Letter: January 24 - Blue Flowers

My darling,

I’d promised myself I wouldn’t talk about that day anymore, about the rental place, the movie, the actor so like you, the character. I’d promised. You complain I’m always repeating myself, and with good reason. Why keep going back to the same subjects, to the same things that have been laid bare, pored over so many times, the rental place, the actor, the movie, that day.

You must be wondering, with good reason. And you must be thinking I never keep my promises. But it’s not true. In my defense I can argue that the rental place today is never the same as yesterday’s, that between one and the other, time goes by. Our time, ours, do you understand? The time that gets itself in between the words and all your turns and returns. Between this letter and the first there is a whole unraveling of facts and consequences and memories, between this and the first reading, a whole unfolding, filling up, distorting what I so fervently wanted to say since the beginning, remember? Because, however much I want to repeat myself, again and again, what I have said to you is never what I say to you now.

And if, at that first moment when you sat in your living room, on the sofa, the chair, in an armchair, with the first letter in your hands, if at that moment you felt rage or curiosity or any other feeling, now, the same words, the chair, the armchair, now, even if we try to reproduce every detail, like in the theater, in a play, you forever receiving the first letter, me forever repeating the same words, the result would be different each time, even if it’s once again the old rage or curiosity or some other feeling. Like in the theater. Or in a movie or a book to which you return from time to time like someone returning to a place they do not know. And you’re surprised to find that what is unknown is not the place, the furniture and shadows and colors, all of it so familiar, what’s unknown is you, however hard you try and however often you keep reciting the old words and old verses by heart. However great the effort and the intention and the will, there is always something to surprise and alarm you.

But perhaps you think everything I’m telling you now I’m only saying in order to justify myself, to justify this insistence, this monotony of mine. Perhaps that’s what you think, you think me capable of constructing the most varied plots, the most complex theories, even a reader for these letters, isn’t that it? A character to receive these letters in your place. Someone to read for you and guide you and say to you, Yes, there’s something very beautiful, isn’t there? There’s nothing I could not do just to convince you to, maybe, who knows, go back to the very beginning. All this, then, just to be able to go back now, once again, to the precise moment of beginning. The two of us walking, the rental place, the movie, that actor or character so like you. Your fingers on my arm. Except that the beginning is never the same.

That day, after the rental place, we arrived home in silence, both of us. I put my fingers to my arm, where yours had been earlier, as though protecting myself, grieving for myself. I thought something would happen. I always thought something would happen. Often I would kid myself and a day would go by with no harm done, and then on other days, the most astonishing things would happen.

We arrived home and I opened the front door to the house, my door, my house. You went in, threw the bag of bread onto the table, sat down on the sofa, opened the newspaper and started reading. I just stood there for a few moments, considering saying something, anything, something that would drive us apart, something that would unite us. But there was nothing to say. I hung my bag on the chair and went into the kitchen to make the coffee.

The coffee grinder was the first and only gift you gave me. That’s just how you were when it came to coffee, you were crazy about it. A whole series of minutely detailed rules for preparing it. A particular kind of bean, roasted in some certain way or other, kept in the fridge in a sealed container. You didn’t trust me and you came over yourself to check the sealed container. You showed up one day with that coffee grinder package, really it wasn’t even a present for me, but I wanted it to be and acted as though it was. You showed up saying, I’ve brought you a present, but it wasn’t, I thought, you put the package down on the table and turned on the TV. I didn’t move, just looked at the package, and you were looking for some program or other on the TV. Aren’t you going to open it, you asked as you channel surfed. And because I really wanted it to be a present, I approached the package and opened it.

The paper was ordinary wrapping paper, I remember, then I finally opened it and out came the coffee grinder. It’s imported, you said. It was automatic, I read on the box. “Automatic coffee-grinding machine,” or something like that, in Italian. I thanked you and just sat there, sitting, really wanting it to be a gift. Later you explained to me how it worked, So easy, just press a button, you said, and I agreed, and we set the machine up just below the microwave. Coffee should always be ground at the time you want to make it, you said. But why, I asked, what difference does it make, and my question was the trigger you needed to give me an explanation of all the subtleties between normal coffee powder and the freshly ground kind. But that wasn’t all, there was also the water and the temperature of the water and the pressure and the milk, absolutely no milk under any circumstances, you said, nobody who really knows their coffee would ruin it by adding milk, much less sugar. And to please you, I followed every one of your whims, the cup of perfect bitter coffee on the table. I did so many things just to please you, I think now, just to please you.

