Chaos of the Senses Read Online Free

alone, concealed from everyone, shielded by a curtain of rain trickling down the windowpanes.
    She had wanted to say things that can only be said at such a moment. But then he pulled over to the kerb.
    Lighting a cigarette, he said, ‘It’s no use taking refuge under the umbrella of words. When it’s raining, it’s better to be quiet.’
    She hadn’t argued with him. She’d contented herself with the illusion of possessing him, her rainy-day captive inside a car, where she could share his breaths, the aroma of his tobacco, and the jingling of the keys in his pocket as he looked for a lighter. In the warmth of the car she sat watching him, mesmerised by all the details of his manhood as he fidgeted next to her, and his calm, unsettling presence.
    She’d long been dizzied by the fine points of a man’s makeup: the self-important suggestiveness, the unspoken, intimate provocation whose vibrations have nothing to do with virility but which a female picks up on and to which she falls slave.
    The bliss she had experienced with him that day led her to realize that rain doesn’t treat us all as equals. When the beloved takes leave of us and we find ourselves facing the rain alone, we have to ignore its painful invitation to romance and its sadistic provocation lest it exacerbate our suffering, since we know full well that, at that very same moment, it is creating happiness for others whom love hasn’t abandoned.
    In fact, there are times when nothing is more unfair than the rain!
    She was still wondering which weather forecast he was preparing her for.
    Had he come back because he wanted her? Or had he come in anticipation of the smell of the earth after it rains?
    The only thing he liked about sunny weather was the damp soil left by the rain. He would breathe in its fragrance with senses ablaze as though he were taking in his partner’s scent after making love.
    ‘Can I see you tomorrow?’ he asked. ‘I thought it would be nice for us to see that film together on a rainy day.’
    Before she could ask him which film he was talking about, he added, ‘Did you know it’s been showing in the same cinema for the last two months? That’s how long it’s been since we saw each other last.’
    This time she didn’t try to make up excuses. She just asked, ‘Where shall we meet?’
    ‘At the Olympic Cinema before the four o’clock matinee.’
    Then, as an afterthought, he said, ‘Or, if you’d like, you could wait for me at the university entrance. I’ll pick you up there at 3:30. That would be better.’
    Without giving her time to say another word, he hung up in farewell, leaving her once more to her questions.
    * * *
    I was happy with this ending, which I’d thought up without much effort. In fact, I’d written it down just like that, the way it had occurred to me, without debating between it and some other version and without crossing out a single line or rereading it more than once the way I usually do. It was as if I wanted to convince myself that I wasn’t the person who had written it.
    But isn’t there always something that words conceal, even when they come this spontaneously? In fact, when they come pouring out so naturally, in one way or another, this itself should arouse one’s suspicion.
    Language can be more beautiful than we are. In fact, we beautify ourselves with words. We choose them the way we choose our clothes, in keeping with our moods and our intentions.
    There are also words that have no colour, that are scandalously transparent, like a woman who’s just come out of the sea wearing a diaphanous dress that clings to her body. Yet transparent words are decidedly more dangerous, since they cling to us to the point where they pass into our very beings.
    This man who insisted on remaining silent while I insisted on getting him to speak, who insisted on keeping his coat on while I insisted on taking it off him, unnerved me in all of his states, even when he took off his silence and put on my