From a nightmare: A Letter Written On A Letter

November 18 2007 8:41 am- 11:34 am

“You ask how loving can happen--- the emotion of loving. She answers: Perhaps a sudden lapse in the logic of the universe. She says: Through a mistake, for instance. She says: Never through an act of will.” [49-50 Malady of Death, Marguerite Duras]



“I release you from me. I release myself from you,” she said to him.

He has to say something, do something that will break her silence. Something more, she doesn’t know. She will know when she hears it, sees it; she will recognize it.

She remembers long ago when she knew that she loved him. She was having dinner with someone else, a good man, beyond a mere man. She stopped eating and began crying.

“I’m sorry… I’m sorry,” she whispered with each tear. He didn’t know what she was sorry for but he hugged her, kissed her forehead, and told her, “It’s all right.”

She didn’t want to love him. This love didn’t make sense. It was a mistake. She knew it and she couldn’t do anything about it. She had tried to murder this love, of course. It was the only thing she could do. She had tried. It was the only thing she could do. She loved him. It was the only thing she could do.

“I release you from me. I release myself from you,” she had addressed him formally. Those were her last words to him.



“You ask: Could the emotion of loving come from other things too? She says: It can come from anything, from the flight of a night bird, from a sleep, from a dream of sleep, from the approach of death, from a word, from a crime, of itself, from oneself, often without knowing how.” [50]



“No,” he had said to her, asking for an explanation, asking her silence.

Her silence says--- I cannot keep on explaining things to you, what this is, what life is. After all, you need to find out for yourself; learn on your own. It’s no use explaining something that has already happened.

Now, what do you do, what do you do?



“When you wept it was just over yourself and not because of the marvelous impossibility of reaching her through the difference that separates you.” [54]


In her silence, she kept on hearing his excuses, not reasons. How terribly clear now. How terribly clear that she made excuses for him. What was her reason? Love.

In her silence, she hears how sorry he is, what he’s doing where and when, with whom. She doesn’t hear that he loves her. He doesn’t say it. He doesn’t show it.

He says and shows the same thing when he first broke her heart a long time ago, a month earlier this time: good morning, i will get the car fixed today, then do this there with whom later.

Her silence had said, says--- Is that all you can say? Is that all you can do?

He doesn’t even remember that time or this time.

She remembers time. He forgets that she remembers time: I ate around 10, he said. At 10:42, he had said to her that he had not eaten.

Lies: Love: Truth. How terribly clear now. How terribly clear that he doesn’t even take note of time. Time is coming for her with “When are you finally getting married?” this from a father. And with, “You only have ten years to have a child,” this from a mother.

Time is coming for her with the diamonds she wears on her ring finger. She keeps her silence as she wears them like trinkets. After all, it is not her question to answer; it is his.

She keeps her silence. She is good at keeping her silence; it is like breathing to her. It is difficult but she does it so well; she struggles, it is beautiful and it makes her weep. She has told him already that she never wept for herself; she had always wept for the “you”, for the “us”.

He forgets. He empties hearts of love in his hunger to be loved but not love. She is his air and he is choking her. He is murdering her and she refuses to die. She refuses to sleep with doubts, with a heart breaking, her heart. She will do what she has to, to live. She wants to live.



“Soon you give up, don’t look for her anymore, either in the town or at night or in the daytime. Even so you have managed to live that love in the only way possible for you. Losing it before it happened.” [55]



He will keep his silence too, thinking, waiting for the time that he will know what to do. He waits for her to break her silence, thinking that she is waiting for him.

She had stopped waiting, it seemed a long time ago, when she called herself this name. She had forgotten about her name, forgotten who waits; that it is not she.

But she hopes that someday he will know how to love. After all, he will never know how to love her. In time, he will. She hopes the cure for his malady will come to him.

“I release you from me. I release myself from you,” she had addressed him formally, no longer as her love, but still the love of her life, and she said good night.

Those were the last words she said to him.