The Laboratory of Love, page 25
His pace increases as he leaves Nervión behind, reaches a run when Los Remedios approaches, hastens further through the fandango of Triana streets.
Señora X confers beyond the door. With someone whose voice sounds as familiar as hers in tone and timbre? As I strain to hear whether this muffled duet warns of immediate intrusion, it becomes swallowed by nearer sound. Psalms rise around me; sweet praise enfolds my body, entwines my head with tenderness. I waver on my feet as flame wavers above the desk. Recover balance, transfer scalpel to the other hand. My right hand, my wrong hand. It is required to etch skin that could not otherwise be reached. My effort becomes increasingly awkward, wildly imprecise. Ribbons of blood unwind and sacred song unfurls and my interior chambers chill in exact symmetry to the warm, liquid glow upon their surface.
I am almost finished. I have done the best I can.
The choir crescendos as it aspires to divine conclusion.
He speeds across the swaying bridge, above the dividing river.
Rushes up San Eloy, along Amor de Dios, through La Alameda’s sweep.
Time gushes with blood; both flow fast toward their end.
He enters La Macarena, turns onto my pension’s block.
I reach toward the vial on the desk.
Carry handkerchief and bottle to bed, chorals the climaxing choir.
Wait, screams the scalpel as weak fingers fumble to unscrew a cap.
You forgot something.
One quick, deep slice replicates the last stroke that realizes his last hieroglyphic.
Cuts the throat of the choir in mid-note, silences its song, allows Señora X’s shout to carry from the hall.
“Your visitor.”
His blue symbols rustle the truth about love beneath my back, pool red proof upon my front.
Commotion occurs beyond the magic door.
Keys jangle like bells.
He’s here.
The Truth about Love
There is a time bomb concealed somewhere in the minefield of our lives—in your heart, to be precise. I press my ear against your strong, broad chest and listen helplessly to its click. To diffuse this danger would be to dismantle your love, I know: the same mechanism caresses and kills. Steadily the ticking grows louder; sounds swells as that decisive, explosive moment nears when we will be blown into bits, scattered like fireworks through the sky. Sometimes I try to calculate how many weeks or months we have left together, you and me, before you are taken away. (Or are there only days?) Yes, it is you who they will handcuff and lock up; but, clearly, we will both pay for your crimes.
How we met, how we fell in love: seas of memory wash inside me, bubble in my blood. They are the same memories cherished by every lover, banal if spoken aloud, gold turned into dross when exposed to objective elements. We do not mention certain moments (our first kiss, for example); anniversaries pass without celebration. No photographs exist to remind me of the time we travelled deep into the desert and slept beneath the stars. That day we climbed a glacier, then built a fire against the cold. Evidence must not be allowed to gather, you have taught me; in the end, it will always be used against us, however innocent it appears. So the presents I gave you at the beginning, before I learned this lesson, you buried in the yard, where they could rot safe from sight, disintegrate into dust. And so we do not hold hands while walking together in the street; we offer no proof of ourselves as lovers to the world. Remember: once our very act of love was forbidden, illegal, punishable by imprisonment or worse.
From you I learned the value of silence, the purity of secrets. When you turn to me in darkness, without words, the gesture bears the weight of a thousand similarly unspoken movements, is heavy enough to prevent me from floating into the air. Once more our mute bodies move together. I receive private pleasure when you sigh or moan against your will. If I can make you cry out when you come, I count this as a triumph.
Later, I waken in your arms. You are talking in your sleep, mumbling what you dream. I listen carefully, hope you will drop a clue. One word that contains a whole story. A name, some Rosebud. Of course I have studied the information concealed inside your wallet. I know the thin data that defines your name and age and place of birth—but little else. Family, former friends and lovers--who were they, what did they mean to you, where are they now? Upon the blank slate of your silence I am free to draw versions of the past that make you who you are today: my man has a thousand distinct histories, a whole horde of buried identities. As I must have for you. I study one alternative then another, according to my mood, my need. No, I do not pretend to know or understand you completely; but my loving imagination can create a dozen approximations of who you really are, and each is dear to me. For this reason, and despite our isolation, we are not lonely. Our multiple selves crowd these tidy rooms: all the boys we once were, all those gap-toothed, grinning ghosts.
These days and nights pass beneath the most ordinary cloak. We waken and go to separate jobs. In the evenings, we share a meal, then stretch before the television, me in your arms or you in mine. We go to the gym and to the movies. Weekends are to clean the house and work in the yard. Domesticity. The telephone does not ring often; our doorbell insists upon silence. Outsiders pose danger, I have come to understand. They would bear witness in court, they would reveal what must stay hidden. As it is, our unknown neighbours will certainly speak to the television cameras upon discovery of your crimes; excited by brief, second-hand celebrity, they will offer mistaken impressions, skewed insights. (“They seemed such nice, quiet young men,” those ignorant people will puzzle.) Anyway, I have no wish to share you; we need no one besides each other, I try to tell myself. I can condone your bloody acts for the way each one drives you deeper into only me; we are entangled inextricably within your web of guilt. Where do you leave off; where do I begin? Sometimes, half-asleep, I touch your arm in bed and think it’s mine. It is that difficult to discern the line of separation: what you do, what I do.
