uring their meetings, Julia would sometimes recount softly the plot of a favorite novel or paraphrase a famous philosophical statement about the nature of love. This would serve as a point of departure for her usually more positive spin on the subject. One of her favorite writers, who wrote introspective stories about unrequited affection, once compared love to an ephemeral point of light. Yesterday love didn’t exist; tomorrow feelings may fade, but in the wonder of the moment, love seems everlasting.

“That’s not what I mean when I call you the light of my life,” Julia would be careful to distinguish among sources of light. “You’re not a distant star that fades from sight after a few evenings. You’re the sun of my life that illuminates my existence every single day. You understand?” she would begin the lesson of Love 101.

“You are the sun, I am the moon,” Allen would hum a familiar song like a distracted student. Even before the lesson would begin, he understood. And, fortunately, he didn’t mind her repetitions. The loving words, those warm exchanges of whispers, like their incessant kisses and caresses, were a cherished ritual. Honey flowed from the tip of their tongues, from their lips. Allen’s eyes would close with contentment and his ears seemed to fold down, like a puppy’s, from the lavish expression of sensual emotion. But he never responded in quite the same way.

“How you exaggerate…” he would murmur, gently stroking Julia’s hair. “On the contrary, those are understatements!” she would protest in response. Despite her boyfriend’s reticence, the young woman felt safe cradled by his angular gestures and comical deflections of love. By the way he would look away, or burst inappropriately into song, or wrap his thin arms around her, with slight roughness, to console her when she cried.

“That’s enough, Julia… This is ridiculous! To cry like this for nothing…” he would protest, but his voice trembled with compassion. How much more loving these awkward gestures felt compared to the disingenuous smoothness of more experienced men!

Thinking of Allen’s personality always made her smile with an air of adoring indulgence, the way mothers beam when relating their children’s shenanigans. It’s difficult not to feel light-hearted when one loves everything about a human being: every gesture, every word, every expression, every flaw. By the time she had crossed the park and arrived home, Julia felt happy. The buoyancy of love had displaced, as usual, the weight of anxiety.

Like most intellectual families on Side B, Julia and her parents lived in a small, run-down apartment. They couldn’t afford a house or even separate dwellings. Intellectuals, a broad category that included teachers, professors, journalists, librarians, writers and artists, occupied the lowest rung of Side B’s social ladder. Putie and his family, needless to say, came first. Then followed Putie’s proteges and cronies, who didn’t have secure positions since their leader never allowed any of them to settle comfortably into power. To purge potential rivals, Putie would take back, swiftly and without warning, all of the privileges he had previously bestowed upon them. One day a political ally would have a mansion, a gaudily expensive car, and the privilege of rubbing shoulders with other top government officials; the next morning he would be fortunate to still have his underclothes and not be rotting in jail. Especially if he became too popular and made judicious political alliances… Lower in status than the favored politicians du jour were the military and the bureaucratic army of informants. They formed, for lack of a genuinely productive class (for the economy was in shambles), the backbone of the country.

About five percent of the population, comprised mostly of young men, was inducted, for a period of at least five years, into the military elite. Putie was most indulgent with this group, allowing his most radical young soldiers to engage in terrorist activities and even to roam around freely on the Edge and pillage and rape the refugee villages. Such amusements, Putie thought, would keep the government of Side A on its toes as well as secure the loyalty of the military to his regime. Nonetheless, officially, Putie never took responsibility for the young men’s brutality or terrorist activities. In televised interviews aimed at Side A viewers, he would say that his government had nothing to do with, and could not control the destructive activities of these errant soldiers.

