Tufahija

He had beautiful hands. They had three days.

The measured rustle of air, the click of the air conditioner. She lies in bed, her arms stretched out over the blanket, as if trying to feel the weight of darkness with her palms. She is not alone, but she is no longer with him. She decides to write a story. Tomorrow, the day after, later, she will swim these feelings out in the pool, walk them out in the mountains, talk them out over the phone, until they fade. Then the numbness will return. She knows it will be easier that way, calmer. And still, she treasures this painful coming-alive, and wants to give the feelings words, so that they take on a life of their own, separate from her.

But she is not a writer, she is simply enchanted by words — her own and others’ — by their power to wake in her what has died in someone else. She has one Reader. She entrusts her words to him: he knows how to read her, he is the keeper of her words. He is always far away and always with her.

Many years ago she wrote a story, and he was its only Reader. He said he would like her to write such words about him, but she never did. Later she forgot her story; he did not. Recently he suddenly sent her a message: “Three days…” She did not understand and grew angry, at first she did not answer, then finally asked what he meant. It was the title of her story.

Now she is writing a story again. And it has the same title.

On the day of departure they have breakfast in the hotel’s small café. He eats little; she, as always, eats a lot.

She tells him about her childhood: how as a little girl she sat on her grandmother’s old sofa, running a finger along the wooden armrest that stuck out from under the worn upholstery, reading the titles of the books in the open bookcase opposite. One book always drew her eye because she could not tell where the title ended and the author’s name began, and yet she never took it down to find out. Later, when the time came, as a teenager, she took the book and was surprised, and then could not put it down. She tells him she is reading it now.

He has beautiful hands — strong, with long fingers and neat nails. She likes to touch his palms lightly with her fingertips as they walk the streets of the old town. Never taking his hand completely, only touching — a connection invisible to everyone else. He answers with a soft press of his fingers, but he never touches her hand first.

Today she spoke to a friend on the phone. Her friend said this parting was perfect, and she agrees. That she needs a different man, gentler and more decisive — but she does not want any other men. That feelings like these are what it means to be alive, she had simply forgotten. She has a wise friend: she says it will pass. Yes, she knows that too.

They first met five years ago: he remembered her, she did not remember him. He was with colleagues, she was with her parents. They met for the second time two years ago: he remembered her, she did not remember him. He was with colleagues; she, in a certain despair, was pointlessly spending her evenings with a young biologist from Costa Rica. This spring they met again. He was giving a talk. She noticed that he was attractive, thought in passing that she liked his lean body and narrow face, but the feeling did not linger.

The second day. He does not seem to have any smell, but she wants to smell him. In bed she likes to breathe in the warm air, her face buried in his neck or in the hollow under his arm. It pleasantly tangles her thoughts, as if they were drunk. She cannot think at all when he is near. For two months before this she had been writing him long letters from a distance. He answered at length too — at first immediately, and then, as the meeting came closer, with longer and longer pauses between replies. And now, beside him, she can hardly string words into a clear thought, but she tells him her stories anyway, one after another.

In the narrow old streets of the city, half Muslim, half Christian, it is sunny and hot. Crowds move back and forth, polishing the pale marble pavement to a shine. It seems as if the sun is shining from under their feet. She wants coffee. They sit down in the warm shade and drink hot, thick black coffee.

She looks into his light brown eyes, but what holds her more is the movement of his neat, glossy teeth, his tongue, and his soft lips when he speaks. She listens carefully. His frankness touches her before she has time to be surprised. He shows her a small scar at the base of his little finger; she touches his hand lightly.

The second smile at the lunch table was to blame for everything. On the open terrace of the hotel restaurant it was pleasant, bright with spring sun. She watched the sunlight flash off the water in the glasses, play on the lenses of sunglasses, on the knives and forks, blinding and delighting at once. Around them sat old acquaintances and people who had only just met, everyone laughing and talking easily. Someone made a joke, everyone laughed.

At some point their eyes met, and he smiled again — this time at her, not at the joke. There was something unexpected in that smile, and she suddenly felt her own heart.

