by Dee
The white skin was a stark contrast to the black sky. Lei would often complain that his skin was too fair for a man. But Indi never found any reason to complain. With a look of adoration and love, she slowly stroked Lei’s skin, in awe as if she were feeling a skein of finely spun silk. And at the end of her fingers’ journey, Indi found what she was looking for: the piece of sweet yellow cake, beside Lei’s face.
They lay together, their bodies entwined. His broad chest was still muscled, despite the fact that he said he hadn’t worked out for over two years. Some strong force made Lei’s chest feel comfortable, like a pillow, and Indi would have been happy to sleep there forever.
The room was dark. Lei’s hand reached for Indi’s hand, but it was her heart that was always squeezed—squeezed so hard that sometimes it hurt. It was a pain caused by the fear of loss, the fear of being abandoned, and by jealousy. The other one.
Suddenly, Indi gave a short laugh.
“What’s so funny?” Lei whispered softly, as if there were someone else in the room that he didn’t want to be party to the conversation.
Indi didn’t reply because she sensed that Lei already knew the answer.
The stillness was like a mellow song.
“When will we see each other again?” Indi whispered, a touch of resentment in her voice.
“In a month at the most. I’ll come up with a pretext.”
Lei’s hand found Indi’s. At last.
“Let’s pray that it will be sooner. We never know what will happen tomorrow or the next day … Who knows, things might change,” said Lei in his wise voice.
And Indi prayed. The same prayer she prayed every night, convinced that God would never tire of her prayer, but would better understand her desires, her dreams. It was all pure-hearted. And pure-heartedness would bring its own rewards.
Another yellow cake consumed. It tasted bitter.
This time they were out of luck. Lei hadn’t been able to come and see her. He couldn’t leave his child, who had fallen ill. Indi understood. This was how it should be. Lei had his own world, just as she did.
Indi sat facing the window, considering her world. It was a normal, natural world, in which she lived as a balanced human being, a violin teacher. But nobody knew about the confusion that engulfed her when night fell. Nighttime took her to a prison, one that she entered voluntarily. In this prison she was tied down by an iron ball that made her drag her feet and bump into things. But Indi remained convinced that she might be happy, that she could change this prison into heaven. She began to pray.
She had lost count of how many pieces of yellow cake they had gone through. The axis of her life was shifting alarmingly. Indi chose to turn it into a satire. To laugh about this thing that was not actually funny.
“She says if she ever meets you, she’ll want to scratch your eyes out.”
Indi laughed loudly. “Why doesn’t she hire a sniper, or just shoot me in some public place? Wouldn’t that make more of an impression? Wouldn’t it be more sophisticated?”
Lei laughed too. “You sent the fake letter, didn’t you? To my office?”
They had been forced to create a “break-up” scenario, a practical step to calm Lei’s raging wife, a fake letter that had caused Indi great angst. Even though she knew it was all pretence, the very act of writing it was agonizing.
Then they resumed their conversation—one beautiful, precious hour, the chance to talk about banal things, to laugh, and to say how much they missed each other.
Suddenly the faint sound of a cell phone rang out.
“Hang on a minute,” said Lei, as he deftly pressed the hold button.
Indi knew very well what that meant: wait patiently, accompanied by the ghost of Beethoven trapped in the canned music version of Für Elise. As a teacher of classical violin, the sound of soulless canned music was torture.
“Hello,” Lei’s voice was more serious now.
“Everything okay?” Indi whispered.
Lei lowered the phone. “She’s not feeling very well. But, yeah, it’s okay; no problem.”
But Indi sensed a lingering anxiety in Lei’s voice. And in a matter of minutes he brought the conversation to a close.
“Sorry, but I have to go home.”
Indi understood, so she let Lei go, without making a fuss. Wasn’t this the way it should be, Indi asked her reflection in the mirror. The circumstances she and Lei had found themselves in were a consequence of choices they had made before they met. You should be proud, Indi said again to her reflection. Lei chose not to leave his marriage, even though he could do and even though that was what he wanted. He stayed out of a sense of responsibility.
