esmeralda

I SAW ESMERALDA in a large museum. There were many floors which opened on a vast, well-lit atrium. Perhaps it was like the Museum of Modern Art in New York, or like Kiasma in Helsinki. It was very crowded there that day and there were lines to get in and out of the exhibits. Esmeralda was there, but she didn’t see me, or didn’t want to see me. She was a small woman, with dark hair pulled back into a braid, and she wore her blue sweater and her blue pants and her white shoes. She was an Estonian girl, light complexioned with light blue eyes, and she chose her words with care. I savored every spare sentence she was ever willing to share. I could never understand why I had attached to her, or come to depend on her in some way. I wasn’t dependent on her doing something or anything. Dependence was more linked to her existence, her presence. There had been times I had thanked the stars that I happened to be born at the same moment she existed in the universe. Two comets passing in the cosmos. Such was my love for Esmeralda, if such a phenomenon could be explained with a simple word.

She didn’t see me. Maybe she didn’t want to see me. If that was the case, I couldn’t blame her.

My therapist was there too at the museum. I noticed her in the line for the women’s toilet, and knew that Esmeralda had also gone inside and was perhaps adjusting her hair in front of the mirror as she waited. Maybe they would meet there in front of the mirrors? Maybe she would at last see this girl of my dreams? I awaited with eagerness her official psychological diagnosis.

Later, I found myself outside at a kind of garden party. It was like something out of Alla vi barn i Bullerbyn. There were tables loaded with Scandinavian goodies, and everyone was wearing old-fashioned clothes. Paula was there with her kids. Her husband Paulo was nowhere to be seen. Where could he be? Paula was wearing a pink dress. She came and lied down next to me. We began to cuddle and soon made love, right there in the grass in the middle of a springtime Swedish party. It seemed to heal something. There were various ways to reconcile disagreements, but this was perhaps the most honest way there was. Oh, the sweetness of a woman’s sex. Like raspberry ice cream, it occurred to me. Just like raspberry ice cream. But she still wasn’t Esmeralda. None of them were. Whatever woman came, she wouldn’t be her.

“None of them are you,” I wanted to tell Esmeralda, if she would ever listen to me or even honor me with a passing glance. “I like them all, it’s true, but none of them will ever be you.”