It went like this: they read a passage in Russian, one sentence each. When someone made a mistake in stress, Mrs. V. put a tick next to their surname. Having collected seven such ticks, one had to step to the front of the class, put out their hand and Mrs. V. smashed the open palm with a heavy wooden ruler seven times in a row. You were allowed to wince — and by the seventh blow it was hard not to — but she never did. He knew all her mistakes were intentional — she spoke Russian much better than V. Throughout the beating she looked straight at him, defiantly, as if daring him to come up to V. and stop her. If she'd said one word, he used to think, trying to justify his passivity in the face of her suffering, if she'd winced or cried or pleaded, he would have done exactly that. But she didn't. They didn't talk about it later (she forbade him to). Her hand was hot and swollen, its pain absorbed and tamed. Her hand's warmth in his said: I'm alive and so are you. Her hand's calmness in his said: Don't be afraid. This is nothing compared to what I'm ready to endure, with you, for you, when the time comes.
"There are seventeen books and I've found them all."
"You are so beautiful."
"Hands off. Eight are in English, three in German, one in Dutch, one in French, one in Spanish, one in Polish, one in Czech and one in Chinese. One was written by a later Nobel Prize winner. One was published in the sixteenth century, one in the seventeenth, fourteen in the twentieth and the final one in 2006. One hasn't been translated into English, and probably won't, so you will have to learn perfect German."
"Interesting. Tell me, do you like to fuck like the dog?" His best French accent, Morrison at his sexiest and most quotable. But she hated comics. She despised their visuality. They smother imagination while pretending to incite it, she'd always say.
"This is serious. You have to read them."
"If I do, will you finally sleep with me?"
"You can't read them yet, you don't know what they are."
"So tell me."
"That's the whole point. You have to find them yourself."
"I don't want books, I want you. Please... just... and later I'll do it."
"Promise me you'll find and read them."
"And what will happen then?"
"Something beautiful."
"Might this beautiful thing happen by any chance somewhere inside you?"
"Don't make me regret I love you."
"Sorry."
"I'm sick of this obsession with sex. And I'm not sure I ever want to..."
It took him a while to process that.
"Are you out of your fucking mind? You're... I mean, just look at you, you're a stunner, it would be like a deadly sin, if you didn't..." he bit his tongue not to say "fuck", "if you didn't make use of your... you know... looks and beauty. You could have everyone."
"That's not true." Her denial was just a little too vehement. "And I don't care, either. I obviously don't know much about life, but I've a feeling this whole sex thing will turn out to be somehow... degrading."
"Could be. Not with me, though," he added smugly and grinned and she glared at him, not without a hint of a smile. "You can't blame yourself for being a biological creature," he added quickly to disarm her.
"I'm not a huge fan of biology. I somehow feel it might be at odds with... what's really important."
"Which is?"
"I don't know. Words, maybe. Without words, we're just meat. Animals."
"Well, we are animals."
"You seem to be awfully proud of that. And speak for yourself."
She kissed him then, a proper, willing kiss. "Listen. I... we won't do it tonight, but I'll make up for it, OK?"
"How?"
"I will tell you something very personal and... well, intimate."
"Tell me something intimate?! Oh, come on, we're finally alone, for fuck's sakes... I don't want to... just talk. I mean, we can talk later, like it's usually done." He tried to say it with authority, although he had an extremely vague idea how it was usually done.
"Only I'm not the usual sort. So? Do you want to hear it or not?"
"At least let me see you naked."
"No touching. No lights."
"Mhm. And I think I've got another beer in the fridge."
"My dear friend, do you really take me for just another weak-minded cow?"
She took off her beloved I WILL MARRY ONLY HE WHO DEFEATS ME IN BATTLE T-shirt in one swift move, then, after some muffled acrobatics, surrendered the rest of her crumpled clothes with an air of a ritual offering, finally lay down, snuggled safely under the blanket.
