用过的胶布

Kailash是印度新锐作家，在印度和澳洲接收教育，明年初他的第一部短篇小说集"WHAT HAPPENED TO THAT LOVE"。这篇小说是他专门为我们的博客写的。

中文版我会分贴奉上。
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Used sellotape

By Kailash Srinivasan



She was, well, mad. On our tenth date she says, ‘I am with your child.’ I gulp down a whole jug of water and ask the waiter to get another one when she shoos him away, and to me she says, ‘Was kidding. Just gauging your reaction.’ Two days later I am enjoying a large mug of wheat beer; Roger Federer is kicking an amateur’s ass. She keeps her rum and coke aside, lights a mint cigarette. Her eyes are fixed on me. I can sense them even though I am busy with the game.
‘I have breast cancer,’ she says, her eyes moist. ‘Do you still love me?’

Breasts are important to me, I think. But sometimes practicality isn’t advised. I say, ‘Are you crazy? Of course I do,’ and quickly look down at the plate of nuts.

‘You’re so silly.’ She laughs. ‘I love my breasts. No way am I letting anything happen to them.’

I didn’t drink anymore that night. That night in bed, I stay down. Don’t go anywhere near her breasts. At the end of it my tongue feels like sticky sand paper. Smile never leaves her lips. She falls asleep, her shirt unbuttoned for the first time since we started sharing toothbrush. I imagine Eva Green dancing naked in The Dreamers to help myself; make sure the bed doesn’t creak much. She pulls my hand over her breast.

‘Be nice to me,’ she warns, rather casually, as she bites into a butter toast in the morning, ‘or else I might run away with the priest on our wedding day.’

My parents don’t even know her first name.

She reads my stories. Stories I write early morning (before heading to my stupid job as a journalist), sipping coffee from Hawaii a friend bought for me. And she asks, her eyes sparkling, ‘Is this story about me?’

She’s six years younger to me, cheeks splattered with acne marks, hair black and curly, and breasts, fair and smooth. I love holding her slender hand and walking her through a crowded street; keeping her away from men and boys who try to brush against her.

My doorbell buzzes. I look through the peephole to see who it is, because I have a cold Corona with half a lemon inside sitting on the table. I place it exactly on top of the cold ring of water that’s already there. Don’t like to make too many rings. When I peep, all I see is darkness. I know it is her because she always blocks peeholes with her index finger. I open the door and she pounces on me pushing me down on the hard, cold marble floor hurting my back. But her mouth is on mine and I don’t mind. She says she can use a drink, but she already smells of red wine.

Whenever we meet she speaks of ex-lovers, a pride of being the one sought after clearly reflects in her eyes. It quickly turns to boiling rage when I mention one of my ex’s. She’s a student, living a decent life, on allowance sent by her father, promptly, on the first of every month. But she doesn’t own a TV. ‘I don’t need one,’ she says. ‘No time.’ But when she comes home, the first thing she does is turn my TV on and watch music videos on VH1. She keeps it on even as our bodies mingle.

That evening. That evening I am on the phone with her. A kid runs across the road after a gray, furry cat and I brake, skidding and falling on the muddy road, bruising myself badly. I am still on the phone with her and she keeps talking about her hair – whether she should curl it or straighten it or colour it. I mention once that I am flat on the road, but she’s busy with choosing the right colour for her hair, to maybe even match with the colour of her eyes. Can I call you later, is a no-no in her books, an obvious transgression in her eyes. ‘Later? Why? What is so important you can’t talk to me now?’ she’d ask. So I lay there in the middle of the road, waiting for her to tire and put the phone down. I say, ‘Yeah, I love you, too,’ with a smile on my face (she can sense it when I don’t from the pitch of my voice and the way it sounds when my lips aren’t stretched) while people who gather around me to help, stand bewildered, and leave when I gesture I am alright.

She makes me soup, cuts vegetables – carrots, beans, cabbage – with her manicured fingers, when I am down with throat infection. She feeds me spoonfuls of the steaming soup, blowing on it through her soft-soft lips before it touches mine. Then she leaves to meet a friend, who she says has a crush on her. She says he’s leaving town and wants to see her.
‘If I jump off a building, will you jump after me?’ she asks later that night, as she kisses the back of my neck. I moan. For sex. ‘Yes, I say.’

When I publish my short story, my first, she squeals, she laughs, she cries, she jumps, like she has had a child with me. I have never seen anyone this happy for me, not even myself. I think of ways to propose to her.

That day storm rises over my house, all purple, blood-clot like and the lightning blows transformers, which give out a blunt sound, like firecrackers sitting in moisture. I reach for a candle and a match, or a torch. When I bring out the candle, it throws long shadows, and I feel love looking at her, sitting on the couch, her legs up as always, her eyes cast down as always, the acne marks glowing on her face in the yellow candle light. I feel the ring in my upper pocket; a tickle runs through my body.
She says, ‘I kissed him that night, the night I went to meet him.’

I slam my fist on the coffee table and feel a bone crack. Raindrops pound the tin sheet covering the verandah. My mouth is bitter and foul and bile comes up to my throat. Thunder jolts the sky. The candle goes off and the wick smells like burnt rubber.

Then the rain and thunder and lightning and breathing, my breathing, stops. She gets up and leaves.

Used sellotape, my heart.