So in the end it turned out to be all romantic nonsense, for it was you and you alone, you so utterly and completely alone who lay spl open like a fish on the table while I, not entirely alone because not split open, went about my daily business blissfully unaware. And although, had I known, I would certainly and beyond question have flung myself at the feet of the angry gods, sobbing and pleading like some latter-day Alcestis - Take me, take me, take me but let him live! in fact I did nothing of the kind, being all the time unaware, blissfully (perhaps) unaware, wretchedly and unforgivably unaware as I went about my daily business. So in the end your silence returned to itself, your isolation on the table was complete, while they tore out your heart and made you a new one. I have still to manage with the old, damaged heart, the one you twisted and broke. And so although we agreed we are forever and irrevocably one heart, we must acknowledge it now to be nothing but romantic nonsense. Nonetheless, the heart you have now is still mine and I have the wound and I have the scar to prove it.

 

After you nearly died I began to invent ways to make you live. Since there is only one heart between us, I thought, if only I can make mine small and weak then his will grow strong. Stop eating stop sleeping stop praying stop everything that might nourish or console me. Instead I embarked on a programme of active disintegration. I lay down quietly in the dark and concentrated, thinking about the heart inside my chest, feeling it beat almost imperceptibly, a tiny flutter in the dark. I imagined these tiny flutters travelling across the world to find you and lodge themselves inside your wounded chest, where they would give you the strength to live forever.

 

 

BROKEN

 

It’s my fault, I did that. Because you broke into my fortress of invulnerable pain, battered down walls, ravaged the Princess  - I will break you back, I said. I wanted you there, at my feet, sobbing - Take me back, take me back, take me…  Be careful what you ask for. God is listening. God is just. God is not necessarily always kind. Look now at the broken man, the little broken man tottering about on his little broken legs. I remember you slim as a boy, graceful with a negligent, unerring grace. The time you dipped your naked foot into the lake and stirred pure liquid sunshine.  The downy golden hairs all along your arms. The crisp white shirt rolled to the elbows just so – everybody else’s shirt might wilt but never yours. How you ran a fine brown hand through your curls, looked up at me and laughed, ripples of light in those great grey eyes of yours. Broken, smashed to smithereens.

 

 

LA VENUS DES NEIGES

 

When he has drunk enough so he is no longer afraid he will buy a ticket and go into the dark.  There he will sit and touch himself alone with all the others sitting there in the dark around him.  If there is one among the flickering imagos at all like her, one whose hair is dark and long down her back, it is a simple matter to substitute her angel's face for whatever blurry mask the imago wears.  The memory of her rose-white skin, the silk of her hair, the orchideous  odours of her perfumed flesh transmute the paper-thin imago into the reality of the goddess made flesh - when he has drunk enough.  He will sit in the dark and touch himself and weep - copious bright tears that blur further the blurred flickering imago, while all around him strangers breathe and cry in stifled agonies of fulfilment.  He feels her voice trickle honey in his ears, sees the three drops of sweat between her breasts break and run like rivers under the snowy mountains.  There was always too much light in the room from the many windows the mirrors the sky - he could see the tiny fissures in her pink lips, the beads of cut bristles in the moist grottoes under her arms, her soul, like a piece of smoky golden lace rippling just under the snowy skin, his own shadow falling across her face.  There was always too much light and perhaps ultimately it was this that killed her, for snow will melt in the sun after all.  Now, in the dark, weeping, when he finds release it is not the remembered sweetness but the terror of infinite loss that swells and bursts inside him - a poison bubble that bursts and spreads the sweet corpse-odour up into his steaming fuddled weeping head.  The tireless imagos now nauseate him no matter how much he has drunk - he pushes his way out past the others breathing there in the dark, he staggers out into the light which, steaming on the plate-glass and mirrors, reveals to him his own face, sweat-drenched but he has no handkerchief.

