Raquel Says (Something Entirely Unexpected) by Mois Benarroch Page A
Authors: Mois Benarroch
Ads: Link
I’m there telling her it’s not a decision I made, but a decision that was made for me. It’s not at all easy to change languages at age forty after writing in Hebrew.
And have you read Saramago?
No, and as my friend would say, I’m not reading it out of respect.
Honestly, right when I decided to read him, he got involved in Israeli politics and I lost interest because of his comparisons to Auschwitz, and I’m just waiting to get over that. I’m most interested in the book about Pessoa, that one about the death of Ricardo Reis.
And then I put my hand on her shoulder and hug her, and say we can go eat at an excellent Asian restaurant at the Shuk, the Mahane Yehuda Market. Then I myself wonder if it’s not dangerous to go to the Shuk with so many bombs, where so many bombs have gone off, and at the same time I tell myself that life has to go on and that death is only something natural. On the day we die we have no age, we are neither old nor young, neither children nor adults. Age only makes sense to those who are still alive, and they will determine whether I was really so young, with all my life ahead of me. And it wouldn’t be so bad for the novels and poems either, maybe then they would become famous. But I can’t tell Raquel all this, these are things I just think about but seem best not to share.
And I want to kiss her, kiss and kiss her, to fill up all those years when we brushed against each other without even seeing each other, but I tell myself no, it’s impossible, she’s married and I am too, and even if I weren’t married, I would never touch a married woman. But I know quite well that all of this is up to her. I’m not strong enough to say no to a kiss, a long kiss, full of all that love that no one gave you, that love you deserve, we all deserve.
I’d like to have another cup of coffee.
Says Raquel.
And I wonder over and over again how I can feel all of this when I’m alone on the street, and I’m going to see my wife in half an hour to celebrate our wedding anniversary, nineteen years, going into our twentieth year. Mois, people just don’t do things like this. Mois, you’re from Tetouan, remember, people don’t do this.
I wait for the time her e-mails come, a little after twelve, which is eleven there in Madrid. I’m on the way to the restaurant in Tel Aviv, and it’s raining. I walk along the sea and feel Raquel with me under the rain and under the same umbrella. And when I see my wife get out of the car, she gives me a look. I wonder what she knows. And Raquel tells me that when I sent her a kiss in an e-mail her husband became furious.
But, Raquel, if all of this is literature, my imagination, if all of this is just imagination, tell me so. Tell me. It can’t be that I’m in bed at night and feel you by my side, knowing that at that very moment you are thinking of me. You know where I am and if I’m sad, and I know when you think about your mother, but none of this is true, Raquel, it’s a story, a book, a novel, a poem, or the play you wrote in 1982, the same year I went to Madrid and searched for you like crazy. You were always on a parallel street and I didn’t find you. It’s a story in which a woman hears the voice of a man and decides to wait for him and continue on alone, waiting for that man from the past. It was the voice of a man from the future.
But in 1982 I was wearing a layer of fear and no one could touch my world, like the Paul Simon song, I am a rock. I was an island, and islands can’t be found in the material world. That’s why we found each other through a book.
Keep writing, I hear your sweet voice say, and it’s what I always tell myself. Nothing matters except for continuing to write. It’s a voice that comes from the depths of the universe, and it says that to me. These are the words that save the world every day. They’re the words of the poets that no one reads anymore, the ones that create a layer of life that pollution cannot destroy.
And have you read Saramago?
No, and as my friend would say, I’m not reading it out of respect.
Honestly, right when I decided to read him, he got involved in Israeli politics and I lost interest because of his comparisons to Auschwitz, and I’m just waiting to get over that. I’m most interested in the book about Pessoa, that one about the death of Ricardo Reis.
And then I put my hand on her shoulder and hug her, and say we can go eat at an excellent Asian restaurant at the Shuk, the Mahane Yehuda Market. Then I myself wonder if it’s not dangerous to go to the Shuk with so many bombs, where so many bombs have gone off, and at the same time I tell myself that life has to go on and that death is only something natural. On the day we die we have no age, we are neither old nor young, neither children nor adults. Age only makes sense to those who are still alive, and they will determine whether I was really so young, with all my life ahead of me. And it wouldn’t be so bad for the novels and poems either, maybe then they would become famous. But I can’t tell Raquel all this, these are things I just think about but seem best not to share.
And I want to kiss her, kiss and kiss her, to fill up all those years when we brushed against each other without even seeing each other, but I tell myself no, it’s impossible, she’s married and I am too, and even if I weren’t married, I would never touch a married woman. But I know quite well that all of this is up to her. I’m not strong enough to say no to a kiss, a long kiss, full of all that love that no one gave you, that love you deserve, we all deserve.
I’d like to have another cup of coffee.
Says Raquel.
And I wonder over and over again how I can feel all of this when I’m alone on the street, and I’m going to see my wife in half an hour to celebrate our wedding anniversary, nineteen years, going into our twentieth year. Mois, people just don’t do things like this. Mois, you’re from Tetouan, remember, people don’t do this.
I wait for the time her e-mails come, a little after twelve, which is eleven there in Madrid. I’m on the way to the restaurant in Tel Aviv, and it’s raining. I walk along the sea and feel Raquel with me under the rain and under the same umbrella. And when I see my wife get out of the car, she gives me a look. I wonder what she knows. And Raquel tells me that when I sent her a kiss in an e-mail her husband became furious.
But, Raquel, if all of this is literature, my imagination, if all of this is just imagination, tell me so. Tell me. It can’t be that I’m in bed at night and feel you by my side, knowing that at that very moment you are thinking of me. You know where I am and if I’m sad, and I know when you think about your mother, but none of this is true, Raquel, it’s a story, a book, a novel, a poem, or the play you wrote in 1982, the same year I went to Madrid and searched for you like crazy. You were always on a parallel street and I didn’t find you. It’s a story in which a woman hears the voice of a man and decides to wait for him and continue on alone, waiting for that man from the past. It was the voice of a man from the future.
But in 1982 I was wearing a layer of fear and no one could touch my world, like the Paul Simon song, I am a rock. I was an island, and islands can’t be found in the material world. That’s why we found each other through a book.
Keep writing, I hear your sweet voice say, and it’s what I always tell myself. Nothing matters except for continuing to write. It’s a voice that comes from the depths of the universe, and it says that to me. These are the words that save the world every day. They’re the words of the poets that no one reads anymore, the ones that create a layer of life that pollution cannot destroy.
Similar Books
