Authors: Charlotte Stein
‘All right,’ he says, just like that. No amusement, no ruefulness. Just an acceptance of my foibles, and a deep patience with my needs. He doesn’t want to rush me or push me, and is quite content to stay quiet and wait for whatever it is I want to say.
In fact he’s been that way all along.
He just
is
that way, and I love him for it. I love him so much that I can feel tears sparking behind my eyes. And it’s silly, it is, but I understand why it’s happening. It’s like when I was a kid, and won a prize for the best-written essay out of thousands of entries. And rather than accept it and be happy with it, I wrote a letter to the board to make sure they had it right. I couldn’t believe that it was me.
I was so sure it couldn’t be.
I’m
always
so sure that it couldn’t be.
‘Come here, love,’ he says again, and this time I go. I stumble to him and curl around his legs – mainly so he can’t see my face, but also because it feels good. It feels so damned good to be with him, no matter what my insecurities tell me. I
hate
my insecurities for telling me these things. I hate them for multiplying like bacteria, growing dark spots I don’t want to know about and illnesses I’d rather not face.
‘What is it?’ he asks, and as he does so he strokes my hair back over and over, and runs a hand down over my side, and generally makes me want to say more than anything in the world. He’ll understand, I think.
But I still can’t quite do it.
‘I don’t know.’
‘You do know.’
‘You’re right, I do. I just don’t know how to say.’
‘Start with the words. They’re these things you use to express yourself.’
‘Couldn’t I just make a series of complicated hand gestures?’
‘I think you’ve already done that. I couldn’t quite get a read.’
‘You – supreme overlord of my every thought – couldn’t get a read?’
‘It’s easier to guess when it’s something as simple as sex,’ he says, then pauses just long enough for me to notice. ‘It’s harder when emotions are involved.’
Now it’s my turn to pause, but probably for different reasons. He just wanted a moment to catch his breath or organise his thoughts, most likely, whereas I need the extra seconds to gather my courage.
‘And are they involved, with us?’
‘What do you think?’
‘I think I’m much more nervous about being involved than I thought I would be.’
‘That’s not such a strange thing.’
‘It isn’t?’
‘Of course not. How could it be? You began all of this with the expectation that it would just be sex, and nothing more.’
‘Well … maybe,’ I say, but I really mean yes. Yes, that’s exactly what I thought would happen. I even went so far as to imagine him having some kind of emotional meltdown, before backing off just as things got too heated.
Only somehow that seems to be me.
I’m the one having the emotional meltdown.
I’m the one who’s backing off.
‘And you believed that I would only ever require that from you, and this belief kept you safe,’ he continues, so casual and yet so sharp at the same time. The sentiment practically stings as it sinks in.
‘I suppose that could be true.’
‘And now suddenly things are different, and you’re no longer sure how to behave.’
‘You don’t know that. How can you know that?’ I ask, half-laughing – though even as I’m making this little non-sound I understand what’s going to happen. I can feel it in the falsity of my own amusement, and in his slight hesitation.
With Janos, the silences say as much as the words.
However, the words make a particularly good show, on this occasion.
‘Because I feel many of those same things myself,’ he says, and this strange prickling sensation runs up the back of my neck. We’re not different at all, my mind whispers, and in this sudden quiet I could almost believe it. It steals over me like a comforting blanket, soft and warm – and all the while he’s stroking and stroking my hair.
It would be so easy not to tell him anything else.
Too easy, in fact.
‘So do you feel like you’re not good enough, too?’
‘Good enough for what?
‘For swanky soirées and magnificent views and fancy restaurants,’ I say, and brace myself for his amusement. I’m facing away from him, but I know I’ll still hear it in his voice. It curdles the tone, like a throat full of clotted cream – unmistakeable and unavoidable.
And also completely absent.
‘Ah, so that’s what has you so worried, my lovely one,’ he tells me, and there’s nothing sardonic about it, no wry amusement. He doesn’t even say that last part in a sarcastic manner, which means something rather disturbing:
I have to accept it at face value.
He really means that I’m lovely and his, and that I have a number above any of the others. I’m not four or seven or twenty thousand and nine.
