The pause before the jump (part 4)

Some time later, we were sitting at the terrace of a café. The light of day was gradually receding, and the shadows had grown long, and the last slanted rays of sunshine broke against the golden rims of her sunglasses, half blinding me. There was this gentle laziness, this carefree lightness in the way people strolled slowly by. She was sitting across from me, her legs crossed, her face turned towards the street. Her pale hands were wrapped around a cup of tea, and thin wisps of smoke rose from the amber surface fading into the air. Seeing her like that, I sort of drifted off into a daydream.

I saw us, old and weary, still sitting outside a café, but somewhere nicer, somewhere less torn by the silent rage of life. There was a handsome pianist in a corner striking his melancholy chords for the tired tourists, and you watched him with your tarnished blue eyes, humming softly, and I watched you, and the way the sun rays caught in the brilliant white waves of your hair, and the way your stained and twisted fingers tapped gently against the table top, while the children chased after the stupid pigeons, running round in circles and laughing, shouting, their arms stretched out.

“Where are you?” She asked. She’d taken her sunglasses off, and had turned towards me.

“I’m right here.” I said, smiling at her.

“Are you really leaving at the end of the week?”

I nodded, taking out a cigarette.

“Why?”

“I told you why…”

“You’re not going to find anything you know,” she interrupted me, turning her eyes back to the street, “nothing will change, its the same thing everywhere.”

“What?”

“You’re running away, as usual, it’s endearing really, but it’s not going to do you any good.”

The whole thing was starting to irritate me a little; her condescending tone, the ugly smug smile which tugged at the corner of her mouth, and the fact that she wouldn’t even look at me, so I put my cigarette out, and said:

“You know what I think? I think, for the first time in your life, you don’t know what you’re doing, and everybody around you is moving on with their lives, and it terrifies you.”

She turned her eyes towards me then, and I caught a flash of surprise, but she blinked and it was gone. She smiled, this cold patronising smile, which brought rushing back so many sour memories.

“How much do I owe you for the precious insight, Mr Freud?”

“I mean, you just can’t stand the idea that I could be happy without you, can you?

“Listen to yourself!”

“So as usual you try to crawl your way inside my head, convince me that I’m lying to myself, that you’ve got all the answers.”

“You’re delusional, you really are.” There was this shrillness in her voice, that she couldn’t quite contain

“You always were like that, constantly putting me down, making me feel like a fucking idiot.”

I was starting to get her angry now, I really was. She wasn’t even bothering to be patronising anymore.

“Don’t you dare try to blame me for what happened between us, you were the one who left, you ran away, like you always do, I loved you, I loved you so much, and you broke my fucking heart!”

“You didn’t love me, not for a single day! You were never in love with anybody but yourself, with all your ridiculous principles, and all your great truths and all your infinite wisdom about the world! And to be honest you didn’t want me to love you either, what you really wanted was to be worshipped, that’s all that ever mattered to you. Well you know what, I’m done with that, I’m not falling for all your bullshit again.

“Oh listen to yourself! Listen to yourself! you love that don’t you, being the tragic victim of the story, the naive little boy who fell into the evil witch’s trap. Is that what you tell yourself? You’re unbelievable, Grow up, grow the fuck up.”

“I need to grow up? I need to grow up?! You’re the one who can’t get over the fact that your comfortable little childhood is coming to an end, you’re the one going round in circles, and shouting and thrashing out against the world like a sullen child. I mean look at yourself, you’re a fucking embarrassment.”

As soon as I said that, I regretted it, I really did. I looked up at her, and I could see her wide eyes were wet. She got up, stood there looking at me for a second, and before a tear could find the weight to roll down the gentle curve of her reddened cheek, she whispered: “Fuck you”, and began to run.

And I ran after her, I didn’t really have much of a choice. She was careering down the street, hardly paying any attention to where she was going, desperately trying to find a way through the mass of bodies weighing against her. I couldn’t catch up with her, no matter how hard I tried. People were pointing, laughing, some guy even tried to stop me. He grabbed my arm, but I managed to break free. I started shouting her name, like a madman, over and over again, getting more desperate each time, but she wouldn’t stop, she couldn’t even hear me anymore, I think. Suddenly, I broke out of the crowd, and this massive bridge loomed in front of me, like it had come straight out of a dream. She was running towards it, faster than ever, and for an instant I was pretty sure a pair of wings would burst from her back and she would fly off. I was exhausted, I could hardly breath, I was barely moving forward anymore. There was this enormous weight crashing down against me. Already, she was half way across the bridge. So I cried out her name, one last time. And just as she was on the verge of taking flight, she stopped, and turned around. So I started running again, like a fucking crazy person. I tripped and fell and got back up. My elbows were pretty badly grazed but I could hardly feel them, I could hardly feel anything any more, or see anything, except her figure looking down on me. At last, I made it to her. She stood there, staring at me with her wet eyes, not saying a thing. I took a step forward. I could see the tears clinging to her eyelashes. She didn’t move. I leaned in. Her lips were parted softly. I closed my eyes and kissed her, what else could I have done?

We were sitting on a bench, right up close to the river. I had my arm around her waist, and she’d sort of let her head rest on my shoulder. She was looking far out to the other side of the river. We hadn’t said anything in a while, and I could almost fool myself into believing that time had just stopped altogether. But then she spoke.

“Let’s run away,” she said

“What?”

“Let’s both just get a few things together in a suitcase and get out of here.”

She lifted her head up and turned towards me before going on.

“I have some money, we could go to Italy, see Venice, and Florence, and Rome; we could hide out in a little fishing village near Naples, and just be happy together, way the hell away from all this.”

“You would paint the sea and the countryside under the summer sun, and I’d write stupid stories on an old type-writer, and you’d be the only one to read them…”

“We’ll have a lot to say to each other at first, and then, slowly we’ll talk less and less, but it’ll be alright, because we’ll understand each other without saying a word.”

“Let’s run away.” I said.

But suddenly she just looked away, and I could see this cold sarcastic laugh crawling up her throat like a spider. So I took her head in my hands and I looked her straight in the eyes.

“Listen to me.” I said

“Listen to me…”

All of a sudden I was four years old again. It was late. I was on holiday with my parents in a sea side hotel somewhere. I was walking back to our room, alone, just basking in the warmness of the summer night. In front of me there was this swimming pool, this brutal rectangle of electric blueness in the middle of the darkness. I couldn’t take my eyes off it, I really couldn’t. I walked up towards it, without really knowing what I was doing. My parents were somehwere behind me, coming back from the restaurant. I was right on the edge, my naked toes were dancing just above the surface, practically touching the water. I waited for a second, thinking about it. Then I took a step forward. Who knows, I thought, maybe I can walk on water.

****

I arrived at the station a few minutes late, I don’t know why. I looked around and caught sight of her, sitting on a bench on the other side of the street. She was lost in a book, and her mouth was open slightly, and a single lock of hair curled down her cheek like a little stream. She seemed so incredibly at peace, right there in the middle of it all, that I didn’t want to disturb her. So I just watched her for a little while, standing there at the street corner. And slowly, very slowly, I realised that this was it. That there would never be anything more. “If it where now to die,” said Othello. So I stayed there for a moment longer, trying to take it all in, trying not to forget anything about her, and then I walked away. Half way down the street, I think I heard someone call my name. I didn’t turn around.