Semmant (12 page)

“He is too head over heels for me. Let him get over it on his own.” I recalled Lidia’s words. He was funny to me – that one who would get over it on his own. I didn’t even want to see his portrait. In that instant I dreamed of being lovesick forever. Incurable.

Chapter 14

Afterward, we saw each other two more times, anticipating intimacy but holding back from it. I endured a week of exhausting expectation. My dreams gave me no respite – a new life seemed within reach. I wanted it and feared it; chimeras, nearly forgotten, hid themselves again in corners and behind the drapes.

Even to Semmant I dedicated almost no time at all. Perhaps he was too busy anyway: a recession had begun in the financial markets. All the robot’s energy went into not losing too much. Companies dissolved, indexes dropped. Anguish and confusion gripped the world and, with them, repentance, hypocritical shame. As if at an imaginary altar, yesterday’s winners hastened to fall to their knees. To prostrate themselves against the flagstones, acknowledge their avarice, beg for a chance at mercy. It was comic – in their reckoning there was no God whatsoever. Yet no one was laughing.

The senselessness of the exchange’s bustle weighed on me more than ever. Meeting Lidia had shifted all the accents. Neither successful trades nor money losses seemed noteworthy now. At least while there was enough of that money left.

Finally, one morning the phone rang. I sensed something even before I heard her voice. A shiver ran through me, as if that Laotian mat had just dug its quills into me again.

“I broke it off with him for good!” Lidia said. Then she laughed at my silence, “I see you’re not excited?” And she added, “All right, enough of that – get here soon.”

I got ready in the blink of an eye and rushed off to her without wasting a minute. I hurried the taxi driver, that most lethargic of charioteers, fidgeting in the backseat and despising the traffic lights. Without waiting for the elevator, I ran up to the third floor and burst in on Lidia, crushing her in my embrace. And she responded in kind; we threw ourselves at each other, but – by the cruel whim of heaven – nothing happened for us. Nothing happened: it was my failure – and I was inconsolable. The arousal that had tormented me all those days suddenly betrayed itself.

Lidia tried to help me, but everything just got worse. We opened some wine, tried to act like nothing was wrong, not really understanding what we were doing and what was going on. We felt as though we had been put right in the middle of a melodrama being filmed according to some idiot’s script. We said strange words, made odd gestures, laughed at awkward moments. I was hungry for another try, but she delayed and would not yield to my touch. It was hard to blame her.

We eventually wound up in bed, and everything finally fell into place. Lidia dug into me with her nails, and spasms shook her body. Afterwards, with a long, happy sigh she threw herself onto the pillow and whispered, smiling, “You almost didn’t move at all. Why was it so good for me?”

I laughed it off, trying to guess whether she was being sincere or not, and muttered something about the energies of living cells. The thin energies of live nuclei, fragile, unseen mutual connections – this made an impression on her. She readily agreed, and I even wondered, could this be her Slavic roots? Russians think a lot about such things – mysterious vitalities, hidden forces. Polish girls think about this too, as do Czechs – and even Germans, despite not being Slavs. I wanted to ask Lidia whether she might have some Teutonic blood in her, but that would have been a bit out of place. Instead, I brought wine: as dark and acerbic as any blood. Happy, we drank and made love again. I understood: she had become a part of my life. And I barely kept from saying this out loud.

Yes, of course, I was in euphoria. I was ready to believe in anything, submit to the most deceptive of illusions. A mutual madness and new path to fulfillment, a voice from above, an inextricable connection… A feeling of closeness overcame me unreservedly; tenderness overflowed my being, rolling in waves, spreading through my veins. I had no thoughts, or rather there was one: her, only her!

In the morning, having spent a sleepless night with Lidia, fresh and alert as never before, I wrote Semmant, “A miracle has happened!” I was ready to elaborate on this topic, but I thought better of it, drank some strong coffee, and sat down to work. I had to prepare the next market review – a sad testament to the world’s imperfection. Still, nothing could darken my mood. Having finished what was obligatory, I thought a moment, then wrote at the end of the file, “Yes, it happened. Miracles do take place!” And then, powerless to stop myself, I scribbled out another couple of pages about this joy that had fallen upon me from the heavens.

