Where in a later chapter Jesus tracks down his estranged lover in France only to close his eyes and lose her once again....

(FINISHED)

On the Croix Rouse the early morning was up. The smell of crushed, filtered coffee swamped the air. A young male server in black and white swept his café front clear of cigarette ends, guiding them towards and down the drain grate.  In the square, the old Muslim men were already grouped on the benches and around  the statue, talking and sipping mint tea and smoking. Jesus looked at a piece of paper in his hand and then looked around. He set off ion one way, stopped, saw a street sign and then looked at the paper in his hand again and turned and went in the opposite direction.   At the otherside of the square, crossing over the road, he slowed his pace. There he saw it, a few doors away from the corner,  the old academic bookshop where he had been told Nuran was working.  It was closed. He was glad for that. Cautiously he approached the door to look for the opening hours.  It opened  at ten. Looking past the sign on the door he peered on  inside. It made him shiver. Something instinctively told him that Nuran was indeed working there, that this was the place she now brought herself to everyday. It was like he could already see/feel her arrival, that somehow he knew that today he would see her  for the first time since she left his bed that morning, that unfinished view he had been punished with. He remembered her naked bottom and the small gap between her legs and her sex from behind. She had purposely teased him with a view as she bent over to retrieve her knickers from the floor and slipped into them. It was a cruel goodbye. She was so fresh and sprightly and they had fucked and then she was gone. Jesus saw his old life  in the reflection of the door, that morning where she had left, and after, alone, how he had wriggled back down under the duvet to smell  her body some more - to sleep in the calm of her scent.  And then, in the door he saw the future, the very soon,  of how it would unfold, her shock at seeing him there, sober looking with the ghost of the great melancholy she had induced within him manifest in his face and stare. She would like that.  The great hollow of pain and distress gaunt in his face he saw would make her erotic with power and sadness and  regret. Jesus' heart thumped. It was a sexual heartbeat. Something that excited and subdued him, made his head dream and his groin want to gyrate.  He finished peering in through the door and then lit a cigarette. He smoked two puffs, looked around at France and then went off in search of a cafe  from where he could sit and watch the shop.

Jesus took a seat inside. He didn't want to risk Nuran passing by his way, seeing him and that fate of chance spoiling how he had imagined their reunion would happen.  He ordered a coffee with milk and sat down at the window, at the far corner, so if anyone did pass, heading towards the bookshop, they would never have been able to see him. Smoking he stared out. Oh, it was a fine day.  A day of spring, where the oncoming summer had snuck in on its back on a reconnaissance mission of  the city.  Jesus felt the world so fresh and mysterious, full of noises and scents and commotion like he had not felt since heroin.  He felt healthy, like his still  damp hair and the smell of shower products on his skin was life and nature itself.

10am came and went. At 11am the bookshop was still closed. Jesus had not been nervous before but as time had ticked on, past the allotted opening time, his stomach had dropped hollow and he could take no more coffee and felt nauseous with anticipation. He was no longer so sure of himself. No longer so sure his presence would provoke Nuran's heart in the way he had envisaged earlier. The last thing he wanted was to stutter and be uneasy in her presence. She would mistake that for drugs. Crying and desperate emotions would work on her, but any coldness of feeling or lack of passion he knew would nail him dead on the spot. He remembered how she liked to be fucked like a whore and held like a lamb, that she liked men of passion and commitment, men who could kill and who could weep. Jesus had never killed but he knew he could kill for her, she had given him something he could no longer bear to live without and yet he did not have a single solitary idea as to what that was.

He would have missed him if it wasn't for his terribly humped back, bent right over like a curled finger so as it looked like his nose was  hoovering the pavement.  Jesus' eyes caught and followed this unfortunate hill of a man. Apart from his back, and his obvious age, the only other detail discernible was the dusty black overcoat  which consumed him. And then the old hunchback stopped, right outside the bookshop, and it was soon clear that he was turning a key in a lower look and then his arm reached up, above his hump, and it opened a second, higher lock. The old hunchback entered the shop headfirst, pushing the door open with his crown.  Jesus sat and watched, but the door closed back over and there was nothing else to see.

It was gone the half hour when Jesus paid up and left. With no Nuran, and the best part of the morning gone, he decided to visit the bookshop and try to find out if the old man worked alone and if not, could his assistant really be Nuran. He entered the shop with low hopes. They had all faded throughout the morning. The bookstore was a jumble, books piled up everywhere, some wrapped in paper, some obviously old, others marked up with what he took as despatch addresses. He looked carefully at the handwriting but he did not recognize it. The old humpbacked man was standing, doing nothing, behind a  desk which seemed to serve as a counter. On seeing Jesus he waved both arms like in distress and said: "On n'est pas ouvert, monsieur!" Jesus did not understand, though  he could tell the man was not French. He approached. "We are not open," said the old man, his eyes suspicious on Jesus. Jesus bent his forearm around and feigned looking at a watch.  "Half-day," said the old man. "Half-day open today." Jesus  thought about asking a few questions but gave up before even deciding on whether to or not. He decided  he'd return to the cafe and wait on the half day. It was obvious the humpback could not run the shop alone and so someone, even if not Nuran, would have to turn up to help. Jesus held up his hand to signal he was leaving. He turned and went to take the door but it opened for him, and instead of him leaving Nuran entered and went straight passed him and over to greet the old man. Jesus went weak in the tiny breeze she had caused and his eyes welled up at the scent he had missed so much. He did not  stem his tears, he couldn't. He instinctively followed her scent, and standing there distraught, his instinct commandeering his beast, he said: "My Love?"