Another ten percent of the adult population, made up mostly of older men, was involved in various secret societies of informants. Their main duty was to spy on intellectuals and detect signs of disloyalty to the government. Nonetheless, the informants also had a precarious social status. For they, themselves, were surveyed by even more powerful officials—called the Commandants—who, in a show authority and diligence, took out their frustrations on their inferiors by demoting and sometimes incarcerating them for suspected acts of treason. The informants took some solace in the certainty that the Commandants would also be purged when Putie considered them a threat. To be fair to the social structure of Side B, we should note that it had some stability. The position of intellectuals in the totem pole was perfectly consistent and clear. They were always lowest on the social ladder, regarded with suspicion and, as often as convenient and possible, oppressed. At least they knew where they stood…

Today seemed to be an ordinary day. Julia’s father had returned from work and, bent over the kitchen table, was scribbling down the math problem he didn’t get a chance to finish at the office. His grayish hair brushed his forehead and his glasses almost fell from his nose unto the yellow lined paper, yet that didn’t detract in the least from his intense concentration. Julia’s mother was sitting on the sofa scrutinizing at least as carefully the latest bills. Frail and small, with her blond hair cropped short, she retained the air, if not the youth, of a little girl.

To divert attention from her lateness, after greeting her parents, Julia launched into a political discussion.

“You know, I heard rumors that there would be another big purge,” she announced truthfully, but disinterested in the matter. Rumors about new purges of intellectuals circulated on Side B on a daily basis. They were believed not in their specificity, but in their general validity and accepted as an inevitable part of life. For the intellectuals normally lived in a state of fear, accepting that at any moment they could be snatched up by the government in the way that soldiers take for granted that at any moment they might be killed in battle.

“Shh, Julia, you shouldn’t announce such things here, in the open” the mother protested with a nervous whisper. “You know we may not be…alone” she added, directing telling glances towards the heater and the telephone. “If you have something important to say, let’s go to the appropriate place.”

“The appropriate place” of every household was, believe it or not, the bathroom. Though that may not seem like the most dignified place for secret political discussions and seditious plans, that was where intellectual families tended to talk “in private”. Although every heater of every room in every household was equipped with microphones planted by the government, the advantage of the bathroom was that one could run the water of the bathtub and the sink to drown out, as much as possible, one’s conversations. Needless to say, while the heaters hardly ever worked, and even in the dead of winter remained silent and cold, there was strong indication that, come rain or shine, the microphones operated effectively. The sense of privacy was purely psychological.

Julia, however, wasn’t particularly worried about spies and microphones that day. She felt happy, in love and basked in the cozy security of being at home with her parents.

“Were you followed?” her father attempted to dispel this fuzzy feeling.

“Where?” Julia inquired absentmindedly.

“From the university here, of course! Didn’t you say you were meeting a friend for a study session?”

“Oh … No, I didn’t notice anything in particular…” Julia answered discombobulated, her voice trailing off with indecision. She had forgotten her own justification for her lengthy absence. For on Side B, all adults would have to account for their whereabouts to their closest family members. Citizens, particularly those belonging to the intellectual subclass, rigorously monitored each others’ comings and goings and recorded them in a special green notebook that would be inspected once a month by government officials.

“Did you look around?” Julia’s father insisted.

“No, but I would have noticed if someone were behind me.”

The parents exchanged a look of exasperation. “Julia, please come with me into the bathroom,” the mother said softly but firmly. Julia knew that a long and familiar lecture on caution would follow, and that would spoil all the pleasure she had experienced with Allen. “Can’t this wait, mom?” she pleaded for a moment’s peace. “I already know what you’ll say. Can’t we enjoy life together without worrying every single second?” Her question was promptly answered by a loud knock on the door.

The father opened the door hastily, hardly having the time to turn pale, and in stepped a man in a blue hat with two cronies behind him. Dressed in navy military outfits, elegant, middle aged, these men belonged to the most feared branch of government, the Secret Security Force, more commonly known as the SSF.

“May we take a look at your logbook?” their leader, who wore a white cap, asked calmly. There was no need for brutality. People followed the SSF like sheep and their mere presence inspired a profound resignation.

“We have already passed the monthly inspection two days ago,” Julia’s father answered, knowing full well, however, that the officials were not there for the inspection.

“We would like to take a look at your log book please,” the officer with the blue hat insisted cordially.

The officer then glanced cursorily at the logbook, hardly taking in the information. He then looked at the other two officers, who were standing to his left, nodding as if confirming an initial suspicion.

“Aha… Just as we thought,” the officer addressed the father. “Sir, you and your wife are under arrest for sedition,” he articulated the expected sentence.

“But why?” the father asked, knowing that such questions were pointless. All government decisions were unquestionable and final.

