That Smell and Notes From Prison Read Online Free PDF

felt the heat in her face, in her
thighs. Every time after that I would make her stand up naked and contemplate
her thighs. They were beautiful and soft and dark. I would ask her to bare her
forearms so I could kiss them and feel them against my body. But she hesitated.
We would lie pressed together in the dark to forget the world, to forget
everything. We thought of nothing, feared nothing, and when my cheek brushed her
cheek, when our noses touched, when our heads rested against each other, when
our eyes stared at the same place on the ceiling, then nothing else had any
importance. Soon I would move my head and my lips would sneak over to her lips.
We shared delicate kisses and rough kisses and then she would pull her head back
and sigh. The first time she held me violently and said, Where were you all this
time? Another time she said, Lover. I was quiet. The word echoed in my ear for
the first time. I didn’t trust myself. But soon she turned away and said, I want
to sleep. I lay on my back, eyes up on the ceiling, hoping she would turn and
embrace me but soon I felt her regular breathing, the contented and peaceful
breathing of someone sleeping. So I turned and raised myself up to look at her.
Her head rested on her arm while she slept. Her hair was spread across her neck
and her other arm rested on her side. I let my look linger all over her body,
then dropped back on the bed.
    She stretched out next to me and laid her cheek on my hand, offering
me her face lit by a little moonlight. She said, I’ll do the talking. She talked
for a long time, then stopped. I told her I was worn out, that I had always
wanted her. I pulled her toward me but she pulled away. I asked her to bare her
forearm and she did. I kissed her forearm and her shoulder in the moonlight but
soon she said, It’s cold, and she covered them. Then she stretched out on her
back. She must have been thinking the same thing I was thinking. Something was
missing, something was broken. She said, I want to sleep. I pulled her toward me
and kissed her. My lips wandered from cheek to ear, kissing her there until she
shivered and raised her eyes to mine and smiled and said, And this, where did
you learn this?
    How could she remember while I had forgotten? When my lips
climbed up her thigh and I kissed her there for the first time and she looked at
me with a mixture of pleasure and surprise and shyness, she said, Where did you
learn this?
    I reached my hand toward her chest but she pushed it away and said,
No. I rolled away, then stretched out beside her. I waited for her to turn and
embrace me but she didn’t. I was awake. I felt the pain between my legs. I got
up and went to the bathroom. I got rid of my desire, then came back and
stretched out beside her. I slept and woke and slept again and when I opened my
eyes it was morning and she had already put her clothes on. I’m leaving now, she
said. When will I see you? I asked. I’ll come by, she said. I stayed there
stretched out on the bed, then finally got up and washed. I put some powdered
soap in a basin of water and stirred it until the foam rose, then put my dirty
clothes in. My sister and her fiancé came by. I put my clothes on and we went
out and I bought the morning papers. In the entrance to the building we met a
friend of my sister and her uncle and we went to a café. My sister’s fiancé
said, We want to be happy for you. That will take time, I said. Why? he asked.
Love isn’t easy, I said. He shrugged and said, Here’s my advice, love comes
after marriage. The uncle said, I’ve been married five times. I left them and
went to see Sami at his place. I was brought into the living room and waited for
him a long time. A little girl came in whom I recognized as his daughter. She
walked up to me. I felt uncomfortable. I needed to use the toilet and I broke
wind and the little girl smelled it. Caca smell, she said. I pretended not to
smell it. But again she said, Caca smell. So I started sniffing all