IT WAS A YEAR OF SAYING GOODBYE…
to Saviana S.
Far behind us lie the facts, the promises, the autumn colours. Today a morning scent of wet branches and wet leaves hangs here, steam rising from the meadows and the asphalt between the imitation farms erected in this domain. Something from here evokes something from over there. Petrila, Petrosani, Lupeni, the villages I came to after we had said goodbye. It was a year of saying goodbye. I have remembered what took place. We looked down from the hotel room onto the roofs of the town – skylights like eyes that had spied on us all night. I stood beside you at the window, saw your lips move, but did not hear you. I had submerged, breathed, but cared about nothing. Was it whisky or ‘the ennui of fright’, as a drunken poet once called it? What lies behind us, pursues us, Saviana. Or do I say, Vava? Do you have a preference for the pet name I have borrowed from your young cousin? Do you still recall the smell of fresh-baked bread that wafted towards us that night in the street? The baker greeted us, white as a ghost. You could be take fright like no one else could. You could not get used to the sound of the sticks used by the waiters to drive off the gypsy children from the restaurant. You hated the whooping of the screwing on the other side of the curtain that separated your bed from that of the couple you rented the room from. We had much to tell each other, many tales without prospect. Other people could have eluded us, others could have been together. Vava, I ought to have answered that last letter. How is your hand doing? What has happened? Have you forgotten me? The day progresses minute by minute. Cumulus clouds drift past. It is late afternoon and the rain comes intermittently. Brich leaves quiver in the wind in the back garden. I listen to the cello concerto in B minor, opus 104, by Dvorak and go on wrestling with your questions.
· Essays · Toneel |
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Joris Iven |