“Your logbook offers false information,” the officer obliged, with the same air of routine courtesy. “You and your wife were not here on Wednesday the 25th. You were in the bathroom of the Citizens’ Paper plotting against the government with Citizens Johnson and Wood. Today your daughter was not at the Glorious University with Citizen Jones, as your logbook indicates. She went to the Edge, where she visited her boyfriend, who is a soldier from Side A. We have been closely observing the situation. Your daughter has been consorting with the enemy about twice a week for the past six months. We’re certain that as dutiful parents and citizens you were aware of her behavior and therefore consider you accomplices in her act of treason.”

Julia’s parents were stunned. They had expected to be arrested for sedition sooner rather than later, but couldn’t believe that their own daughter had betrayed them in this manner. To have an enemy boyfriend! To lie to them constantly and see him behind their backs for months! No matter how much they despised their government, to embrace the enemy represented an unspeakable evil to citizens of Side B. It showed a total lack of dignity and ethics.

Resigned to the magnitude of their daughter’s crime, the mother pleaded quietly, in tears: “Please, I beg you, take us instead of Julia. We accept the severity of our crimes and our punishment. But spare our daughter. She’s so young; she was in love…”

“Citizens never tell the government what to do,” the officer sharply reprimanded the mother, who was so overwhelmed by shock and sorrow that she seemed ready to collapse.

“The Justice Committee has not yet convened regarding your daughter’s case,” intervened a second officer in a deep voice. He was heavy-set, sported a small mustache, and had a friendly, good-natured demeanor. “She needs to supply further information concerning her exchanges with the enemy soldier,” he explained. “Following our debriefing today, she must remain in this apartment until her official sentence is delivered. As for you and your husband, your sentence has been processed through the appropriate channels. Please follow us.”

Gazing lovingly yet reproachfully at their daughter, unspeakably more wounded by her duplicity than by the harsh sentence they would face, Julia’s parents embraced their only child with tears in their eyes. Quiet tears, devoid of words, but ringing with the sound of despair.

Julia was too stunned to feel nervous. For a moment, she looked at the dingy walls of her own apartment as if they were completely unfamiliar surroundings. The darker streaks of green on the bluish paint formed a hieroglyphics which might have provided some answers, if it were not for the fact that she was too disoriented to ask questions. Unpeeling her glance from the wall with great difficulty, she fixed it upon one of the three men standing calmly before her. She noticed that they all looked similar (dressed in navy blue uniforms) and gazed patiently at her.

Catching her absentminded stare, the main officer reassured her: “Julia, you must trust in your state. If you cooperate with us, no harm will come to you or your parents. Their fate rests in your hands.”

At the sound of his steady voice, Julia twitched in her seat, as if awakened from a bad dream. Pain saturated her body, trickling from head to toe, as she realized that she was not recovering from a dream, but returning to a nightmarish reality.

“There’s no reason to feel nervous; we won’t hurt you” whispered a second officer, the one with the deep voice and mustache, trapping her in an indulgent, even endearing, gaze. Julia was taken aback by his unexpected softness. She had often heard about SSF interrogations. Rumors of loud shouting, torture, rape and severe beatings circulated everywhere. No one ever mentioned this strange cordiality and calmness. Would the beatings follow the apparent kindness, as in a cruel sadomasochistic ritual? Small, frail and exceedingly sensitive, Julia knew she would have no tolerance for physical pain. She would say anything they wanted to hear if they lay a single finger on her. Gazing nervously from one man to the other, without realizing it, the young woman seemed to be pleading for mercy.

The officer with the mustache approached her. Julia was sitting on a chair in the middle of the living room, which, in her imagination, had been abruptly transformed from a family haven to a seat of terror. The officer then kneeled by the young woman, so that their eyes met on almost the same level. He looked tenderly at her, then reached over and caressed her cheek with one hand, tracing it like an artist, with a smooth, painterly motion.

