...And Dreams Are Dreams

I wasn’t long (about an hour after the scene I have described) in understanding this strange move of Rosa’s. I must say it came to me a little late because I’m an idiot where the complex psychology of a woman is concerned: I fell victim to her sexual advances, thinking that we would reach once again the apogee of our travels. But I was wrong. I was lamentably wrong. Rosa had come to see me, Rosa had sought me out, Rosa had practically asked me to bed a moment ago for one reason, apparently a very important one to her: to prove to me that she was over me. That I did not give her the same pleasure as before, that our exhilaration and our space travel belonged to a past that was irrevocably lost. She knew I would be deeply hurt by that, because it would strip me of medals I had awarded myself for her conquest.

She knew (although she never told me so; we never discussed what I am now writing) that she too needed to be convinced it was indeed so, that she was over me, that we now had an ordinary relationship, as she had had before with other men and I with other women.

Nothing unique, nothing special, nothing earth-shattering like before. By proving this, she succeeded in hurting the most sensitive part of my manhood—

since all men deep down are flattered when a woman loves them — and in poisoning me with the slow-acting drug of ranking our relationship together with all others.

Of course I did not understand all this at the time.

When we found ourselves face to face again in bed, everything seemed to unfold according to the old scenario of our love. I wanted her and she wanted me; we gave ourselves to each other, we exchanged some of the words we used to say, as if we were taking old clothes out of a closet. But the explosion never happened, the rocket never took off, we remained on the surface of the earth, a few meters above it perhaps, but always under an inexorable terrestrial law. I had thought then that this might have been because it was the first time. Two bodies that had once loved each other shamelessly, fanatically, like neophytes of a mystical sect, could not help but suffer a slight shock when they met again. But the same thing happened the following time. During the six days that she stayed in town, every time we came together as lovers — and, if I’m not mistaken, there were as many times as days—

nothing happened reminiscent of that twin flame that had set the universe on fire, its sparks like fireworks that illuminated our darkened sky. Everything went along at an ordinary, normal pace, without the slightest surprise.

What I am writing now is the conclusion, the summary of all our meetings. And I am practically convinced that she did it all for one reason: to prove to me that in fact our relationship was over and thus to hurt me, since apparently I had hurt her so much. As for that romantic line, “Let’s stay friends,” Rosa had worded it differently: “Not only friends, but lovers too.

But you should know that love isn’t what you think it is. It cannot be ignited by the fire of the body. The body is a vessel, a tool, endowed with an inner power greater than ourselves, since, as you see, the very same bodies, our own, cannot reach their old records. We are no longer Olympic champions at love, but creatures like most others, with our feet on the ground, who carry out this function to satisfy a need.” Having apparently studied my psyche well, she knew that knowledge would hurt me. That it would kill me. And indeed it did hurt me, it did kill me. I tried many times to lift her up to the old heights we used to scale, like mountaineers, hanging from taut ropes, in danger of falling to our deaths at any moment, always to find, at the last moment, the magical flower of our love that would save us, a miracle on the steep slope of the most abysmal desire.

And that wasn’t the worst thing. The worst thing was that she was letting me use all the old tricks, the old passkeys with which I used to open her most secret doors, after which she would give herself to me as to a pirate pillaging her diamond coffers, whose treasures were at once replenished. It was as if my hands, by taking her diamonds, made her give birth to newer, brighter ones, through the magical power of love.