“You’re welcome to.”
“Oh no, your hands don’t look good.”
“How’s your heart?”
And once again we decided never to part. But soon we did. Tell me, was that love? If you ask me, love is an unsatisfied hunger for existence. Whereas the two of us had been hurt by existence. Neither of us was young anymore. She was a few years younger than me, it’s true, but it was a long time since she’d been young. I often had to ask her not to be ashamed of her body. She’d always look over anxiously to check I wasn’t watching when she undressed. It was always:
“Turn the light off.”
“Why?”
“Please, turn it off.”
“But why?”
“Don’t you get it?”
I didn’t get it. She probably never suspected that as I watched her undressing I had the feeling I was being enriched by all her hurt, all her pain, by the way time was passing her by. I’d lived through a great deal myself, but it wasn’t as important to me as what she had been marked by. No, it wasn’t that I felt sympathy for her. Besides, does love require sympathy? What I’m trying to say is that I experienced her existence as my own existence. You ask what that means? It’s like you desire to take the entire burden of someone else’s existence upon yourself. As if you wished to relieve that person entirely of the necessity of existing. As if you wanted to die in their place too, so they wouldn’t have to experience their own dying. That’s something different than sympathy the way it’s usually understood. At the very possibility of such a thing, even if I was only imagining it, I felt a renewed desire for life. You say that isn’t possible. It’s possible that it isn’t possible. But in that case, what should be the measure of love? If you and I understand the same thing by this word that has no meaning? In accordance with what do we supposedly experience it? The appetites of the flesh? The flesh has its limits, and they’re reached much, much sooner than death.
Do you know if she’s still alive? Did I take you by surprise? Who on earth else other than you could tell me? I thought I’d at least learn that much from you. Because if I knew she was no longer alive, I’d not want to live anymore either.
Sometimes I think to myself that maybe if I could still have played. Or perhaps I was afraid to involve her in my life. Or I no longer had the strength to take on that love on top of everything else. You have no idea what it means to love when you’re not young anymore. It’s the hardest challenge. When you’re young, ceasing to exist doesn’t seem so terrifying. But you see, me, I always lived on the boundary between existing and not existing. Even when I seemed to be there, it was like I was only passing through, only there for a short while, visiting someone, though I don’t know who, because I have no one.
You think that’s why I came back here? But this isn’t my place either. So what if you came to buy beans? You could have gone anywhere, and not necessarily for beans. If you hadn’t found me you’d always have found someone. What difference does it make? For you none at all, I don’t think. I’m not mixing you up with someone else. Though for a long time I kept thinking about where and when it had been. At one point, right at the beginning, I even wondered if you might be him. Oh, no one. It just occurred to me. But no. If you’d been him, you wouldn’t have come to me for beans. How would you have known that someone like me exists.
What time is it? Ah, I have to be getting along. I’ve got to make my rounds of the cabins. Like I told you, I always go around at least once every night, often twice when I can’t sleep. See, the dogs are awake too. What is it, Rex? Eh, Paws? Sit! You’ve already sniffed the gentleman. No, they’re not hungry. They ate earlier in the evening. Maybe they had a dream. I’ll leave them with you. Don’t be afraid of them. Just keep shelling the beans.