“You’re so lovely ,” he continued to whisper close to her face. “You’ll tell us everything, won’t you? We wouldn’t want to hurt a beautiful girl,” he grinned provocatively, displaying at least two discolored teeth. Despite their proximity, she could barely hear him, as his soft voice was overpowered by the strong, irregular beat of her own heart. This sickly tenderness was even more disconcerting than direct brutality. It was an indication that the worst was yet to come and that the attack would be sudden, taking its victim by surprise. After instinctively recoiling from the man’s touch, Julia remained immobilized, her back tightly pressed upon the grill of the wooden chair.

“Now tell us, Julia,” the officer continued in a regular, almost mesmerizing tone, “what were you talking about with your boyfriend? What were the two of you discussing there, for hours, on the Edge?” he asked, playing suggestively with the top button of her white shirt collar. His heavy body emitted a pungent odor of alcohol and perspiration.

Although no violent word or gesture had been made, Julia felt assaulted with all of her senses. The offensive smell, the masculine touch, the deep, hushed voices, the very presence of these large men playing with her as a cat with a mouse, made her feel exceedingly vulnerable. In the agitation of her troubled mind, she even forgot the dangers her parents were facing as she called for their help, silently, with desperation.

After these initial moments of weakness, however, Julia gathered her mental strength and resolved upon a plan of action. She would give the men information only gradually, making things up when necessary and convenient, incriminating only herself, not her parents or Allen. About herself, she would say everything they wanted to hear. And in exchange for this information, she would attempt to find out the fate of her parents. Perhaps, if all went well, even negotiate a reprieve…

“Of course I’ll tell you everything I know, sir” she responded, assuming an air of deference and calmness. The officer was taken aback by her demeanor, as a tennis player might be startled by a swiftly returned volley.

He continued to invade her space, touching her body as if searching for weapons, though his reason seemed to be less concrete. He was reassured by her rapidly beating heart, by the drops of perspiration condensing on her forehead, accumulating where the delicate dark hairs met the pale skin. All was going predictably well in this routine investigation.

“When did you meet Allen?” a third officer asked loudly, from the corner of the room. He was playing the role of the aggressive interrogator, while the man with the mustache was supposedly the nicer one.

“I met him a few months ago on the Edge,” the girl answered softly but firmly.

“What were you doing in a forbidden zone?”

“I often go there to rest, think, contemplate nature…”

“Why can’t you do that in a permitted park of Side B?”

“Because they’re crowded. The Edge is the only place I found where I could be alone.”

“That’s a gross exaggeration!” the mustachioed officer laughed in her face, almost jovially.

“ No,” Julia responded. “The Edge is beautiful and tranquil.”

“It appears that you didn’t go there to be alone…” the officer in the corner continued the fast-paced drilling, giving his subject little time to think.

“I’ve been going to the Edge by myself for the past five years. I went there as a teenager just to get away from the world. It’s only during the past few months that I went there to see Allen.”

“What was Allen doing on the Edge?”

“The same thing as me. He was there to think in solitude and tranquility.”

“A kindred spirit, you might say…” the man close to Julia added, with undisguised sarcasm. Julia felt oppressed by his presence; by his hyena-like smile.

“Yes,” she nonetheless responded, without further elaboration.

“What did the two of you discuss?” the relentless interrogator pursued.

“We discussed our ambitions, our family lives, and especially the difficult situation of our forbidden love.”

“Why forbidden?”

“Because we knew that our parents would disapprove of it.”

“Did you ever discuss treason?” the hyena officer interceded.

“No. What do you mean?” Julia asked, confused.

“He means that the biggest barrier would be loyalty to your country, not to your family!” the corner officer intervened.

“We knew that our love was forbidden by both our countries and our families. But we didn’t see it as an act of treason. We didn’t discuss politics; we didn’t exchange any political information. We’re just two young people in love.”

“You didn’t exchange any political information?” the hyena repeated, with his usual insinuating grin.

“No.”

“Well then you’re lying!” he suddenly shouted in Julia’s ear and with a swift motion swept the seat from under her. The girl fell on the floor, stunned by his loud voice and rapid maneuver. She then instinctively raised her hand above her face, in a beseeching gesture that combined fear and self-protection.

“Do you consider your conversation on the fifth of August, when you and Allen speculated about the likelihood of war, to be apolitical?” the officer in the corner asked, this time more mildly. He had switched roles with the mustachioed man.

