11 Bulgarian Love Songs #2
“Come on, just an appetizer.” Pauline, trying on her most seductive voice.
Jean-Pierre nodded, eyes closed, before being transported to heaven.
From the kitchen to the bed. They returned to the scene of the crime for the sake of comfort.
And to conjugate life by saying tender and intimate things, the kinds of things you don’t say with your clothes on.
Every now and then, they made love. Like a poem they were continuing, they surprised each other with every verse, refining the rhetoric, and stripping the language bare until they reached the essence of love.
By the time they got up again, lunchtime had long passed.
That afternoon, they talked. Overcome by a longing for Gina, Paulina realized she needed to do it.
She needed to tell Jean-Pierre something that was very important to her.
She hoped he did not get the wrong idea of her.
She was not the kind of woman who went around with a wedding ring on her finger, trying to seduce men whose last names she didn’t even bother to ask.
She wanted it to be clear she didn’t go around animating her life with the first guy who came along without bothering to dig into his past or care about his present.
She suddenly felt the need to sit on a bench in the shade of la Tuileries and apologize for something she wasn’t quite sure of.
But she felt she had to say it out loud, to confess to someone who might be the only one capable of understanding her.
After a few unforgettable days, he was the center of her secret.
They sat side by side on a wooden bench in the middle of the gravel path, their legs crossed.
She leaned back against him. His body was the perfect support for the two bodies to fit together, drawn to each as they were like magnets.
Paulina liked feeling Jean-Pierre’s strong arm behind her neck, over her shoulder, his hand holding on to her arm.
For once, it was easier to speak without looking at him, her eyes drifting into nothingness, or toward the passersby—tourists and vendors of plastic souvenir Eiffel Towers—who walked invisibly in front of her.
She thanked him for the hours they had shared.
She praised him for his sensitivity and his tact, and told him about the whirlwind of new, unexpected, indecipherable emotions that were shaking her.
Most of all, on the verge of tears, she asked him not to think that this was usual behavior for her.
It was important that Jean-Pierre believe this was not just another anecdote, a weekend fling in Paris, sex for the sake of sex.
She didn’t just jump into anyone’s bed. It was much more than that.
She did not go to bed with anyone. He could ask Julie if he didn’t believe her.
Actually, it was better not to mention anything to her cousin.
But he had to understand that she, Paulina Homs, was not like that.
Or if she was, she didn’t know it. And she was just discovering it with him, walking beside him, listening to him talk about Braque, dancing a sirtaki by the river, lighting a pipe, and kissing him at the foot of Saint-Sulpice.
She wasn’t running away from anything by running toward him.
In fact, in Barcelona she had a tidy, well-organized life, without speed bumps.
She needed Jean-Pierre to understand that she had a daughter who was her whole world and a family she loved, who she thought she might be failing.
But in that moment her desires were breaking out so forcefully she could not hold them back.
She neither wanted to nor could repress them.
She was feeling things she had never felt before, and now that she was here, she could not stop experiencing them.
To their fullest extent. Even if it was only for a few days.
Perhaps there was a bit of regret, but it was mostly excitement.
She felt she had one foot in paradise and the other on the edge of a cliff, and she needed to share that, just like they had shared everything else those days.
So she told him. And that was all. Paulina would not have felt at peace if she hadn’t cleared her conscience, if Jean-Pierre didn’t hear her out at least once about the doubts that occasionally plagued her.
To be clear, it wasn’t remorse, she insisted.
They were only feelings. Passing worries that sometimes, like the echo of a cramp, sent her a signal and then disappeared.
He listened to her empathetically as a good listener. He wordlessly let her pour her heart out. Once her moment of catharsis was over, he gave her a soft kiss on the ear, gave a Mona Lisa smirk, and said only three things, the kinds of things people say when they’re not sure how to respond.
One: “We’ll figure it out.”
Two: “Don’t be afraid.”
Three: “I’m okay if you’re okay.”
They were maybe not the words Paulina would have most liked to hear. But the calm and distant steadiness with which Jean-Pierre said them helped settle her nerves. Sometimes calmness is contagious. She noticed then that Jean-Pierre primarily radiated security.
