◊
This is the part where I have to count backwards, or elseI’ll lose myself. That’s what you do to me. I was eight when I first met you, Iwas ten when your aunt became my summer guardian. I was sixteen on the day ofthe boardwalk and the sunset, when we fled to Marseille for a perfect day thatwas never supposed to end. But what between? Sometime, someone had to tell methe truth. Your aunt must have felt sorry for me, the little boy clumsily pursuingthe black-eyed girl who melted, seamlessly, into everything: into the mud onthe banks, into the tar of the fens, into the snow glistening on the distantridges. The birds and fish were afraid of you. We must have been fourteen orso. I say we because your age is mine, you understand, and mineis yours, and we must not try to separate one from the other anymore.
We found a garden with crumbling walls, our own antiquity.You slipped through, and I climbed over, fitting my bare feet into the crevicesin the stone. I was not, by then, surprised at how you collapsed boundaries. Iwas only surprised at how desperately I wanted you to collapse into me. Insidewas all a mess of hyacinths. You remember now. The open-mouthed white and palepurple buds, stacked generously on their stout cerulean stems. Thunder crackedand the air was full, suddenly, of rain. You were still trying to gatherflowers. Your veil came loose when you bent your head and some impulsecommanded me to pull it back until you were entirely bare-headed. The feelingthat overcame me then, I cannot define, besides to say that I never wanted tofeel like that again. I could see nothing; the sun was eclipsed, myself waslost, and you were the only thing, standing luminous.
You couldn’t love me like that, Isabella, not if you tried.You are lying in that hospital bed now with your arms limp at your sides, andyou still can’t fathom it. That love, I am sorry to say, is the reserve of thepowerless; that love is only mine. We ran back through the downpour. Your armswere full of hyacinths, your cheeks were streaked with rain and tears. Youraunt separated us that night. She crushed your flowers beneath her shoes. Shetold me the story of what you are, her mother before her; her daughter after.Looking sternly at me, in a fierce whisper: “don’t you dare fall in love withher.” I was fourteen years old. I was weak-kneed and nauseated. I only knewwhat I wanted after she said that. They call those desires nascent.Pronounce that word in English, hold it on the edge of your tongue, reallyhearing it. You can, if you listen closely, hear the word be born.
◊
You already know how the boardwalk ended. Let’s remember therest of the day. Let them not say that there were no good times. Already youwere collapsing by then. You would say such dark, cruel things. But you held myhand and wore a scarf wrapped around your head, dark curls spilling out thesides in botanic abundance. Your dress was plain and light and billowed at yourankles. We boarded the first train to Marseille, ascending the lonely platformof our rural station in the cool hours before your aunt was awake. From myguardian, we were still getting postcards with watercolor sketches of relics onone side and scribbled notes on the other; last night, in a fit of defiance, wehad torn the latest one to pieces. Now we came as true orphans into the world,born to each other. We rode the Ferris wheel. We ate ham and butter sandwiches.Marseille looked inconsequential on a map of France, only a red dot nodding tothe jagged coastline. But it was famous, you had promised me, for the cathedraloutside of town. The cathedral belonged to the bleeding nun and her sisters.The cathedral was haunted with their grim berobed figures, who walked attwilight singing endless posthumous vespers. You said you belonged to them, asif you were dead already.
I didn’t understand, then, how your clothes were a sepulcherand your body a grave. I thought if I only loved you enough, I could make thestory come untrue. At sunset we approached the heavy Gothic spires and youprostrated yourself on the still-cooling marble. I stood motionless until atlast I found the courage to pull you back. I said we should go home. You toreloose. You looked at me and I saw, suddenly, how far down you could tumble me.
The constable who seized upon us did not know who we were.He had not seen our photographs, three years old and sepia-bleary, althoughalready your aunt had a poster circulating. We must have worn our story on ourfaces. When they separated us at the station and you screamed, I thought youwere crying for me. Sometimes now I shut my eyes and dream of the world wherethat was true. If you could feel for me as you felt for those cathedral doors,we would surely be married now. We would have three children, and a sprawlinggarden with a pit of unutterable horror looking for all the world like a patchof blue flowers. I comprehend now, as I couldn’t then, that you were never mineto lose.
Your aunt extricated me from the entire misguidedepisode—her phrasing, not mine, primly enclosing an unceasing passion withinthe confines of a day. We were reduced, all at once, to our ham and buttersandwiches. Arrangements were to be made, she told me. The university,traveling, perhaps even a sojourn in the Orient to cultivate a sense ofworldliness. For a young man, doors are always opening. A bystander whowitnessed our parting would have thought he was seeing the bittersweetconclusion to a forbidden adolescent romance. But I knew. And you did too. Ishut my eyes and saw the veins snaking across your forehead, the veil slippingloose. Something cleaved within me. Afterward, the sound of your wailing wasalways going
