LIBERTANGO

He sat down next to a girl on the bus.

That instant flocks of thoughts traversed his brain but so fleetingly that he could not make out any of them. Yet there was one thing he was certain of, he was attracted to this stranger without even having seen her face. He felt like he had known her since ever and he wanted to make her his for the rest of time. There was something about her he had known all along. Her scent. He had encountered her scent before. He looked at her. He had lived with her smell all his life, he had lived waiting for his nostrils to be tickled by it, his brain had longed to be enthused by it, he had dreamed about it as he lay asleep in his bed in his apartment on the second floor at night.

She was turned away from him staring out of the window. But he could see a pointed ear jutting out from among her long dark hair.

He was awed, and the bus had already reached the bus stop in front of the block in which he resided. And he hesitated because he could not decide whether to speak to her or not, but he got up and out of the bus.

Her scent. Warm thick chocolate cream stirred with a wooden spoon and spread onto the dense chocolate cake with small solid chocolate chunks. The old lady who owned the cake shop on the ground floor of the block where the boy lived worked with zeal and filled the courtyard with delicious smells from early morning. And then the petit chocolates wrapped in gold and oozing fragrance, the inviting thick hot chocolate topped with fresh whipped cream which melts in the mouth, and the biscuits bursting with dark chocolate and milk chocolate and white chocolate and nuts and fruit and sugar.

She was enjoying the warmth of the rays of the sun on her face on this rare sunny Monday afternoon when someone brushed against her. Time halted. She had lived this in the past. A déjà vu. She glanced at her side. A boy sat next to her, his arm against hers. His hair was dark with big curls and one of these curls sat mockingly in front of his eyes, but the boy was wrapped up in reflection and did not seem to mind. She gazed back out of the window and saw the window panes of her first floor apartment. She had reached her destination. She looked beside her again but the boy was no longer there.

His touch. The touch of the hands of the dancers of the tango classes on the third floor, their feet stroking the floor, the contact between their bodies upsetting and stirring. The stroking of their cheeks against each other, the roses, the outburst of ardor, obsession, and rage, to the tempo of Astor Piazzolla’s Libertango.

And both stopped facing the same block. The small edifice was built in the mid twentieth century and contained four floors, each having one apartment. The neighbourhood was tranquil, and the two lane road was lined with trees on either side. They looked at each other and their eyes met for the first time of an eternity of other times that would have come.

“Hi, I’m Kris.”

“Monica. Nice meeting you.”