Something began to dawn on Indi. It was an image that gradually froze in her mind: clutching a disconnected telephone. Her chest felt tight, a sensation that increased with time. She quickly regulated her breathing. She knew the consequence of breathing incorrectly, even for just a moment. That was why she had enrolled in a short course in meditation, so she could learn how to expel pain and fatigue in the bubbles of carbon dioxide that flooded out of her body, hoping that good luck would enter with the oxygen that she breathed in.
Exhale…inhale…exhale…inhale… The crushing sensation was too strong, and she—got it wrong. The burden of exhaling overwhelmed her, breaking her concentration.
Like a river in flood, the tears flowed. Breathlessly, Indi tried to stop them, to stay strong, even though no one was watching her—apart from the reflection in the mirror. But wasn’t that what she tried hardest to avoid? As she tried to hold back the tears, Indi asked herself whether there was anyone else in the world who, like her, felt that they had betrayed their own reflection.
Indi had fallen ill four times in the past two years. All the doctors gave the same diagnosis: “Too much stress.”
Indi had not enjoyed the simple luxury on even one of those four occasions when she picked up the telephone and reported her illness, getting Lei to come home and take her to the doctor, or just get her some medicine and a glass of water.
Indi always felt that she was the lucky one because she was the one to whom Lei gave his full and unconditional love. I just hope that I haven’t been wrong all this time, and that you’ve been right, Indi said pointedly to her reflection. That reflection was a constant irritation. This was its line: “love is only rhetoric unless there’s some genuine action, ” which meant that all this time she’d been fed on bullshit.
Not feeling up to spending the rest of the night with no company but remorse, Indi phoned her emergency assistance line: her best friend, Ari.
Ari came straight away and sat down beside the window. There was a piece of yellow cake on the side of her friend’s face, but Indi hadn’t had a chance to taste it yet because she’d been immediately bombarded with questions: “What did I tell you? He stood you up again, didn’t he? And you’re still putting up with it? You’re mad!” Ari let fly. “Take a look at yourself. You’re a good woman, you’re smart, you don’t deserve this shit.”
I do take a good look at myself, and you’re right, I don’t deserve it, Indi replied silently. It’s such a great honor to be able to love in this way.
“I don’t hate Lei, you know that, but there’s somebody out there who can give you more than he can.” Ari squeezed Indi’s shoulder, and looked at her with an expression of concern mingled with pity, as if she was counseling a naughty child. “You’re both young, but you’re the one with lots of opportunities open to you. Don’t let yourself be turned into a pair of shoes that he has to wear in secret.”
Like an electric shock, Indi visualized a pair of old shoes hidden beneath the stairs—comfortable shoes worn by their owner when he was tired. But when he wanted to face the world, he couldn’t possibly choose those shoes. Then he would put on the designer shoes that were intended to be his companion. That was what the world demanded—uncomfortable, but obligatory. And Lei, again and again, had shown himself to be a responsible man.
“Maybe…” Indi mumbled, “it’s better to be with someone who doesn’t have any other options. He only has me, through thick and thin. I am not an alternative.”
Ari smiled, relieved. Indi was waking up from her long sleep.
Now it was time for Ari and Indi’s other friends to start biting their nails yet again. Indi hadn’t given up. In fact she and Lei became had become even more cagey in their guerilla operation. A piece of yellow cake routinely controlled the ebb and flow of their story. Ari knew perfectly well the fluctuations of the relationship, like Indi’s other “ears,” who laughed louder when Indi was happy and cried harder when she was sad.
Sometimes Indi felt a bit freaked out and confused as she conducted her routine prayer. Was she dealing with a criminal, a destroyer, or someone that deserved to be loved and helped? The uninvited constriction in her chest was still there, but Indi had become immune to it all. It was as if her eyes had run out of tears. And now there was no longer any need for her to regulate her breathing.
Nothing had changed in her world. Indi was still Indi, with her cute violin pupils, and the parents who regarded her as a perfect role model. She had freely accepted the existence of another world that stamped all sorts of cruel stigma on her. And she didn’t find anything wrong with that world either. The prison she chose brought with it the consequence of a bad reputation—with no hope of a program to repair her image.
