Paula Robles Nettel
The Time Machine
It was late
and we went to bed, the room was large painted and dressed in white, with two
vertical long windows from ceiling to floor covered in white and light curtains
of natural material. The morning light came through the windows around six in
the morning, Henning slept on the left side of the bed and I, laying on my side kept quiet in order to contemplate his peaceful slumber. Letting my eyes
travel through his uncovered naked body, lean long muscles, soft and strong
Forseti. His manly figure full of resting testosterone and life waiting for the
morning to walk the trail of hair traveling from pelvis and heart where he would
become alive. Looking at the wonderful center of a man’s body, where he would stubbornly grow against his will, morning window of some of the greatest pleasures I know.
I quietly got
up and looked out the windows to see what was behind them, it was a
beautiful cemetery with big and tall trees blooming with spring colors of
green. I put on my jogging clothing and my running shoes and went out to the
streets of Berlin to find a place to run. I found a small park near the
flat and ran a few kilometers before walking back to the apartment, I had my music
on and began to wash the dirty dishes from the night before, suddenly I heard
Henning calling me from the bedroom, I went there and stood by the entrance
door looking at his half sleepy eyes with the cute gesture in his face that those who wear
glasses have when they are not wearing them.
“Where were
you?” “I want to show the morning bread” he said.
“I went out
for a run since you were sleeping" "And what is the morning bread?” I
asked.
He immediately
lifted the white bed-sheet and showed me his huge erection “is what we say in
Norway to make reference to the morning glory” and he laughed with his familiar silly
laughter. I approached him and kissed him while he playfully pulled me into to
the bed, undressing me fast while he once more proved to be the same Henning of
the other times, giving, passionate, focused and with the ability to prolong
the pleasure for both of us.
The following days we continued discovering the
city of Berlin, mainly walking randomly far away from the tourist crowds, kissing
through the city like we were young and newlywed, Looking for the next
interesting pub to drink beer, visiting museums, and discovering places to eat.
We made love often, and we laughed, we talked, and enjoyed the silence
of each other’s company. The minutes were marked with nothing but the most
wonderful feelings ever possible to be felt, as the sentence of the end still wasn't possible to be felt in those early days; we felt only love and unbridled desire.
Nothing absolutely nothing interfered with our romance until the evening when
we went to the opera in Berlin to see Salome. That day we had returned for a
long day walking in Berlin, and we both started rushing to get dressed for the
night plans, I came out of the bedroom ready to go, wearing a simple yet
beautiful black cocktail dress and high-heel shoes, he stood ready and handsome
in the living room waiting for me, he looked at me up and down and then approached me taking my face in
his hands he proudly said “you look stunning”. I shyly smiled and gave him a compliment,
I couldn’t believe how unaware this man was of his looks.
The taxi
left us in front of the Berlin State Opera, marveled of its beauty we went up
the stairs holding hands, we both liked the opera, we both loved classical music
and the venue was perfect for that romantic night we had planned in Berlin. After
the opera we walked for a little while crossing the river Spree looking for the
French restaurant Ganymed Brasserie River that we had booked earlier that day.
We sat in a cozy corner next to the window and that was the first time that the
sentence of our pending farewell felt. We started talking about things we didnt want to talk about, Henning had a hard time going to the couple’s therapy, he didn’t
want go, he didn’t want to continue in his relationship but he was certain that
he had to stay there for his children and for the time he had already devoted to
that relationship. I reassured him telling him that I understood his decisions
that were also of love, that I knew well that he still loved his partner,
because otherwise doing the effort to go to therapy and fix his life with her
wouldn’t have been an option, that in one part of his heart he had to love
her. “I do love her, but I have not been
in love with her for many years and now it's you I have fallen in love with,
but I can’t lose time with my children”.
The conversation
was weighing us down and we kept quiet for a long time before Henning would
outer the words that would send us into the beginning of our parting ways. “I want to give you a child, I know how much you long for more children and I want you to
not take care of yourself these days”. In the madness of the moment I did not think about
how selfish his suggestion was, I was so confused, we did not discuss the topic more, we
kept silent until we got to the flat, where he played soft music while he
opened a bottle of wine, he then extended his hand silently asking me to dance,
we danced slowly in the hall, the gentle touch of his hands travelling the back
of my body, my arms resting in the upper part of his arms, while my head rested
in his chest until the music and his touch lead us into the lust of the night that
needed to be lived. After we finished while resting in the couch Henning suddenly
said “The only thing is that I cannot be part of that child’s life, and I can
only promise you to help you financially, but I can’t be a father to that child”. Painful tears started to roll down my face,
once again my integrity bruised and I started arguing, because I had never
asked him for anything even less a child. He knew well that one week before I
had announced to my ex-husband that I wanted a divorce, we had received news
from Haugesund that we were eligible for our second In-vitro Insemination to
conceive our second child and that I who wanted nothing but a big family had
against all my selfish reasons decided to reject the only chance I had to be a
mother again, because it was the right thing to do when our marriage was
broken.
