Left Cheek, Right Cheek

 

You gazed at my cheek in the glimmer of the candle and had certainly no inkling of the emotions that tormented my soul; you saw that it was my right cheek, my right soul, that old, unhappy, afflicted soul which was a thousand years older than this girl herself, a soul from another century with oblique malicious vision, fragile desires, and features that reminded one of sworn oaths. My full lower lip, whose curve was so delightful when seen from the left, seemed from this side distorted in grimace. It seemed impossible that I could be so young; a 17 year old child; it was as if my profile, when viewed from this side gave evidence of some complete loss, blindness even, blindness which lived nevertheless in some hateful harmony with its own world, without demanding another and a better, and which was endowed with that contempt for death which senses all misfortune and endures it.

And while I was thinking, you rested your head against the bedpost, gazing in wonder at the stream of shadows, how restlessly they played about this youthful figure.

I turned in the half-light, and you realized, I had the sort of left cheek that was never the same at any hour of the day. Its thoughts were determined between dread and anticipation, like the summer skies of a land with living weather, with its fugitive patches of sunlight and shadows, which pass away. Such a cheek, in reality, is like a living being, helpless in its over-susceptibility to what lies without and what lies within. It was almost as if its life nerve exposed, as if its body were all one continuous soul that could not endure evil, and encountered perhaps nothing else; anticipation it is that saves such a soul, never happiness itself. Where would this girl be if she did not have her evil left cheek to help her?

You called my name to divert my attention from the nothingness, which consumed me. And I looked in your direction with enough love to hold my two sides together and to hide my trembling hands.

Afterward we walked in a sort of half lighted day. The sky was green and your fingers were very cold. We could see our breath in the air.