I made the coffee, put the just-bought bread on top of the fridge. I wasn’t hungry and you were never hungry; Only the coffee, you’d say. I put the cup down on the little side table next to you as you read your newspaper. I said: Here’s the coffee. Said it as though it was necessary to make an announcement. You said nothing, I stood there, right in front of you, waiting for an answer. Anything. You said nothing.

I sat down far away, at the dining table, stayed there, examining the little scratches in the wood that I hadn’t noticed before. I tried to think about the rental place, to understand what had just happened to us, but I couldn’t do it, my thoughts got themselves all tangled, in the scratches in the wood, in the cup of coffee.

Could it be that I realized, as I ask myself now, could it be that I realized something had changed, do we really realize when things happen, right at the moment when things happen? Or do we maybe only realize later? Hours, days, years later, when we think about these moments, when we feel them, when we recount them. Or are they happening perpetually in another moment? An unreachable moment. Because they are happening now, once again, as I write to you, and once again I feel the same distress, the same fear: you sitting there, just reading. You sitting there now, reading silently. Once again I feel the distress and the sense that something’s happened, something unspeakable. Once again the coffee and the table and the movie and your hands. Will things really never stop happening?

You didn’t say a word that afternoon. I even asked, as a way of reaching a hand out toward you, You want a glass of water? You want more coffee? But you didn’t answer. You went on reading your newspaper, a whole heap of paper that was scattered across the furniture, across the living room, and when that was over and you were finished, you turned on the television, you changed channels every two minutes, then picked up a book, then a magazine, then watched the television again; time refused to pass, as you sat there, motionless.

And as it got dark, I came apart, something was dissolving away in me. At first, sitting at that table, still, as though hypnotized, watching the newspaper, the book, hearing the noise from the television, as though I wasn’t there. Then the thoughts came and went, always the same images: the rental place, the movie, the actor or character who was so like you or wasn’t, could that really be so important, a secret that got in between us, a betrayal, something appalling I’d hidden, was there something, was there something appalling I didn’t know about but which was mine? From one moment to the next, somebody was losing their memory, the memory of a whole series of another person’s treacheries, so different in reality, perhaps an actor, a character, and I think, maybe that’s really what it’s like, one day the movements that aren’t mine, those same movements, the gap between them, something in which I recognize myself, at last I recognize myself, something mean and unpredictable, the greatest betrayals, as the world went on, still you sat there, a newspaper, a book, and still I sat there silently before you, the greatest betrayals.

At a certain point I couldn’t bear it, I asked a question once again, searched for your hand. You didn’t answer, I got to my feet, my mind made up. But my mind made up to do what? I wondered. I got to my feet and went into the bedroom, maybe to force you to apologize to me, to follow me, but you were still, impassive.

In the bedroom your things were scattered about, I picked up your backpack, put it on the chair, or was that afterward? I don’t know anymore. But I just remember your things scattered around, your backpack, your laptop on the table. I’d cleared everything off that table for you, and I would have rearranged the whole house for you, my house, I would have rearranged the whole house for your books, for your clothes, and I would have accepted your obsessions, the coffee, the sheets, the towel, anything you wanted, even myself, I would even have reinvented myself, anything to please you. But you didn’t want that, your need, your distance, that apartment of yours, where you sit now, perhaps with a cup of coffee, this letter in your hands. Why? Maybe because you knew that, in spite of everything, in spite of all the effort, the coffee, the sheets, the towels, in spite of all the effort, there was something that revealed me and betrayed me.

I stayed in the bedroom a few hours, I no longer remember what I did. I tidied up your things, looked out the window, read, I no longer remember. No, that’s a lie, I do remember. I walked around the room, paced from end to end, straightened a picture on the wall, looked at myself in the mirror. I thought myself so obvious, so normal, I, who so desired you to see me, to desire me. At that moment, what I most wanted was for you to desire me. I took off my dress. Naked, in just my underwear, I looked even more beautiful, I thought, my body slim and soft, extremely soft, remember? You used to tell me that, your fingers stroking my back, the palm of your hand on my back.

