Slowly and hesitatingly she peeled off the blanket covering the man on the sofa, fearful and more or less expecting one of his spiteful blows to her face. That all too substantiated fear was the reason why she pulled it down that way, slowly and a little by little, but as soon as it was off she realized that there was no need for fear: The stillness, the smell and the flies in the flat needed no more explainings than this.
His bloated face had lost its contours under the matted hair and his body had swelled. This wasn't the face that "launched a thousand ships", but the one that had attracted her at first sight and then transfixed her many years ago. A face she remembered and in her mind's eye always saw like transfixed in certain situations. Sexual passions being one of them, hatred and disgust, contempt and ridicule some other ones. However, for a long, long time with an indisputable, classical beauty as in statues of old, Greek gods.
This face, this body that had kept her and her imagination prisoners for so long now was nothing but rotting flesh. A truth which she took in like strong medicine killing off a disease. Looking at him, staring at this sad sculpture of human decay made her delve deeper into the mystery that was "lover" as she always called him to herself. She knew what this dead frame was full of right now as she was the one who had administered those many pills to him three days ago when he was still his old spiteful and abusive self, his perverted mind and wicked plans for the future. Strange that anyone that perfect in looks could have such a foul soul, and even more strange that she had loved him. What was there to love now? It was the same man - she recognized him as the one she had loved even in this heap of poison - but then had he ever been what she thought? Perhaps he in a way had been a Changeling for her own deep grown images of perfection? Someone who personified the one she had always been looking for, but never was HIM, the right one? Just like one never "gets" the genuine Hamlet, Eugene Onegin or Superman, but only may get a chance with the actors playing these classical characters.
Having stared at the dead man for quite a while she decided to call the police and they soon came with the paramedics. She told them of his sick heart. To her chagrin she caught herself smiling while she said it, because deceased it was, yeah, thoroughly sick and deranged, but not only the way they thought. His bad kidneys, bad liver and not too good lungs made them jot down something at a speed while nodding and phewing like they knew him. "Yes," she added, "all this made him very depressed as it deprived him of a lot of his old life. After all he used to be a very active sportsman." Their sympathetic looks and compassionate faces were evidence that they would be no threats to her. If they found what she had administered him it would be seen as evidence that this poor wreck of a man had committed suicide, not that his wife had killed him. "I'm sorry that I was away for some days and it was then it happened," she said, "but my sister is sick and I had to go to help her. She lives in another town, not here ..."
After the interrogation she went back to the flat, sat down on a chair in the centre of the room where he had been. She let her eyes wander all over it, savouring the details of furniture and paintings, then all of a sudden she stood to her feet and went for the large bags for garbage that she had bought some time ago. In a few hours she had filled the bags with belongings that she now saw as refuse. The sofa, the chairs, table and carpets were put at a side and she phoned the haulage contractors to make them come and take it away to the dump. They would be there in a couple of hours and full of glee she then started to take down the paintings - his paintings, his dreamworks which had brought him fame.
She took pains in not looking too closely at them, but inadvertently her eye was caught by another set of eyes staring back at her, out from a frame. At first she thought that these eyes with the mysterious and sexually suggestive look were his, but then she saw that she was mistaken. They belonged to a beautiful, young woman lying on a couch with a man who obviously was him. The energy, focused as it was, didn't come from him, handsome as he was, but from her. With quite a shock she realized what she had never done before that this young woman who was much more beautiful than she had ever been nonetheless was her, or rather his dream of or memory of her.
Meeting herself, filtered through his imagination, she felt like he had stabbed her right in the heart. In the painting there was no reservations, no hatred or contempt, only adulation, desire and perhaps a slight shade of despair.
Her eyes went past his figure and she met her own self in the painting, eye to eye, quite overwhelmed with the insight she found and which she had never seen when he was alive. - So this is it, she thought, this is what it was about, and I don't even know that woman as he did.
Originally Posted On Site: 2009-04-09 16:28:00
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