More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
To put it simply, it’s how they treat us…You’d have to be blind not to see how much confidence they have, and how stupidly they achieve it. And if you need a measure of their arrogant pride, all you need is to see how shocked they are when an advance is rejected. They are the hunters, you see, and we their miserable prey. And our duties? To bow down and obey, and give them whatever they want…But we shouldn’t.
Heaven was only centimeters away.
All my life, I’d kept my heart closed. I had never known love. But now, all at once, the doors had flown open. My unspent passions had been released to illuminate this one magnificent woman.
All my life, I’d been waiting for her. Searching for her. Scanning my surroundings for some sign of her. Bitter experience had given me second sight, and had it ever been wrong?
After spending two hours with a book, and finding it more pleasurable than two years of real life, I’d remember again that life had no meaning and sink back into despair.
Maria Puder had taught me I had a soul. And now, overcoming a habit of a lifetime, I could see a soul in her.
All I wanted was to pour out my heart to her, the good with the bad, the weaknesses with the strengths, holding nothing back, baring my soul. I had so much to say to her…enough to fill a lifetime.
I would, with just one word, be at one with her.
“How obedient you are…Don’t you have any ideas of your own? Any desires?”
For as happy as I was that we thought so similarly, and were already so close, I was afraid — afraid that one day she would leave me or hide the truth from me.
somewhere deep inside, I could hear a faint voice warning me: once you have seen someone as she truly is — once you have accepted reality stripped bare — it doesn’t matter who she is: intimacy is no longer possible.
As different as you are, you’re still a man…and all the men I have ever known have ended up leaving in sorrow or anger once they realize I don’t love them, and can never love them…But why, when they say goodbye, do they assume I am the one to blame? Because I never gave them what I promised I never would, or because they convinced themselves it would be otherwise? Isn’t that unfair? I don’t want you to think the same way about me…You can consider that a point in your favor…”
But what I hate most is women always having to be passive…Why? Why are we always the ones running away and you are the ones chasing after us? Why is it always that we surrender and you take the spoils? Why is it that even in the way you beg, there is dominance, and pity in the way we refuse? I’ve been challenging this since childhood.
My girlfriends had a hard time finding things in common with me. They had no interest in being real people; they preferred to be objects of desire and act like dolls.
In other words, a truly powerful man, a real man…Now do you see why I can’t love you?
What I mean is, you’re the first man who’s listened to what I have to say without once trying to discipline me…I can see in your eyes that you understand me…Like I said, we could be great friends. In the same way that I am speaking to you so openly, you can tell me everything too. Is that not enough? Is it worth losing that, simply because we want more? That’s the last thing I want. I told you last night that I can have violent mood swings…but this shouldn’t drive you to the wrong conclusion…On the main points, I shall never change…So tell me. Will you be my friend?”
I had just one desire: to stay close to her, no matter the cost…nothing else mattered…
Nevertheless, there came a point when I was sure that she understood how I was feeling, and I said, “I’m so grateful to you.” “I feel the same way,” she said, and she pulled away her hands.
This intimacy came from thinking alike; in truth, it came from accepting one side of an idea while preparing to pay the price demanded by the other. But isn’t this how souls come together, by holding another’s every idea to be true and making it their own?
How I loved her! I had opened my heart to the world I saw in her.
In my opinion, love was not an absolute category. There were many kinds of love, just as there were many ways people could show their affection for one another.
what to say, I thought for a time before speaking. “If a person truly has the ability to love, then he can never monopolize his beloved. And neither can his beloved monopolize him. The more he spreads his love, the more he adores his one and only true love. When love spreads, it does not diminish.”
“For me, love is something else entirely. It’s beyond all logic and impossible to describe or define. It’s one thing to like someone. To be consumed, body and soul, by desire is quite another. That’s what love is to me — desire that’s all-consuming. Desire that’s impossible to resist!”
Having never known such intimacy before, I was desperate to protect it. And perhaps what I desired most was to possess her wholly and absolutely, body and soul, but I was so fearful of losing what I already had that I did not dare look away from it.
