pure silence

quotes from lost paradise by cees noteboom

"the gallery owner must have told him something, because he stood there before me without saying a word, whether out of shyness or because his thoughts were miles away i couldn't tell. and i still can't. sometimes i think he doesn't see me, that even when he touches me or has sex with me, i am invisible to him, someone without a soul, a mere shape or figure - and he is right about that - as if what we do has no substance, as if his pre-announced departure can be felt in everything, in his long silences, his stillness, his refusal to see me although i am dying to be seen and know i won't be - i knew all that the moment i saw the painting."

"after a few days in port willunga we went to a strange place, a reserve in which we played at being aborigines. it sounds awful, and it was. i don't know why he took me there, but at least i now know how to find food in the desert and have seen how pure silence can turn you into silence yourself. no one was surprised to see me, so perhaps he had brought others there before. i shrugged off the well-meaning nonsense and practised withdrawing into myself - i'm good at that. it was not his mob, and since they spoke english to him, they did not come from the same language group either. i did see him smile, but not at me. i considered telling him what had happened to me that week, but my black cloud could never be his. i would take it with me when i left, incorporate it into the rest of my life, as if one cloud could cancel out another. we'll see. it is our last night together. i rub my hand over the dirt floor of the cabin. it feels hard and dry, like paper. everything in this country is different from mine. outside, the dawn's early light flows out over the world with such violence that it almost hurts my eyes. red paint. blood. i roll over and look at him. he is still asleep. he too just a shape. i wish i could lift him up and fly away with him, over the vast emptiness of this country, to the place he comes from, to the place he belongs and i do not."