Her thoughts are like a Hollywood film.
On the black screen of her white nights,
Tatiana, still a little naïve, keeps fading to black:
at the moment when Eugene unclips her bra
fade to black
at the moment when Eugene’s lips brush her collar bone
fade to black
at the moment when Eugene unbuttons his jeans
fade to black
We always fade in again
the next morning,
when Tatiana is fully clothed,
when they are eating breakfast together,
when they’re chatting in the garden, united
by the knowledge that something’s happened
and no one knows.
black/white/black/white
black/white/black/white/black/white
One can only admire it, this innate self-censorship,
this discipline within;
but despite the chastity of her dreams, Tatiana still doesn’t
fall asleep until dawn.
And when she sleeps, she thrashes about,
and when she wakes, she feels like
she’s spent the whole night fighting her covers,
which are wrapped tight around her
like an octopus.
And these thoughts barely have time to stagnate:
every day, they are refreshed by something new.
Something Eugene’s said,
a lock of hair he’s put back in place,
the arm of his glasses that he sucked, deep in thought,
the hint of a hesitation on his face;
Tatiana hoards all these little Eugene treasures
in the storeroom of her dreams, a shop
where she is the sole customer,
the sole vendor.
hello madam I would like to buy
the little mole from Eugene’s neck please yes that one
yes yes the one that looks like a peppercorn
thank you kindly
it’s to decorate my daydream where I kiss him just there
you see
would you by any chance have a jar
of his favourite expressions?
that’s right
I’m planning an imaginary conversation
with him tonight
Sometimes these treasures prove explosive, intoxicating,
a detail marked with DANGER;
let’s say, for example,
that one afternoon he took her hand
in order to look at her watch,
then, that evening:
I’d like a copy
of the sensation of his two fingers on my wrist.
Oh dear!
Are you sure?
Absolutely.
You know this guarantees you won’t fall asleep
until three or three-thirty in the morning!
I know, but I need it.
I should warn you, it’s highly addictive.
I’ll be careful with it.
All right.
If you say so. But please follow
the instructions.
I will, I promise. Thank you.
The most dangerous of these treasures
gets delivered to Tatiana on the day that changes her life.
That day, while deep in conversation,
as she’s explaining something
very interesting
about butterflies at the time of the Industrial Revolution,
the world is suddenly torn apart:
Eugene takes off his sweater, and his polo shirt is lifted
up –
and
she
sees
a
fine
dark
line
of
hairs
running like a pencil shading
from his navel to his belt buckle.
And then beyond.
Down to where?
down to his damn
she was in the middle of explaining
something very interesting
about something
white butterflies no, they were black no, hang on
in England during the Industrial Revolution
the butterflies were white
but, you see, there was lots of soot,
she tells Eugene because of the factories
the butterflies were white, before but then, because
of the soot oh God, where
was I? oh yes, so to clarify
so it was the time of the Industrial Revolution in England
are you with me so far?
‘I’m with you so far,’ Eugene smiles.
And so, in fact it was it was all dark I mean
oh I can’t explain it
‘It was all dark because of the smoke from the factories,’
encourages Eugene.
The fine dark line of hairs has disappeared again
under the polo shirt
but it remains imprinted
on her retina,
seared to her poor stunned brain.
‘Yes,’ says Tatiana, ‘that’s right,
so in fact – concentrate – the walls of
London were white before, and so were the butterflies,
but when the walls became black because of the soot, the
butterflies evolved and they became black too.’
bravo Tatiana, she congratulates herself,
that was a more or less coherent explanation
now get thee behind me, fine dark line,
come back tonight when I’ll need you
as a prop for my dreams
‘It’s proof that a dark world
makes you dark,’ concludes Eugene.
‘Yes,’ stammers Tatiana. ‘I mean, no,
it’s actually proof of Darwin’s theory, so …
I mean, don’t you think it’s amazing, that
whole thing about white butterflies becoming black?’
Eugene laughs. ‘I don’t know
about the butterflies, but you
are bright red, suddenly.’
And indeed our poor Tatiana is vermilion.
