By Djenar Maesa Ayu
Night gives tranquility. Many memories come to life in a dark room. Memories that live only in darkness, that breathe at night; it’s as if these memories were raising their hands, asking to be remembered on a lover-less bed each time night falls.
Many people are fearful of nighttime. Of darkness. Of whatever blinds the eyes and forces them to grope in the dark. That makes the heart beat faster. That makes them uneasy. Renders them willing to trade their fear with the cost of electricity, although the cost keeps surging.
But night gives me calm. The darker, the livelier. Not unlike the night market, full of exciting sounds and voices but without light. I am never afraid of darkness. I am never lacking peace in the dark. As far as my eyes can see, they see darkness. They see a body so dim in the distance. The image of the body is vague but there’s a voice I can hear clearly, as if it comes from nearby. So close to me that I can smell the speaker’s breathing. My eyes are shut tight, and it becomes darker and darker, until it is so dark I can see everything.
Maybe that’s why I so need love. Love is like night. It’s like darkness. Love makes the eyes blind. I don’t need sunglasses to create dark in the daytime. I don’t need to close the doors and draw the curtains and block every little gap to prevent any ray of sun from penetrating the room. I need only love, and in a second I am blind.
I call this blindness the eyes in eclipse. Others call it blind love. Whatever it’s called, I don’t care. I only want to hear what I want to hear. I choose what I want to see. And he is what I want to see, The Lover, so clearly seen in my blind sight. The warmth of his body gives me daytime, which we spend on beds at cheap hotels. We stare as if it were the last time we would ever gaze at each other. We touch as if it were our last touch. And we moan as if it were the last time we would moan together.
At these moments, at these blinding moments, I don’t need to grope in the dark. I never think about what will happen tomorrow. Never think if there exists such day as tomorrow. In my drunken blindness I am interrupted by voices and sounds from the outside world, from the real world, like the endless ringing of a cell phone. But as the eyes don’t see, the ears don’t hear. The ringing of a cell phone becomes a beautiful song. I don’t hear it as it is; I hear it as I would like to hear it. I don’t admit that he is distancing himself from me. I don’t want to hear his reluctant, deliberately soft voice when I call him and he says he needs to be left alone, and his excuse is stomachache. I keep feeling that he’s still close to me. I still hear his voice, gentle and reassuring, that makes me feel that this would be the most beautiful moment to die. I still see his eyes staring into mine, as if no one in the world means more to him than I do. Nothing is more important to him than I am. My eyes grow blind, gripped by the eclipse. My body has drowned in the deep mouth of love.
We meet only in the daytime, in the afternoons when my body is hot like an oven, when my longing for him has been burning all night. When every line and curvature is seen and felt. And shadows always follow these lines and curves. We meet in these shadows and we unite in them. In these shadows we satiate each of our desires.
People ask, why meet only in the daytime? Why not morning or nighttime? Because of blindness, I say. In blindness I can create whatever I want. In blindness I can even create bright daylight.
They ask more questions. Why blind? Why must you be blind? Why not use real eyes to see real daylight in the daytime and real darkness in the night? Why create blindness? Because of love, I say. In love I feel everything is authentic, even though the morning and night are not real.
Honestly, I have never checked to be sure these questions are real. Who are they from? Sometimes I feel they don’t come from anybody except myself. So I can never be sure the answers are real either. Because there’s no way that something real will emerge from something that is not.
But then this feeling always feels real, even when we meet only on a false morning or a false night. The words we read before we tear the packet off the condom—“100% RELIABLE”—these words are real. The warmth of his skin. The movement of his body that sometimes pulls, and sometimes pushes. The creaking of the bed. His hard-hitting heartbeat. A voice that becomes more hoarse each time. It’s real. All of it. It’s not enough and I want to do it again.
I can go there again. But I need to remember what I’ve signed up for. He is married. I meet him in the afternoon, not in the morning or at night. And in the afternoon our time together is so short. I don’t see him in the morning or at night when time is long and I so long for him. I am stuck in this cyclical abyss—not enough daytime, yet night and morning too long. I am stuck between being exhausted and being exhausted. Stuck between giving up and giving up. I am trapped, looping around two identical choices. I have fallen, in love.
If only I could kick love out and bring logic in, maybe I wouldn’t be in such agony. Maybe the voices that often ask questions and give answers would sound different—different questions, different answers. Maybe nighttime and darkness would frighten me. Maybe it would be a different body lying next to me and pulling up our blanket. And no more daytime when he is above me and the phone rings and then what unites our two bodies, what’s inside me, becomes soft.
Maybe.
Maybe one day he too will experience eclipse in his eyes just like mine. And he and I can live in the same world. No longer meeting only in the afternoon, no more waiting for each other at night and in the morning. No one asks why only this, not that and that. No more answering: because love blinds me. The new answer is: because love blinds us, the two of us.
Maybe.
Six years have passed. Since yesterday, on my right ring finger is a ring carved with his name. In the darkness of night these two eyes spill tears. I lie down on a bed where a husband still will not come.
Translated by Nani Ratnawati