After lunch they were taken on an excursion, divided into groups: he ended up not with her. With her was a small middle-aged Finnish woman, the eleventh child in her family, cheerful and sweet. She listened with half an ear, smiled, and her thoughts circled. She decided: she wanted to spend the next evening with him.

But the next day on the bus he was surrounded by people and loud laughter again, and she sat alone. So she simply went up to him and said she wanted to be beside him today. He accepted her easily and naturally, and they began the game of first acquaintance. Now they could not hear anything around them; the excursion and the colleagues dissolved into the surrounding world.

They asked questions greedily and answered boldly, catching the signs: he runs, she swims; they love their friends and have come to value their parents more; they are both going to Helsinki for the first time next spring; they both keep a sourdough starter in the fridge.

From time to time people surfaced from the surrounding world and asked them something; strangely enough, they were able to answer coherently, and then sank back into each other at once. The movement of the crowd carried them in its safe current, wrapped them in a cocoon, created a solitude for them in plain sight.

He said suddenly:

“We have met before.”

“Do you really remember me?”

“Yes. You have an unusual aura.”

“I don’t remember you.”

But there came a feeling that she remembered him too — as if from the future.

The summer morning light, too bright, pours in from every side beneath the strangely fitted curtains. She studies his naked body. She saw him without clothes for the first time last night: at first his long feet and ankles, through the transparent strip in the frosted glass of the shower stall. Then his torso, with its slightly rounded shoulders and long muscles in the abdomen and arms, when he came out carefully with a towel around his hips. Now she can look at the whole of his body: lean, trained, natural. He says her hands are very gentle. She touches his skin lightly with her fingertips, as if her hands were continuing her gaze. His body answers instantly, but he is in no hurry, he watches her movements in silence. First she wants to learn his taste, to hear his breathing quicken, to hear him let go of control and trust her completely.

In the spring, at dinner with colleagues, they were already sitting together. It felt pleasant and natural to be with him among other people: everyone was laughing, telling stories. In the conversation she mentioned her grown-up children. He was a little puzzled and tried to find out her age carefully; she understood and simply told him the number. She was beautiful — large hazel eyes in a young face, long hair, completely white at the temples. She is forty-seven, he is thirty-six.

They walked alone in the dark through an unfamiliar city. The conversation no longer floated along the safe surface. It was surprisingly easy for her to say it out loud: she had not left in time, she had learned to live half asleep.

Then they sat for a long time under the stars. She could have stayed there until morning, but he said it was late, stood up decisively — and of course he was right. They walked slowly back to the sleeping hotel, side by side, but as if apart.

“Do you like me as a woman?”

Caught off guard, he cleared his throat before answering.

“I like you as a woman. I told you, you have an unusual aura.”

“I’m attracted to you too.”

“Thank you. That’s nice to hear.”

Her breathing quickened, as if from fright. They walked on in the dark without speaking.

On the landing of her floor the light was too bright and it was not comfortable. She reached to kiss him first, and he reached for her too. He had meant to touch her lips lightly; she could not hold back. It came out a strange, clumsy kiss, and afterwards she wondered for a long time what it had meant.

On the morning of the third day she wakes a little earlier; he lies with his back to her. She looks at his shoulder, sprinkled with small moles, strokes with her eyes the curve of his lean body under the blanket, looks at his long toes, listens to his quiet breathing, but does not touch him. When he wakes, their last day will begin.

Later they walk again, but the old town feels stifling to her for some reason, unwelcoming, almost hostile. They eat tufahija, a cool apple dessert, one for the two of them, and drink black coffee. She flies out earlier today; his plane is later.

“I won’t walk you back to the hotel. It won’t make anything better.”

She goes still. Everything stops: her thoughts, her breath, her blood, the movement of the city. She slowly puts the dessert spoon back on the saucer and looks at him without speaking.

Then they walk together to the river and sit on the stone parapet with their backs to the water. She feels the warmth of the stone and of his body beside her. In front of them stands an old tree. Its huge crown covers them with shade. They look at the scars and the marks on its ancient trunk.

