An Affectionate Petrifacation

   An Affectionate Petrifaction

"A stone, to humans, is dead life, but - as such – also life; she is a human and I love her," he thought, as he kissed a person in an open square, at random, though regularly. Why let oneself be drawn this way? Why meet here without arranging it? What kind of unknown systematics had command over them, and how was it not allowing them to meet one another?

    Even when he took a walk in the middle of the night in order not to run into her, he ran into her; even when he hid in his closet in order not to meet her, she opened the closet and met him; even when he dove under the water so as not to run into her, she dove as well - perhaps in order not to meet him, her love. And still they hadn't spoken, and still they loved each other more? And still they wouldn't meet each other? - If, on the other hand, he went out to meet her because for a long while he'd gone out not to meet her, he wouldn't meet her and therefore finally wanted very much - more and more - to meet her, so he walked alone for years and was unable not to want to meet her, but one day he no longer wished to meet her and gave her up and he went home, where she met him in his house.

    "So, we meet," he said.

    "Yes," she said, "because you wanted to."

    And they kissed and she disappeared, and he missed her and therefore on the one hand wanted to meet her, on the other hand wanted not to meet her, and he thought: "Things must be in order; from now on I shall remain standing on a mountain which she must storm in order to meet me."

    She would not meet him and therefore stormed the mountain; there he stood with the most beautiful view in a far-off land far away, enjoyed the beauty of nature and sea far away, never sitting down, and the girl arrived, sweating with a certain regularity, and gave him one kiss, where after she curled up and let herself roll down again.

    "You look worn out," he said to her, who had grown very thin, but - though in her suffering and her demanding love - also stronger and more beautiful, and when she kissed him, he said: "I love you, I miss you. Stay on the mountain top with me." And inside him love burned for her, who perhaps now spoke only in terms of mountain storming and kisses. But this, too, he loved, and he thought: "By standing here I am demonstrating my love; by storming the mountain she is demonstrating her love, a love that is impossible to destroy before she breaks down herself. Therefore she is asking her body to make a decision she cannot make with her soul. True love is every bit as demanding as it is completely silent, for it is not necessary to say more than what is said when one storms mountains."

    "Show me your love, or don't show me your love," she said. "Show it by not standing here, show it by standing here; roll down the mountain for me and with me, or don't. Whether you are here or not: I will continue upwards."

    "Yes," I said. "There's nothing we can do, not even meet by chance, not even stay here or leave, nor demonstrate our love, nor find it necessary and then not stop our love at all, which will continue on its own, in us or without us."

    He went down from the mountain, perhaps the victor, perhaps because he no longer found any victory valid or relevant, and he saw her storming the mountain constantly, and asked himself: "I wonder to whom she is paying a visit?" So he asked her.

    "You," she said.

       "But I'm not up there," he said.

    "Isn't your name S?" she asked.

    "Yes," he said.

    "Then it is you."

    "Fine, then. Say hello to me from me, but don't believe everything I say, for he is only the one you wish him to be; whether you will both love and hate him, he will make it possible - your own S, whom I do not know at all. What is your name, my girl?"

     "S," she said.

    "Excellent. And at the top you meet yourself – only yourself. We resemble each other, true enough. Regards to yourself from S; say hello to S from me and let the S's speak - or be."

    Still he thought the true misfortune was, of course, that there was nobody at all on the summit. He couldn't bear this misfortune on behalf of his beloved, walked once again to the top of the mountain, met no one other than she, who stood, waiting, and said: "It's good you came, that you let yourself be tempted. I've waited for you."

    Since it was not possible to leave her, not possible not to meet her and not possible to meet her if he wanted - and besides, not at all possible to want to meet her or not want to meet her - he began visiting her regularly, every month. Stormed the mountain, kissed and rolled back down, felt supple and not stiff, and thought: "This is how I'll recapture her trust; for her, love must be demonstrated constantly, in a way most demanding, and only in this way." He did not notice himself growing smaller and smaller and more and more hard, did not think the thought, didn't even feel happily freed from consciousness or freed from happiness or from the thought, or liberated from the grueling wanderings, or liberated.

    But the beautiful girl often took him by the hand, caressed him when he came, and kissed him - the perfect love stretched out over the years with this regular systematism – never noticing that she kissed a little stone. She saw him, not the little stone. Love had let go of her before she could let go of it, and when she noticed the stone, and thought: "So this is what I've been kissing all these years," it awakened in her no greater shame than that she still was able to fling the stone resolutely into the sea with a laugh he'd never heard before.

    Yet why can she not get rid of it, why is the little stone lying under her skin? Why does she continue pushing it back and forth under her skin, from foot to breast, breast to arm, arm to hip - even though it hurts? Why can an operation not be performed to remove it and why does she not want one? Why does this lifeless thing, lifeless in life, seem to actually demand some form of dialogue that could never take place? Is this stone not both the desire to converse and the lack of ability to do so, a human reminder of humanity, the demand we can never completely fulfill, the conversation that ought to have been held before stone became stone and humans became human?