“Yes,” Julia answered, recovering from her surprise, but not daring to make a single move to get up. The small of her back was still aching from the fall. “We were only speculating about the likelihood of war because we feared it would separate us. We often discussed how terrible it would be for us if Allen was drafted. It was a personal issue for us, not a political one.”

“Didn’t you learn in school that the personal is political?” the mustachioed man repeated the hackneyed state slogan.

“What else did you and Allen discuss in your personal conversations?” the corner officer inquired, placing with his hands the word personal in quotation marks to inflect it with due sarcasm.

“That’s all,” Julia responded.

“How about the supposed oppression of intellectuals and of your family by our government? Was that also a personal conversation?” the corner officer pursued, making several butterflies in the air to indicate Julia’s misuse of words.

“Yes,” Julia answered, growing defiant. Since the SSF had apparently monitored all of her conversations with Allen, this interrogation served no purpose. She might as well keep her dignity, at least before they began the torture and violence… Calmly, with an air of self-possession, Julia sat down again on her chair.

The mustachioed man seemed both irritated and amused: “Who gave you permission to sit down?”

“I feel more comfortable like this,” the young woman answered calmly.

The mustachioed officer began to push Julia from the chair, but the officer in charge, who had spoken very little up to now, stopped him with a simple hand gesture. Patience, he indicated. He then stepped forward before Julia and began talking in a gentler voice than he had used earlier, with her parents.

“Julia,” he cajoled, “You’re a smart young lady. You must know that these interrogations don’t tell us anything we don’t already know. The state knows everything.”

“Yes,” Julia answered, genuinely convinced of this claim.

“So why not cooperate with us?”

“I have answered your questions honestly. The issues you find political, I consider personal. They’re related to my family life and to my future with the man I love.”

The officers looked at each other and laughed. Then, ignoring her sentimental claim, the chief officer coaxed her: “There’s no point bickering over what terminology you wish to use to describe acts of betrayal and treason. You can help out your parents, who are in serious trouble because of you, by cooperating with us. Who knows?” he added with a wink, “Perhaps from a traitor you can become a national heroine…”

Julia was not at all enthusiastic about the idea of becoming a spy for her government, particularly since she knew that the SSF agents would pressure her to use her boyfriend as their main resource. Nonetheless, she understood that explicit defiance was out of the question.

“What would you like me to do?” she asked.

“We would like you to meet Allen as usual, on the Edge, carrying this little device,” the mustachioed officer indicated, taking a small, wireless microphone from his pocket. “Always wear this microphone in your meetings with your boyfriend. And behave as you normally do,” he pursued his instructions. “Continue to be hysterical and depressed about the prospect of separation, but orient the conversation more and more towards speculation about what Side A is planning to do. He’s a soldier. He should know something about that… That’s all. No big deal, right?” the mustachioed officer smiled kindly once again, brushing her chin with the back of his hand, half-menacingly, half-encouragingly.

“Right,” Julia replied, resolving, in spite of all the risks, to flee to the Edge.

Two of the officers left, but the mustachioed one stayed behind. He grinned at her, looking more menacing that if he had shouted. Pins and needles constricted Julia’s heart. This is what true fear must feel like, she thought. And what happened afterwards, mercifully, she forgot.

In the morning, Julia remembered that her parents had disappeared, but couldn’t recall how she had found out about it. Who had told her? Under what circumstances? She raked her brain for an answer. While her mind drew a blank, her body responded with heaviness and aches. She barely could lift up her legs, which were covered in spots, like mushrooms, with pinkish-blue bruises. The skin below her left eye was tender. Her head was the heaviest of all, weighed down by a pounding headache. Despite this slowness, her thoughts were racing to find a route of escape. She realized that she couldn’t go right away to the Edge to see Allen. Under the circumstances, she could have sounded the alarm: called his home, letting the phone ring three times, then hanging up. This was their secret code for any kind of emergency. In which case, they had decided in advance, he would meet her at the Edge at any time of the day or night. She very much wanted to run to her boyfriend; to lean on him with the full weight of her burdens; to melt into his arms. Given the fact that her every step was being monitored by the SSF, however, such recklessness could prove fatal.