Sure enough, I couldn’t think that day about bonds or stocks. Couldn’t occupy myself with figures and graphs, lifeless and dull. I wanted to discuss the rationales of feelings, the most secret properties of human souls. I was sincere in my elation and detailed to the point of silliness. I was overly-sentimental, heedlessly straightforward…

Love’s pulse raged in my head like a thunderous chime. It called out and resounded, confirming: it has come to pass! “The sound of a bell, absorbing all other sounds, is very dear to the god of gods,” said the wisest Skanda Purana. The call of love, which has eclipsed all sounds, was clear to me, though I knew no gods. That is, I didn’t know the usual ones. I honored my own who obviously existed. Otherwise, who had heard my supplications and given me this?

“When you are young, everyone loves you,” I wrote, but corrected myself, “No – that’s not right. That is, nobody loves you, but you don’t know it yet, and don’t want to know. You just believe – this is a sweet belief! You won’t ever have it again.”

“Later come disappointments, but you think this is a small price to pay. This is a reasonable cost, you surmise, still assuming you are loved by many. They might care about you indeed – at least those who need you so they can go on. The ones linked to you by struggles, by common ideas and shared efforts.”

And I continued, “Here, that’s the start of your big confusion!” I admitted. “That’s the bitterest of fallacies, nastiest of delusions.” And I was savoring – down to details – vainglory and vainness, illusion and self-deception. I was dissecting the nature of solitude and ridiculing its power. I was condemning the insincerity of the whole world – and then, as a counterbalance…

“Here it is,” I wrote Semmant. “The following encompasses the entire matter. Somewhere in the world, in time and space, are scattered souls, connected to you by a thread. The ones that need each other, regardless of all vainglory, struggles, and efforts. Of course, you never suspect you might meet them. You don’t even hope, and you drive such dreams away. You know the probability is exceedingly small – and you are more familiar with probabilities than most. But hope lives on – and one moment, maybe even with a taint of self-deception, you really do happen to come in contact, and you see: the impossible did occur!”

I banged on the keys, pouring out my thoughts on the kinship of souls – the same thing everyone writes about. And I was thinking about my robot, feeling sorry for him. He would never be able to experience that: he was the only one of his kind. Not a single soul existed anywhere with whom he might share kinship. He was unique, unlike anyone else. I made him that way – was I really to blame?

Then life went on – intoxicating, different. “After all, you’re not normal,” Lidia laughed. “But I like it. I will brighten your world with my presence!”

And she brightened it, oh yes! We loved each other any time, day or night. I gasped for breath in the cloud of her hair, was driven mad by the whiteness of her skin. Her snow-white body belonged to me in its full entirety, without taboos or limits. Red marks were left on it – from my hands, from slaps and embraces. Sometimes she wanted pain; she asked me to be rough. Sometimes she would cause me pain herself – with a grin, chaste and lascivious at once. It seemed I was being burned with pitch and brimstone. Incandescent needles pinned us together. I endured this like a new birth each time. And, having been born again, saw the same thing: a barely distinguishable, all-knowing half smile intended… not for me, no; perhaps not for anyone at all.

We knew no embarrassment, felt no shame. The past did not inhibit us in anything. “There are the quick, there are the dead, and there are those who go to sea,” said the ancient Greeks. “There are the wretched, there are the fortunate, there are you and I,” I said to her once. Lidia dropped her eyes. Then she gazed steadfastly at me; her pupils darkened. I plunged into them as though into a bottomless whirlpool…

In fact, she often changed the color of her eyes – with thin lenses of various shades. I attempted to interpret the colors, as I did before with Semmant’s pictures, but usually hit a dead end. The state of her soul was hard to decipher. Still, it seemed to me she was sensual and carefree in green; ultramarine, on the contrary, meant thoughtful or sad. Yet this might have been mere speculation. I was quite drawn to speculations at that time.

Euphoria is always a replacement for emptiness. It was strange to think it’s possible to soar on wings again. Having parted company in the morning, by lunchtime we had already begun to long, to yearn for each other. We hastened into the city, met somewhere, threw ourselves into each other’s arms. It was March, warm and dry; the weather spoiled us outright. As happens in Madrid, the city, illuminated by sunlight, suddenly revealed its best side. It became agreeable, kind, in its own way. And it even seemed you would never want to leave it!