By now I know the pattern. Twelve or fifteen or twenty days after your last crime, you grow restless, distracted, uninterested in making love. You complain of headache, and wear an inward expression as though inside your ears there were a buzzing you must silence any way you can. At our window you stand and search the dark, empty street. Out there is something you need that I can’t give you: this is still difficult for me to accept. I wonder what it is I lack, how I could more completely fulfill your needs. (This is when I believe I am as guilty as you, a complete accomplice: I feel the shape and weight of your knife in my hand, see it slice and watch the red ribbons unfurl, share that satisfaction.) As it is, I can only sense you build toward dangerous excitement; I become excited by suspense myself. Always I am prepared for the night when you say you wish to go for a drive. “Want company?” I ask—must ask—hoping you will answer yes, hoping we will only drive along the river and observe lights shudder in the water. I must offer you this chance to detour from your violent path, even as I know that altering your route would, in fact, mean leaving me behind.
But you do not want my company, you long to go into the dark night alone. Are you protecting me, preserving my innocence? Or do you selfishly refuse to share your pleasure? You put on your coat and kiss me coldly at the door; already you heart has turned toward the next unknown, unsuspecting victim that waits. I listen to the car’s engine turn over at your touch, hear you drive away. Sometimes you are gone for several hours; sometimes it is nearly dawn before you return. Then I will not notice the stain of blood on the hem of your jeans, the scratch on your arm hinting that this time there was a struggle. Afterward you are tired and full of need. There is always heightened passion then; whatever lay between us, separating us, has been eliminated. We move urgently toward our brief false death, then lie together slick with sweat. The scent of crushed blossoms hangs heavy in the air.
Do you suspect I know? There are times, moving above me, when your open eyes confess. You seek my understanding. And when I hold you tighter, grasping the muscles that wielded the knife, this is absolution. My hands stroke forgiveness. Be careful, I nearly say the next time you go out alone. Do it right. Then, while you sleep, I check your clothes and shoes for splashes of blood, eradicate a clue you may have overlooked. I retrieve the knife from the car’s front seat to ensure that it is clean. Press its sharp blade against my throat as though I were both you and your victim at once.
Near the beginning, you deliberately dropped a clue, I suspect. You wanted me to know. Through narrowed eyes you watched warily to see how I would react to certain news stories on television. How I would respond to understanding their connection to you. You knew me well enough to be sure I would not telephone the police: such acuteness of intuition has, in part, saved you from discovery until now. Watching those images—the body draped with a white sheet, the sobbing family, the perplexed police— I matched your silence and calmness. Instead of fleeing from you in fear, I stayed to love you with greater fervour. That was the moment we became linked by unbreakable chains. Complete acceptance: this is what we all seek. This is my definition of love.
Details don’t interest me. I am not curious to know if it is men or women or children you kill, or why you need them silenced. What you do with the bodies, before and afterward. If you like to hear them cry, beg, scream. How it feels. What it’s like. I respect your secrets. After all, I have secrets of my own.
At first, it’s true, I did feel jealous of your victims, of your special relationship with them. How their last earthly vision is of you. That interlocking of your eyes with theirs as they leave the world. How you carve out the shape of their unique destiny with your knife. Such shocking intimacy. But now I know you will always leave them to return to me. They hold your attention only briefly; our exchange lasts far longer than any death scream, any fading pulse.
Why I love you. After you are discovered (and the day draws nearer as surely as the next season), I will be the subject of curiosity--one more psychiatric specimen. They will hound me with questions, they will feed me drugs. Already I prepare for the silence I must maintain to preserve the holiness of our union. “Monster,” they will label you in an attempt to pollute our mutual devotion. Perhaps they will present me with a detailed description of your acts. How you gouge out a victim’s eye with your teeth, roll that firm ball in your mouth, bite through its resisting outer layer to the satisfying squish of softness, chew up all the visions this eye has seen. Inhuman, they will say, anxious to place your deeds on a plane separate from their own existence, unwilling to admit that in all of us there is the capacity to perform every kind of act, and that these acts, however horrible they appear, may be an expression of the most human emotions such as desire, and hate, and love.
“He is my lover,” I will simply state. If they can’t comprehend what this means, how the word wraps itself around everything you are, they will not be worthy of further information. If they had been just once inside your magic arms, they would not wonder at all. I will scorn them for accepting feeble, legal passion; I will mock their envy of our outsiders’ ardour. It is simple to see how they will sensationalize and warp our story, but beneath their outrage will stir some glimpse of the true force of our love; really, this sight will disturb them more deeply than any of your actual crimes. It will drive them—the police, the courts, the media, the public—to hysteria. Without doubt they will work to prove that our love makes me an accessory to your crimes. They will not be able to leave me free.
