Booffoonery

Morena

From the moment we met, Morena struck me as a woman of unearthly Beauty. It should come as no surprise, then, that she had not yet been married, despite being in the prime of life for a woman and being able to look back on an ancient family tree. The stories that were told about her beauty were strange, and the first serious advances were probably not made out of fear, as those in the circles surrounding her knew very well that one always had to face up to the ancestors who had once made the family great. Woe betide anyone who does not prove themselves worthy, who hesitates when it comes to pushing forward, or who, conversely, tries to fill an entire breach on their own full of arrogance.

I was neither of the one nor of the other kind and was probably listened to by her because I neither stormed and pushed nor showed the usual fear of her aura. In her presence I was always gripped by a power that enabled me to scale philosophical heights and to parley about Jakob Böhme, for example, who was a favorite topic of discussion at these societies at the time, as if I had ever been a studious and had not only read the Aurora, but understood it. Morena then gave me looks that urged me to continue to speak so boldly about the alchemical-poetic style and to pursue the idea of contradiction as a necessary moment. I often spoke like this in front of her and had no idea that I was conjuring up the very thing that most people were afraid of.

On the mirror bulging out of the wall was the justification for my suspicions, which perhaps I shouldn’t have voiced until a little later.

“I never had…” This thought had never been spoken, my drooping mouth could not have curved around the intended words. So I remained silent.

I had left her standing in the bird of prey enclosure, unable to decide whether to approach her or not, while I watched her kiss a burnt angel. But that wasn’t why I was watching her, hiding behind a feathered tree. My eyes might not be welcome, and if not my eyes, then perhaps her gaze.

It was her bandaged arms that made me curious (to tell the truth, I didn’t recognize the angel until much later), and not least her breathing apparatus, which stuck out of her face like a radar trap. I didn’t know her then.

When I met her again later, I noticed her treacherous dress. She no longer had her mask with her and her arms were free of wounds that would have made a covering necessary. Only her dress and the burn marks on it. On the table in front of her was a plate of small, oil-fried fish – sprats, to be precise. The exit wasn’t far, but you always had to walk through a fast food restaurant to get to it. The door only opened when you had bought or eaten something (whether you then left it lying around or threw it in the bin — there was only one bin, so it appealed to your moral sensibilities — was left to your own strategy).

I didn’t speak to her, of course, but I sauntered over to her table and grabbed the breast that was on my side. If she had still been wearing the mask, I wouldn’t have dared.

Her plate shattered on the barren floor and the fish slithered across the water as if they were in a hurry to find their way back to the sea. But they didn’t find it, just scattered the oil and stayed where they were.

I can’t say exactly what happened next. Only now do I remember the crumbly remains of her eyelashes that she left in the sink, a salted sole in the fridge. I look at her handwriting on the mirror again: “I never had …”

What did I want to ask her?

Published by M.E.P.