On hearing the voice Nuran froze and turned. She looked like the bottom of her soul had fallen out. She faced him with shock and then was overcome with a quick and deep sense of anger at having someone she had consciously left have the temerity to impose themselves in her life.  Jesus noticed the  underlying  fury in her and had to resist his instinct to crush her in an embrace and kiss her and make a thousand desperate apologies and promises.

"What happened my love?" he asked.
"I am not YOUR love," she hissed with suppresed spite. Then forcing a smile, to keep up a pretence to the old man that this was not a rag of her personal life present during business hours, she said: "Will you please leave. This is not fair. This is my work. Please." Nuran saw that Jesus was wilting under his emotions, that a deep and all-consuming hurt was subduing his  pride and that his emotional being had come to the fore and the Jesus was ready to collapse and throw himself around her feet and cry and beg, regardless of where he was or who was present. To prevent such a scene she softened her tact and said "not here, please," and ushered him outside. She said something in Turkish to the old humpback  who had not noticed they were anything but common acquaintances.

"Can we get a coffee?" asked Jesus, calmed a little and wanting to get out off the street and be alone with her. She looked at him, weighing something up. He appeared so fragile and truly hurting, almost shaking, that she nodded and said "one minute, I must tell the owner, he can't do much alone."

When Nuran returned she had removed her coat and scarf  and was with a small handbag over her shoulder. She was wearing a black dress which buttoned up the front, a round neck which exposed her chest bone, shoulder and neck. Jesus could smell her perfume, could taste her neck in the air. She excited him even through great sadness. As they walked he watched her. Her  tall, slender profile and lips and hair and neck. She knew she was being observed, devoured. She straightened further, her small breasts against her dress, but she did not look back.


In the throes of his illness Jesus now felt that French day, the cries around Croix Rouse and the short walk they had taken to find a café and how the coffee chugged and churned and the smell separated and sat in that space between them. There was also something flagrantly sexual taking place, there could not help but be. After all they had done together in London, the sexual taboos they had transgressed, his lustful eyes on her as they sat  and her awareness that she was bringing his animal passions to the surface, it all created a strange and dangerous erotic environment where she could barely  keep eye contact  for fear of being seduced and falling victim to her own lustful desires and fantasies. But these were no longer blissful memories to Jesus, rather torturous things which seemed to physically hurt him having them play out in his brain. And Jesus wept. And he could no longer distinguish if he was weeping in self-pity over his miserable state or whether the tears were of the memories in his head. !but they were real tears and tears which soaked his skin and he could see leaking through him and dripping from his ribcage and over his organs and he wished somebody would come, scoop him up and take him from his bed.


* * *

In the cafe on the Croix Rouse at midday the two ex-lovers smoked. It was dangerous to smoke and drink coffee because these things were focused on the lips and they both knew it well and both knew what it meant. With a real hurting human in front of her Nuran had softened. She felt  much more in control of the situation now than when he had first appeared and when he was capable of anything and it was out of her control. They chatted random nonsense stuff strangers would not even bother with, the big questions, all from Jesus, bubbling under the surface and waiting to come up. He wanted not only answers but also a solution, and a certain solution at that. he did not want this French excursion to end, but to be the start of their second romance. He asked her what had happened and she said she did not know that she was scared and lonely. He asked if there was someone else and she said there was and Jesus nodded knowing it had been the case. It did not deter him. He had been the someone else to her too. What he had lost to another so he had taken from someone else. He understood something in her and forgave her and wanted her back to him and yet he also knew if she came back this would be a cycle that would be repeated until he was either killed in a duel or by her or at his own hand. She was a fatal encounter and yet it only spurred him on more, feeling even more of a romantic warrior having given his lot to death. And so he nodded and he bowed his head and she could tell he was  crying but he made no sound only looked up after a while so as she could see his pain and she saw it. Drawn in by his emotions she took his hand in hers and her touch burnt him with its softness and she seemed to radiate hope through him that that touch was something more than humanism within her. For her she had a man head bowed, at his weakest point, one of life's rebels and here he was subdued and she felt beautiful and powerful albeit in respectful ways. She held his hand and he withdrew it and smiled and lit a cigarette and stared with melancholy out the window at the passing life on the Croix Rouse. And she smoked too and looked at him and her smoke came his way and she did feel guilty for the hurt in that man. He trembled as he smoked and although in real pain he tried his best to look devoid of all hope and desire, like he was staring out at death. After a moment he turned to her and asked: "Can we meet somewhere tomorrow?" Nuran nodded and looked at him so intensely. She had lost herself like she feared and she told him "yes". Then he said: "It's not hopeless is it?" And he was shaking his head slightly as he asked and she followed his cue and said "nothing is hopeless" and now she was crying and she could not understand and a fire of obsession was in her and she wanted him to bite her neck because nothing was hopeless and that felt like the poetry she needed in life.

With the early sun warm upon him, and Nuran just opposite, Jesus closed  his eyes and all the pain and sadness of the past weeks melted away. In the closed orange glow of meditation Jesus found a perfection in being.  Nuran watched him. It was a bad sign. Jesus' natural response to warmth and peace was to cocoon himself away with it, mentally prolong the bliss and fall back crucified into tranquillity. What that was was a disposition to heroin. She saw it as clear as day. That Jesus turned to heroin not only to block out trauma, but also to preserve the moment and enhance blissful perfection, those vulnerable states of being that can turn so suddenly and sink their  venomous fangs into a man. When Jesus opened his eyes Nuran was there and  she smiled and he reached across and placed his hand over hers, unbeknown to him that tragedy had befallen him again, that the present is proof of nothing, that really she was gone.


word count: 2626