i always remember her eyes first. how they used to burn me. third degree scald, inevitable slow death. i loved it. but she never wanted to kill me with those fires she was constantly wrapping me in. much more of the contrary. time has washed her looks, the details of her eyes lose their delicate sharpness, the colors are fading away, but not the twinge, not the missed heartbeats, not the electricity at the end of my fingers.
she offered me a picture that she had made of herself not long before we had met. it is black and white, or more of an admirable scale of grays. a hundred shades for her mouth, a thousand for her hair, a million for her eyes. i’m not exaggerating. i have counted. i have looked at this picture so much, reconstructing her intimate and personnal tones so many times, that i can almost decipher again which colors her eyes were made of. you would say, you can always remember one or a couple of words to tell the colors of someone’s eyes. if you want to go for this, yes, i can : blue and green with sparkles of gold. that won’t tell you much — not that it tells me much either. you would have had to see them, to watch them as carefully as i used to. if i showed you the picture, perhaps you would understand better.
it has been some time now and i can still see them quite perfectly. but i need the picture to help me. the corners are worn, and it feels like the surface has lost its glossy aspect. it looks like i have pulled it out from my wallet at least once a day for like forty years. which is exactly what i have done. except it is thirty-seven years.
i still don’t know how she had managed to make that picture, it is something that i can’t figure out. how you can make a self-portrait and still look that intense when there is no one at the other end of the camera. i have never known much about photography, but there is this thing that i can’t understand, i came to realize it one night, after looking at her picture for a long time, i had let my thoughts wander far, far from her as i knew her, i was trying to look beyond her image. i tried to imagine the scene, how it had been like, how she had set up her camera, on a tripod maybe or on a table, how she had calculated the light on her face, had she been in her kitchen, had she been in her room, was it an early morning, afternoon maybe, late spring ?
or had it all been a hazard, a strike of beautiful luck ?
explaining the hows didn’t tell me much. i guess that i could have brought the picture to some professional photographer, someone who would have made hypothesis much more accurate than mine. but after the hows, it is the whats that bothered me. what had she been looking at, what had she been thinking, what gave her that expression, which thought, which idea, which desire, it tortured me. it still does, but less, somehow. what had she been before i had known her ?
i have always thought that the shutter had snapped a thousandth of second before she had completely finished to raise her head. i can’t prove it, of course, but i feel it deep, intuition, gut feeling, whatever you want to call that. there isn’t a hint of a motion blur, but maybe it is in her mid-long curly hair, the way it falls around her face, maybe it is in her slightly open mouth but maybe it is only in her eyes. she looks like she is caught — but not by surprise — like she has caught herself and her full attention, willingly, like she has tied herself, like she has surrendered eventually, remaining proud and strong in defeat, proud but helpless. i still don’t have any idea what it was she had fought that day, and the past days, months, years. i have never seen her with that face, that look, even though i could begin to interpret it only many years after.
she never liked that image of her. she said it when she gave it to me. back then, i didn’t see the despair in it, i just thought that she looked striking. i asked her why she didn’t like it, but she never said, she only replied that she believed that she could trust me with it. her answer puzzled me, if she didn’t like it, she could have never shown it, she could have ripped it, burnt it, what do i know ?
but why giving it ? i asked, and why me ?
she made half a smile, amusedly, take it as a gift, she said, something unique for someone unique. then she got up and went to take a couple of beers in the refrigerator.
and you ask too many questions, she added without looking at me, still showing her back.
it didn’t take me long to learn when i was off-limits.
why is it that i always feel like a kid when i’m talking to you, i asked her one day. she burst out laughing, she laughed for the longest time ever. it was so communicative that i couldn’t help but laugh, too. she finally told me, it’s cause you’re only living your first life baby, and me, i’m living my ninth and last one, make the count…she tilted her head and lightly shrugged her shoulders. she was not mocking me, no trace of irony or condescension in her tone. she laughed again, probably because of the look i must have had on my face, but i knew, she had not been lying, she had been more serious than i had ever seen her.
it wasn’t long after this talk that she started to regularly ask me questions about how much i trusted her, how much she could trust me, like whether i would never fail her, no matter what.
you’d be ready to do anything i ask you, to help me ?
i said yes, i said i would, i said i was ready.
thank you, she replied slowly, still not leaving my eyes, but if you want, you can always change your mind, and i won’t blame you.
i won’t, i said.
don’t make any promise, she warned me.
she was frightening and beautiful, the more i was burnt, the more i indulged in it, and i walked through that part of my life with the smile of those who have nothing to lose anymore.
she woke me up one day at dawn.
i’m gonna need you now, she started, do you still want to help me ?
i didn’t hesitate.
yes, i said, yes of course. what can i do ?
i need you to help me disappear. her voice was clear, her tone resolute, i started to shake.
i didn’t ask anything. i waited.
she told me what she needed me to do, and i did what i was told.
i wished that i had never known her, i wanted to escape, i wanted to lay down and die. but she would look at me, envelopping me in her brilliance. please don’t, you’ll be alright, you don’t know it yet but trust me.
and i did. i trusted her more than myself because my curse was to give her unconditionnal love and her curse was to bewitch people like me. at the end of the day, as i noticed that i had never stopped crying, she asked me to stand up and close my eyes, i felt her inches from my face, her scent, her breath, she kissed my cheeks and every tear, and the corners of my mouth with an infinite tenderness. please, kill me, i said in a whisper. i will, she muttered back. and when i opened my eyes again after an eternity, still standing at the same spot, it was all over.
it took me some time, but i erased all traces of her, of her life in her appartment, in the city, in this country, in this life. i didn’t keep any evidence, i kept my silent promise to an absent, i just had this picture of her. i couldn’t erase the memories that she had put in everyone, but i knew that she had done that herself somehow, during all the years that she had lived here. nobody ever knew what happened to her, and me, after these long years, i’m not certain anymore, i can’t tell for sure, there is so much that i never knew and will never know.
i never asked any question.
i wish i had.
sometimes it feels like none of this has happened. sometimes it feels like i have made that up. so i hold on to the picture, her eyes are what i always remember first.
sountrack : huh…hoggboy – don’t get lost
the complete version is quite longer and much more boring. and only 100 pics left. and tigan, if you would wake up just so i could get up and go to the bathroom, life would be perfect.
