Peter Nadas - A Book of Memories

And now I knew even less just where my place was in this somber situation, but the stark sadness that broke through all her possible masks and faces, now illuminated by the harsh streetlight, was like a sudden violent discharge, a clash of the most opposite forces.

All right, I'll let her go, I said, but first I will kiss her.

It seemed that by simply saying it, the act had become impossible, and then we could consider it done.

And then that famous whole that should pervade all details of a relationship must also include what in the ordinary sense does not take place yet is a reality.

She turned her face back toward me slowly and with a surprised look on it, as if she were amazed on behalf of that other person as well, I was faced with the astonished gaze of two people.

As she turned, the light vanished from her face, but I knew that the strange face would not leave her, and the half-open mouth said or rather moaned from behind that face, No, not now.

I let go of her; some time passed.

This moan issuing from their shared sadness did not mean what it seemed to mean, it had to be translated: in the language the two of us had in common it meant just the opposite, it meant that she felt as I did, and if not now, she did mean maybe later.

If it had meant next week or tomorrow perhaps, that would have meant not now and not later either; but that's not what she meant.

Our faces began to undulate between yes and no, between now, the next moment, and any time.

With my casual statement I seemed to have awakened our mouths, and now we had to look at them.

Yes, the features of our faces were undulating, wavering, the skin trembled as our faces relaxed and tensed again, and the next moment did arrive, but without turning into now or anytime, what remained was the uncertain later, yet what was vibrating on her lips was a definite yes— only its when was unknown.

But this began to be painful, because if it didn't happen now then the yes must have meant no, after all.

Like a pendulum, our faces swayed between the subtle pain of tentative rejection and the equally subtle joy of tentative consent; I might even say that our faces oscillated between self-defense and self-surrender; and because this was true oscillation — when pain flitted across one face, the other flickered with joy, and when one was suffused with joy, the other showed pain — even when the long-awaited decisive moment seemed at hand, yes and no could still not be separated.

So to avoid having to wait for the next moment, I cut through our shared time by making a move; and I did it simply because I was in pain, and while one escape route was closed to me, the car door behind me was open; the pain, unable to turn into joy, sought relief at any price.

But true to the movement of the pendulum, Thea was ready to swing forward as I was about to pull back; and she wouldn't allow her joy to turn into pain either — this was her yes moment — and with her hand she had to turn the anytime I created with my move into a now.

When we are awake and fully alert, our jaws are conditioned to keep the mouth closed, the upper teeth resting on the lower set, and the upper lip lying neatly on the lower one; at this point, however, the jaw relaxed and reverted to its original, preconditioned state, easing the alertness and discipline which, except in the hours of sleep, maintain tension in the facial muscles; regulating the extent and nature of this tension gives character to the face, which, in turn, causes the tongue inside, arching sensitively from the rim of the lower teeth, to hover, and the saliva collecting on the tip of the tongue and around the impeding row of teeth to trickle back into the hollow of the mouth.

Heads tilt sideways, if one to the left, the other definitely to the right, because when two human mouths seek each other out they must avoid the collision of noses protruding from the facial terrain.

Once the eyes measure the distance, from the features of the terrain estimate the angle of the tilt, and from the speed of the mutual approach can also determine the moment of contact, then the eyelids slowly and softly drop over the eyes — seeing at such close range becomes impossible and unnecessary, which of course should not lead to the conclusion that everything impossible is also unnecessary — but the eyes do not close completely, a narrow slit remains, so the long upper lashes need not descend and mix with the lower, shorter ones; in this way the eyes put themselves in a perfectly symmetrical position with the mouth; one is fully conscious now, but not quite aware; the amount of tension relinquished from consciousness equals the loss in awareness; whatever opens up here, but not completely, will shut down there, but not completely.

If one wished to say something specific about a kiss, the joining of two mouths, about the moment when the direct sensation of two sense organs turns into direct bodily sensation, it might be best to step into the open mouth, between the vertically grooved, tender skin of the barely touching lips.

If this were at all possible without the aid of a scalpel, the peculiarities of the living organism would force one to choose among several alternatives: should we follow the facial muscles rippling toward the interior of the mouth, or the intricate network of neurons, or the crisscrossing veins perhaps? in the first case we'd have to cut through the cluster of salivary glands in the lips and cheeks, traverse some connective tissue to reach the mucous membrane; in the second instance, it would be like being absorbed by the tiniest capillary roots of a tree and from there to reach the trunk and travel on to the nerve center of the crown; in the third case, depending on whether we took the red or the blue trail of blood vessels, we'd reach either the ventricle or the auricle of the heart.

Fortunately, it's only in fairy tales that out of three possible paths we have to choose the one that will lead us to safety; but since we don't need to be rescued and are merely yielding to simple, most likely superficial curiosity, we shall choose yet a fourth option and slip through the grooves of the barely touching lips; it won't be a smooth glide, though, because at this moment the surface is almost completely dry; the glands are producing saliva in abundance, but the insecurely hovering tongue is not wetting the surface; consequently, the longer it takes for the lips to meet, the more parched they become; sometimes they look like cracked soil in a protracted dry spell, even though in the hollow behind the lower teeth, under the tongue, a proper little lake of saliva has formed.

If we proceed along the craggy ridge of the lower teeth and, avoiding the little lake of saliva, clamber up the slippery back of the tongue to take a look at the distance covered, the sight greeting us there promises to be quite remarkable.

The undertaking is not without dangers: if we don't cling fast to the taste buds, we might easily slide down into the gullet, but it's all worth it, and where we are is actually a well-protected cave: over us stretches the palate's lovely arch, and looming before us, in the form of an obtuse-angled triangle, is the great orifice of the mouth itself; if we hadn't purposely invaded this spot to catch this breathtaking sight, we might cry out in astonishment, because from this vantage point the anatomical view of the orifice bears a striking resemblance to the conventional representation of the eye of God.

And while looking out through this opening, and seeing everything suddenly turn dark — for prompted by simultaneous pushing and pulling, yielding and receiving, another triangle clings not quite symmetrically but somewhat aslant to the triangular opening of our hiding place, in sum, a kiss is happening — we get the feeling that in the darkness of the two interlocking caverns, God's one eye is looking into the other eye of God.