Fragment Noir

Can you see me? 

No, of course, you can´t. And you never will: I´m no longer amongst the living.

Don´t worry! I just want to share my story with you, after that you will never see me again.

I hope I can leave a fragment of myself. Some effervescent essence as a souvenir of who I was.

No, you don´t know me. You might think you do, from what you´ve read in the newspaper but that was never me! I was never anything more than a projection of male anxiety.

Don´t worry: I´m not the menace they made me out to be in the papers. I wasn´t 33, but 29, and I most certainly didn´t make a career out of wrecking marriages or driving men to insanity. How could I be? That´s never really allowed for a woman. My only crimes were being a woman and falling in love with the wrong kind of man.

No, I never broke any man´s life. But in the end, a man broke my life…. Here´s how it all began:

My mother had left years before, leaving me to take care of an alcoholic father and prey to a brother who took his frustrations and misfortunes out on me with his bare fists.

Always short on money and mostly out of luck, my daily life was dreary and weary. I worked as a waitress in a small burger place near the bus station. One night after my boss paid out my wages, I bought a one-way ticket on one of those busses, never to look back.

My friend Mary was the only one worth saying goodbye to, I told her I was leaving, in case they sent out a search party for me and drag me back to a life of tomorrows with more of the same.

And so, I arrived in the city. It was very hard at first. What did a girl like me really know about life and the world? Vampires can smell that a mile away!

I worked a few small jobs as a phone operator and salesgirl. I was working in a small family-owned French restaurant went he stepped into my life:

Contrary to other rainy nights, that particular night it was exceptionally slow. I was already cleaning up when he walked in. Completely soaked. I guess back home, they would have called him dishy. To me, he was handsome, dark, and spicy. His eyes were hungry and of the clearest blue I had ever seen. He had a good sense of clothing and an even better sense of humor; the first thing he asked me was if I perhaps had a hairdryer to lend him. At the time I thought that funny. There was something unsettling about him as well, but that was easily brushed away by his charm. He needed to use a phone. His car had a flat tire. As a matter of fact, I handed him the phone and made him a cup of coffee.

He thanked me for the use of the phone and the coffee. We chitchatted a little while he drunk his coffee. He spoke with such eloquence. I was mesmerized…

He became a regular after that, always came around closing time. His very presence made me walk on air. He told me he was a writer. Poetry mostly. He brought me one of his books, or so he called it, as a present one night. It wasn´t much really. A few pages in a softcover kind of brochure. He had signed the front page, under a picture of himself, covering a full page. I was above the moon: I knew a published writer. Though his poetry didn´t really speak to me; I blamed that on the fact that I probably wasn´t sophisticated enough to appreciate poetry.

One Saturday night he asked if I would honor him with my presence for a walk along the river. Of course, I would! And I did.

I waited for him in front of my apartment the next day. He drove up in a car that made every head in the street turn. He leaned over to open the door for me and told me to get in. as I was getting in, he kissed me on the cheek. I hadn´t expected that, but I liked the feeling and it woke up strange butterflies in my stomach. I felt like a little child allowed a ride on the merry-go-round at Christmas.

When we got to the river he told me, to sit while he was getting out. He ran around the car and opened the door with a very gallant gesture for me. I was enchanted with the beauty of the riverbank. I felt out of place in my “best” dress. It looked so plain compared to the elegant dresses other women were wearing. We strolled and talked. After a while, he began to look depressed somehow. He let out a deep sigh when I asked him if something was wrong. He suggested we go for a fancy coffee on a terrace. 

We sat near the water, and he ordered a kind of coffee I had never heard of before. It was all magical to me. when the waitress came back with our order, I was distracted by thoughts that her uniform was fancier than the dress I was wearing. I was pulled back to reality when he took my hand in his and brought it to his lips for a kiss. He noticed I was a little shocked and asked me if that was allowed because he had dreamed of kissing my hand from the moment, he first saw me.

He started to talk. The first thing he said was that he wished he had never met me. when he saw me furrow my eyebrows, he added shyly that he didn´t have a second of peace of mind anymore, because all he could do was think about me. he lived, from day to day, only for the brief moment he could see me. because of me, the blinds had fallen from his eyes, and he had become aware of how sad his existence was, trapped in a loveless marriage.

Married? He was married… and he was sitting here with a strange woman, drinking expensive coffee in such a romantic place… he shrugged when he saw my concerned look. It´s only a marriage of convenience, he said.

I asked him if he had children. He nodded yes, and that was the reason why he stayed married. He would never see his children again if he were to ask for a divorce. He couldn´t do that to his children, because his was wife was an icy and cruel woman, she came from money and power., therefore held all the cards. There was no way, they would grant a poor writer custody over his children. Four of them. The youngest wasn´t even a year old. He smiled a little crooked smile when he read the questions in my eyes. his wife insisted on his marital duty – or she made his life, and that of the children hell; that´s why he was forced to oblige. 

And I believed all of it!

