Brief Loves That Live Forever by Andreï Makine

Author:Andreï Makine
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-55597-343-8
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Published: 2015-10-09T16:00:00+00:00

FIVE

Lovers on a Stormy Night

The moths flung themselves at every light source, collided with things, got scorched, fell, exhausted, regained their strength, hurtled back once more toward the white heat. In the face of this absurd obstinacy, one had to imagine a sublime sexual passion whose intensity made the risk of dying seem trifling.

Every evening during August that year we saw clouds of kamikaze insects bombarding the little lamps in the restaurants and the street-lights. And hordes of vacationers, seeking the heat of an embrace, the blindness of an affair, with a similar determination.

The awareness of being a part of this gave rise to ambiguous feelings in us: the joy of belonging to a bronzed, carefree tribe, hungry for love, and at the same time the disappointment of being just one more couple, a holiday romance, ephemeral and feverish, among so many others in that beach resort on the Black Sea …

This disagreeable feeling that we were imitating all the others was added to by our dependence on pleasure, like that induced by drugs. We had to increase the dosage, step up the frequency of our bouts of lovemaking. And our bodies would give way, exhausted, like those of the moths intoxicated with light. And every night we would be pained by this growing realization of a trite and bitter truth: pleasure only aims at itself, being a marvelous end in itself. A repetitive loop, heady, exhausting, delicious, perfumed with the scent of tanned and salty skin, molded by muscles made firm in lengthy daily swims, spiced with hot dishes and thick wine that tastes of walnuts, a panting flight toward the climax and a spiraling down into the abyss of bed linen saturated with sea spray, beneath a star hanging low among the branches of a pomegranate tree. An intoxicating cul-de-sac.

My companion during that August proved to be more aware than I of this circular dead end. Every night she watched the moths struggling against the suicidal impulse of their aerobatics … She was an Abkhazian, studying in Moscow and hoping, during her holidays, to experience an adventure essential to the life of a young woman of her origins: to free herself from the moral constraints of her Caucasian homeland, to love without falling in love. Yes, to be a moth fluttering amid a stream of light particles but without burning her wings. She had a name to match the best romantic scenario: Leonora …

Within a few days this project was accomplished: we met, free, passionate, each eager to offer the other the most attractive image of a physical relationship, to act out a fine drama of love. Our bodies performed superbly, the decor of mountains sloping down to the sea added a cinematic luster to every word, every kiss. We clasped one another with the energy of athletes, with a fierce yearning for perfection, just as if our every move were being projected onto an ever-changing screen of beautiful sunsets.

At that age one is loath to accept the brevity of pleasure.

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