Like those little butterflies,
she would like to disappear at the end of the garden
(and I too must admit that I find it surprising
that we so want to blend into the background,
that we wish to vanish into the door,
the wallpaper, the carpet on the floor,
and that so often this chameleon desire arrives
at the very moment when we might blurt out:
I was troubled by the fleeting vision of your body;
in those very moments that could change our life,
we want to hide, in order to survive;
in order to avoid
being eaten by birds,
we wish ourselves carpet, wallpaper, doors,
instead of the great scandal that our words
might cause.)
It is perhaps that vision and those regrets that force
Tatiana to pace up and down in her room tonight.
She’s trying to exhaust herself so she can sleep.
For days now she’s stayed awake till dawn.
All this love and tiredness make her want to puke.
She tries to count her steps, but the hope’s forlorn:
she has no self-discipline at all.
A hundred steps a hundred and one a garrison of
steps she is an army just her alone she’s the military
march of her beating heart she’s the general at its head
it is she who decides she won’t let her emotions walk
all over her she wants order in her organs calm in her
cardiac rhythm she wants to sleep perchance to NO no
dreams she is in charge here not her ventricles not the
tentacles of her octopus bed she needs to sleep her
m
ind a blank no images of pencil shadings NO
steep dark line of hairs going down to NO please
just sleep just sleep let her sleep please sleeeeeep
But trying not to think about something
is a battle lost in advance; your brain
will just keep asking you –
what was that thing again?
Now Tatiana’s feet
are aching and her head
is still filled with pictures of Eugene.
And she still hasn’t fallen asleep.
Yet another sunrise to be seen
from her window. She’s high
on exhaustion and suddenly feels
invincible.
The truth is, she thinks,
I missed my chance, earlier today;
I could have I should have told him.
And yet …
And yet … why not!
Here, now, she will do it, she will be
the person she wants to be: someone better.
I am going, she tells herself, to write him a letter.
A letter of unspeakable beauty. A letter
that is honest, true, real;
lines written straight from her heart
like the straight dark line of hairs that NO NO
DON’T THINK ABOUT THAT. I said NO.
So …
write this letter now, Tatiana, in haste,
instead of imagining the path of that dark line
below his waist.
Tatiana runs to her desk and picks up a pen.
Intelligent, she thinks, be intelligent.
She thinks she’ll write something full of references.
Something spiritual. Subtle. Something to impress Eugene,
who loves quotations more than he loves his parents.
Yes, that’s it!
She’ll compose a letter littered with quotations.
He can have fun spotting each one
and at the same time
admire her sophistication,
while simultaneously guessing
at her feelings.
Tatiana makes several failed attempts,
which we won’t list in detail right now;
it will be the task of future archivists
to decrypt those crumpled scripts.
The last one, written around three in the morning,
reads as follows:
Dear Eugene,
I shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages hence:
How I saw a proud rider on a horse’s proud back;
Oh, how his broad clear brow in sunlight glowed!
And from underneath his helmet flowed
His coal-black curls, his flashing eyes,
For he had fed on honey-dew, and drunk the milk of Paradise.
My love, had we but world enough and time …
Alas! At my back I always hear Time’s chariot arrive!
And as love is life, and life hath immortality,
Let me wake forever in this sweet unrest,
And so live eternally – or else swoon to death.
Tatiana contemplates her shanty-town verse,
cobbled together from others’ words.
In itself, it has to be said,
the poem is not
especially good.
Put it this way: if Eugene does not spot
the references, he might well wonder
what exactly she’s been sniffing.
And as the original verses were not all in the same
meter,
she had to plug the gaps with words of her own:
an oh here, a how there,
an alas where it does not belong,
and to make it rhyme,
she had to alter some of the lines,
and you can tell, a little bit, she thinks.
(Who is she kidding? It stinks!)
But the biggest problem is that none of the thoughts
are really hers.
It is the work
of a thousand others, and yet of no one.
It is half past three in the morning when she scrunches up
the sheet of paper.
She sits down at her desk again,
concentrates and at last frees herself.
Sometimes, she realises, you can try too hard
to be perfect. Reaching for rhymes and rhythm when you
could write freely. Being clever when you could be sincere.
