An offering of flash fiction that acquaints readers to the type of love that makes life worth living…
by: Donna Obeid
When I was forty, I fell in love with an older man.
He was a great actor who, as luck would have it, appeared in the crowded lobby after a performance. He stood amongst the tangle of theatergoers, nodding at the appropriate moments of chatter and laughter. He glanced up and his eyes met mine across the lobby, and he held my gaze for what seemed like eternity. Light was suddenly let into my soul. Years of darkness vanished in a split second. My heart burst loose of its bloodied cage, shooting like a bird up into the sky.
Just that once I knew what life was for.
This man, this man!, I wanted to cry out. There was never a time when I was not in love with him. There was never a time when he was not in my life, because before this moment in the lobby, before this life (of children and marriages and money), we knew each other when there was no time, when we floated together in a dream, when we didn’t have eyes to see nor hands to reach nor minds to think.
This is the recognition of the soul, he once told me, gently touching each beauty mark on my arm with his long fingers — touching them in turn — then running his hands over the hills of my breasts, the plain of my belly, the scar crescent-shaped on my areola, tracing them over and over with the letters of his name. Saying, “My darling, I’ve lived my whole life longing for you.” Saying, “Our secret is that we love each other above any of these earthly matters.” Saying, “Our secret promise is that we will be with each other there, in the afterlife. We will know each other by smell alone, by subtle glance, entering sacred places where others will never dare to go.”
All this, the great actor explained in secret to me, lying tangled together in the room he rented above the Chinese tea shop on Carnaby Street, the scent of bergamot and cardamom and cinnamon bark rising through the floorboards, a taxidermy ostrich watching from the corner.
After that, I didn’t know how I could return to my old life.
I walked through each day as if in a lie. I’d be bathing or dressing or eating supper with my husband and children and the great actor would appear in my mind. He’d be in an armchair, reading his book to me. He’d be pouring a bowl of warm water over my back, running his fingers through my hair. He’d be speaking to me and rather than words, butterflies would pour forth from his lips. In one version, the ostrich is the feathered soprano on the stage, the operatic cry of her voice sailing like a prism of colors through the theater. She’s singing of the foolish lovers in their little room, the scent of cinnamon like an illicit perfume. We sit beside each other in the dark, husband and wife, clapping at the performance.
Donna Obeid is an award-winning writer and educator based in Stanford, California, where she serves as a Senior Research Program Manager at the Hoover Institution. Read more at: www.donnaobeid.com
