The Barber Won’t Be Digging Any More Holes
After this dream I came to an important decision. The tip of my somewhat industrious pickaxe will finally begin to chip away at the solid cliff.
*
Matters are as clear as crystal.
Crystal, crystal.
I want to make love to Miu, and be held by her. I’ve already surrendered so much that’s Important to me. There’s nothing more I can give up. It’s not too late. I have to
I’ll cross that bridge when the times comes.
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“Did you ever see anyone shot by a gun without bleeding?”
*
Blood must be shed. I’ll sharpen my knife, ready to slit a dog’s throat somewhere.
*
Right?
Right you are!
*
What I’ve written here is a message to myself. I toss it into the air like a boomerang. It slices through the dark, lays the little soul of some poor kangaroo out cold, and finally comes back to me. But the boomerang that returns is not the same one I threw. Boomerang, boomerang.
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It’s 2.30 in the afternoon. Outside it’s as bright and hot as hell. The cliffs, the sky, and the sea are sparkling. Look at them long enough and the boundaries begin to dissolve, everything melting into a chaotic ooze. Consciousness sinks into the sleepy shadows to avoid the light. Even the birds have given up flying. Inside the house, though, it’s pleasantly cool. Miu is in the living room listening to Brahms. She’s wearing a blue summer dress with thin straps, her pure-white hair pulled back simply. I’m at my desk, writing these words.
“Does the music bother you?” Miu asks me.
Brahms never bothers me, I answer.
*
I’ve been searching my memory, trying to reproduce the story Miu told me a few days ago in the village in Burgundy. It’s not easy. She told the story in fits and starts, the chronology thoroughly mixed up. Sometimes I couldn’t unravel which events happened first, and which came later, what was cause, what was effect. I don’t blame her, though. The cruel conspiratorial razor buried in her memory
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slashed out at her, and as the stars faded with the dawn above the vineyard, so the life force drained from her cheeks as she told me her tale.
Miu told the story only after I insisted on hearing it. I had to run through a whole gamut of appeals to get her to talk -alternately encouraging her, bullying her, indulging, praising, enticing her to continue. We drank red wine and talked till dawn. Hands clasped together we followed the traces of her memories, piecing them together, analysing the results. Still there were places Miu couldn’t dredge up from her memory. Once she dipped her foot there she grew quietly confused, and downed more wine. These were the danger zones of memory. Whenever we came across these, we’d give up the search and gingerly withdraw to higher ground.
*
I persuaded Miu to tell me the story after I became aware that she dyed her hair. Miu is such a careful person that only a very few people around her have any idea she dyes her hair. But I noticed it. Travelling together for so long, spending each day together, you tend to pick up on things like that. Or maybe Miu wasn’t trying to hide it. She could have been much more discreet if she’d wanted to. Maybe she thought it was inevitable I’d find out, or maybe she
*
I asked her straight out. That’s me—never beat about the bush. How much of your hair is white? I asked. How long have you been dyeing it? Fourteen years, she answered. Fourteen years ago my hair turned entirely white, every single strand. Were you sick? No, that wasn’t it, said Miu. Something happened, and all my hair turned pure white. Overnight.
I’d like to hear the story, I said, imploring her. I want to know everything about you. You know I wouldn’t hide a thing from
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But in the end we talked all night. Every story has a time to be told, I convinced her. Otherwise you’ll be forever a prisoner to the secret inside you.