I couldn’t
understand his thinking, his wishes, I have never asked him or tricked him into
fatherhood, we both knew about my infertility problems, the chances for me to conceive
naturally were very small but if I had gotten pregnant I would have never ever
thought of going to his family to embarrass him and destroyed what they already
had, destroy his image in front of his children. I questioned myself, what part
of me Henning didn’t understand or what part of him I was not capable to
understand. After that he started talking about the end of our time in Berlin
and the permanent silence on his part that was to follow, that I had to
understand that after Berlin there wouldn’t be any more a time machine, his rhetoric
felt more directed to himself than to me and those were the first words in form
of an emotional barrier that Henning Alexander began to build on the third day
of our meeting in Berlin. As my crying grew, his sadness grew as well telling
me that for him things were also difficult, that he knew we weren’t going to see
each other ever again, that we would never ever hear each other’s voice again
but that was the way it was supposed to be. He then started saying "we should
speak again in ten years", then he changed his mind saying in five years because ten were too many, then he
said three years and kept quiet looking at me. We were 38 I thought, I was mute listening to the
craziness of his suggestions, I was drowning in my tears trying to understand
the magnitude of time, how could I think in years when surviving one day seemed
to be the most devastating of fates.
We went to
bed sad and resentful of the situation. The next day ready to go out for a
walk, I saw him quiet and sad sitting on a kitchen high chair, I was invaded
again of compassion and approaching him I held on to him tightly, whispering to
his ear for forgiveness, for thinking that the situation was only difficult for me and
not him. We stayed all day inside, mending with physical love the pain of our
souls and our bodies.
The days of
Spring in Berlin were the happiest and most beautiful days of our story and
perhaps the beginning of the saddest ones. We visited a city that gave us the
gift of days of sun and the bloom of German spring, a spring that otherwise
only comes to Norway a month later. A city that gave us the privacy we needed
to stage and pretend what our life could have resembled if we would have been
able to be a couple, like those couples that can publicly manifest their desire
and love to the world; a city that gave us the opportunity to live in our time
machine, the best ever built time machine in Norway. A city that allowed us to
tell each other I love you any time of the day, to admire one another aloud and
with looks, a city that allowed us to touch each other brazenly in public
places. Being lovers without restrictions, taking photos of ourselves when we
felt like it and in the simplest of minutes of those walking days in Berlin,
the gift of his hand that constantly looked for mine to entwine our lives in
the same moment we were living together while we discovered the beauty of a
city that allowed us to flourish as the late bloomers we both were. I have lived
43 years now and there is no moment in the history of my life that could
compare with the love and romance of those perennial April days that are marked
forever in me.
In the penultimate night of Berlin while we walked in a
residential area, we stumbled with an Italian restaurant called Boccondivino, an
intimate and inviting place that we decided to try; despite the language
barrier our waiter kept talking to us about “amore”, we couldn’t hide how we
felt, Henning observed my arm over and over, pleased with the silver bracelet
he had bought me from one of the places he had visited.
“I am in
love with you” he said looking at me.
“Yo te amo”
I replied in Spanish. The first time and the only time in my life I have ever
used those words in Spanish to declare my love to someone.
That night
we didn’t sleep much, after dinner we went out to bars, drank exotic cocktails,
laughed uncontrollably and got drunk, while we walked back to the flat he said
something that made me very sad
“All the
things that made sense to me during my hypomania have lost meaning, all the
signs and things that marked this stage in my life have lost value”.
I walked in
silence thinking that I was part of those signs and events that had happened
during his hypomania and therefore I would lose meaning for him. We arrived at
the apartment, we were so drunk that we slept immediately. The next day Henning surprised
me with breakfast in bed, it was the last morning we were going to have
to our leisure before getting up to start preparing for our departure the
next day. While I was packing my bags, Henning left the flat telling me that he
needed some time alone and that he would return shortly. Upon his return he
went looking for me and without saying nothing hugged me with the heaviness we both
felt, that of the death of silence that was only 24 hours away. On that last night I
invited Henning Alexander to a restaurant of my choice, I was going to pay for
our last meal. While we were in the restaurant Henning asked me for my honest
opinion as to what to do with his career.
I remember
telling him that he had to stop postponing what he wanted to do just to please
others, that he had to take control and direct his life with his own decisions.
That loving himself did not meant that he was selfish and that he had to reconsider
how much of a slave he was to his high standard of living which he was accustomed
to but on the price of sacrificing his dream which meant accepting a state salary
rather than a private one, reminding him that when he had earned vast amounts of money he was still
not happy compromising the truth of his words for a superior income. I told him that I had no doubt
of his talents and that I would follow the developments of his career,
that I was sure I was going to see him shine again, that I wanted him to
succeed both professionally and privately, I encouraged him to give it all
because there was nothing worse for me than to go in life with a castrated passion, because without love, without the certainty that it is there in our heart, body and soul, life would be largely wasted. I concluded.
After dinner
we walked slowly to the apartment without speaking, the passing of time made us
sentimental. We made love without saying a word, quietly watching each other with
the lust that the following day needed to be suppressed; with the tenderness we
knew we would never cease to felt, with the intense love so true and so certain
felt. We laid in bed embraced, my back against his chest, I wept like a child in his arms, I cried with anger, I cried with
sadness, I wept with love and despair. I sobbed while his reddened eyes remained
stoic behind that wall that he had already begun building the previous day. The
wall that men know very well how to build to block the emotional blow
previously anticipated of an inevitable painful breakup to come. He approached
my pain but his wall helped him stand strong and in control in front of me. The
sensitive man was living forever from my side; the man who loved me was walking away
from me with the minutes of the night. The next morning he woke me up with his
tender touch, we tried to make love again, but couldn’t, the visible and invisible
tears had already put off the fire of our libidos.
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