“Who
are you?”
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything.”
And I find myself, lost in a dream, not
knowing whence it originated, reveling in my ignorance, with her whom I know
still less, reining it.
She lowers her eyes at first, implying a
feeling of indecision, then raises them again, an affable smile, restrained from
showing on her lips, glimmering in them. “But it is impossible,” she says at
last.
“Why?” I inquire, letting my own smile
appear.
“Because I know of no mystery ever being
interesting after you have known the solution to it.” Her gaze is fixed at me,
expectation of what I shall say suffusing it.
“You insist on making yourself a mystery
to me? But no, I shall not have this as a definite answer. What I want is not
at all a solution; you have no distinct shape in my head, and I’d like to
clearly see you.” I pause, thoughts apparent in the creases of my forehead as I
consider what exactly I shall ask her. “Your family, your house, and all those
other matters may not show you to me. I want something that expresses you,” I
again keep on trying to find a name to such a thing, but encounter only
failure. “ Tell me about your friends,” I say at last, after realizing that I
have spent too much time thinking, with a somewhat low voice, meant to hide my
embarrassment of the silliness of the question that I asked only after I have
found that I couldn’t find anything to say.
“I cannot tell you about them because I
have none,” she answers, not having recognized the abashment in my voice.
She has unconsciously laid me a first
thread for real conversation, and I unhesitatingly catch it. “You can consider
me your friend then,” I say, feigning empathy that my former experiences with women
affirm that they love so.
“Well thank you.” The quizzical look in
her eyes tells me that she has given me away. I lie in bafflement, not knowing
what to say. She saves me and continues after looking away smiling delightfully
to entail that I have been forgiven, “ After all, how am I to have friends when nobody ever
interests me? “
“Why is that?” This time, I am genuinely curios.
“ Nobody ever interests me enough;
nobody ever has anything new about him. Two minutes are enough for me to see
that if I shall go on talking with this person or that, I’d be risking my life
, dying out of boredom. Besides, I believe that the disliking I have towards
people is mutual; I believe all people just find me strange.”
“Strange?”
“If you are about to deny it, then let me
save your effort; I am strange.”
My face, I am aware, falls into an
expression of bewilderment, like my thoughts. It is true, she is unlike all
others I have met; but to call her “strange” is nothing short of an offense. In
her uncommonness, lies a magic, radiant, now in her eyes, now in her smile,
that no one can ever call but enchanting, and it irks me still more that she
believes herself to be so.
“You don’t seem to be convinced?
But I tell you, it’s true. In my head, run there strangest of all thoughts, and
questions that drive me to the edges of insanity. I question everything,
everything. I keep on wondering, what
for instance would happen if I were another; then, I ask myself, ‘would my view
of the world change?’ for you know, some part of me likes to believe that
reality does not exist but in our heads . It also likes to believe that when we
are dreaming, we are conscious and alive in another world, and when we are
awake, we are dreaming in there.”
Her words are uttered, not with vehemence,
but with a deep quiet serenity that adds to their exoticness that I heavily
fall into.
“So I now might be dreaming you?”
“Perhaps.”
“And
how am I to restrain that dream?”
“You
don’t.”
She lowers my face to hers, and
delicately kisses me to prove herself real. At such proximity, I let my eyes
discern hers and drown in their depths.
“You are beautiful,” I say.
But like in a dream, she has already flown
away.