Every night Indi sat at the window to talk to her piece of yellow cake, trying to remind herself again and again that what she wanted was quite simple really: that half of her soul would always be with Lei. That was all. Indi wanted her soul to be whole.
A rainstorm came, causing chaos. Indi was woken by the sound of thunder and the ringing of the telephone.
“Hello …” Indi’s voice was suspicious. She didn’t feel good about this.
“She tried to kill herself.”
Indi felt dizzy as she pondered what he would say next.
“I don’t know who she hired, but she knows everything—all about our meetings, the fact that we’ve been seeing each other for five years—”
“But it’s not the first time, is it? Suicide has always been her favorite threat,” Indi interjected, her voice uncertain.
“This time she really meant it, Indi. She took nearly a whole bottle of Valium. Luckily we got her in time. She’ll recover.”
Indi’s instinct voice told her there was more to come.
“To make things worse, she wrote a letter telling everything about us. She mentioned you by name and regards you as the instigator of it all…”
There’s more to come, Indi said to herself. There has to be.
“Everyone is on her side now. Who’s going to defend you and me?”
This is it, Indi squeezed her eyes shut. This must be it.
“I’m sorry.”
Enough.
“But you do understand the situation, don’t you?”
Enough. Enough.
“There’s no way I can leave her. Just think about it. Whether she lives or dies hangs on what I decide to do! If I leave her, what will she do?”
Enough. Enough. Enough.
“I promise I’ll try to do what’s best for you, for us,”
Just shut up. Please.
“But not right now, there’s no way I can do it now.”
Shut up.
“Indi, I’m sorry…”
She hung the phone up carefully, as if she were locking a genie into a bottle, and then she yanked out the cable, as if she were severing the thread of time. The sky was dark with clouds. Where are you? Why don’t you come to me so I can savor your bittersweet taste? Her throat was constricted. This is what I get in return for my pure-heartedness, for my conviction.
Like a blind person who can suddenly see, Indi realized with a start that this prison had become her life—entirely. And she wasn’t ready. The tightness in her chest pressed down on her harder, until it was unbearable. The tear ducts that had been out of action for so long started pumping out drops of salty water that made her cheeks stream. The prayers that she had been sending forth every night for five years came raining down on her, transformed into rebuke and regret. Indi didn’t know what she’d prayed for—too much apparently, because the rain wasn’t about to stop. Every drop pierced her like a knife. Indi regretted having talked so much.
Eventually she toppled forward, lips to the ground of despair. She didn’t know how to get up again. She was too nauseated, sickened; she just wanted to throw up.
Lei would never again join her at the window. But the piece of yellow cake was always there, always reliable, without sin.
For months Indi would close the curtains tight, denying the presence of her yellow cake, battling her feelings of longing and regret, replacing it with a sort of emptiness that she fabricated herself. Until eventually, exhausted, she gave in.
One clear night at the end of the year, Indi opened the curtains, to be greeted by a sky full of stars. And there it was: the moon at the beginning and at the end of the month, a semi-circle perched on the sky, brilliant and yellow—her silent mentor, who gave her the biggest lesson of her life, a piece of yellow cake in the center of a black tray.
Dozens of yellow cakes had been served on her tray, and Indi would always anxiously try to guess whether they were sweet or bitter. Now she stopped guessing. Her courage that night was to confront her own feelings again, to acknowledge that love doesn’t fade but rather mutates, takes on a new meaning. Her yellow cake was nothing more than the reflection of the Earth as it continued to turn without compromise, life that moves forward and never retreats.
Indi stood still for a long time, piecing together the simple revelations that were slowly changing the patterns of her heart. That familiar iron ball was visible. So was her fist, which had turned to stone. Slowly, her fingers opened. Indi could see herself squatting down, shedding the ballast that had tied her down for years. The key had been in her hand all along. She couldn’t help smiling. The half of her soul that she thought had disappeared had in fact not gone anywhere; it had just changed sides, a trick of the dark and light of the sun and the moon.
That night Indi crossed over to the other side. She was now able to love without the fear of losing love.
Translated by Pamela Allen