’t a seed to turn into a plant and water and all those silly things that people like to think when they’re happy, this happiness that’s silly in the way all happinesses are, that makes us think it’s possible to recover the unrecoverable. You say all this now, as you read this letter, or maybe you’ve already said it or thought it about the previous letter, but I go on and I argue, insisting again, that there is something surprisingly beautiful inside me.

I was thinking about this yesterday, about love, about this insistence on love, as though love could save us from everything, as though love could save us from hate, from madness and even desire. Whoever came up with that idea? Love can’t even save us from love.

What can be said, then, about sadness, about indifference, and that inevitable moment when love ends? That moment we think will never come. And how are we to know when love ends? Will there be a moment, a dividing line, a revelation, an internal alarm clock that goes off, then right when we wake up, we say, sleepily, Right, it’s over. We get up, we get dressed, take our bag or suitcase and leave. Outside, the morning light of another day, people on the buses going to work, children in uniform, coffee with milk at the bakeries, all so everyday, so normal. How can it all be so normal, while inside an apartment, in a bedroom, in a bed, is love that has just ended.

Or does love start ending right from the beginning, from the first kiss, the first look, the sense that something is being worn down, dissolving away. And however many kisses and gazes, and all the happy, foolish words we can invent, there’s always a lurking something that troubles us. Something that, at the precise moment when it starts, also sets in motion the inevitable process of extinction.

Why all this? All these words about love, that can only be obvious and foolish, it’s true. My answer is that it’s just a way for me to get closer. To get closer, carefully, to what really matters. Why do stories end without ever revealing what happens afterward, what happens after the story ends? Isn’t that where the most important thing is, aren’t we missing something?

At what point might we draw the line that separated us? You could even argue that we were separated from the start. But I’d rather not. I’d rather there be an event, an act, a moment when we got up and said, Right, it’s over. And what if it wasn’t us, that plural that includes us both in a single act, in drawn-out synchronized gestures, and what if it wasn’t us, but only you, who one day woke up, got out of bed and said, as though you’d heard an internal alarm clock only you could hear, the ringing of an alarm clock only you could hear, said, Right, it’s over. This single fact would be the beginning of countless little movements, which I would have no way of following, as I lay there, out of sync, thinking about the previous night and about everything that had happened and the way that you suddenly, without looking at me, without saying a single word, got up and put your clothes on and left. How was it possible that, from one moment to the next, you could wake up, get out of bed and leave. How could it be so simple? I couldn’t understand, and just went on lying there.

I remember that you woke up, or perhaps you’d been awake all night; I was awake all night, hating you deeply, have I told you that? I spent the whole night hating you deeply; it’s so foolish and vulgar, hatred. But that’s how it was, foolish and vulgar, and I hated you and at the same time wanted to hug you tight as though trying to reassure myself, at every moment, that you were still there next to me. In the middle of the night I was hugging you, how is that possible? You were in bed with your back to me—how could I be hugging you, after everything? But I was hugging you, my arm around your chest, a hug that was gentle and firm, because I sensed that there was something getting away from me. It’s always possible to lose what you don’t have, it’s always possible to move further away, the unlimited possibility of loss. I sensed this and much more, because deep down we always sense these things. In the middle of all this I told you I was just lying there, but it’s not true, I was lying there and there was extreme rage and resentment and a desire that you should leave, and, at the same time, the fear of your leaving, of your finally getting up and leaving. The whole night, my arm was around you in your unmoving sleep, as if I didn’t exist. I stayed there, the whole night as if I didn’t exist, my arm cinched tight around your chest in an attempt to prevent that last link from coming apart. I should have sent you away the moment you approached silently, lay down on my bed, as though I weren’t a part of it, lay down on my bed, turned onto your side and fell asleep, saying nothing to me. How could you have slept, just like that, so simply? As if nothing had happened—how can somebody sleep like that? I should have sent you away, from the first moment, but no. For some reason. The whole night spent with your back to me, and me hugging you in that last link of ours. Awake. All night long.

But then the day broke, because every day it breaks, the first rays of sun on the bed and the remains of the night in the bed. You got up in silence, always silence, since the day before, since our trip to the rental place and the night that came after. I should have sent you away, I should have hated you and sent you away. But no. I just lay there, under the sheet, clinging to the sheet the same way I had wrapped around your body not long before, I clung to the sheet with a hug, a kind of salvation, even knowing that it was just a sheet, as unanchored as me, a sheet that can’t even be a plank of wood, or a rope.

You got up in silence, put on your clothes, picked up the backpack that you’d left on the floor and I’d put on the chair. And now I think about these little details, after everything, that day and that night, and after what came later. After everything, I’d seen your backpack open on the floor of the bedroom, and I had closed it and put it on the chair—how is that possible, I think now, I should have thrown it in the trash, should have burned it, something to destroy you, however small, but no. I took such care, an automatic gesture, such care.

But now I’m lost, where was I? Your backpack. Yes, you got up, put on your clothes, picked up your backpack and left. I remember my reaction when I saw you leaving the room. After everything, you simply picked up your things and left, just like that, saying nothing, no goodbyes, no explanations. At the time I thought I would never have such strength, such resentment, such a terrible desire to do you harm, to get to you, make you suffer. And at that moment I might have been capable of anything, anything that hurt, anything excruciating. I might have been capable of the most extraordinary things.

You got up, put on your clothes and left. I clung to the sheet, which I was now dragging across the bed, across the bedroom floor, and I followed you, asking something, but you left in silence and I called to you, following you to the door, the sheet dragging along the floor of the hallway, of the dining room. I was wrapped up in the sheet, like a bride, a sheet dragging along the hallway, through the dining room, like a naked bride and with all the expectation of a bride, begging you to love me, to say something, or even if you didn’t love me to stay, even when you stood at the door, your hand turning the door handle in a movement that seemed to go on forever. And now, as I write to you and think of that image, that last image, your hand turning the door handle and me behind you, I see at once that I’m trying to give all this a more dramatic color than it had in reality, even in slightly poor taste, perhaps, like a bride, honestly, what could be more dramatic and tasteless, but I also think, Isn’t that how goodbyes ought to be? Me behind you, wrapped in the sheet, like a ghostly bride begging something of you, isn’t that how suffering ought to be, pathetic, dramatic, in extremely poor taste? Isn’t that how anything extreme ought to be?

But it was not, as you know. The moment when things happen never takes on the importance it should. Only much later, when time has passed and life has passed and everything has passed. In the moment, it’s the opposite, it’s all so quick, so simple, without making a scene, which is how the most extraordinary things happen.

Then you got up, put on your clothes, picked up your backpack and left. There. Simple. Without looking at me, or addressing a word to me. And I stayed there, lying in bed. Looking at your body and your movements that were now so unreal, so distant, movements that were unknown. I stayed there, unmoving, silent, looking at your body and then at the absence of your body, at the space created that had been occupied by the thing that once was you and the space you occupied, in my room, in my bed. I didn’t say anything, I didn’t cry, didn’t ask for explanations, didn’t beg you not to go. I just stayed there, unmoving, silent, lying on the bed, while you put on your clothes, picked up your backpack and left.

A.