Butterflies in November

TWELVE

In five minutes’ time I will have written him off, not that I ever really thought he would actually come. There’s no one on the ice in the mounting thaw; the kids have all gone to the indoor ice rink and are listening to FM 97.7, licking green and violet ice pops. The circle in which the ducks are squabbling is growing larger and with every round I take I’m drawn slightly closer to the water.

There I am standing on the glistening ice, with the steel dents of the skates pressed into the surface to steady myself, when I see the man nonchalantly walking towards me in his long woollen coat and a pair of skates slung over his shoulder, like some image from a century-old Alpine postcard. Complete with a red and white striped fringe scarf. Under his coat he is in a suit and tie. Darkness has long descended on the islet in the middle of the lake, but the lamp-posts from the surrounding residential streets shed some light on the area. He has left the engine of his car running on the edge of the lake to allow the headlights to illuminate his path on the ice, because he intends to be brief, just a moment. He simply wants to collect me and take me home to console me.

He isn’t very tall, seen from a distance, in his socks just a few feet from his car. He now sits on the wall by the lake to put on his skates. Then he advances cautiously on the ice. He is not as ill-experienced as I imagined, or he is skilled enough to be able to follow me at any rate, although the skates are clearly as new as his blue car on the edge of the lake.

I wasn’t prepared for this. The perseverance and determination my ex-lover displays on the ice triggers mixed feelings in me. I’m not sure I can cope with anything at the moment. When all is said and done, this is my first experience as a woman on the brink of a divorce. But if people mean well and show some masculine and persuasive sensitivity, it won’t be easy for me to remain indifferent.

The ice in front of us is silvery blue and I’m about to launch myself into a figure, drawing intricate patterns under the beams of the car headlights. That should give me some technical one-upmanship, although I feel him coming eerily close to my back, like a waxing moon over a frozen sea.

He is trying to sidle up to me; I can sense he is out of breath and feel him panting in the dark, but can’t really think of anything to say to him. I don’t know if I’ll go home with him or not yet, because I don’t know if I love my ex-husband, so I just try to keep a step ahead. If I had it all written down on a sheet of paper, my options I mean, in a manuscript, in front of me in black and white, I could simply cross out one of the possibilities.

When I glance over my shoulder, scanning over the white-streaked ice, I see that I’m drawing a pattern that looks like the intersection of the lifeline and fate line in the palm of my hand. I could probably carry on writing important messages with my skates, or even perform a pirouette and allow myself to glide towards him, etching the shape of a curved heart in the cold grey ice.

Instead I dash towards the hole in the ice, with headphones pressed to my ears and the volume pumped up high. The circle steadily grows bigger as I near its edge. He is trying to phone me now; I can feel my mobile vibrating in the lower side pocket of my trousers.

Personally, I can easily avoid that hole in the lake. The question is whether I might not be putting him in peril by coming so dangerously close, creating unnecessary suspense just to buy some time, simply because I don’t know what to say to him yet. Despite my mastery of many languages, I’ve never been particularly apt with words, at least not eye to eye, woman to man. Even though I know a regular sentence will require a subject, object and verb and, if it is to achieve any level of complexity, at least three prepositions, my power over words doesn’t stretch that far. I’m not particularly good at conjuring up words, the right words I mean, or saying them, what really counts. I can’t even spurt out the most important bits like “be warned” and “I love you”. In that order.

Now that there is nothing in front of us but the black hole and a decision urgently needs to be made, I can suddenly clearly see the difference between me and my ex-lover. I slow down and prepare to sway to the side, drawing a semicircle close to the edge, while he skids to a halt in a straight line, almost crashing into me, but I manage to swing away, taking a long curve that almost takes me to the bridge.

He catches up with me as I’m flexing my knees and about to shoot under the bridge, and envelops me in his turn-of-the-century scarf. I feel his hot breath on my eyelids. Everything is suffused in a reddish glow and I am, in spite of everything, a woman with a beating heart. I could just as well go home with him.

“Don’t you want to see me any more?” he gasps.

“No, I haven’t stopped wanting, but this is a difficult patch for me so I’m going away for a while, on a journey,” I say, because it is only at that precise moment that it dawns on me that I should perhaps take a trip somewhere.

He wants to know if he can come with me. I tell him that’s not possible.

“Can I visit you then?”

“It’s so far away, halfway across the planet,” I add, coming up with the kind of stratagem that always surprises me just as much as it does the men in my life. “I’ll be away for a long time,” I say to add further weight to my words and make sure there can be no turning back.

“But I’ll send you some postcards anyway,” I add.

He asks if he can make some Spaghetti carbonara for me.

“We could catch a movie afterwards.”

I tell him I feel it’s too soon to be going to the cinema with him.

“We could catch the ten o’clock screening instead.”