*

 

TONIGHT I AM INGRID BERGMAN

 

Bend over, he says, holding the flashlight close so it burns my skin.  But tonight I don’t mind, because tonight I am Ingrid Bergman in a black lace cocktail dress with a skirt that eclipses the moon and the stars, with slow eyes that glow a helmet of golden hair a silver laugh and a coat of pure one hundred percent illegal ocelot.  Notice my Swedish accent.  We will always have Paris.  Tonight I am Audrey Hepburn just look at my beautiful bones all draped in skinny black my cigarette holder between my slightly off-colour teeth (wartime hardships I suffered as a child) my feet childishly awkward in stiletto heels.  I told you not to touch that he says, smacking me.  Touch it, he says.  Touch it again.  But I don’t care because tonight I am Marilyn Monroe and everybody wants to touch me, everybody wants a piece of me, even the President of the United States until I can’t take it anymore so I tell everyone I’m dead and run off to the Nevada desert where I live forever along with Elvis, John Lennon, Jesus, Mozart and anybody else you care to name.

 

 *

 

 

I was walking slowly along the banks of the Seine, it was an afternoon in August, Paris was empty, hot, reeking and unbearably sad.  I had intended to browse the bouquins along the quais, but all the booksellers were away in the ancestral countryside, their stalls shut up like glistening green cocoons, dripping with jungle moisture.  I took the stairs down to the river and crouched at the edge, watching the garbage bobbing gently on the green water.  A red and yellow crisp packet, a blue cigarette box, a translucent plastic bottle, a doll with a grimy face.  Something crawled out of the water and wrapped itself about my ankle, pulling me with great force towards the river.  I felt a sharp, stinging pain up my leg - screaming, I floundered for  a handhold, grasped at an old iron mooring ring set into the pavement.  The thing let go and slid back into the water.  I staggered back,  collapsing on a bench under a little, dusty lime tree.  The little tree looked down at me, unperturbed.

 

 

 

SHOPPING

 

I was sitting at the kitchen table, it was morning, the light was pale and fine, he was messing about, making something nice for me to eat.  'I want you to come with me to buy a table,' he said.  'A new table for the dining room, a nice big table.'  Yes, I thought, this is great, let's go shopping together - and I'll take him to that new shop with the pretty dresses in the Schönhauser Allée and I bet he'll buy me a pretty dress.  And he'll be bored because men hate shopping, but he'll certainly want to buy me a dress.  And I smiled at him and said, 'Yes, but keep this table for when we have a baby.  It's good to have a table in the kitchen when you have a kid - then he can sit at the table while you're cooking and you can keep an eye on him while he eats or fools around or whatever.'  And he came right up close to me, gingerly he took hold of my hair and said, 'When you have a baby, I'll brush your hair for you.  Isn't that right?  Pregnant women have trouble brushing their hair?'  'I never had any trouble brushing my hair,' I said.  'But I'll let you brush my hair if you want to, my darling.'  And he moved away from me across the kitchen and stood very still with his back to me, loving me very hard with his back and the nape of his neck.

 

*

IN LOVE WITH THE LOOK

 

For my birthday my father took me to FAO Schwarz to buy a doll. There were all sorts of dolls - big and little, Eskimo and Chinese, baby dolls and lady dolls and bride dolls in fancy white, and this one - a boy doll in full, old-fashioned evening dress, complete with top hat and silk-lined opera cape. I picked him up, he was damp to the touch.’ But he's all wet!' I said, laughing.’ He was damaged .in the flood,' said the salesgirl.’ Well, he may be damaged, but I'll take him anyway,' I said, thus beginning a lifetime relationship with men in evening dress.

 

 

 

This face is handsome but weak, especially the mouth, something indefinable in the slightly too-broad space above the upper lip, and the smile which is often conciliatory lost childish confused and the way the eyes slide away from you. It’s a delicate, a striking face, the face of a boy who never grew up but is already growing old. It is, perhaps, a pathetic or a moving face, a tragic countenance. It is sometimes ambiguous, womanish, soft, and sometimes hard and almost ugly, the face of a peasant. Or refined, the face of a prince. Among the billions of human faces each different each in its own way beautiful this face alone has the power to make me suffer.