Every night he would pick me up from the restaurant. He chatted a little with my boss, who didn´t take a liking to him at all. He kept telling me I deserved better and that he didn´t trust him. I wouldn´t hear of it of course; I was in love.

Pretty soon he started spending the night in my small apartment. He brought me pretty dresses, like the ones I saw in the magazines. I felt so glamorous wearing them. I knew they weren´t bought new. But that didn´t bother me. 

We made plans, to run away together. We would go to South America. Someplace where nobody could ever find me. we just had to wait a little while longer until the children were old enough to testify to a magistrate what an awful person their mother was. 

And I vowed to be here for him and never ever abandon him. Some nights he even cried bitter tears because he had to go back home.

One night he didn´t pick me up at the restaurant. I didn´t think too much of it. I assumed his wife had prohibited him from going out. So, I took the subway home. I was barely home ten minutes when the bell rang. I hadn´t even opened the door all the way when he stormed in with beads of sweat on his forehead and a look in his eyes that frightened me. he looked like a cornered predator. He needed cash because he ran into some small problem, and he left his wallet at home.

- You got paid today, right? he asked me. I could tell his mouth was bone dry. Before I could say anything, he took my handbag from the wardrobe by the door, rummaged in it for a moment and took out my pay envelope, threw back the bag, put my wages in his pocket: see you later honey! Love you. And off he went. I didn´t know what to think. I had never seen him like that before. Something in his attitude, especially the way he went through my bag unabashedly reminded me of my brother. That scared me. I ran to the window and caught him in time to see him jump into his car. There was somebody in the passenger seat. A man I had never seen before.

I didn´t see him for a couple of days after that. When he finally came back into the restaurant, he acted casual as ever. When he drove me home, I told him the money he took was my rent money. I didn´t need to worry, he would pay me back. I needed that money like yesterday. I didn´t feel like dodging my landlord again the next morning. He was upset at my nagging, especially since we didn´t see each other for a couple of days. He had a lot of problems and had to move heaven and earth to see me that night, and this was the way I greeted him? He didn´t feel like that. He dropped me at my place and drove off as soon as I got out of the car.

I was dumbfounded and walked around like a living corpse for a couple of days. When my boss asked what was wrong with me, I didn´t need to answer him – he guessed. He gave me an advance on next month’s paycheck so I could pay my rent.

I didn´t see my disconsolate lover for a couple of weeks after that. I was just starting to feel my normal self again when one Sunday night he came to my door. Again, he acted as if nothing out of the ordinary ever happened. When he tried to kiss me, I pushed him away saying he stank of strong liquor. The next thing I knew, I saw stars. He hit me in the face so hard, I had bitten through my lip and my nose was bleeding. He walked out slamming the door behind him. I spent that night sitting on the floor of my apartment, in the dark: crying. The next day I had a shiner of course. I tried to hide it with make-up, but upon seeing me, my boss sent me home anyway.

I started to feel scared again and decided that this was something I did not deserve or need. I would break it off. the next few times when my doorbell rang, I didn´t answer it.

Then came the letters! Heart-breaking and overflowing with shame. Begging me to forgive him. Endless declarations of love, full of passion… I couldn´t find it in my heart to throw the letters in the bin right away, but I didn´t answer them either. 

Then he started coming to the door again. He made a lot of noise, shouting obscene language when I wouldn´t let him in. My landlord and neighbors started to complain. At work, my boss would walk me to the subway station, and once I got to my station, I made sure to give off the impression I wasn´t alone by talking to complete strangers just for the sake of it.

He started to hang around in the dark; that wasn´t hard for him since he was made of it. He would jump out of nowhere, grabbing me or tearing at my clothes. 

Hell is not somewhere you go, it´s something you carry around you!

One Saturday night I came home, to find the lights didn´t work in the stairwell. A terrible feeling of unease squeezed my throat shut. Evil was in the air; I could smell it. I have smelled that particular odor before. It was the scent of a feline on the hunt, playing with its prey before the final kill. 

I fiddled to open the door. It was so dark, so dark!

The second the door opened he jumped me, I heard a thud, felt his fist, and fell to the floor. He jumped on me and started calling me a whore and a whole litany of demeaning insults.

If he couldn´t have me, no other man would ever have me. he closed his hands on my throat and kept squeezing until I was motionless. I drifted away, I saw Mary from back home and felt her hugging me goodbye. I sank further and further. Never to return.

When he could no longer sense any sign of life in me, he took out a stiletto and started cutting my face, like a maniac. I was gone…

I have no idea how long I lay there, maimed, and lifeless on that cold floor before somebody found me. They were very quick to convict me of lascivious behavior. No big effort was made to find any family or relatives. Since I didn´t have any savings, a Viking burial was out of the question. They dug a hole in the ground as fast as they could: unconsecrated ground, threw me in, and that was that! 

My only crimes were being a woman, who wanted a chance at life and falling in love with the wrong kind of man. Could you see me? my story through my eyes?

Pity me not!

I have to go now.

Thank you for listening to me.