I imagined we would be together forever – she, the city, and I. Peering into the young faces, I was sure: we looked like them now. Meeting the eyes of the weary, the elderly, I thought: we would also resemble them someday. My imagination was sufficient for a few hundred years. I knew we could live through them all – enclosed in the time frame apportioned to us. But then, it was senseless even to mention time frames. And I didn’t mention them – as I never spoke of Semmant. He was linked in my mind, for some reason, with the concept of time condensed to its limits. Of time that passes not in vain.

Lidia kept her own account of time. She feared it in a womanly way but spent her days thoughtlessly and without regrets. Her knowledge was sketchy and casual, her tastes chaotic, her preferences inexplicable. Somewhere she hoarded everything she saw. Everything she heard, read, or was told by someone. In her was gathered a surprising multitude of things. Living with her, I thought, one could never get bored. It was beyond comprehension where she managed to acquire all these bits and pieces. Maybe she had a whole army of men as well? I frowned with displeasure and pushed this thought away.

Having lived in Madrid since her early childhood, she still knew it poorly. I showed her the city, revealing my favorite places. However, Lidia also had something to offer in turn. Something to amaze me, and sometimes even to shock me. It seemed she was doing this on purpose – dropping a veil, pulling back the curtain. Offering her past, bit by bit. Adjusting it for me after her fashion.

The world had been saturated with her perfume – a sweet poison soaked with pheromones. Features of the Spanish capital served as very valuable currency. The Sibelius Fountain and the Columbus memorial, the Bernabéu Stadium, the Plaza Mayor… To each place was attributed its value. In exchange for what? Lidia apparently had her own plan. She had her goal, her custom, her method. She might be looking a bit haughty – sensing she belonged to prevailing forces. And I didn’t hide that I was living in the minority – in a vast world infinitely alien to her.

On the square of Quevedo the poet, I learned of her former husband who, far from being a poet, was a miser and a snob. Lidia laughed as she spoke of him – with the same tone I had used in telling her about the tricks of local petty thieves that Quevedo, forgetting his rhymes, had once described with his wicked, satirical pen. Lidia’s husband, Antoine Raoul, also seemed to be a man of unclean hands – an
hidalgo
who had come to ruin, with cuffs tattered along the edges. I told her so, and she laughed: “Oh, no, he was rich. Rich and completely indefatigable in love!”

“Don’t pout, he’s not the only one,” she offered in dubious consolation upon seeing my sour face. “And besides, that gets old quickly. Sometimes I would leave the house and not come home until night. I would wait for him to get drunk and fall asleep!”

Her look darkened, and my jaw muscles stiffened. I wanted to tear her clothes off then and there, to take her roughly, powerfully. But she calmed me, caressing me like an abandoned child. Her eyes twinkled with satisfaction, and a familiar half smile flashed across her lips. People scurried about the square bathed in light; new pillagers roamed the crowd. No one remembered Quevedo the satirist – or the poet, either, for that matter. Antoine Raoul was also not worth recalling.

In the center of the old city, a place of festivals and
autos da fé
, where medieval gawkers used to gather in record numbers, I told her how they had once burned witches there.

“They used to call me a witch,” Lidia laughed in response. “My mother and brothers, my whole family.”

“Maybe they called you Gela?” I ventured casually.

“What a disgusting name,” she screwed up her face and squeezed my hand hard. “I think you had a reason for asking that. Who is it, a former mistress? Or a maid that you nail whenever you get the chance?”

Something had seriously offended her. She was gorgeous – agitated and defenseless. I knew I would still pay for Gela, but I gazed at her without looking away.

“My mother was a witch herself,” Lidia told me with considerable ire. “She smelled like a cat and slept fully clothed in the bathtub. Sparks crackled in her hair – it was something to hear, believe me. Even though nobody wanted me to know about it. And as for my father, he was just an average old fart!” she added emphatically.

I started to kiss her right there in the street, and Lidia got horny – even more than I. We went into the stairwell of one of the buildings – after buzzing the office of some dentist on the directory to let us in – and she gave herself to me on the fire escape between the fifth and sixth floors.

“Gela,” I whispered, grinding my teeth at the most uncontrollable moment, but Lidia didn’t hear me. She confessed later she really wasn’t herself. All her attention was fixated on repressing her feline screams. Only the dentist, perhaps, was jarred by the familiar sound, which reached him through the ceilings and concrete walls.