I’m number one.
‘Perhaps a little.’
‘And by “little” you mean so much that it’s making you dig your nails into your palms – not to mention the night-time wandering.’
‘Maybe the latter was just about needing the bathroom.’
‘So that’s why you got up.’
‘It could be.’
‘Oh, I’m sure it could,’ he says, in this faux-solemn way that’s becoming very familiar. He’s about to spring a trap, I think, and sure enough here it is: ‘Care to tell me where the bathroom is?’
‘Sure,’ I tell him, brightly, but in my head I’m frantically counting doors and identifying likely culprits. It wasn’t the one on the left, which means it absolutely must be –
‘The first room on the right.’
‘So you pissed in my study.’
I don’t know what’s more jarring: that he nails me so effectively, or that he used the word ‘pissed’. It sounds absolutely profane in his glassy, accented voice, like seeing a nun spit or watching the Queen run naked around a playing field.
‘What? No, I –’
‘Such a strange choice when the nearest bathroom is right there,’ he says, and points a finger in the direction of the door at the end of the room – while I inwardly face-palm. Of course, I should have known. All places like this have en suites, after all.
But the fact that I had no idea only serves to illustrate my point. I’m still living in a world where people have to fumble around in hallways when they need the toilet in the middle of the night. In fact, I’m not so far removed from a time when most people like me had to go outside for things like that.
I’m not ready for this.
I’m not
right
for it.
‘I don’t belong here.’
‘Because you don’t know where the bathroom is? That seems like something of a leap.’
‘You know that’s not why.’
‘I do, but I’m still waiting for you to say.’
‘I don’t fit in, Jan. I don’t wear the right clothes or do the right things. You know what drink I wanted to have with my meal? Diet Coke. I desperately wanted a Diet Coke, because I hate the taste of water and despise the taste of wine. And you know what? Next time I’ll just ask. I’ll just ask, and you’ll have to sit there with a woman who drinks fizzy soft drinks, in a room full of people who probably don’t even know what a fizzy soft drink is.’
I pause then, but only because I have to. I’ve run out of breath to say words with, and my cheeks are all hot with embarrassment. What a thing to admit, my mind barks at me, only once I’ve recovered there’s some more.
Oh, there’s so much more.
‘Is that really who you can imagine yourself with? A girl who drinks pop, and probably burps after she’s done it?’
‘I like it that you burp,’ he says, and I’m sure he means it to be comforting. I’m sure he does. But I’m still covering my face with one hand, anyway. I’m still moaning in horror.
‘Oh, God, you
heard
me.’
‘Well, I’ve seen the strange series of convulsions you do when you’re trying to hide that it’s happening. Does that count?’
‘I don’t … I don’t
convulse
.’
‘Of course you do – though that’s not really the point.’
‘Then what is?’
‘The fact that I don’t
care
, and have no idea why you do. Have I ever made you feel as though your natural self is disgusting?’
‘Well … no, but –’
‘Do I shame you for who you are?’
‘Never.’
‘And do you know why?’
‘No.’
‘It’s because I adore who you are – don’t you know by now that I adore you?’
The answer is yes, of course. It’s yes in the morning and yes in the evening, yes when I’m unsure and yes when I’m certain. And it’s especially yes when he says:
‘Do you know what that word I call you means?’
Because I do know. I didn’t dare look it up, but I understand it anyway. I feel it right down to my bones before he even offers a definition.
And then he does, and I’m undone.
‘It means “beloved”. It means that there is and only has been you. I did not lie when I said I had not kissed any of the other women I met through the assignations, or taken any of them out. In truth, I have not been to dinner with a woman for the better part of ten years.’
I try to contain my shock, here, but I already know I’m failing. I started breathing hard around the time he used the word ‘adore’, and when he gets to the ten years I’m practically hyperventilating. I feel like I’m in some tense race I didn’t sign up for, but I can’t deny it’s exhilarating, now that I’m here.
He just keeps upping the ante. He keeps peeling back more layers, as though he’s never had a problem with talking like this.
