The somehow skinny singer, in a way not alive nor dead, but more alive then the living and more in touch with death then the dead, moved Glen’s ear with her magical music and singing, and this was the first time that Glen liked to hear the human voice rather then the music of the instruments. But if his ears were drown into this uncanny voice he was hearing, he himself was drowning into Hannah’s big, dark eyes every time their eyes met: in moments like this he just couldn’t stop loosing himself in her eyes in a way that it would be unpleasant for any other girl then her who didn’t feel it intrusive, quite the contrary, she liked his strange presence, and felt for him the same closeness he was feeling for her. During the vivid conversation she was continuously slightly touching him, his upper arm when she wanted to stress something in particular, or his knee when she smiled and wanted to say, that it was only a joke, but in one particular moment their hands accidentally met in a way, that it interrupted the conversation and silence took its place, a silence, that needed no fulfillment with excuses or laughing.
Somewhere in the time, when the late evening broken into the night, when the band was playing its last notes and the green-eyed Leyla was singing her last song, the two come so close one to each other while talking and arguing passionately, that their faces were almost so near, almost at the point of touching each other. And when this point was at hand, when the two almost reached each other, she smiled bashfully and lowered her face, stood up from the chair, elegantly unshod herself, and started to move with the waviness of the music.
Like a star I fell,
At all times I fell,
In an image of myself,
Forgeting my own self.
Stars get close and closer one of another,
and far and further one from the other,,
I get close and far from you,
’cause stars don’t touch each other,
In any normal circumstances she would have attracted the attention of the others, if only because no other was dancing, but she moved so softly, like a butterfly flying through a lawn of herbs lightly moved by a slow wind, where you cannot distinguish the blade of grass from the wind, nor the flower from the flying being. While all the guests contemplated the stage like hypnotized by the magic of the singer’s voice, the time almost stopped: the glasses half the way to the thirsty mouths, the cigarette’s smoke half the way to the distant ceiling, and the same Glen, who didn’t know where was the floor or where his feet were, all of his being absorbed in her dance and all of her dance embodied in the iris of his eye. Like the candle slowly burning down to the end, so was the flame of Hannah’s dance slowly extinguishing with the song, which pervaded her dancing body, and when the blaze of the voice silenced, another one brightened, which begin to burn between the two, and which escorted their way out of the fairy Nightingale.
The clouds that many hours ago announced a storm didn’t break their promise: they ripped open and let fall at least so much rain as humanity shed tears in all its history. Fat drops felt so densely that one drop was chasing the other’s tail, so that you almost couldn’t distinguish one from another: where one ended there began the other. Glen and Hannah moved embraced without haste through the water curtain, and while his shoe firmly step from one plash to another, her naked little foot nearly floated on the surface. She stopped for a moment, covered her soaked head with her shawl, and the looked at him smiling she gently said: “Would you hold my hand?” He didn’t hesitate, and the moment her hand laid in his, their pace harmonized and it was like the sky descended to earth or if the earth raised to the sky. Who knows how much time passed, since their walking so embraced, where no one lead the pace, but it wasn’t important any more, because time had no role at all in this descant, which heaved them over the surface of the many plashes, under the bare light of the city lights and through the cold of the soaked air, which ruled their path no more.
The two arrived in her apartment, a small, pleasant basement flatlet, while the storm outside now reached its apex, like a snow avalanche which begin like a non-nothing and at the end develops in a unstoppable force. She insisted on leaving him her comfortable bad and on herself taking the sofa, to what he protested for a while, but then accepted the quite uncomfortable situation. The striking of the raindrops on the window drown Glen’s loud heartbeat when she asked him to turn around so that she could undress, leaving only the nylons on, and covering herself with a white chemise. They were lying so for quite a bit, talking funny nonsenses to avoid any direct contact, and then he couldn’t resist and asked her: “Why don’t you came to lay next to me, I promise I won’t touch… unless you want me to.” He added half-seriously, and she answered: “Rather not, ‘cause I can’t promise I won’t touch you – if I come there to you, I’ll have to kiss you.” He was confused by her answer, not knowing what it really meant, he asked: “And why not kiss me if you want to?” – “Because it would be like to touch the ocean…” she answered and in answering she pierced him.