“Maria,” I whispered, “how can one person make another person so happy? What amazing powers we must have, hidden deep inside us.”
“Of course…of course,” she said. “Of course I love you. And so much…Could it be any other way? I must love you…I certainly do. But why are you so surprised? Did you think it could be any other way? I know how much you love me…and there is no doubt that I love you just as much…”
“Maria,” I said, “Maria. My Madonna in a Fur Coat. What’s happened all of a sudden? What have I done to you? I promised that I would ask nothing of you. Haven’t I kept my promise? Why you are saying this, at a time when we should be closer to each other than ever?”
“So I suppose this means that people can get only so close to each other and then they must drift apart, each time they try to take one step closer. I can’t tell you how much I did not want our intimacy to have a limit, or an end. What truly saddens me is seeing how empty my hopes have turned out to be…Now there is no point in deceiving each other…We can no longer speak openly as we did before. We sacrificed it all and for what, why? Nothing at all! In attempting to possess something that was never there, we lost something we already had…Is it all over? I don’t think so. I know that neither of
...more
Never in my life had anyone loved me, ever.
For as long as I lived, I would travel far and wide, meeting with people whose languages I did or did not know, and everywhere I went, I would be looking for Maria Puder. In every pair of eyes, I would be searching for the Madonna in a Fur Coat. I knew from the outset that I would never find her. Yet it was not in my power to give up searching.
But life was meant to be lived, as these people were doing. They were taking their share of life and giving something back. What was I in comparison? What did my soul ever do, apart from gnawing away at me like a woodworm?
No doubt I was the most useless man in the world. The world would be no worse off without me. I expected nothing of anyone and no one expected anything of me.
I simply could not accept the fact that I would be spending all my days without her
And if, by chance, I happened to hear her cries as I lay there on the ground, taking my last breath, I would die smiling.
It was during that long night, as I paced the hospital’s high stone walls, that I came to appreciate just how much I loved Maria Puder and how desperately I was attached to her; I thought about nothing but her.
you’ve taught me how…I love you…not madly, but I love you with a clear mind…I want you…such an overwhelming desire…if only I can get better…When will I get better?”
I felt the boundless happiness that comes from devoting your life to another.
“I am leaving. But I will come whenever you call for me…”
My letters achieved nothing. My worst fears came true.
Waking in the morning to a terrible ache in my heart, I would wonder why I was still alive.
For a brief while, a woman had pulled me out of listless lethargy; she had taught me that I was a man, or rather, a human being; she had shown me that the world was not as absurd as I had previously thought and that I had the capacity for joy.
Perhaps she’d been all I needed. I suppose that is what any of us need: one single person. But what if that person wasn’t really there? What if it all turned out to be a dream, a chimera, a delusion? I had lost the power to hope, and with it the power to believe. My distrust of others was so great, and so bitter, that I sometimes scared even myself. Everyone I met, I met with hostility. Everyone I encountered, I assumed to be full of malice.
The mistrust I felt for people had turned into spite.
Why was it that when someone tried to get close to me, my first thought was that they might hurt me?
There was only one person I’d ever believed in. I’d believed in her so deeply that — once deceived — I lost the will ever to believe in anyone again. I felt no anger toward her. I could not begrudge or resent her, or even think ill of her. Rather, I begrudged and resented everyone in the world, because for me she was the symbol of humanity.
The pain of losing something precious — whether earthly happiness or material wealth — can be forgotten over time. But our missed opportunities never leave us, and every time they come back to haunt us, we ache.
Life had dealt me a bad hand.
I found life tedious, but that was all. I had no other complaint.
For ten years — fully ten years — I had, in my wretchedness, loathed and condemned a dead woman…Could there be a greater insult to her memory? For ten years I had wrongly and unequivocally doubted the person who was my life, my soul, my reason for living, without once considering that I might be doing her an injustice.
Oh, Maria, why can’t we sit by the window and talk? Why can’t we open our hearts and souls to each other as we walk together in silence on a windy autumn evening? Oh, why aren’t you here with me?
