He lit one eye and ran across the street. He scratched a tin garbage can with his claws and jumped onto the lid. He had only just licked his left paw when he heard footsteps. He pressed himself flat against the lid and extinguished his eye.
"You probably think I'm not sorry," the man said. "You know, all this is hard for me too."
The woman didn't respond. Tears flowed silently down her face, unseen by the man.
He didn't know what else to say to her. He felt awkward, and he'd rather just leave, especially since he was starting to feel tired and sleepy. Unfortunately, something wouldn't let him go. Something was growing in the lower regions of his chest, ripping his ribs apart from the inside, taking on a life of its own, developing inside like a worm hatched from a piece of rotten meat, speared on a fork and placed in his mouth.
Guilt, the kind that causes insomnia on a night like this.
In the darkness, he couldn't see her face. As he raised his hand to touch a strand of her hair, they both heard a noise from across the street. Something black jumped off the lid of a dumpster and shot toward them like a stone fired from a slingshot. It grazed the man's legs and vanished into the darkness.
The man flinched and cried out softly. He felt his heart pounding wildly.
"It's just a cat," the woman said, unlocking the stairwell door. Without a word of farewell, she slammed it shut behind her.
***
Don't ever return to her again. Don't speak words that tangle in her hair like dead nightingales. Don't burn your skin with a touch as hot as a soul stolen from an old iron. Don't poison life with your breath, don't knock the stars hidden in your hand, don't dig sunflower seeds out of your coat pocket. Go away. Let her forget you. Never come back again. Never come back again. And never come back to her again.
He muttered a mantra as he sat on the tin lid of a garbage can, staring out the window on the first floor, fourth from the left. He saw her pacing aimlessly around the apartment, saw her wringing her hands as she stood in front of the mirror, saw her weeping, leaning her forehead against the doorframe. He saw her open a kitchen cabinet drawer, saw the glint of a kitchen knife, saw her pull up the sleeve of a blouse she'd bought especially for him. And he also saw her throw the knife to the floor in fury, how she began pacing faster, how she lifted the telephone receiver to her ear, how she sat down in an armchair and began screaming. And he saw her close her eyes, swollen from crying, and fall asleep exhausted in the armchair with the light on. And when he was sure she was already very deeply asleep, he willed it out and shut one eye.
***
"Your hair has turned light.
" "It's from the sun."
He knelt on the grass, and she lay on his lap, squinting at the blade of grass he held in his mouth. She reached out to touch him, and
reached out to touch him, and found empty space. She turned on the bedside lamp and went to the window. She had the strange sensation that there was something in the darkness beyond the glass, something she couldn't see or understand, something that knew of her existence, watched her every move, and filtered her dreams. She shuddered and drew the curtains. As she returned to bed, a cat meowed somewhere outside.
***
He glided along the street, keeping close to the walls and avoiding the beams of streetlights. Softly and silently, chasing away her unpleasant thoughts with his tail. In the corner by the stairs, he sat on a cardboard box. With a keen eye, he calmly registered his surroundings. He was waiting for him. He knew.
***
Don't ever return to her again. Let her sleep peacefully, crush the fragments of recent memories with the heel of her shoe. Don't touch her hair, don't spoil her smile, don't wake her tears in the middle of the night. Don't frighten the birds slumbering in her breasts, don't draw faint lines on her lips, don't stir the curtain of her eyelashes with your hot breath. Leave her silver-winged moths alone, let them scatter their mirages of colorful pollen.
Don't come so close. You can look at the intercom button with her name on it. You can only look, but don't touch.
The sound of footsteps in a dark alley. A rustle and a hiss. A man's scream and blood.
I warned you.
***
She stepped out onto the sun-drenched street and put her keys in the pocket of her suede jacket. She pushed back her hair, squinted, unaccustomed to the sunlight. It had been so long since she'd seen him. It had been so long since she'd left the house.
She walked a few meters and then she saw him. He was sitting on the lid of a tin dumpster, basking in the sun with his matted black fur.
She felt a throbbing in her temples and a vibration in her belly. Something was tearing through her thoughts, penetrating the recesses of her brain, sifting through dreams and images, sending her into a frenzy. And suddenly she saw darkness and a flash. She saw eyes glowing in the darkness. She saw a man's face with a deep scratch on his cheek. She saw herself in her apartment, her blouse sleeve rolled up, a kitchen knife in her hand. She saw herself lying on his lap, reaching for a blade of grass. She saw herself asleep in bed, a blissful smile on her face, waking a moment later with a scream. She clamped her hands over her ears.
She didn't understand why she was going to him. She didn't understand why she was leaning her stomach against the tin dumpster. Or why she was reaching out and feeling the rough fur beneath it. And why does he place the other one between his stiffly erect ears and slide it down his back.
The street was bathed in sunlight. She blinked a few times and saw that she was standing on the top step of the stairs. Pigeons were cooing on the lid of a garbage can. They flew away with a flutter of wings as she took a few steps.
***
He climbed the fence and looked into the dark window of the apartment on the first floor. Fourth from the left. He calmly scanned her dream, intensifying certain images. Her mother's face in the window of a departing bus. A woman in a peacock feather headdress offering her hot tea. A colleague from work bringing a report several hundred pages long. Zoom in. Zoom out. Intensify. She'd been dreaming beautifully lately. He had to delete less and less, had to be careful less and less. He could afford a moment of peaceful sleep during the night. He was very pleased with himself. Consequently, he put out one eye.
And the next day, he was hit by a car. And unfortunately.
That was his last life.
***
As usual, when she was rushing to work, she couldn't find the apartment keys in her purse. She was just locking one of them when she heard the screech of tires and a piercing scream. Perhaps animal, not human, flashed through her mind as she hurried down the stairs. She ran out into the street. She couldn't have known that she was the last image his fading eyes would record.
Driven by a sudden instinct, without thinking, she lifted him from the ground and hugged him to her chest. Without knowing why, she began to cry silently, feeling an inexplicably deep despair, as if after the loss of someone close. And suddenly, someone placed a hand on her shoulder. She turned and saw a man with large, pale green eyes. He ran his hand through her hair, ran a finger down her cheek. He smiled faintly to himself, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye.
And as they entered the shadowed part of the street, she didn't notice that he had lit one eye.
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