And all I can do is listen, agog.
‘You are the only one. The only one who spoke in such a way that I had to hear it again; the only one who did things that meant I wanted only to return to you. And most importantly: you are the only one I’ve ever felt compelled to touch. I spent every other assignation in that seat by the window, without the urge to rise and do a single thing.’
I’m no longer hyperventilating when he finishes, though that’s hardly a good thing. It just means I’ve suddenly forgotten what breathing is. My body is starting to need oxygen, but I don’t care. Did he just say he hasn’t been with a woman for ten years? That he just sits there and … and what? What does he do?
I have to know. It means using up my only remaining air, but I don’t have any choice. I just need to blurt things out, immediately.
‘Are you seriously saying that you only ever watch?’
He seems to take a moment – I think to muse over this concept a little.
But to me it’s just an endless agony, waiting for him to finally speak.
‘Well, occasionally I comment.’
‘You comment? You
comment
? All this time I’ve been imagining you doing God knows what to God knows who – to the point where I’ve actually scared myself, thinking about limbs tangled like pretzels and women with hair like ice palaces. And the most you do is offer a few words, like some TV pundit?’
‘Being incredulous won’t make it any less true.’
‘But you … you went for me the first time we met.’
‘Indeed I did. I wonder why that might be …’
‘Because you’re crazy?’
‘I’m fairly sure that isn’t it.’
‘You’re going to have to give me more than “fairly sure”.’
‘Very well then: because I have never wanted anyone the way that I want you. With the others it was always easy to maintain my calm, and remain aloof – perhaps because they were all so similar. But with you …’ He trails off in this wistful way that gets me by the throat. I’m choking up before he’s even finished, which isn’t a good thing. Because, oh, his finish is spectacular. ‘I’ve spent years building up my walls, and one look at you and your awkward little striptease was enough to tear them down. Everything you do is enough to tear them down. Even now, here, when you tell me you can’t quite believe that you’re worthy of something as meagre and miserly as my love … as though my love is precious to you … as though
I
am precious to you –’
I have to cut him off, here. I don’t mean to, but there’s really nothing else I can do.
He needs to hear. He has to know.
‘You
are
precious to me,’ I blurt out, in a rush of emotion so thick it almost trips me up. There are tears in my eyes and they’re spreading to my voice, and in a second I know my words will stumble over them. I know it, and don’t care in the slightest.
‘You’re my … you’re my … that word you said,’ I say, reduced to some gushy inarticulate fool. And he reacts as though I am, too. He laughs in that bemused way of his.
But it’s OK, because he also tells me this:
‘It’s really so much easier in Hungarian.’
‘Is that why you always say it that way?’
‘Of course.’
‘All right. All right then,’ I say, but I’m just stalling. It’s a struggle to get the next part out, and I need to buy time. Just a few a seconds, I think. Just a few and then I take a breath, and go for it: ‘You’re my …
szeretett
.’
Only to have him laugh. He
laughs
at my efforts. I’m ridiculous, I’m awful; I shouldn’t have said it – that’s not the word he meant at all. He was trying to suggest I say something else entirely, and now I’ve completely given the game away.
And then he speaks, and I realise what an idiot I am.
‘Ah, God, your accent is terrible,’ he tells me, and just to sweeten it further he adds some more words on the end: ‘And yet I’ve never heard anything quite so lovely.’
I turn to him then. Not because I no longer care if he sees my watery eyes and my probably runny nose – I still do. It’s embarrassing to face him looking like this.
But my need to see him overrides all other considerations. I have to know if he’s sincere, and the sound of his voice just isn’t enough. I don’t know if anything would ever be enough, but his expression is a start. His eyes are so warm I could sunbathe beneath them, and for a second I do.
I bask in that dark light. I let it wash over me, without a care in the world. He said those things and feels those things and nothing else should matter.
I wish nothing else mattered.
‘But why?’ I find myself asking – almost against my will. I know I need to stop with the questions. I know they’re more about me than him. And yet they keep coming all the same. ‘Why do you find my awkwardness lovely? Why is it my conversation and my way of doing things?’