Мелисса П. - The Scent of Your Breath

I tremble. I tremble as everything vibrates in the world, in the air. I tremble because I know that there’s still life out there and I can’t live it.

I need to look at the life I have inside me, that dark life, disconnected from all the others; I need to live inside myself, because outside no one can let me live. I thought he was capable of letting me live and wouldn’t let me die one day at a time. But that’s what he’s doing, and I’d rather he killed me all of a sudden, once and for all, with a well-aimed blow.

Lying on my stomach on the bed, my face suffocating in the pillow, I put my arms behind my head and slowly start to braid my hair.

“Holy Monday, Holy Tuesday, Holy Wednesday, Holy Thursday…,” I murmur.

I braid it slowly and diligently, taking tiny bunches of hair between my fingers.

I think that if I do this before she does, nothing will happen to me.

My body is arched, my arms hurt because of the position I have assumed, like a spider trapped in its own web.

I tress five or six bunches of hair, run my fingertip along the plait, and feel it, smooth, hard, and very small.

I tell myself that this way she can’t hurt me.

But suddenly I think of him, and I think he’s exposed to danger, too.

What if the dragonfly came tonight and tressed his hair? He’d be bound to her forever and I’d never be able to have him back, not even if I cut myself into tiny, tiny little pieces and slipped under his shoes.

So, at night, I will cuddle up next to him and when he shuts his eyes I will lightly, silently, braid his hair.

And he will be safe. We will be safe.

That time when I grew wings and my eyes dimmed until they were sightless, his absence became inevitable.

Now I have gulped her down in a single mouthful, because she was the only thing I could eat, because nothing now can give me as much nourishment as a human being. What I want is women’s flesh, the flesh of a wicked, terrible woman, a dragonfly-woman.

I am something different and dark.

I am the impalpable fog and the terrible wind that shakes the branches, I am mean and murderous jealousy, I am the love I have lost and will never regain. I am a tangle of memories and joys that have begun to rot and decompose into humus for my obsessions to grow in.

I am a huge, stretched, white sheet on which the images of my love affair are projected, and every memory becomes a source of unease, of obsession. My desire is not to distort reality; it’s an inexplicable instinct to make my life difficult and unruly. In his face I see nothing but intolerance, lies, and discomfort. I can no longer think of him, imagine him happy.

I’m a bat and I’ve just swallowed the dragonfly. We spent hours shut up in a bell jar, which our breath made invisible. She broke off one of my wings and I licked away the blood, my tiny, red tongue healed the wound, and then my pointed teeth tore her face and I ate it. Her body was still vibrating — you should have seen it, Mamma. A body without a head, still moving, blood still flowing through its arteries. It really was a most beautiful sight, the bell jar was splashed with loads of blood, and I licked it in a sign of victory.

I have destroyed my house and upturned my memories. My antennae are too weak; my eyes are completely blind. I swallow everything I find in my way, and I don’t care if I swallow him, too.

I have no more time to remember, to reinvent myself, to let the tapeworm move its body and make me a spectator of my past.

I have no more time.

Because now, I’m sure of it, nothing is the fruit of my imagination and my fear.

Now everything’s real, palpable.

If my fantasies touch me now, I’m no longer afraid, because now I know that they’re here to help me. They’re here to let me live unscathed or else to make me live in an abyss for the rest of my life.

For me, one life has the same value as another. If he isn’t here, one fate weighs as much as another.

I hear his shoes stopping outside the door, silently observing, thinking, folding in on themselves and turning around, going on their way and leaving me on my own. My bed has never been so big or so depressed; it’s never been so deep and wickedly comforting. I can already feel his skin brushing mine, his tears mingling with mine, and it’s only a sensation, yes, a sensation, because nothing of anything that happens, nothing, absolutely nothing is real. He’s writing something, bent over the desk with his eyes drowning in his heart. I feel like a tiny ant, lying on that big, terrible bed. I wish I were even smaller and transparent. I wish he could squash me once and for all. I breathlessly seek warmth from a strip of duvet; my fingertips sense that it’s crumbling away and nothing is left. My body is just a piece of bloodless flesh, thrown into a refrigerated cell, waiting for someone to buy it and cook it and eat it and do with it what he will. My body alone exists and it’s a fictitious one.

The mattress yields to support a weight and I pretend I haven’t felt a thing.

Two blue eyes like yours look at me and smile at me. I whisper, “Mum,” but she shakes her head and smiles sweetly at me.

“You’ve got to go,” she says. “You’ve got to leave and you’ve got to understand.”

I pretend I haven’t heard anything.

“Look at me,” she cries, shaking me, “look into my eyes.”

I look at her and there are words inside. At first they’re confused scribbles dripping with ink; then gradually the letters assume a concrete form and fit together into phrases. It’s a letter. It looks like a woman’s handwriting, young, showy writing. There’s an incredible vitality in the os and the as that inflates the letters like balloons.

The letter says:

Dear Melissa,

I’m a fan of yours. I know I’m one of many, but I hope you’ll read this letter, or perhaps you’ll even reply, who knows.

The story you told is not my story, it doesn’t belong to me. My life is different from yours, I’ve had different experiences, perhaps I’ve made bad choices, but at least they’re mine and no one else’s.

And yet, dear Melissa, I feel a kind of contact with you. It’s as though there were a rope pulling us tightly together. There is a connection, I’ve worked that out, and I hope you won’t think me arrogant or anything like that. I just wanted to tell you what I think. It’s something very powerful, I can’t explain it.

Yours,

Penelope

PS: I’m sending you a photograph. I think it’s important to give a face to someone hiding behind words.

“So?” I ask the woman with eyes like yours. “Another one who thinks she’s me. So?”

“So, you fool, this might alleviate all your suffering. Don’t you understand, don’t you see that the only connection between the two of you is him? The only point in common might be the love that links you to him.”

“What the hell do you mean? That it wasn’t Viola but that bitch Penelope who was jeopardizing my relationship with Thomas? Are you saying I’m blind, as always?”

Her eyes are sweet again and that makes me nervous. “No,” she says, “she’ll come after you. She doesn’t yet exist in his thoughts. She’ll come if you decide, if you go downstairs, open the letter, and see the photograph she’s sent you. You’ll be able to decide whether to survive or to die…and quite honestly I don’t know which is worse,” and she laughs, modestly putting a hand in front of her mouth.

“Shut up! Shut up…stop laughing. Tell me more clearly,” I beg.

She composes herself and says, “Do it like this. If you want to die outright, the best thing to do is the following: you invite her over to your place one of these days, and a few hours before she turns up, you leave. You get out of there. But you really have to go for good. In the meantime make sure that he’s at home, so that when she rings the bell, he’s the one who answers the door, and she’ll be forced to accept his invitation to come in, because she’s just had a long journey…and that way you’ll die, but at least you’ll be happy. And you’ll know that everything’s real and nothing is imagined anymore.”