“What are you making?” she asked.
“Fried tofu and tomato sauce.”
“I guess it could be worse,” she joked.
She took out the plates, and I served the food before we went out on the porch. She said it was good, and we didn’t talk much more while we ate. Then I made tea, put on music, and lay in the hammock with a book in my hand.
Leah broke the silence after a while.
“What are you reading?” she asked.
“An essay. About death.” I suppressed the impulse to get up, kneel beside her, and embrace her. That’s what I would have done during the first two or three months. Now the idea seemed so distant, almost impossible.
“Why are you reading that?”
“Why not?”
“It’s not something people like to talk about…”
“Don’t you think that’s a mistake?” I’d been thinking about it for months…
“I don’t know.”
I put the book aside. “I’ve been reading about death in other cultures. And I’m wondering if the way we face things is a matter of how we’re raised or if it’s instinctive, inborn. You know what I mean?”
Leah shook her head.
“I’m talking about the different ways human beings have of channeling and feeling the same thing. Like some aboriginal people in Australia put dead bodies on a platform, cover them with leaves and branches, and leave them there. When they have an important celebration, they rub the liquid from the corpse on themselves, or they paint the bones red and use them to commemorate the people they love. In Madagascar, the Malgache take bodies out of the grave every seven years, wrap them in cloth, and dance with them. Then they spend a while talking to them or touching them before they bury them for another seven years.”
“Jesus, Axel, that’s gross.” Leah furrowed her nose.
“That’s where I have questions. Why does something that seems horrible to us comfort other people and make them feel better? I don’t know, imagine if since we were children someone taught us that loss isn’t sad, it’s just a goodbye, something natural that we have to talk through.”
“Death is natural,” she agreed.
“But we don’t see it that way. We don’t accept it.”
Leah’s lower lip trembled. “Because it hurts. And it’s scary.”
“I know, but it’s always worse to ignore something and pretend it doesn’t exist. Especially when it’s something we’re all going to experience, right?” I got up and crouched down next to her. I held her chin in my fingers. “Are you aware that I’m going to die?”
“Don’t say that, Axel.”
“What? The most obvious reality there is?”
“I can’t even think about it.”
I opened my mouth, ready to go on tensing the cord, but when I saw her face, I stopped. I got lost in her frightened eyes, and couldn’t keep myself from bending over and kissing her forehead. Then I pulled away quickly. I went back to the hammock and opened my book again. I stayed there reading until late, after Leah had said good night, thinking, thinking about everything…
It was so strange, so illogical that for years, they taught us math, literature, biology, but not how to deal with something as inevitable as death…
62
_________
Leah
I had taken a decision, a path.
To turn back. Find myself. Get myself together.
It was a Friday afternoon when I opened the kitchen cabinet and looked through the bags there until I found a heart-shaped sucker. They had been my weakness for years. My father always bought them for me. I took off the wrapper and looked at it slowly, focusing on its intense color. I put it in my mouth and savored the strawberry flavor. I closed my eyes. Then I saw him, Dad, always smiling and in a good mood.
Memories are like that. Sparks. They come when you least expect them. Sssss. The slightly harsh feel against your cheek, so similar to that sweater your grandmother knitted for you from thick wool, with a Christmas design in the middle. Shhhh. That word your father used to address you and you alone, no one else, that Sweetie, give me a good night kiss. Shhhh. The sun. Light. A certain light. The light of midday, of Sundays on the porch at home right after lunch, when it seemed like the beams were lazy and hardly heated you up. Shhhh. The scent of fabric softener, the soft scent of roses, the feeling of bringing clean clothes to your face and inhaling slowly. Shhhh. The hoarse sound of familiar laughter. Sssss. An entire life in images, textures, scents, and flavors passes before your eyes in a second.
63
_________
Leah
I readied my suitcase on Saturday afternoon to have it ready when Oliver came to pick me up the next day. When I finished, I put on the clothes I had left out, a peach dress and flat sandals with brown straps. I grabbed a matching bag and walked out. Axel was in the living room. He was wearing jeans and a ridiculous-looking shirt that would have looked awful on any other guy, but simply made him stand out more.
His eyes traveled over me, and I shivered.
“I see you’re ready. Let’s go.”
Axel had said we should go out for dinner and walk around for once. It was all I could do not to jump for joy and throw myself in his arms, but I managed it. Because he had asked me to. Begged me, actually. I couldn’t get out of my head his whispering to me that it couldn’t be, and I wanted to shout to him that it wasn’t true, but I couldn’t bear the idea of us being upset and distant with each other again. I accepted that he had admitted there was something there, even if that made things harder.
We went to a nearby town, twenty minutes away by car, and had dinner at a restaurant Axel liked that served vegetarian dishes of all kinds. We ordered a few things to pick at and then chose a few more dishes to share. He looked at me as he chewed.
He was so handsome under that orange light.
And I was so fucking hooked on him…
“I was thinking one day we could go to Brisbane.”
“What for?” I took a sip of water.
“I don’t know, just to go around, check some places out, see the university, maybe.”
I put aside my glass and a silence enveloped us. “I don’t even know if I want to go.”
“Why not? Spit it out.”
“I…I’ve just got the feeling I’m starting to breathe again. And I’m terrified of drowning, of being there all alone and having to meet new people. I don’t know if I can. A year ago, that was my life’s dream, but now…I’m scared.”
“But fear isn’t a bad thing, Leah.”
“I don’t want to talk about this today.”
Axel leaned back in his chair. “Okay. What do you want to do?”
“Just be normal, for one night. Without thinking about the future. I don’t want to talk about death either, or feelings or anything related to painting.”
He leaned his head to one side without taking his eyes off me.
“Just be here in this instant. Isn’t that what you told me to do a long time ago?”