A Deluded Heart

“Help me! Help me!” he cried with a funny accent full of joy. I smiled. Pleased by the man. Buddhist from Srí Lanka, twenty days on a boat, four brothers, two sisters, a little of joga… His aggressive smell. The smell of Buddhist meditating temple hundred times multiplied and Best before some years ago…

His loud free laugh after every sonnet of sentences. His yellow teeth, one badly damaged. At Jardin de Luxembourg. It was raining a little. Early February afternoon. Golden sleeping trees.

Traveling to England. War in Srí Lanka. Grey capitalism in Europe. He knows, he knows. Laugh.

Three days in Paris. Sleeping at Croix Rouge, what means having a chair and cup of coffee there. Eating? I don’t ask.

Policemen. Policemen. Appointment in two hours. Closing time in two hours! Ticket invalid in five days! He needs a stamp! Laugh. Grasping my hand. I smile. Grasping his. The smell hurts. Not believing? Then going with him and seeing all papers! Where am I planning to walk? Don’t know… Sitting in bus to Place de la Concorde.

To go to ambassy and see the papers. No. Policemen make me sick. Disbelieving faces. Realistic faces. Nothing-knowing faces. No! Go alone and fetch! He goes alone and asks. l’Impossible…

The men in suits, the men with power, eating. Must wait for twenty minutes. Policemen said. Can you see them? I can see them.

Church of Saint Madeleine. The rite of changing addresses. Sekaramuthiliar Naganathan, Parla road No. 148, Jaffna, Srí Lanka. Happy minutes. Fool plans. Sending me the postcard after arrival to London. And money! Money. But I cannot expect them in three weeks. Rather in four. Yes, I will have it in a month! In two years I will definitely visit Srí Lanka. He will be back already, wealthy man. We will be walking through the forests below the Asian sky together, talking about Buddhism and laughing a lot. Then I will leave him for three months and go to a monastery, or he might go with me. If he only hadn’t a wife at the time yet… But if he had, I would be certainly pleased to meet her. Yes, I will talk with her about inner life of a woman in Srí Lanka. I will be able to talk with her, because almost everyone can speak English there. And in India as well. Laugh. Laugh. The terrible smell…

Time to go. Eye of policeman laughing at me. My hate for him. Condemnation. That’s all you. Living through food, sex and expectation of better time. Without poetry. Without poetry, which is only possible way of Life!

No. I must not meet him. His fat skull…

Go alone. There are fifty Euros. And…

                        … I believe you.

Yes, yes, yes. In twenty minutes at Saint Madeleine. Perhaps in fifteen. But not more than twenty five. Half an hour in the worst.

Him, passing along the door where that department of ambassy should be. Me, at Saint Madeleine.

The alter! Three angels around Mary Madeleine making her fly to the heaven. Or perhaps showing the right way to us. Didn’t she pour the expensive lotion at the head of Jesus? Wasn’t eternal fame promised to her for this very moment? Sins of your whole poor life are forgotten for one sincere tear yielded now…

Can we yield a sincere tear to-day?

Certainly not the policemen

An hour at Saint Madeleine. View of wet street pointing to Place de la Concorde, mechanically moving stream of various cars in thick light of late afternoon, Pallace Bourbon and Hotel Invalides on the background…

Did he betray? Was our tricking of all wordly policemen in fact tricking of me? The reason was cruelly sure but I didn’t know. Hour and half after our splitting I set off for walk to metro. White and yellow clouds full-mouthly smiled at me. The painfully stabing smell flooded whole Paris…