She would have to wait until tomorrow, meet Allen on the Edge at the usual time, act normal, and turn the conversation toward war and politics. A blind instinct that seemed to come from the hasty beat of her own heart nonetheless impelled the young woman to the Edge. Her whole body ached with anxiety and the only relief could come from Allen’s soothing touch and voice. Of course, she realized, if she followed her impulses she might never again feel that touch… This thought froze her desire for an immediate meeting and even for a common life. For what kind of life would it be? A life of spying, deception and constant risk? No, better the night. She would run tonight to the Edge; the darkness would cover her like a comforting blanket, and if she died at the hands of an SSF man or an errant soldier, she wouldn’t care. Caught between the paralysis of prudence and the indifference of despair, Julia longed for the courage to embrace death.

She lay down in her parents’ bed and closed her eyes. These were the sheets they slept in last night; here lay their pajamas, she thought, abstractly, seemingly devoid of emotion. Nonetheless, tears trickled between her closed eyelids, marking her pale face with their zigzag little streams, and, somewhere in the distance, she could hear her own sobs. As soon as she calmed down for a few moments from sheer fatigue, a lucid thought of the great dangers she and her loved ones were facing would grasp her in its claws and she would once again dissolve in the fluidity of emotion. Her chest heaved with an uneven rhythm. The vision of her parents’ last look of disapproving adoration came to her with vivid freshness every time her body, exhausted by pain, sought tranquility. For tragedy comes to us like a murderous criminal, stabbing us over and over with the same bad news to create each time a fresh impression of pain; to excite a new hopeless plea for escaping irreversible misfortune.

Suffocating from the heaviness of her own breathing, Julia attempted to find some comfort in thinking about Allen. She could count on him for everything, she told herself. He had assured her of his loyalty time and time again. And it was true that he was the most dependable person she knew. An exquisite friend. But his commitment provided no comfort and even augmented her anxiety. Their relationship was so beautiful, so strong, in part because the only thing Julia had ever asked of Allen was his enduring friendship and love. She never dared place any explicit pressure upon him to run away with her; to marry. Although this possibility had always been in the back of their minds, it was an oppressive one, resembling more of a sacrifice of family than a manifestation of mutual love. Caring about each other, sustaining each other through all of life’s difficult moments, was a freely-given gesture; a sign of the heart’s strength and generosity. But uniting in marriage under the constraint of circumstances, Julia thought in agony, how was that different from an arranged marriage? No, she couldn’t bear the thought of asking Allen to run away with her only because they seemed to have no alternatives.

In more sober moments, Julia called their love “having roots.” Which meant viewing Allen’s life as independent yet at the same time deeply intertwined with her own. Regarding him not only as her recent past and present, but also as an indefinable part of her previous existence without him. As the brother she never had. For what else could explain their compatibility; their instant ease with one another; their sense of long-lasting familiarity? Regarding Allen as part of her roots also implied seeing him as the meaning of her life, her raison d’être.

Which is why when Julia faced any other kind of hardship, one which had nothing to do with her boyfriend, she would somehow manage to remain strong, supple, upright like a willow tree. Only her fragile, lamenting branches swayed in the harshness of life’s winds. But when the smallest worm began to gnaw at the roots of their love, Julia felt torn apart, uprooted. The only way of keeping her from falling would be to remove the worm and gently place new earth by her delicate roots. For in the space of a few months, Allen had become the genealogy of Julia’s desire: her boyfriend, brother, best friend and partner.

With all of these deep-seated connections, who needed marriage? Not that Julia objected to it on principle. In fact, if they were not compelled by desperate circumstances to make this kind of decision, she might have even desired it. Like most young women on Side B, she thought that marriage signified the culmination of commitment and strong sentiments. To live with a man without marrying him would not only bring dishonor upon a woman, but also ridicule. In the eyes of society, it reflected lack of strong feelings. The woman was pitied rather than criticized. She was considered insufficiently attractive in body and mind to make a more permanent union; lacking in some fundamental way. For why else would a man live with her, make love to her, even have her children but not marry her? Public opinion saw no other plausible justification.