I approached the mirror, took the black pencil out of the makeup case and circled my eyes, my darkened eyes, bestowing a new depth on them, almond eyes, they could be a gypsy’s eyes, they could be the most exotic eyes, these eyes of mine, with that new depth. But seeing myself in the mirror, I still found myself obvious, predictable, something missing, that appalling something, which could surprise you, and make you smile or suffer, wasn’t that it? Even if it was no more than a detail, a touch, just something abstract.

I went over to the dresser and took from the jewelry box a pearl necklace, a thin necklace, triple-looped, which had belonged to my grandmother and which I’d never worn. Then I examined myself again, just in my underwear, black cotton, and now wearing the pearl necklace that shifted between my breasts and made me somehow ancient and fragile, or even more naked. Why was I doing this, some kind of need to be nostalgic, I thought, perhaps to seduce you, perhaps because I thought something appalling was being revealed. In the mirror, however, I was just a nearly naked woman who was wearing a pearl necklace, my skin soft under my fingers as I very gently stroked my neck, around my breasts, my waist, as though wanting to reassure myself that what I was seeing was me.

But what I was seeing was always something else, something very different, a stranger, somebody much farther away than you are there, sitting on the sofa in your living room. I wonder if you’re still there. The unending newspaper for the whole day. Suddenly I feel concern, doubt, the fear that you’ve gone. I looked out the window, it was beginning to get dark, I was looking at your backpack on the table and your things, to reassure myself that, no, you were still there, that nothing had changed, that nothing could change. But I was still concerned. I opened the closet, took out a black tank top, tight and plain, thin straps that insisted on slipping off my shoulders. I kept the pearl necklace on, put on those high-heeled sandals you liked, the ones that hurt, remember?

Then I went back into the living room. Dressed like that, the underwear, the tank top, the pearl necklace. The noise of the sandals on the wooden floor. You were still there, unmoving. I went to the kitchen, opened the fridge and stood there, the fridge door open, for how long? I took out a bottle of water, filled a glass, put the bottle in the fridge, closed the door. I left the glass of water on the kitchen table, went out to the balcony, took the laundry down off the line, folded it, put it in the clean-clothes basket. I went back into the kitchen, took the glass, threw the water into the sink, dried the glass, put it away in the cupboard. I took another glass, filled it nearly halfway with vodka, neat vodka, drank a little, thought it tasted disgusting, drank half of it, threw the rest into the sink. I went back into the living room. You were still there. The noise of the sandals. My pearl necklace. I took a chair, sat down in front of you. I was a woman with heavily made-up eyes and a pearl necklace that contrasted with the dark fabric of the tank top and panties. My hair loose. The straps of the top slipping off my shoulders, the material barely covering my breasts. My legs on display. You said nothing. It had been hours since you’d said anything, how was that possible? Where did you get that scorn from, that strength? Without once looking at me. I started to cry, finally, I started to cry. You said nothing. You said once that my crying didn’t move you, I remember: Crying doesn’t move me, you said. And I knew you were being serious, and I hated you deeply and thought about something that might move you, something so strong, so alarming, so disconcerting that it would move you, dismantle you, destroy you, something that would make you suffer. But you weren’t suffering. Sitting there, never once looking at me. You never suffered. How was it possible to have that scorn, that strength?

Maybe now, reading this letter in your apartment with a glass of water, a cup of coffee, reading it now, perhaps you see that I’m contradicting myself, once again, I’m always contradicting myself. Maybe you still remember the other letters, only the other day, could it have been yesterday? Only the other day I said that you slept and that you cried and that you suffered, or something in you suffered, something unreachable in you suffered, was that it? And how is it possible for you to have changed so much from one letter to the next? Yes, how was it possible? I’m contradicting myself, you’re right, I’m contradicting myself. But I think, now, perhaps it’s precisely in this contradiction, in this space that opens up between what I claim and what I deny, between your suffering and your cruelty, between my suffering and my cruelty, between my body and yours, in precisely this incoherence—this is the only means of communication. Isn’t this space, this gap, the only place we can possibly meet?

A.