The Scent of Your Breath

Thirty

Once, you and I went for a walk in the country. I had a long stick to help myself climb steep slopes, and every now and then I cynically squashed any lizards that passed close by.

You were pregnant, and your belly was hard and swollen. I was worried that the lizards might hurt you; I was afraid that the whole world might hurt you. So I protected you with my little body and followed you everywhere you went.

We stopped to sit under a big magnolia with white flowers. I remember that the sap spilled from part of the trunk and I stuck my finger in; under the magnolia was a tiny pond in which we bathed our feet. It was spring and the world seemed like Eden.

Countless butterflies and dragonflies swirled suspended between heaven and earth; it was as though they wanted to keep us company but never found the courage to come too close.

“You see those?” you said, pointing to the dragonflies. “They can turn into women.”

“Women?” I asked you, fascinated.

“Yes, women. They come and get you at night in the form of insects and destroy your dreams, they put terrible spells on you, and they can even kill you…,” you said, opening your eyes wide.

“Why?” I cried excitedly.

“They’re women who pray against you. They kneel before a cross and loosen their hair and repeat magic phrases that no one knows.”

“Women on their knees…do you know these magic phrases?” I asked. I wanted to know them, too.

You shook your head and continued: “But I know magic phrases to chase away the ronni ri notti—the night women. They’re the women who turn themselves into dragonflies and fly at night…”

“Oh, yes.”

“The next morning, you know they’ve come because your hair is woven into tiny, almost invisible plaits that are impossible to undo.”

“Impossible?” Now I could only muster single words.

“Not impossible exactly…you have to spray your hair with oil and recite these phrases.” You took a deep breath and your huge belly swelled until it seemed about to burst. “Holy Monday, Holy Tuesday, Holy Wednesday, Holy Thursday, Holy Friday, Holy Saturday, Sunday the night women will lose their wings.”

I sat there with my mouth open and whispered. “Beautiful…”

“And remember: every time you see a dragonfly, kill it. If you let it live, it’s more likely that you will die.”

We went on splashing our feet in the water while I allowed myself to fill up with the fascination of your stories.

“I hoped you would come back soon,” I say to Thomas as I finish the last of the food from my empty, dirty plate.

“Sorry, I had problems at work,” he replies, embarrassed.

I’m embarrassed by lies and hypocrisy, they make me feel small and insignificant, they make me slide into the certainty that the other person thinks me stupid, inferior, untrustworthy. In this case, mad.

I summon my courage and say, “Please tell me — who’s Viola?”

“Who’s Viola?”

“Who’s Viola?” I repeat.

“Oh yeah, she’s the one who let me have the dog,” he says and points to the little mongrel crouched beside us, gazing up at us with those eyes that I’m seriously starting to love.

“Oh, I get it…and it was so important that you had to store her number on your phone?” I ask harshly.

He shrugs and says, “What’s so important about that?”

I leap to my feet and react violently. “What the hell do you mean, what does it matter? It’s fucking important, that’s what it is!”

He shrugs again and this time his expression has changed. “OK, we’ve bumped into each other in the bar a couple of times, we’ve had a sandwich together…nothing more.”

“I bet! Nothing more? What else would you have wanted? A sandwich and that’s that? In fact I don’t really see why you’d have wanted to share it with her,” I say, looking into his eyes, aware that mine are exploding from their sockets.

I stare at him and imagine him looking at her, I work my way inside him and hear his thoughts, telling him over and over to leave me. At this moment he’s thinking that I’m making his life difficult, but as far as I’m concerned that’s the last thing I want. Right now I just want to analyze, understand, and take possession of all the security I lack. I know, I know, at any moment he’s going to slam the door and he’ll never come back, he’ll leave me bleeding and faded on this floor, I’ll gradually disappear and stop annoying him. But right now he’s got to take my hands and reassure me.

As for him, he’s not the kind to withdraw from a discussion. He’s the kind of person who likes to reason, to make me reason, but he can’t do it. He can’t say, “OK, you’re being a pain in the ass, so I’m out of here”—that’s not his way. He stays here with me and looks at me and sometimes smiles at me without resentment. I hate his goodness, his tolerance. He makes me feel so unworthy, so wretched and pitiful, with my tendency to hide, to seek refuge, to sink my face into the pillow, to escape my problems. I’m not capable of being so self-possessed, so empathetic.

Then he takes my hands and whispers, “I love only you.”

I don’t believe him. Not for a moment.

Don’t ask me why, don’t tell me — forget it. I just don’t believe him.

Then he talks to me about freedom. He says he lacks it. He says I’m tearing off his wings. How naive of me — I thought I was his freedom, that I was his wings, and that with me he’d be able to go wherever he wanted; he would have stayed perched on my back and guided me among the clouds, among the storms; together we would have looked down on buildings from on high and laughed at the stupid, impotent men struggling on the streets, dragging themselves along like sacks of potatoes.

He tells me he has the right to meet whomever he feels like and that isn’t why his love will shrink. He just says, “You’ve got to trust me.”

As for me, I have the right to die, to destroy myself, to feel my belly crumbling, to go mad and meet my ghosts, to become their puppet.

I have the right to yield to instinct. I have the right to cry and feel good as I do so. I also have the right to think that if he feels suffocated, clearly I’m no longer the delicate, flowing wave that softened and dissolved him. It means that I’m the storm now and he’s alone and he can’t find shelter anywhere.

Except with Viola and her normalcy.