INTERLUDE FILE 07–08 The Holographer’s Atlas Source Material: Benidorm ’89 / Xàbia ’24 / I. Ph. De Lange
The Holographer’s Atlas
I.
Depth and Danger
Twenty-five years old, the Cavalli dress, and it still fits like it was cut this morning. No bra needed — I considered braiding my hair but decided against it, long and loose and gold from the sun like the rest of me. I went with the young crowd to the club. Old house on the floor, not too many people yet. I was flowing, enjoying the energy, all of it constructive.
Then the dark eyes above the tattooed throat and everything skipped a track. Marko. I became the needle — dust, bump, hiccup, dragged to a stop. He walked toward me without visual force and yet the approach was entirely forceful, the way gravity is forceful, impersonal and total. He caught my wrists — knowing that, knowing exactly that — and I kept moving backwards anyway.
Then everything erupted: slow motion to fast manga in one cut. A friend of my youngest asked if everything was alright and Marko shoved him aside without looking. Then the ex appeared and the whole party started.
Out of the chaos a hand took my left arm and an arm came around my waist from the right — and I was moving, held in utter stillness, carried sideways into a private nook I hadn’t noticed existed. He let me go cleanly.
Please, take a seat. A sip?
He held out a glass of champagne. Behind us the shoving and fighting continued where we’d left it. He didn’t look back at it once.
He apologised for the inconvenience his relative caused, and acknowledged — quietly, as a fact — that he knew who my ex was. Then: that he was glad, finally, to have the opportunity to meet me again. After that New Year’s moment he’d never seen me again.
Well, you’re witness to what happens when I stick my head out the door. My bad decisions have a way of catching up. And I’m not particularly a fan of the human species in general.
He had a poker face. Just the faintest inquiring look — nothing offered, nothing performed. A man who had heard something real and was simply registering it.
The rowdy crowd got checked by the bouncers and the owner, who happened to be there. Iliya had given instructions in Russian, I think, to one of his men — the nephew was escorted out. Then my youngest and her friends came looking for me, allowed into the private area. After a brief interlude, satisfied I was intact, they began drifting back toward the dance floor.
Before I could follow he asked — quietly, as everything he said was quiet — whether he could have the pleasure of inviting me for a drink.
My youngest gave me a look. He caught it.
You are invited as well. All of you.
She turned to me.
Mom?
They stayed. I drank — I love champagne. He began directing his attention toward me with a particular focus: he knew who I was publicly but wanted to comprehend. I found it titillating in a creepy sense, which is its own kind of information. When the youngsters suggested moving to another club I didn’t hesitate. Being Dutch I gave him a firm handshake, a short nod — graceful, final. I think it left him short of something.
The next club had good music, better entertainment, and I tried to shake it off. It didn’t escape me that more than one of his men was already standing there.
I told the young crowd I’d had enough. My youngest was staying nearby — she owns a place there — and I was going home. Stepping out I was already fishing for my car keys, thinking briefly about a cab, then: no. The car knows where I’m going.
And then it hit me. So probably does the man behind me.
~
He found me at the beach — not sunbathing, my mother would have been mortified. Colour is for the people afoot, she always said. She meant it literally.
Suddenly a Russian baritone, sweet, and a parasol placed beside me. Iliya took a seat at the same height and watched the sea.
Depth and danger are inseparable, don’t you think?
I kept my calm.
Nothing wrong with skylight and soul melancholy.
He is not a great orator. He is one of those people who don’t need sound to express wish or wonder. After a while one of his men approached, whispered something, stepped back.
Will you accept an invitation for dinner?
The moment I nodded he stood and left. His parasol and seat remained beside mine. I thought: more theatrical than this is impossible. And yet I couldn’t deny I was titillating again.
I left toward home. Arriving in my street I found a bouquet attached to my gate — peonies and lilies, white, with a card. How did he know. Nine o’clock tonight. No number, no name. It was now six. I had time for a dive in the swimming pool, time to write a little, time to refuse to wonder about this — and what the hell I was going to wear, and where exactly we were going.
Quiet, I told myself. Enjoy.
I chose a champagne lace dress with long sleeves and a high slit at the side. Hair up, heels. He’s not tall, perhaps 1.80 — at least I’d be taller than him.
It wasn’t him waiting at the gate. I was irritated. A driver took me to a restaurant and when I walked in, he too walked in from the back at the same moment, and softly murmured an apology. It didn’t impress me — weren’t it for the intimacy he delivered it with. No bravado, no overacted politeness. Just intimacy. My brain registered the ballpark. My heart fluttered in consequence.
He ate. I drank. He directed his attention toward me with that same focused quiet. He knew who I was publicly but wanted to comprehend. Then:
I have read the Memory Cartographer. Loved all of it. Especially Africa.
I choked on my champagne.
Glad you enjoyed it, was all I could manage. I had thought Armenian or Russian mafia bosses didn’t read.
He brought me home and asked whether I was going to give him another night of my life.
I raised an eyebrow. Please. As if he was the only one who knew how to play coy.
~
The next morning a package arrived — a beautiful sunhat and a card: Care for some waves? It made me giggle and made me wary in equal measure. When, where, how. I am far from social; my writing is important to me, and on top of that I prefer to see the sea rather than be on it. Snorkeling yes, sailing not so much. All this pondering was interrupted by a call from an unknown number.
Of course he had my number.
Hello? Quien es?
I am in front of your house. Take your time.
He hung up.
~
This dance goes on all summer.
Under the eyes of my youngest, her friends, family, villagers — topped up with holidaymakers we stand out. It is not so much the looks between us that provoke attention but the way we move. How he hushes me and yet parades me simultaneously, and the particular pride he takes in being the one who does the hushing. His men always present, peripheral, furniture that breathes.
I don’t look over forty though I’m already past fifty. He clearly hasn’t reached thirty-five, but the sternness adds years — except for the glint I sometimes catch in his eyes when he doesn’t know I’m looking. Those moments he is entirely his age.
He asks, I answer. He has a ravenous curiosity and no hesitation — in the cinema, in restaurants, about a painting on the wall, about etymology, about whatever crosses his mind. He inquires the way serious people inquire, as though the answer will be useful later. And when I’m quick — when I get there before he expected me to — and he doesn’t think I’ve caught him looking, he eats me alive.
I improved nano-seconds.
~
He leaves suddenly. One kiss, consummated. A text: I will be back.
On one hand, relief. How much tension can a woman of my age hold, and for how long? Now I can go back to writing, to interviews, to reading, to my readers. To myself. The summer has been beautiful and now it is over and I am free.
That same evening I feel his absence.
I.Ph.
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