The Man in The Long Black Coat: Going, Going Gone.....
Like a Beast in the pen I'm cut off
From my friends, freedom, the sun
But the hunters are gaining ground
I've nowhere else to run.
- Boris Pasternak Nobel Prize.
She was a good woman and nothing was her fault. They were all good women. They were women with a mission to him, to serve him, straighten him out, to get his oh-so-many talents working in one direction, to help him make a fresh start that would get him clear of all the fresh starts he had made before.
He had encouraged her as he encouraged all of them. He had stood beside them at the patient’s bedside as if he were not himself the patient but a member of the healing team.
" So what shall we do about this poor chap that will get him up and functioning again?
The only difference was he had never believed in the remedy.. Never ever...
She lay face down, exhausted and possibly asleep. She had cleaned the flat. As prisoners clean cells and the bereaved tend tombs. She had scoured the surface of a world she couldn't alter.
Other people might tell him he was too hard on himself. Women said it to him often. How he mustn't hold himself responsible for both halves of every relationship that had collapsed on him. But he knew better. He knew the distance between himself and everything else.
In those days he was still the unequalled expert on his own incurability.
His disease: falling in love head over heels every time.
He touched her shoulders but she didn't stir, so he knew she was awake.
" I have to go" , he said as he began loading his junk into his long black coat, ritualistically as if setting off on a safari. his bent wallet, full of unpaid bills and cancelled credit cards; his passport mildewed with sweat and too much travel; the notebook and pencil he kept handy for penning gems of wisdom to himself for contemplation when he was sober and not under the influence.
He fished out a suitcase and began filling it with shirt's that she'd ironed for him.
" You said this time you weren't going back, that you'd served your time?"
"I have to go, there's nothing I can do, stay here, use the flat."
"If you just hadn't said all that stuff we'd have been fine. I’d have been happy just having an affair. You should see your letters and hear yourself in them."
He didn't look at her. He stooped over and picked up the suitcase.
"Just don't do it to anyone else", she said.
That was as far as her calm could stretch. She began sobbing and was sobbing when he left and she was still sobbing the next morning when she called her friend over and babbled out the whole story, yet defended him and his actions to the death.
She defends him still, a surfeit of loyalty to this day, even though her illusions are destroyed......
All that was left is ....
The eloquent silence, All that you hear at a hundred miles per hour is the ticking of the brain.
The only difference was he had never believed in the remedy.. Never ever...
She lay face down, exhausted and possibly asleep. She had cleaned the flat. As prisoners clean cells and the bereaved tend tombs. She had scoured the surface of a world she couldn't alter.
Other people might tell him he was too hard on himself. Women said it to him often. How he mustn't hold himself responsible for both halves of every relationship that had collapsed on him. But he knew better. He knew the distance between himself and everything else.
In those days he was still the unequalled expert on his own incurability.
His disease: falling in love head over heels every time.
He touched her shoulders but she didn't stir, so he knew she was awake.
" I have to go" , he said as he began loading his junk into his long black coat, ritualistically as if setting off on a safari. his bent wallet, full of unpaid bills and cancelled credit cards; his passport mildewed with sweat and too much travel; the notebook and pencil he kept handy for penning gems of wisdom to himself for contemplation when he was sober and not under the influence.
He fished out a suitcase and began filling it with shirt's that she'd ironed for him.
" You said this time you weren't going back, that you'd served your time?"
"I have to go, there's nothing I can do, stay here, use the flat."
"If you just hadn't said all that stuff we'd have been fine. I’d have been happy just having an affair. You should see your letters and hear yourself in them."
He didn't look at her. He stooped over and picked up the suitcase.
"Just don't do it to anyone else", she said.
That was as far as her calm could stretch. She began sobbing and was sobbing when he left and she was still sobbing the next morning when she called her friend over and babbled out the whole story, yet defended him and his actions to the death.
She defends him still, a surfeit of loyalty to this day, even though her illusions are destroyed......
All that was left is ....
The eloquent silence, All that you hear at a hundred miles per hour is the ticking of the brain.
