“I never aimed at impossible stars,” she once wrote me. “I
wanted the comfort of knitting colourful socks by the fireplace. I never had that time. I worked for others, and they never knew I
did. I did not have the time to be selfish. Or personal.”
The sun had long set, yet there was plenty of the day left
in this medieval Italian city. I almost
jumped thru the closing doors of a sidewalk pub and asked for two beers. “I am tired of the day,” the man said, “but
if it is for the pretty lady…!”
“He gave the beer for your eyes only,” I said.
“You are being silly.
My eyes now only see and do not attract.”
We watched young students go by on bicycle. A camionetta crammed with seasonal cut-
flowers was selling its day-weary load half price. The sweet smell of wild flowers filled the
sounds of the city with harmony. And the
beer was crisp.
“Have you looked in the mirror one morning and saw your
father?”
Yes I had. Many times
over. In fact, once when I was in Taiwan I was so shocked by the way
I brushed my teeth in the morning that I took a self portrait doing so. In order not to forget I caught, as a still
picture, my father’s facial expression while brushing a pre-molar.
“It is not the picture of my father I see, but rather his mannerisms. Somehow, decades later, things we have seen
our parents do, we do them too. The way
we show surprise, the way we limp when the back aches, the way we spit
watermelon seeds over breakfast. Ah,
even the way we drink our coffee! I was
soo surprised to hear myself sip, retain the elixir between my lips and tip of
the tongue, then swallow and almost feel my insides. “I know exactly where the coffee is now in my
stomach,” my father used to say. Funny,
I can almost tell you about the passage of that warm liquid in my esophagus and
when it reaches my deeper insides. Yes,
I have seen my father in the mirror.
“And you?”
“Well, I have not. I
seem to have not paid attention to the mannerisms of my parents. Or, perhaps it is because they are still both
alive, and becoming like them is a post-mortem thing.”
“So you are uniquely yourself? And since this man has drowned in your eyes,
should I get another round of beer?”
We stayed there for a long while. Often silent for long stretches, watching the
stone buildings turn dark. After three
rounds of beer, the pub owner came to tell me that if he does not close and go
home, his wife will never sleep with him again.
“I am still young,” he said with a pouty mouth, “do not take sex away
from me…!”
We laughed, paid, and left.
... ”When are you going to knit those colourful socks?”
I asked without
looking at her. She was walking by the
old city wall and seemed most interested by the history of it. We stopped every 5 minutes to read the
informational boards about the various segments of the wall.
“In my mind I do often.
In fact, I have miles, and miles of socks knitted with colours you do
not even know! These are the colours of
my days, but mostly of my nights. Nights
are lonesome and long when you spend the days cleaning others’ wounds.”
We had been walking for a while. The cobblestone paved streets can get rough
on unaccustomed feet.
“Let’s have wine.
Let’s have a table-full of antipasti.
And let us smoke a Garibaldi cigar!”
It was not difficult to find a small restaurant with minimal
lighting. The antipasti were just right
for the taste buds to come alive. For
her eyes to get deeper into the shades of hazel and green. Till the wine numbed all taste buds. Till her eyes got deeper into her
dissociation from the antipasti and me.
“You left,” I said.
“I am not sure where your mind is.”
She puffed on the bitter cigar like non-smokers do. Then took a sip of the deep-purple wine and
looked at me. Intensely. As if I was supposed to know why.
“You know what we should do after we finish the next bottle
of wine? We go back to the hotel, and
wake up our lazy friend. He is not
supposed to sleep when in Italy !”
“And we would do that why?” I wondered.
“So we can walk around the city the three of us, all
night. Then, we can have breakfast, we
will kiss upon the cheeks three times, then we go to the airport. And when we get home, we email each other
saying” I wish we had rented a bike and checked every corner of that small
city.”
I took a puff on that bitter cigar. It tasted of an unusual evening and night
when I was in company of a woman who knew what she had missed. I just happened to be there when she was searching
for herself, to see if she had become her parents, to test if men still drown
in her eyes, and on a cold night, tuck her feet under herself on the old sofa
and knit a colourful pair of socks.
… As we got into the hotel elevator, she whispered:
“Let me knock at his door alone. You just hide in the hallway. Let me see how men still react if I knocked
at their hotel room door at midnight!”
January 20, 2014
© Vahé Kazandjian, 2014
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