Maybe This Time

the hallway and staircase, the room and the wall I always ended up facing. Repeating what was, to see it once again, again and always anew.

I knocked and she welcomed me. In time she opened the door before I’d even had a chance to knock, or simply left the door ajar. I entered and sat on my chair, and got ready. I sat alone for a long time, as if she were waiting until I had made myself at home. Then she came out of one of the rooms, greeted me and sat on the sofa, without a word, always the same. When it happened, when she showed me myself in the guise of the doll as I had been, it was I who was sitting on her lap, and she was the witness of what happened to me. She stroked my hair as I dived into the images, merged with them and disappeared. She never stopped looking at me, and it was into her gaze that I fell and in her eyes that I awoke hours later, hours that I could not account for.

Karl was always there with us, watching me while I remembered particular moments from my past, places and situations into which I was about to plunge, where all traces of my history had been erased. It was there that I encountered myself, as the child I once was, and I would see myself run, or sit, or walk through the trees. The same images, always in the same sequence. This house with its front garden, the room, the wall, always the same, and always someone would be picking me up, lifting me and lowering me again, lifting and lowering me, weightless. There the memory ended each time and I landed back in the present, looking into the eyes of the woman who welcomed me with a smile.

We sat across from each other, looking at each other in silence, and I remembered, though afterwards I could no longer say what it was I had recalled.

I knew very well what kept drawing me back to this woman, for she had something to offer, something I accepted. But what she could possibly gain from these meetings, I had no idea.

I became even more estranged from my wife than before. She suspected I had become involved with another woman, and while she was not wrong, it was, in fact, myself I had become involved with, in a manner I would never have thought possible.

I got increasingly used to the old woman’s idiosyncrasies, but it was a while before I realized how fragile and vulnerable she was and that our time together was running out. There was so much I wanted to know, to experience and to see once again. When I awoke to her gaze she stood up and left. I then had the room to myself for a long time and I looked at the other dolls. I often wondered how many others might have sat here before in my seat. They had come to her over the years, those who had turned away from themselves, for whatever reason, she explained. They are here, she said, and what happened to them is here too. Some of them have visited me every day for years now. Every day, every night, in their dreams, in their sleep, they come to me, she said. They can stay here. Nothing will happen to them here that has not already happened to them elsewhere long ago.

One day I opened a cupboard in which she often rummaged in search of something. I opened it and found Karl looking at me out of many faces. The dolls that showed me as a child were scuffed and old. Their clothing was tattered and threadbare but meticulously folded or hung up. I even saw my first pair of shoes, which I remembered since I had been photographed in them so often. They were there, underneath the pullovers, shirts, jackets and trousers of long ago.

The woman always referred to her children when speaking about the dolls, but she didn’t react when I asked her about her daughters. She frequently mentioned them during my early visits, and the next time I passed by one of her daughters’ hair salons, I went in. In Salon Annie a woman welcomed me and took my coat. I had to wait so I sat in a corner, picked up a newspaper and observed the place. After a while I recognized the old woman’s daughter because she looked like the doll I had seen just the day before. They were identical down to the last detail. She had the same voice as her mother, and when I stood in front of the doll the following morning, that voice still sounded in my ears.

Whether I liked it or not, I too had become one of the old woman’s dolls, or perhaps I had always been one. She sat me on her lap, and I let it happen, because in exchange she gave me something I wanted and each time craved more deeply – myself. And so I sat across from her and observed how I, as her doll, sat on her lap and had my hair stroked and was petted and cuddled. As long as I was sitting across from her, I was happy, and it did me good. And as soon as I left her house, I was drawn back there. She knew it, or maybe she didn’t. It was different each time. She was close to me but also distant. She gave me the space I needed and didn’t coerce me, but every fibre of my being was drawn to her and to this place where something of me was hidden and could ultimately be found through her. So I tried to live up to any expectations she might have of me, and I enjoyed that. I felt an affinity with her, felt understood by her, and if not understood then at least accepted. I had surrendered myself to her and continued to abandon myself to her and to the images she showed me of myself. And so I returned to her every day, and before long it was as if I lived with her.

One day my wife confronted me, but it seemed to me that she didn’t want to know the real reason why I had changed. I didn’t mention the woman since I didn’t want to destroy anything that wasn’t already over. And when, the following day, I sat across from the woman, it seemed to me that she was smiling more contentedly than usual.

It was impossible to say what bound us together. We depended on each other without knowing why. When I was with her, we didn’t leave the house. On the contrary, it was only deep within her house that we could truly be there for each other and be alone with each other. Alone, that is, apart from the local children who stalked her. They just couldn’t leave her alone. Again and again, one of the boys would sneak into the garden and venture up to the window. Using his hands to shield his eyes, he would press his face to the windowpane to see inside. I see her, he would yell, she’s inside, and he would shout, bang his fist on the glass and disappear, only to throw a handful of gravel at the house from a safe distance. Each time the woman acted as if she hadn’t noticed anything, which was not possible. Once, when the children were behaving worse than usual, I went to the window and jerked it open. Some of the pebbles flew into the room and fell onto the floor and onto a doll I hadn’t noticed before but in which I recognized the face of the boy who had thrown the gravel.

The children were afraid of the woman, and I noticed that with time they also grew afraid of me because they associated me with her. They avoided me when they saw me on the street or made a game of holding my gaze without greeting me. On my rare visits to my old school friend, his two daughters shrank from me like frightened animals. They hid behind chairs or behind their parents, who grew more reserved with each visit. Eventually I no longer dropped in to see them and changed my route when I came to visit my new friend.

Each time I left her house, a part of me remained behind, and I could feel its absence when I was not with her. I didn’t know her at all, in fact. She was a stranger to me in so many ways. Nothing bound me to her other than her knowledge about me and her ability to reveal me to myself to an extent no one else ever could. I felt secure with her, but at the same time was unsettled by the fact that I had no idea what her intentions were or why she should take such an interest in me.

A blank wall. That is what I faced every time, that’s how it begins. My eyes trace the expanse of the wall, from top to bottom, from bottom to top. Someone picks me up, lifts me, lowers me, lifting, lowering, always the same, sometimes near, sometimes from a distance, until this wakes me and I look into the woman’s eyes as she holds Karl, raising and lowering him, pressing him to her, rubbing him against her body. She was doing to him exactly what I myself had just experienced. This irritated me, but, fearing she might no longer show me myself, I pretended not to notice anything.

From then on, the woman changed. More and more frequently, she sat across from me on the sofa, hugging Karl and caressing him. She stuck out her tongue, showed it to me briefly, then ran it over Karl’s face. Then she showed me how she lifted the child and lowered him, raised him and hugged him tightly without once taking her eyes from me.

I stayed away for a while, forcing myself to keep my distance, yet I longed to go there all the more. I gave in, stopped resisting. I pretended nothing had changed, and she pretended nothing had changed, and we sat across from each other, as we had done before. She stroked Karl’s head and looked me in the eye and placed the child’s finger in her mouth, kissing it tenderly for a long time and sucking on it. She slavered over the little hand, and pulled it back out of her mouth where the fingers had begun to dissolve. The more often they disappeared into her mouth the smaller they got. They melted away and became stumps, before they finally vanished. She kept licking and sucking tenderly, and eventually put the entire hand into her mouth, which melted and vanished. She seemed fully aware of herself and of what was happening. She ate with relish as I sat there across from her and I watched as I disappeared into her. At the same time she slowly deteriorated right before my eyes. Soon enough she was sitting