Solenoid

by Mircea Cărtărescu

If it had been possible, Nicolae would have cut the rope with a knife, taken the young suicide in his arms, and lain her across her bed that smelled powerfully of lavender. He would have covered her with a sheet and tucked thousands of pleats over her stony body, and he would have lain next to her, staring along with her at the ceiling and beams. She would have been his departed beloved, his bruised icon, beside whom he would have stayed for eternity in the vast crypt of the world, he would have grown old there, gazing now and then at the charming, black trace of the noose on her martyred neck, he would have died beside her and they would have decayed together, holding hands, on the bed that was now a boneyard, would have crumbled like plaster in their own vestments, and in the end there would be left only two skeletons in a heap of rags, he and his dead lover, he and his undying love.