“Let’s go.” He rose from the wooden bench the moment he noticed a cocker spaniel approaching to sniff their feet.
“Where to?”
“To Rivoli. Didn’t you want to meet Antoine? We can’t get there halfway through the performance.”
One pencil, two chocolate, three rocket, four Bible, five stream, six funnel, seven telephone, eight clock, nine tin (Antoine Fernández knew that there is always at least one joker in the audience), ten stamp, eleven ball, twelve bed, thirteen water, fourteen glasses, fifteen calendar, sixteen pepper, seventeen domino, eighteen cauliflower, nineteen belt, twenty scalpel, twenty-one wheel, twenty-two racket, twenty-three church, twenty-four bore (and there is also always a mischievous person), twenty-five baton, twenty-six triangle, twenty-seven swing, twenty-eight . . .
“Why does he say a number before each word?” Paulina whispered into Jean-Pierre’s ear with surprise.
“It’s a mnemonic trick. It’s much easier for him to remember each object if he associates it with a number.”
“But then . . .”
“Shh, it’s our turn . . .”
“You say it.” Paulina passed the ball to him to give herself more time to think.
“Thirty-seven, butterfly.” Jean-Pierre blurted the first thing that came to mind when it was his turn.
“Thirty-eight . . .” She hesitated. “Thirty-eight, pipe.”
She was nervous about ruining Antoine’s list and anxious about speaking in front of others in another language, getting the word right.
Paulina’s slightly sweaty hand clutched Jean-Pierre’s, and he squeezed hers with understanding.
He was pleased that she had chosen a word associated with his world.
Only a few days had passed since they’d met, and he realized they were already creating a shared universe.
Forty-four sunflower, forty-five raffle, forty-six cow, forty-seven condom (and, without fail, there’s always someone trying to be provocative), forty-eight mattress, forty-nine coin . . .
“Do you see how he sweats?” They spoke softly, careful not to disturb anyone.
“Every day he ends the day soaked. The mental energy. It seems like nothing, but . . .”
“Why did he blindfold himself?”
“So he can concentrate. It helps him not to . . .”
“Lose track of things.”
“Exactly.”
“And I think so people don’t accuse him of peeking.” Paulina nodded her chin toward the waitress, who was writing each number and word in neat cursive on a mounted chalkboard.
Sixty-six coffin, sixty-seven pen, sixty-eight ship, sixty-nine sex (a predictable one), seventy harpsichord, seventy-one clog . . .
“Are you and Antoine very close friends?”
“It depends . . . I like coming here and watching him. I’ve come maybe ten or twelve times.
One day”—he lowered his voice even further when two people shot them dirty looks—“we held a performance in the gallery. We hid an object, and Antoine had to find it guided by the telepathy of one of us even though he was blindfolded and didn’t know what it was. ”
“And?”
“Crazy. He found the pencil sharpener inside the . . . Wait, it’s over.”
Sitting down with his eyes covered and sweat rolling down his head, Antoine Fernández was breathing heavily.
He panted like he had just run a marathon and crossed the finish line.
Either this was part of the show in that dimly lit basement on rue de Rivoli, or he was having issues with hyperventilation that were getting worse by the minute.
“And now?”
“This is the part where they ask if there’s a doctor in the house.”
“Shut up.”
In bursts, Antoine Fernández recited each object from one to a hundred patiently and confidently, a few stumbles here and there.
The crowd was unanimous in its applause.
“Bravo” someone shouted from the back of the cabaret.
He proceeded to recite the list backward, from a hundred down to one, without a single mistake, but with even more difficulty.
All the way from “snail” to “pencil.” The audience, numbering around thirty people, gave him a standing ovation.
No one cared that the act never seemed to end.
Then, acting like it was easier for him, the mentalist in his sweat-soaked shirt asked the audience to call out any number.
He would instantly respond with its corresponding object. And vice versa.
“Butterfly!” Paulina shouted.
“Thirty-seven,” Antoine answered triumphantly.
“He’s a machine.”
“If every show went like the one tonight, he wouldn’t be here,” Jean-Pierre said, chewing the stem of his pipe as he clapped. “He’d be filling the seats of the Odéon every night.”