Hear the Wind Sing

34

Sometimes I tell lies.

The last time I told a lie was last year. Telling lies is a really terrible thing. These days, lies and silence are the two greatest sins in human society, you might say. In reality, we tell lots of lies, and we often break into silence.

However, if we were constantly talking year-round, and telling only the truth, truth would probably lose some of its value.

* * *

Last autumn, my girlfriend and I were naked, having climbed into bed together. And then we got really hungry.

“Don’t you have anything to eat?” I asked her.

“I’ll go and check.”

She rose from the bed, naked, opened the refrigerator and took out some old bread she’d found, made some simple sandwiches with lettuce and sausage, then brought them back to bed with some instant coffee. Being October, it was a really cold night, and when she crawled back into bed her body was completely chilled, like canned salmon.

“There wasn’t any mustard.”

“Mmm…delicious.”

Wrapped up in blankets in her futon, we munched on sandwiches as we watched an old movie on television.

It was The Bridge on the River Kwai.

In the end, when the bridge was bombed, she groaned for a little while.

“Why’d you go through all that just to build a bridge?” she said with her finger pointed to the dumbfounded, petrified Alec Guinness.

“So they could keep their pride.”

“Hmph,” she said with her mouth stuffed full of bread, as she thought for a moment on the subject of human pride. It was always this way, but I had no idea what the hell was going on inside her head.

“Hey, do you love me?”

“Sure.”

“You wanna get married?”

“Now? Right away?”

“Sometime…someday.”

“Of course I’d like to marry you.”

“But until I asked you about it, you’ve never breathed a word about it.”

“I forgot to tell you.”

“Hmm…how many kids do you want?”

“Three.”

“Boys? Girls?”

“Two girls and a boy.”

She washed down the bread in her mouth with some coffee and then fixed her eyes upon my face.

“LIAR!”

She said.

However, she was mistaken. I only lied once.