The Spectator

Chapter 4

My beer was finished and I was debating whether to leave or stay when Kavki leaned towards me and said, 'I have a poem for you.' She rummaged inside her canvas tote and with aplomb of a magician's assistant produced a jagged patch of colored tracing paper on which her writing shone blue-black against yellow. On the page were words she had scribbled in her loopy-loping handwriting. Towards the bottom right corner I noticed a phone number ostentatiously tacked on the translucent sheet. I wondered who might answer the phone if I called that number.

The way she held the tracing paper caused her thumb to partially obscure the last three digits. My curiosity without doubt was unwarranted. Still, jealousy is a curious beast, and by its twisted nature leaves one exonerated. The tracing paper fluttered each time the blades of a swiveling fan delivered a blast of air in our direction. I kept my eyes averted, lest I was tempted, and asked the question, and risk damage by the asking.

Kavki placed her chin on my left shoulder and whispered, 'Listen.' She spoke words, her breath tracing the line of my clavicle, but my mind was elsewhere. I heard the words she recited, and the words weren't oblique, and for that matter the words were not direct either. Places where one expected ambiguity written into the poem's lines was defeated by the clarity of thought captured by a phrase or word.

'Read it back to me once more,' I said. 'I missed the opening line.'

And she did.

There was certain succinctness to the three lines of her poem. Three lines that seemed almost religious for their austerity. A kulak, solitary and reserved, and rife with interdict ideas.

Kavki ran the back of her hand along her forehead, traced a line following the curve of her left eyebrow, attended to a stray lock of hair in front of her eyes.

Her words were easement written up for silent recitation. The poem was the antidote to remembering. Her poem was a balm for forgetting. Hermetic. Almost mystical. I repeated the words she had read and I could not be sure if her words meant something to me or not.

I could melt

Deep kiss is good

Sister, sacred candy.

'Nice,' I said.

'It's for you,' Kavki said. 'You can have it.'

A strange mood came over me, a yearning, almost physical for its intensity. Were I to take this feeling and mould it with my hands, I might have described it as rounded and malleable. The texture like modeling clay. Something made from Plasticine for a child to play with and break.

Kavki tore out the phone number. She crumpled that bit of paper and threw it away. She handed me the khaki colored patch, a little worse for wear, a little more jagged around the edges.

'Read it ten years from now and remember me the way I was,' she said.

Her right hand rested close to her bottle of beer. Her left hand was on her lap. She pulled her left hand away when I reached for it. Since I was already in the act of reaching for her hand, I sought to disguise the action by continuing the movement. I took a lock of her hair, tugged playfully before pulling hard. Kavki gasped. Mauss shouted, 'Stop, you are hurting her.' Grinning, I told Mauss, it was just horseplay.

'A brother-sister game,' I said before picking the piece of paper she had left on the table, folding the fragment with care, tracking earlier fold lines, and after I was done I placed it inside the front left pocket of my shirt, right behind the packet of No. 10s.

'Did he hurt you?' Mauss asked.

'A little bit,' Kavki said. 'I have high tolerance for pain.'

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