Writing a letter with ink and quill, when you could just
Open a New Message.
Eugene’s email address will come in handy, after all.
Tatiana turns on her computer,
which takes ten minutes to sputter into life (it’s 2006),
and she opens her Hotmail inbox
and finds she has an email from Myspace
reminding her it’s her birthday
(it’s not: she gave the website
a false date of birth;
her actual birthday is in two weeks’ time)
and another one, some spam, that yells
TATIANA1992
SEND A VIRTUAL CARD
TO THE PERSON YOU LOVE!!!
MORE THAN 250 ANIMATED CARDS!!!
FOR FRIENDSHIP, LOVE, CONDOLENCES
Tatiana smiles at this coincidence (which is nothing of the
kind, since she gets messages like this almost every day).
In a corner of the screen, MSN
lights up too.
Sometimes the little men are blue, other times grey or green;
Eugene
is a little grey man.
At this hour of the night, of course, everyone
is a little grey man.
(Except for SmarterChild, the robot from MSN,
every insomniac’s friend,
always available for weird conversations.
I used to chat with him sometimes,
because I liked the odd sensation
of conducting a discussion
with someone who couldn’t answer
any important question;
just like all of us,
but at least he admitted it
instead of trying to bluff.
Have you ever fallen in love, SmarterChild?
Robots do not fall in love.
What should I write in a love letter, SmarterChild?
If I were to write a letter,
the first thing I would consider
is the person to whom I am writing.
I am sorry to learn
that you are having difficulty
falling asleep.
What is the meaning of life, SmarterChild?
I am afraid that I have not been
programmed to respond to this question.
I miss SmarterChild; it’s a pity
he no longer exists. Siri tries too hard to be witty.
Even though he sometimes made no sense,
I preferred SmarterChild and his wise innocence.)
Tatiana is not done with robotic questions.
She clicks on Microsoft Word,
starts to write …
Dear Eugene
and right away
it looks as though you’re writing a letter
exclaims the animated paperclip, with his bulging eyes
and vicious smile
can I help you?
No, thanks – I’m fine.
Tatiana clicks on the X in the top right corner of the screen
and the paperclip vanishes. Now she can proceed.
She writes her message to Eugene with disconcerting ease.
No verbal acrobatics.
It is simply a message that tells him how she feels.
It’s beautiful, in its way. I kept it. Would you like to see?
Tatiana’s message
to Eugene
Good evening Eugene,
or rather, good morning.
It was really ni
ce to see you again today.
Recently, maybe because of the way
I’m feeling (bored), or the hot summer weather,
or maybe some other reason,
whatever,
sometimes I just wait
for you to arrive.
Then I hear the creak of the garden gate,
and there you are,
with Lensky by your side.
But until you turn up, I’m all distracted.
I find it hard to concentrate.
I wait and wait,
but when we’re waiting, we don’t really live;
reality seems unreal.
For weeks now, it’s like reality’s been passing me by;
I can’t touch it, I can’t feel
anything
until the gate swings open and you enter our garden.
It’s strange, but
only when you’re there with me
do I feel like I’m where I’m supposed to be.
The rest of the time, I’m like a girl at the window
watching myself live,
out there, down below,
with the feeling that life is happening to
someone else
and I am trapped behind glass.
I know what I’m writing is not very elegant –
I don’t think of myself as poetic –
and I also know that it’s probably because
I’m a bit too romantic,
but
I just wanted to ask if maybe
you might have feelings for me?
I do
for you
by the way.
I’ve known it ever since we first met.
You’ve probably got loads of girls after you, though; in fact,
I’m
sure you have to brush them off your trouser legs
all the time.
Maybe you have a girlfriend back at home,
that you’ve never mentioned?
Maybe you don’t have any feelings for me,
after all.
Or maybe you’re gay?
Not that I have a problem
with that – no way!
But if you’re not
gay, I mean
and you don’t
have a girlfriend
and you do
have feelings for me
then maybe
we
could go to see
a movie
together, or something, one of these days.
I heard Spider-Man
is out at the moment. But it doesn’t have to be
that film in particular. Anything will do.
I like pretty much everything, honestly.
Or we could just go for a walk in the park,