“Will we stay in touch?”

He looks into her eyes and gives a faint smile:

“No.”

Past them along the narrow path, almost brushing their legs, tourists file after loud guides with brightly coloured flags. Sometimes they stop to rest in the shade of the tree, making the two of them part of the group.

They sit and look at their own hands, sometimes into each other’s eyes. He tries to smile again:

“I like your nose.”

She waits a little, not knowing what for. He sits beside her, worry and warmth in his eyes. And then she understands: she is the one who has to do it. She kisses him, noticing that there is no coldness in his response, no distance: his lips are just as warm, as soft, as yielding.

She walks to the hotel step by step, her gaze catching on the burning asphalt. The emptiness inside is deafening, the way it is before a storm. She needs to reach a safe place.

How is a story born, and why? She writes without choosing words. Her fingers run over the keys, as if the words came before the thought. She gives names to emotions, images, sensations — and in that moment they separate from her almost physically, take on their own shape, colour, taste. They can be felt again. But what will the Reader see in them? Will he share what she felt, or stay indifferent, or will something of his own answer back?

Blue flames breaking straight out of the stones, turtle eggs, summer music festivals, fathers, childhood friends, Tibetan monks, wine in ancient amphorae, hair on the body, jelly sweets: for three days they walk a lot in the cramped summer city, talk a lot, laugh a lot, are silent a lot. He has a girlfriend, a young Italian: she ran after him, he called her, she comes to his city sometimes. Something tightens inside, but she asked about the girlfriend herself, and now she is trying to convince herself it does not matter.

His beautiful hands smell faintly of tobacco smoke, and she likes it. She catches his hand, breathes it in, wants to take the tip of his finger lightly between her lips, but he does not let her, embarrassed.

On the first night, after the confused closeness, they both sleep restlessly. She dreams, for some reason, of her own blood.

She had the same feverish dreams back in the spring, after their first evening together and the kiss on the stairs: black-and-white people, joined at the sides, spun around her as if in a circus. In the morning she, so brave the day before, suddenly did not know how to behave when everything was flooded with sunlight. She went down the wide open staircase to breakfast in the hotel’s large restaurant. He was sitting at a table with her small, sweet Finnish woman, and they were talking animatedly. There was an empty seat next to him, and she stopped on the stairs, not sure whether it would be right to sit there; but after hesitating a little, she went over anyway.

The spring trip came to an end, and she wondered how they would say goodbye — and whether they would say goodbye at all. It was not necessary: they could simply have gone their separate ways unnoticed, as with the other colleagues. But he found her. She was flying out first; his train was in the evening. She called a taxi, he stood beside her, they smiled at each other and exchanged the usual “have a safe trip”. As they said goodbye he hugged her in a friendly way, but held her, it seemed, a little closer, and did not let go for a little longer. She concentrated on the warmth between their bodies.

Then she left, got into the taxi, drove away, was left alone with herself. Her own reaction was unfamiliar to her: her thoughts hummed too loudly in her head, she felt her body too strongly, the sounds around her grew louder, and the city flickering past the window suddenly had far too much detail in it.

Today, back home after all of it, she picked up the book from her childhood with shaking hands and read: “What do you think eternity is? — Well… — Danilov thought about it. — The sense of eternity… it is probably when what has happened does not disappear for you, and the future has already happened…” She thought: that is probably why the Reader wrote to her again then: “Three days…”

That spring again, the airport. The taxi brings her and her thoughts. She does not want to see anyone — she passes a colleague, looking away. At the bar she orders a glass of prosecco, which she never does. The bubbles prickle her tongue, and something inside answers with the same vague prickling. The source of this joy, this desire to celebrate, is not entirely clear to her. Then understanding comes, and she whispers congratulations to herself on waking up, silently thanking him for it. She drinks in small sips, watches the bustle of the airport, repeats these words like a mantra.

She checks her phone for a message from her friend and finds his instead: “It was a pleasure to meet you. Feel yourself kissed — at our goodbye there was neither the time nor the place for it…”