ARNOST LUSTIG
297
Naked, she reached perfection. I didn't need light to see that. Smooth,
tight skin covered her shoulders, head and face, her breasts down to her
waist and belly, hips and thighs. Her body expressed everything for her,
just as did her open eyes, her erect breasts and her warm lap, the tender,
winding mazes of her small ears and her face that had not lost its pain,
fatigue, and yearning. Her body was the picture of one single thought.
There wasn't any now or never anymore yet at the same time, now and
never composed the moment; that now, here and omnipresent never.
I had never seen a more beautiful being either before or after. But that
was already different to me, too. I stroked the real her inside. And just like
no one can ever get back home again after being away for a long time,
even if his home hasn't changed in the meantime and he hasn't either, and
how things would never be the way they had been up to that moment, Lea
had transformed with the approaching daylight into someone I didn't
know, maybe somebody she didn't even know herself. Was she crying? I
couldn't tell; I only knew her eyes were wet. She whispered something that
I didn't understand: How much can a person care for another person?
What makes him like or dislike himself? How can he give another person
a little pleasure or a piece of himself-or all his pleasure?
She was different from the way she'd been yesterday, from last night
and now. Maybe I was different from last night, too. We were strangers
and at the same time, we were no longer unfamiliar to each other. I
sensed her chest and heart speaking to me with each beat. The rest of
her was an eighteen year old, possibly immortal, but tired spirit. A
memory of a memory; a here and now that never carries over to tomor–
row. We had already gotten used to being people without a future. The
place between life and death was a new center with uncharted borders,
something that was merely between yes and no, a lengthy meantime,
that perhaps meant waiting but without the slightest hope. We already
knew that hope meant fullness and hopelessness emptiness, and we no
longer had anything more than our bodies and souls and a piece of the
night until morning would come. She soaked up my patience and impa–
tience. She couldn't have known what was going on inside of me. She
edged up to my tenseness like an invisible wall and let her mouth open
slightly in anticipation and invitation. Her lips were warm and moist
and held the taste of wine drunk long ago or juice or thirst. The sun that
looked out of her eyes was not rising but setting. Timelessly. I wanted it
to be the other way around but it wasn't. They would probably cut off
the strands of golden hair that had fallen on her forehead as early as
tomorrow or the day after. She licked her lips and kissed me gently,
