Marguerite

A word meaning more than beautiful does not exist in English without sounding odd. Gorgeous is too unripe. Stunning is too candid. Instead, we seem to talk about how a certain beauty makes us feel. If I were in love with her, I would have been infatuated. But I was not. I wanted a word with more flesh, that went beyond the flesh. So, every time I used beautiful to describe you – I meant that word which does not exist.

I wore a belt, somewhere beneath the overhang. My trousers did not need it. I could only be described as well-fed. I did not have a beard; some bristle instead had found its nest on my chin and left the rest of my face as its typical pink gouache. It was snowing impalpable flakes outside and I could see them only for the living room light which caught their edges. Marguerite, that was your name. Like a French cocktail, living opposite the hospital. At night the hedgerow blocked those bright lights, and the path was coated in gleaming ice. You had wrinkles as though comprised of crumpled paper. Yet, as is the case with the incredulous human body, your eyes had clung to that infantile nacre which made them gleam in the small region which looked at me. Your sight, far superior to the abilities of your ears, had remained. Though sometimes I wondered if when you poured water from the kettle, the entrance of the stream into the cup was a product of practise rather than vision.

The living room was cream in all its facets: wallpaper, mantelpiece, carpet, chairs, compiled inside a Georgian house with high ceilings and cornicing. I envied the elderly and their sanitary, clinical rooms of white, their heavy jewellery and polished wood. You were alone with dogs, and you seemed happy enough having them bundled on the sofa, feeding them treats from a metal jar on the coffee table. They tricked your rationing, taking advantage of your memory that told you they had not been fed. Dogs are cunning like that. You need a pet with character. If you buy a goldfish, make sure it tries to jump from the bowl.

You were in your ninth decade, and the exterior of diaphanous skin, green veins, and the stumbling from your deafness gave it away. I had to shout to speak, pretending not to be doing so by not moving my mouth so wide. I did not wish to remind you of your age. Your reading glasses hung from your neck on string, resting on the grey buttoned cardigan. Your legs were crossed, the thin trouser on the right leg was pulled up somewhat, revealing the swollen Baltic sausage beneath – the varicosed, inflated vegetable the doctor called a leg.

There was an Atmos clock on the mantelpiece, and each time I sat opposite, I watched the balance wheel spin right to left. Then, there was the grandfather clock by the door, the IWC by the window, and in the quietude, one could hear the chronographic mechanics taking away the seconds. My wristwatch joined the orchestra of ticking, followed by the pipes trickling inside the walls.

I saw a squirrel through the window adulterating the fresh surface of snow. Then, as is the case with all the elderly, when one starts to be noticed, appreciated, remembered, they have a habit of passing away, and you chose to do so in bed. I saw your hands folded in front of you. When mine had been empty, you had filled them with yours, and so I reversed the commonplace to feel them cold. Then, walking behind the coffin, the branches still white and the yellow leaves embossed into the path, my trousers blew around my ankles to remind me of you, speckled with dirty water. The trees dripped soluble pebbles onto my head and down my neck, and I dispatched an umbrella. There is a certain way of walking with an umbrella, angling it to set the drops from your shoulders and the front of your legs. It was old, and when I put it up, a nice layer of rust coated the palm of my glove.