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Gossamer

Susie Gharib

    His face had the luminosity of a jasmine petal, his eyes the hues of very deep lakes. Our first meeting lasted for a few seconds. I declined an offer of a car lift, an irreparable mistake for which regret still gnashes its teeth. Two years elapsed before I saw Emmanuelle again. He arrived at my office flushed with the early summer heat, not in his business suit but wearing a pair of Jeans and a turquoise shirt. His simple attire and graceful carriage instantly pierced my armor, allowing in a soft zephyr. His faint perfume subtly intoxicated every limb and nerve. The texture of our handshake was gossamer. We sat on a pair of wooden chairs but it felt like sitting in the lap of a lawn of daffodils. A handsome man renown for a series of past conquests sat shyly in my modest presence. We said very little but I instantly knew that he was a man with whom I could breathe in the steamy casserole of traditional marriage.
    We sauntered down the leafy alleys. I took his arm and felt the charm of a snug flower suffused with the heat of a sun-spun bower. I was touched by his honesty when he addressed his social and financial troubles in the most candid manner. I did not mind his dire straits as long as his love for me was unshakably straight. It was a tacit understanding between us and I was prepared for the worst. We parted to meet again soon but Emmanuelle disappeared for months and I began to question his word. It did not occur to me that he was deeply entangled in the labyrinthine webs of the intricate legal system that Charles Dickens had immortalized in The Bleak House. His enemies had been busy for years setting financial snares and legal traps, which ended in various lawsuits and unreliable attorneys. His past relationships had also won him the enmity of mighty women for whom revenge is a sacred rite.
    Every effort to meet again was ill-starred. I started to worry about Emmanuelle’s life and decided to maintain the same distance that had been tearing us apart. He must have intuited my plan and after he knew that somebody had been paid a large sum of money to have him chastised, he contented himself with the text messages we exchanged. He urged me to send poems every day. Strings of words made me steadfastly anchored to his love. Every word he sent unraveled its kingdom before my fascinated eyes: I had to write. There were a few phone calls and brief exchanges of greetings on the road. Months passed and yearning for him became so hard to contain, but when we decided to surf on tidal waves, he then disappeared without a trace. When I intimated my worries to a wise friend, she swore on her life that he would be dating some other woman; men were simply faithless. I was in the grip of a premonition for four days and appointed a lawyer to search for him.
    He lay bruised and battered with a fractured skull in a different city’s prison cell. He could not walk and was brought in a wheelchair. His smell was worse than the stench of rubbish heaps, with which I had become familiar in my mission to rescue maimed and tortured stray dogs. I knelt before him and urged him to trust the lawyer with his tale, but Emmanuelle who had a long history with such men kept his parched lips firmly shut, except when he received a plastic cup of water that he squashed with his fist because of his excessive thirst. Nobody knew what had happened to him. He sealed his words in an early grave, leaving me scarred for life.

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