Gross. Ruth looks at the heaving mass of a man next to them shoving an egg roll down his throat, licking brown sauce off his fingers. Were they crazy? Why would they do that?
Rhys looks disappointed in her. He sighs. His glowing face comes closer to hers, as if his proximity would help her understand. They wanted to experience Christ’s suffering. They wanted to repeat his torture on the cross. They abandoned themselves to God through this mortification of the flesh. It’s how they self-annihilated themselves. Angela of Foligno told her confessor—I could not imagine a death vile enough to match my desire. They wanted to find transcendence. They wanted to escape the cages of their bodies and be at one with God.
Oh. Ruth is made uncomfortable by the direct beam of his gaze. There was something fanatical about Rhys.
So, are you really religious? She asks.
His long bony fingers choke his coffee cup. I don’t know if I would call myself religious. I would say I’m spiritual. These women just really fascinate me. Their mystical devotion. Their fervor. After these ecstatic visions they would experience such excruciating pain and longing at God’s departure.
That’s interesting. Ruth says. She doesn’t know why she keeps on saying that. She hates how inarticulate she is being.
Well. Rhys checks his watch fastened to his bony wrist. I guess now I have to experience pain and longing at our departure. I’ve got to get back on the floor. He fixes her again with that gaze as he takes her coffee cup to throw away along with his. Can I see you again?
Yes. Ruth says. Yes, I will, yes I will, yes. There was so much more to say. She hadn’t talked nearly enough about herself.
I must confess that, in allowing this man to return tomorrow, I was giving way to my desire to keep, not an admirer, not a friend, but an eager spectator of my life and person.
— Colette,
The Vagabonde
Perhaps, ever since Ruth had gotten to London, she was looking for a vessel in which to pour out her confessions. Maybe this was what she was searching for, if she was searching for anything at all, an ear in which to whisper: I have experienced loss, just an ear, not even a person attached, just an ear. I have experienced loss. She had not found the right person to possess such information until she met Rhys. Not even Agnes knew Ruth’s mother was dead, because Agnes never asked, and Ruth never told her.
From the first moment they met she sensed he would listen to her.
My mother is dead. She now tells him. They are at the French café. This is the second round of interviews. The waiter is making fluttering eyes at him.
When she says these words out loud a relief comes, a relief in the form of tears which she wipes away hurriedly with her napkin. She stares at her lap for a moment, composing herself. To compose oneself. To put back on a face.
To say it makes it real.
Rhys nods. He understands. His gentle, pained face understands. He doesn’t say anything. He waits for her to speak. She does not have to be a face with him.
I have experienced loss, she now says. But she is now thinking of HIM, not her mother. HE who haunts her, haunts her thoughts.
I long for you. I can’t stand it. I long for you.
Rhys is waiting. His face is beautiful. His face is love. Oh, to be luminous. To be lit from within.
Rhys moves his chair over closer to her. He dries her tears now with his napkin, now splattered with dark mascara. He cleans her face off. He looks into her eyes.
You loved your mother. That is a beautiful thing.
Yes. I loved my mother. Oh how I loved her how I loved her. I didn’t think I possessed such reservoirs of love.
They began to meet up everywhere. They ate lunch together. He walked her home from work. They held hands and kissed but never touched beyond that. She was exhausted after their sessions. Time would pass in this intense state and she would look up and it would be night out. They held hands through dark and scary streets. He protected her from the eyes of others. He was her tall, lanky ghost. When she was with him she felt less afraid. When she was with him she was as innocent as he was. He was her Savior. He was her Prince Myshkin. She was a child. She felt pure and good again.
There was a tenderness to the way he treated her, a carefulness verging on devoutness.
She found herself confessing everything to him, telling him her life story, which, besides the death of her mother, was the usual list of traumas self-inflicted. She slices her wrists and pours out pieces of herself all over the table. She shows him her scars. She trusts him with everything. She tells him of HIM. Of all the HIMs before. Of everything foul and evil she had ever let inside of her. He wants to save this fallen angel. She is Mary Magdalene pressing her perfumed hair onto his feet. He was earnest about her. He was almost feverish.
She had so many questions so many questions.
They are walking amidst crowds in central London. Her arm is grasped around his slender waist as if she is holding on for support.
Past the crush on Carnaby, a maze of umbrellas and shopping bags.
Will I know her afterwards? This is very important to Ruth. They have had this debate several times before. She is always dissatisfied with his answer.
Rhys is patient, gentle. I just don’t think it works like that, Ruth.
Why not? She presses.
I just don’t think it does.
Why? She is a child, she asks this over and over again. Why? Why?
He sighs. It is beginning to rain, an annoying tinkle, like insects slapping against their faces. They ignore it. It’s a bit closed-minded to think that…
What?
That you live this embodied existence afterwards…
Ruth persists. But do you believe in an afterlife?
I’m not sure.
Down Oxford Street, they stop to watch the Hare Krishnas parading slowly up the other end of the street. Ruth stops and claps gleefully. Rhys is amused.
There has to be, doesn’t there? Ruth continues. There has to be? What’s the use of it all then if nothing, nothing happens?
I don’t know, says Rhys.
I want to talk in the afterlife, Ruth says.
I don’t think souls talk. Things are more transcendent.
They pass a hen party waiting to cross Oxford, women wearing veils decorated with toy penises.
Transcendent sounds boring, Ruth pouts.
The crush of bodies on Charing Cross Road. Tickets for Electric Six! a man with a Cockney accent, hands in pocket, strolls by. Past a field of Mohawks like roosters.
Simone Weil says we need to let go of our ego. You must forget I. Says Rhys.
They shake their heads no to the smocked girl standing outside an overpriced pizza place, holding a metal pizza tray on which remnants of a cheesy carcass rested. They pass alleys with their human stink.
They shake their heads, sorry, no, to the skinny homeless girl who sat on a blanket outside Sainsbury’s, clothed in flannel surrounded by a cloud of smoke. With a mournful expression on her sooty face she holds up a sign. Help me. To complete the picture is her three-legged golden retriever, fur spiky from lack of wash, limping near an overflowing trash bin, his bandaged half-limb now blackened.
They are at home, sitting on Ruth’s mattress, facing each other. He her priest, her confessor, her solemn philosopher.
I need I says Ruth. I am all I have.
But sometimes I am so crazed with love
I do not know what I am saying.
— St. Teresa of Avila
He began to stay the night when Agnes wasn’t home, which was often. He would hold her while she wept.
I’m scared of dying.
Sh, sh, it’s okay.
He cradles her, his body long and tender, as they listen to a man being beat up on the street.
She cries and cries as he kisses her all over her face her neck her hair he covers her covers her in kisses. He holds her like a child.
Oh, Ruth. He murmurs into her hair. How you’ve suffered.
That night was the first night Ruth tried to defile Rhys. She pins his pale arms down. She sees herself in his eyes, liquid shadows of self, twisting and turning. She wants him to make love to her. Or is it more that she was resistant to being saved? Maybe she has a desire to ruin him. There was something so virginal and pure about him that she wanted to soil.
Ruth I love you but no he said.
Sometimes, as a cruel consolation prize, he let her put makeup on him, blue eyeshadow highlighting those blue eyes, a bit of red lipstick, and she would laugh and laugh at how pretty he was, her solemn philosopher.
He gave her books to read, the confessions of Angela of Foligno and Teresa of Avila.
On a night when she was not with Rhys and Agnes was home she read some of Teresa of Avila’s confessions out loud to Agnes. That is some fucked up stuff, Agnes said. She was painting her toenails black on the foot of the stairs. Ruth was lying down on Agnes’ bed.