This prejudice was fueled more by a certain self-complacent malice and pettiness than by high moral principles. As the old Eemish proverb went: There was once a peasant who had nothing. He had barely enough food to survive; owned only the ragged clothes on his back; had no money, no wife. One day, this poor wretch saved a little boy from drowning. The boy then told him that he was an angel and he could grant him any wish. But only one. The peasant thought long and hard. It was difficult to settle upon a single desire when he had so many needs. He wanted food, money, a house, a beautiful wife and he even had a vague longing for happiness. But when he saw his neighbor working in his yard, he knew instantly that he had found his most burning desire: “Could you kill my neighbor’s goat?” he asked the angel. The wish was instantly granted.

Pettiness is part of human nature. But that didn’t intimidate Julia. She dismissed Side B’s double standards and archaic conventions. She nonetheless had her own misgivings about living with a man. To her, cohabitation was no different from marriage. It implied sharing the same house, the same bed, the same meals. A union was a union no matter what name one called it. So, she reasoned, without caring to get lost in semantic debates, one might as well get married and call a spade a spade. But even this prospect didn’t attract her.

She longed for a life of closeness and passion; of friendship enhanced by freedom. In helping us carry the burden of daily existence, Julia thought, passionate love and friendship functioned like a lever. Love involved, at least by way of analogy, the principles of physics. One needed a certain distance to be able to help one another carry the weight of life more easily, further, higher. By way of contrast, she concluded observing other relationships, daily intimacy generated a certain atmosphere of heaviness and friction. Not the erosion of the deeper feelings, but of the lighter, happier ones that elevate both body and soul. Of what she needed most in life: passion. Consequently, while craving intimacy and commitment, Julia was ambivalent towards marriage and conventional attachments.

This ambivalence was amplified by Allen’s own palpable need for independence. Sometimes, in the middle of the warmth of their hungry kisses, she saw him gasping for breath, at once seeking and repulsed by their closeness. And then, there was also a Stoic attitude that distorted his feelings, preventing him from fully abandoning himself. He believed that dependence upon a person one loves is a sign of weakness and, conversely, that autonomy means strength. Julia always attempted to dissuade him from holding such manly principles. To make a case for interdependency in love, she called upon another philosophical tradition that described emotion as an acknowledgement of the beloved’s importance to one’s happiness. Their long debates would be suffused, as usual, in ardent kisses. With this finale, it seemed as if Julia had had the last word.

Yet she knew that there was a part of Allen that needed space. Emotionally and psychologically, she never granted him that space. They had fused together, by nature and inclination, from the very beginning. However, she was prepared to maintain some modicum of detachment in their otherwise interdependent lives by postponing co-habitation and marriage. By resisting the inertial pull towards becoming a traditional couple and following instead the flow of their feelings to the very end. Such a course of action was now impossible. Under the present circumstances, they would either come together under duress rather than desire, or separate in a way that would cruelly belie their commitment and love.

 

here are different ways of smiling. Smiles can look posed, spontaneous, awkward or genuine just like any other form of human expression. Imagine, for a moment, the way people’s smiles are caught in pictures. One can tell a lot about a person from his smile. There are some people who deliberately suppress smiles, as if the absence of lightness will automatically endow them with seriousness. Putie, for instance, would never be caught dead with a smile on his face. Neither would most intellectuals on the Edge, who, as if observing an unspoken rule, would pose for their official pictures with their fists under their chins and projecting a half-dreamy, half-concentrated air. Their preoccupied glance into the space beyond the camera and the viewer would indicate they were contemplating a subject too deep to be captured by a visual image. They posed as thought objectified, ignoring the obvious fact that if one is truly absorbed in the deeper matters of life, how one looks while thinking about them doesn’t really matter. At the other end of the spectrum, there are of course the smiles of pretty women, which tend to draw dreams to the picture, and let them glide on the surface of an image where beauty makes seductive appeals for admiration. Last but not least, there are those smiles that sparkle with the unawareness of their own charm; where the personality bursts forth unselfconsciously in a reflex of warmth and joviality. That is how Allen smiled: spontaneously, looking boyish, adorable and gauche; radiating life even from the slightly-lifted corners of his mouth.