 

 

STUPID

 

I kissed the cold smooth glass of the television screen - I know it's stupid, I don't care, I want to be stupid and I am stupid, I will be just as stupid as I like. I am determined to reach the absolute outside limits of possible stupidity. Nobody can see me, after all, nobody knows how stupid I am. But he knows, because I tell him.’ Last night I kissed your face, your sweet face, your dark secret infant face...'I am stupid, I am shameless, I am utterly mad, I am grandiose, I am beyond everything at last at last at last...

 

*

 

 

 

He took me in his arms and began kissing me, pressing his long, hard body up against me as if he were trying to merge his flesh with mine, his face a little stubbly, and the stubble scratched my cheeks while he kissed me deeper and deeper, so deep I thought – I am falling, falling off a cliff and I’ll never hit the ground. With his hands he caressed me, my back, my arms, my hair, while my hands wandered over him, the back of his head, grasping his thick, spiky albino hair, feeling the tense muscles at the nape of his neck, the strong flat surface of his back, his hard little ass while he kissed me and kissed me. Later he pointed a camera between my legs and took a photograph.’ For your collection?’ I said, and this made him very angry.’ You don’t understand - there’s no collection - I need this, need to have it with me all the time.’ We got on his motorbike and rode very fast across the Brooklyn Bridge into the dark.

 

 

 

Sometimes when I’ve had an argument with my husband I go on-line and look up my old lovers. I gaze at their photographs and read a few words of their biographies, I remind myself of their various advantages. This one was a great kisser, could make a girl’s head spin in three seconds flat, that one had a line in unusual, darkly romantic compliments. I try to imagine what my life would be like if I were with one of these old lovers still. And I have to admit that among these crazy and difficult albeit nonetheless attractive, indeed only the more attractive for all that, men I have known, my husband is the least objectionable. Which is only one of the reasons why we’re still married.

 

 

 

Please Daddy don't.  Please Daddy don't Daddy please Daddy.  I'm sorry Daddy please Daddy don't Daddy.  I won't do it again Daddy. Please Daddy don't Daddy please please Daddy don't Daddy.  He always hit me anyway.

 

*

MISTER MOON

Have you ever tried to read the face of the moon? It shifts and changes, you cannot make it out. After a while you're not even sure there's a face in it at all. Riding up the FDR Drive on winter nights with my grandfather in his car, I was amazed how the moon always followed us all the way home. Floating over the quiet landscape of glittering skyscrapers, gliding along the black ribbon of the river.’ Hello, Mister Moon!' said my grandfather.’ Hello, Mister Moon!' I cried, and waved at the bright face, watching me from the middle of the sky, watching from the other side of the cold glass, following me all the way home.

 

 

 

Walking once with my son on the Anzengruberstraße, we had been out shopping, we were carrying rolls, cake, fruit, I said, 'I don't understand how a man can be frightened of a woman, because, after all, men are bigger and stronger than women. 'And my son, who was then seventeen and already much bigger and stronger than I am, said, 'Not when you're a little boy they're not. 'When he was little I used to hold him on my lap and read to him, and smell his milk-sweet hair, and sing to him love songs and lullabies, and watch the light in his eyes while I gave him kisses. Of course we don't do those things anymore. I still love him though. He's not frightened of me at all, I don't think.

 

*

 

In his flat in East Berlin the furniture was all of dark blue leather, the sun came in through stained glass and made red and yellow diamonds on the polished wooden floor. There were books that no one had ever read, and indeterminate glass objects, and shiny black machines for listening and watching. 'They ought to make a machine for love,' I said. ‘A machine that would love you, and always do whatever you want it to.’ ‘What would it look like?' he said. Like you, it would look like you.