He stood up leaned to his elbow, because he wanted exactly the same as she was afraid of, the deepest sea, where you lose yourself, where there would be no him or her and nothing at all, and in leaning over the border of the bad toward the sofa he wanted to kiss her, but she withdrew behind her long hair. He caressed her softly and called her name silently, but his call didn’t sound simply like her name, because with the first syllable he expired all his being, and with the other inspired all of her’s. To her this call was like a shot in the middle of the opera, which interrupts what should never be interrupted, and that’s why she grabbed his hand, with her face leaned to it, the deep breath and moan bear witness of her pain, which through her breath he inspired into himself. She looked at him with her big, besprinkled eyes, in which he found himself drowning without defense, with which we people usually use to prevent the other from coming too near to us. With his hand he caressed her darkly-skinned cheek, soflty, even more softly than a falling tree-leaf which skims the surface of a still lake, and she shuddered like a spike on a summer-winds slightest blow. To her “Please…”, which was pronounced like asking the impossible, to her “…no.” he withdrew from her embrace, and this withdrawing was to him like a falling, a falling which lasted till she seated next to him, where she without touching just looked at him, and being touched like this he wasn’t able to respond in any other way than in trying to embrace her once more. Feeble in his arms she was hiding covered only by her thick hair, and when with his fingers he slowly uncovered the look of her face, it was for him like to stare at a star being born. He kissed her on the front, only on the front, because he knew a stolen kiss is never a real kiss, and this time it was him who drew back, unable to bear so much beauty, at which point he would have cried like a baby if only the pain didn’t stir with the joy, so that the tear was dried at the very moment it was born on the board of his eye.
Hannah went back to the sofa and barely covered her with the sheet while he just felt down on his back and shut his eyes, at this both maybe felt asleep, maybe just half-asleep, at some point, when the night was coming to its end, she waked herself up with him saying: “Are you still here?” – “Who knows where I am, myself, I don’t know where’s up or down, where am I or you…” and before finishing he silenced, because at turning back to her he sow the most beautiful image in his life: her, lying half lied on side, with the head sustained by her hand, and the hair freely falling down over her deeply melancholic face, while the first morning-sparks trickled through the thick mist and raindrops, gradually brightening the room with a golden whiteness which poured over the girl, so that she glow up in front of his eyes, dewed by the scene in the knowledge, that daylight is coming, when no magic is possible anymore. Glen couldn’t help himself, he had to hopelessly come near to her, caress her hand, which she didn’t withdrew, quite the contrary, she leaned her head on his beating heart, with the lips carefully hidden from his, which at that moment and for a long time ahead also couldn’t taste anything but her. He tried, but in trying he was himself tried, in trying to touch her he was himself touched by an untouchable touch, upon which no touch can reach.
The dawn at last defeated the defenseless night, and the sun illuminated the room, the sofa, the bed, him, her, although without reaching that hiatus that come to light inbetween and that made him loose himself: the same she was so afraid of, if they would have kissed, the same untouchable ocean at the end touched upon him.
That day, after the light chased away the shadowy daybreak, the two seated at the table drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes and talked about everything but what has happened – of course, how to talk about something that isn’t supposed to be spoken? They met in a moment in their lives where the very time and place was put into suspension, but even though you abolish everything, time makes so that all abolished comes back even more violently knocking inexorable at the door. Before he left he hold her once more in his hands, he hugged her like he would never see her again, and then they did what every true lovers do: they parted.
On the way home he wasn’t paying attention where he was going, so that when some time passed and he wanted to get in touch with her, he couldn’t find her where he left her. Many times Glen returned to that concert hall, and then endlessly roved the nearby streets looking for a way to come back to her, but he always ended in the Nightingale, where he seated on the same chair, gliding the other chair, where she was sitting, feeling her presence with his bare hand while his fingers touched his forehand, feeling the scent, that she left on him like a scar, that no drug or medicine can heal. Leyla watched him with her sad eyes, which were more empty than the vastness of space and more full than any full moon at the same time, he felt that she could understand his pain while she was singing:
Ajourd’hui c’est le jour que tu pars, et je pars avec toi,
en partence touchent le point ou le toucher ne touche pas,
ne peux pas toucher, si on veux que il touche vraiment:
ne me touche pas, mais caresse-moi avec un touche vrai.