Julia told herself that she would mask all the weight of her anxiety and greet Allen with a smile. She arrived at their usual spot, the grassy patch next to the tree where they first met. And Allen could, indeed, see his girlfriend smile from afar. He was immediately taken aback by her expression. Her pale face was white as a sheet from the accumulated trauma of the past two days. Her hair, usually falling in soft dark ringlets around her angular shoulders, looked uncharacteristically dingy and unkempt. And her smile—a mechanical grin which distorted her lovely lips—was down-right sinister.

Allen turned pale and the first words out of his mouth in response to Julia’s supposedly reassuring smile were: “Julia, you look terrible! What’s wrong? What happened to you!” and he looked his girlfriend straight in the eyes, with a worried glance that sought the quickest path to truth. Julia had not expected to display her vulnerability so quickly. She wanted to appear strong and independent; to stand on her own two feet in a time of crisis. But her own transparency had disarmed her. All she could do is stand there, a small vertical shape next to the monumental height of the tree, answering her boyfriend with a desperate, empty stare ravaged by pain.

He took her in his arms. Protected by his familiar gesture, her rigidity gave way to the suppleness of intimacy, conforming to Allen’s body until she was hidden from the world. Cradled as usual in the warm cusp of his being, her frozen shock melted away with the first drops of tears. With constant questions interrupting the sobs, Allen managed to understand what had happened to Julia’s parents and her current circumstances.

“You’ll find your parents” “I’m sure they have not been killed” “It’s not in Putie’s interest to kill intellectuals; he must be using them for some secret purpose” “We’ll look for them together” he tried to reassure her. But all these words of comfort missed their mark. In the shivering movements of her inconsolable body, Allen finally perceived the truth. Julia embodied an irrevocable choice. No ambivalence, no ambiguity were possible. She was either his or she was all alone: and it was up to him.

He felt physically pinned down by the burden of choice. He had always shifted his weight; hopped around commitment and decision; postponed both for as long as he could. But there are moments in life when such postponement is no longer ethically possible. If you see a child about to get run over by a car, you either pull him away from danger or you watch him die. There’s no moment to think about the matter; to deliberate its dangers or contemplate—as when looking at a painting from a distance—its moral facets. Small, frail, outrageously impractical, exhausted both emotionally and physically, alone in the world and deprived of all resources, Julia was now such a child.

Allen continued holding her in his arms. Her nervous body awaited his decision, listening to the beat of his heart like to a clock that marks the time of judgment day. For a moment, he recalled his own mother holding him like that when he was very young, after he had fought with his little brother. He was guilty, but instead of punishing him, as he had feared when he watched her approach, she held him gently to calm him. To express, silently but compellingly, her unconditional devotion. No matter what you do, she seemed to say, I love you and will always love you.

Still holding Julia and rocking her in his arms, Allen echoed these maternal sentiments like the man he had become. “No matter what happens, I will always stand by you and love you, Julia,” he said softly, bending his head towards her ear. “You’ll never be alone, never abandoned,” he chanted his feelings like a melodious refrain.

And the shaking stopped, and the little body in his arms miraculously warmed up under the blanket of loving words. She believed in his promise. With hope, with faith. For a day, he left her alone at the Edge. He promised he would resolve her crisis without telling her how. Because, in all honesty, he didn’t know. As he walked away, every few steps he would turn back to glance at the diminishing figure he knew he could never abandon. He returned that very night, depositing by her sleeping side all of his savings and some clothes and food. Then he held her once again, wrapping his arms around her waist, sensing her languid body fold into his. When she awoke to reassure herself it’s him, he whispered: “It’s me little Julia; it’s me.”

They made love half-asleep, worn out by fatigue. He was very gentle, careful not to hurt her, but she still cried out in pain, plastering her body unto his, bracing herself around his slim shoulders in an appeal for clemency, for tenderness, for love. And in the morning, he gave her the ring. A little band of gold that competed with the glimmer of the sun. She took it, brought it to her lips like a sacred object, then slipped it on her finger. And so she became his in the same way that he had been hers from the very beginning. With a love that was indistinguishable from devotion.

 

[END]

© 2004 Claudia Moscovici - Contributor's Bio

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