"I masturbate to books. Last time it was Apt Pupil. The dream in which the boy rapes the Jewish teenager. I always time my orgasm to the sentence: 'Todd found the cry pleasant, as he did her fruitless struggles to free herself, or, lacking that, to at least bring her legs together.' The belaboured syntax makes it even kinkier. My other regular is Lorraine Goes To Livingston, the part where Denby sodomises the girl, the boy and the sheep — bear in mind my fantasies alternate solely between the boy and the girl." This one he hadn't read and instantly made a high-priority mental note. "And my all favorite bit is from The Black Prince, when Julian arches her hips to let Bradley pull off her tights."
"Bit on the tame side, that last one."
"Still, when I use it, I usually come strongest. Do you think I'm sick?"
"Probably. God, I want you so much now. I won't ever be able to forget that."
"Good."
"That was cruel."
"I'll go and get that beer."
His eyesight had accommodated to the darkness, though not nearly enough to allow him to see what he wanted. She fetched the beer. They sat and took turns sipping it and she quickly got drunk and laid her head on his shoulder and guided his hand to her small warm breast and said: "I love Borges so much. I want to die already. I feel so alone. I'm so young and pretty and feel so alone." Then she started crying and he held her and fell asleep first.
Next week she told him it was over and slashing his wrists felt almost like an afterthought.
He knew they'd meet again and fifteen years later they did. They went for a drink. She was now an alcoholic hooked on a spectrum of mood-elevating medicaments. She was fat, had a pasty complexion, yellow teeth. She was more beautiful than ever. For a while she'd kept herself busy as an it-girl of literary circles. She'd had affairs with writers, later editors, later lawyers and entrepreneurs, later everybody. She'd fucked her way to a Wikipedia socialite entry, published a tome of poetry, had a semi-casual abortion, etc. He, on the other hand, had been on his own for a long time. The string of ever lonelier girlfriends had slowly and painlessly trickled down to nothing. A few years ago, when he could still be bothered, he came to specialise in targeting and attracting a certain type: desperate enough to actually want a pseudorelationship with an undisputable nobody, pretty enough to induce a drunken erection, ugly enough to allow for bouts of spectacular cruelty at the ditching stage. Anyway, he didn't meet her to talk about life. Some pressing matters were at hand.
"I think I've already found some of them... Spent ages whipping my German into shape in preparation for the untranslated one. I've got some pretty strong leads.... Was the Nobel winner Australian?"
"Do you actually still remember that? Listen, I made it all up, you know? There are no seventeen books. I just... came up with that silly story."
"But... No. I mean... these books do exist."
"Why? Because I told you?"
"No... because... Yes, exactly. Because you told me."
"I lied. I invented it."
"You didn't."
"You know I've always liked inventing stuff. I knew you'd buy it. I knew you'd like it. You're the kind of person who would. You're a romantic."
"We both are."
"Not anymore," she laughed sickly. "Men are romantics. Women are realists."
"Why did you leave me?"
He willed her to say something cynical and blatantly untrue, like: "Because I didn't want you," or some such rubbish.
"Because I loved you too much and knew I wouldn't survive if you left me."
"This must be the most ridiculous and romantic lie I've heard in my entire life."
"I thought you liked romantic lies."
"I thought women were realists."
"Then maybe I'm not your average woman."
"You most definitely aren't."
"Listen, why don't we just get it over with..." She kept her eyes glued to the empty foam-covered bottom of the glass. "I mean... I'm no longer much of a looker, but I think you might still... fancy me, at least a little bit, and I'm totally independent, like, financially... We could still have some good times together. I could have my teeth done, and maybe get my body sorted out... get fitter, you know... I'm not that old, I just look old, I'm just sort of tired... We could talk about books..." She used to hate people who punctuated their speech with "sort of". And "I mean". And "you know". Pea-brained wankers, she would call them.
In bed she was no-nonsense and professional. It felt good, properly mechanical, anonymous and unspectacular, just like he'd expected. Later she couldn't help stroking and kissing the richly textured fury of scars on his sweaty forearms. They didn't heal well, she kept whispering. They didn't heal well at all. There was no talk about books.
He woke up alone. The night was warm and windy, she had put on her ancient faux-woolen Diesel cap, ONLY THE BRAVE stencilled across the top darkly illegible after she smashed head first into concrete in the wake of a short, angry flight fuelled by twelve floors' worth of gravity and courage. He found the note a few days later. "I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library". And seventeen titles.
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