 

 

 

It was just a few days after Christmas and I was alone in Istanbul. The city was freezing cold, wrapped in a soft blue haze compounded of auto exhaust, spent fuel, the dense black smoke that spirals from the ancient ferries crossing the Bosphorus, and the small bonfires burning in the streets. Men stood huddled around these fires, mostly young men, though a few were older, and some of them wore red Santa hats. At night I lay in bed and listened to the melancholy call of the ships sounding their horns as they passed through the Golden Horn. Early in the morning, and at twilight, these mingle their voices with the long, drawn-out, heartrending cries of the muezzin. If you did not know these were calls to prayer you would surely take them for the wails of some abandoned lover.

 

*

 

SACRE CŒUR

One night in July, when it wasn’t too hot, I walked up the hill to the little park that’s tucked away behind Sacré Cœur and sat for an hour in the twilight, reading nonsense in le Monde, the odours of soot and lavender, and the sound of children’s voices, high and sweet. A very drunken young boy came up to me and asked if he might ask me ‘une question insolite’. Go ahead, says I. ‘Est-ce que tu aimes la vie?’ he said. I stopped to reflect for just a little moment and said, ‘En effet, oui!’ ‘Moi aussi,’ he said, and we both smiled.

 

*

 

 

I had been in Paris for about three weeks. I was in a copy shop on the rue St. Antoine where I’d gone to copy a picture I’d found in le Figaro of a hideous, elongated angel with the wings of a monarch butterfly. I had to wait a long time for a machine, I stood there, waiting, waiting... and suddenly there comes over me the old familiar feeling – of being watched. And I turn around, and there you are, sad ghost, watching me through the plate glass window. In your sun glasses. In the rain.

 

*

 

 

Two blind men, both with white canes, were making their way along the street. One stood behind the other, his hand on the first man’s shoulder. The man in front tapped the pavement with his cane, sweeping it from side to side as if scything imaginary grass. The second man held his cane loosely, barely grazing the earth. Their progress appeared to me dangerously awry. I’m unable to say whether they eventually went into the ditch, or not.

 

 

 

It was the hour when the street lights have just been turned on, and the fountain in the centre of the garden had sunk to its lowest ebb. A small boy was crouched over the quiet pool of water. Lit from below by the pale green underwater light, he appeared a fairy child at play in a magic forest. The spotlights set into the rim of the fountain glowed like so many enchanted water lilies. For a moment under that great, gathering sky and flanked by the tossing heads of the enormous oak trees, it was the perfect curtain up. But what the play?

 

 

 

Two young girls of about fifteen or sixteen were walking just ahead of me, hot and sticky on the Underground, their arms around one another like lovers, and close behind them their pimp, a barely middle-aged man, tall, fat and gingery in a cloth cap and flash waistcoat walking beside them with an almost paternal regard. The girls were nearly naked, dressed in skimpy mini-dresses, their thin legs and arms bare. They both had the same long, wildly curling masses of unkempt hair, like a pair of pre-Raphaelite maidens, one girl little and black-haired, the other taller and blonde, they were giggling and holding one another up as they stumbled along on very high heels. Their faces, not very clean, and had a sly, feral look to them. The three of them turned back into one of the tunnels, past the ‘No Entry’ sign, in search of God knows what. Their drunken laughter, so young, so almost innocent, echoed in the tunnel behind them.

 

 *

 *

SUMMER IN THE CITY

I’m a great connoisseur of city summers. Today was almost hot, certainly hot for London at over 80 F – with a thick, pearly mist that dimmed the top of the BT tower to dreamlike inconsistency, a mist heavy laden with flower scents and choked with exhaust gases. People become very strange in this sort of weather. Inhibitions seem to fall away, aggressions surface, strangers stare at one another menacingly, or shout things, or laugh inexplicably. In New York they’d probably open a fire hydrant and cool off but here they don’t seem to have any fire hydrants. Which makes me wonder – where do they get the water for putting out the fires?