The twisting of fate enthralls me. I see now that the inevitable end began long ago; the finale was written right there at the start. As a child my eyes hungrily swallowed dark-eyed boys who searched for trouble. Bad boys who did things I wished to do but could not do myself. There were never stains of dirt on my neatly pressed trousers; I did not dare cross the line that lies between what is and is not permitted. The misguided angels escaped from school, stole what they needed, drove with drunken recklessness through the night. At first their crimes seemed just an excess of boyish energy, a swagger of high spirits, such charming bravado; swiftly their needs turned darker, less innocent, and they flirted with Alcatraz, wooed severe sentences without parole. Danger burned inside them; I reached out for that heat, became branded a hundred times. There were handsome lovers and strong lovers, and lovers who carried me to all kinds of lawless lands and revealed to me any number of outlaw visions. Each of these dark desperados led directly to you. I followed their AWOL steps across the sand and found you there beside the sea, perched high upon the rocks, wind in your hair and salt sticking to your lips. Upon that shore we sealed an unbreakable pact, mixing our saliva and blood and semen.
We must take what we need. Every life you steal is a sacrifice offered only to me; our love is baptized upon an altar of blood. Certainly I do not pity your victims. I would stab them myself to keep you with me. Their lives are taken to preserve mine, I realize; if that seems a harsh equation, let me only say that all mathematics are cruelly precise. In fact, it is clear that your knife could easily press against my throat with the slightest shift of wind inside your heart. Anyone who doesn’t know that even the strongest love must be this precarious is truly unenlightened.
Tonight the maple tree outside our window stirs and trembles. You look for car keys, you move toward the door. Suddenly my blood churns: their net may be drawn around you right now; this may be the night you don’t return. The night you enter the magic door. When I do not visit you in prison, listen, you will understand: your spirit will escape its skin the moment you are captured; that body they guard with such care will be but an empty husk. Often I have caught your questioning glance: you wonder if I will be brave enough to slip from my skin also, and join you in the only place allowed for us to exist together. You’ll never take us alive! we brag every outlaw’s boast into the wind.
I don’t know. I can feel impatient with abstractions that do not take into account the actual touch of your lips, the real pressure of your hands. Already I mourn your physical absence; knowledge of the brief time allotted for us here and now has made each glimpse of your tall form sweeter. Still, for a moment I am angry that you risk our earthly life together, court bodily separation enforced by iron bars. Is this what you finally want and need—to be apart from me in your lonely cell, your solitary confinement? Fleetingly, I wonder what would happen if our roles were reversed: if I committed your crimes, would you be so understanding and accepting? While you pause in the doorway I doubt everything: you, me, us. I suspect your love is just another con job, one more grifter’s sleight of hand. Have I been set up as the fall guy who will take the rap, while you dance away at liberty to seduce a score of men unsuspecting as me?
Don’t go.
The words die on my lips, are swallowed by your goodbye kiss. No, finally I don’t doubt, don’t regret: I wouldn’t change any of this even if I could. When you are gone into the demanding night, I hear steel doors clang, strong bolts slam, heavy keys rattle a dirge. Someone cries for mercy. A knife stabs my heart, my opened veins afford release, we drown together in the red sea of love.
Touching Darkness
First things first:
You were not the prisoner; I was not the warden with the keys.
There was never a cage, never a cell. No bars of iron, no heavy chains.
Let’s get that straight from the start.
Since appearances can be deceptive.
Once again, as originally, the room at the back of the house looks clean and neat and quite bare. The sparse furniture—a single bed, a night table, a wardrobe—is as unexceptional as its setting. A window, set fairly high in one wall, overlooks our backyard; even when they’re closed, the venetian blinds let in light. The uncarpeted floor is laid with tiles, now faded or never bold, of an uninteresting design. White walls are decorated with several generic prints of ships at sea. A large closet contains a few unmarked cardboard boxes.
Undisturbed dust dreams in silence.
Unbreathed air waits to be consumed by throats, caressed by lungs.
Certainly not a sinister or disturbing place.
The room at the back of the house neither evokes nor deserves such a description.
Perhaps only I am able to detect the slight stain on the tiles to the
rear.
The subtle scent that lingers like a memory or dream of love.
For years we use it as a spare room, a guest room, a room to hold odds and ends that don’t belong in other rooms. You or I might look here without particular hope for something that’s gone missing. The room possesses an air of neglect born of indifference; neither of us feels sufficient interest to invest it with his attention, his energy, his taste. We don’t really need the space; it’s almost beside the point. We can bear no heirs. Often I would forget that our house contains this room, as if it weren’t there.
The infrequently entered door is kept closed. It has no lock or key.
As your last wish, you will wordlessly beg for those interdependent mechanisms that
deny entry.
Or that prevent escape.
Yet finally this unremarkable space will be spoken of in the most lurid language.
Chamber of Horrors.
Dungeon of Death.
(Never mind that the room is situated on the ground floor and not in the basement. Upon the prosaic surface of the earth, not in its murky depths. Outrage often eschews accuracy.)
Prison of Pain, they will inevitably howl.
You would smile, I know.
If you could.
