Returning Home #3.1: The Mouse [A Fiction]

"His cousin! I have met his cousin. The cheek of the little rodent! He lives IN THE HOUSE. The comfort and the warmth of the exterior will not suit his calm and small exterior. He is the mouse."

- Latirr Carr, "Red-Black Nonsense - The Closer End"

de Clerambault's syndrome .noun
Psychiatry a delusion in which a person (typically a woman) believes that another person (typically of higher social status) is in love with them.

- Oxford English Dictionary


Once there lived a man, who fell in love with a woman. He loved her in the hardest way possible: from a distance, for many years. And he never told anyone - he nursed the feeling within his breast, next to his heart, and daily it grew, so that every time he passed her on the street his heart beat faster, and his face became warm. Why did he not tell her? It was not that he was afraid - no, he was a brave man, who had done many courageous things in his life. Why did he hesitate then? Perhaps if he had not, if he had told her right then, things might have ended differently.

But instead he created a world in which there was a promise, and the promise was that one day, when he was ready, he would meet her, and speak with her, and the silence that had lain between them over the years would prove to have been only a curtain which hid the true love that secretly resided in their hearts for each other. And she would submit to him, and become his wife, and he her husband and master. This world he had created came to replace the real world for him - though she lived her life, and went about her business, and had suitors, still he believed her to be an innocent girl who had never fallen in love, had never even been kissed. He would be the one to take her hand and guide her through this new world of sensations she had never experienced, with great tenderness, and she would be grateful to him, and love him dearly in return. And it gave him comfort, this belief.

So imagine his surprise when he woke up one day to find out that she was going to get married. At first he could not believe it. How could this have happened so fast - in only a few more years he would have saved enough money to go to her father and declare his intentions. Surely there was a mistake - perhaps a man had approached her parents, and she had been forced into it. But then he found out that this was not true either: the person who broke the news to him told him that she had been with her fiance for almost six years. He felt blind and ashamed - how could he have missed such an obvious thing? And he felt self-pity too - it was only that he was not enough, had never been enough for her - he fell short in all departments: he did not have enough money, he was not good-looking enough, he did not wield power over anyone. He had been a fool to think that true love existed, and would trump all these other qualities, would make them not matter.

And so the girl was married off that summer, and the man spent the rest of his days alone and bitter, friendless and childless, all his dreams gone to dust, all his aspirations crumbled before his eyes.

That is not my story.

I fell in love, yes. You would have, too: her voice was the sound of a breeze after a thunderstorm, her skin soft as coos coos, her smile and teeth warm and white as basmati rice, straight from the cooking pot; she was black, but with a fire within her that rivaled that of the Sun, whose light illuminated her and shone through her skin, so it was a golden-brown. When she walked she walked with the grace of the birds when they are in flight, thoughtless of the world below, soaring far, far over our heads, us cursed bipods. No one in the world truly deserved her - only I could love her as she ought to be loved.

And so I wooed her - I was a man, after all, not a mouse. Though the words got stuck in my throat when I began to address her, though I developed cold chills and fits of trembling, and my voice sometimes came out sounding like a squeak, still I pursued her. And though always she said no to me with a brisk shake of the head, over time the violence of her head shake began to decrease. Until finally she stopped shaking it all together, merely walking past me in silence.

Then one day she sent me the message. It was subtle, almost too-subtle, and a less alert man would undoubtedly have missed it. Which is testament to how much my love trusted in me and my abilities as a man. She was walking past on her way to the market, I standing at my usual spot to intercept her. Normally she would have merely sidestepped me and kept walking, her head in the air. But this day she stopped in front of me. She looked me deep in the eyes - ah and what love she must have seen there, at her disposal, to do with as she pleased. Then she rolled her eyes, one slow motion, pupils moving to the top, then to the bottom, with a wiggle side to side in the middle. Then a long drawn out cheepu. Then she walked past me. A word was not uttered - a word was not needed. Looking deep into my eyes could have only one meaning: it had been the test, the attempt to measure whether I truly loved her, or wanted her only as a prize to show off. And what she had seen there she had liked, liked so much that enraptured with it she had for a moment slipped into an enthusiastic ecstasy, the depth of which had caused her to roll her eyes, barely in control of herself. And the cheepu at the end was directed at anyone who laughed at me, and pointed, and said "what a fool she must be - to be able to have anyone yet choose this fool, who has no money and no prospects".

And so that night I left my house, and made my way to hers. Surely my love, after the display of that day, would be ready to consummate our relationship. In fact I was certain that right at this moment she sat, her insides burning with the agony of anticipation, as mine did. Into her house - without opening the door - running through dark, forbidding corridors, without meeting anyone. And when I reached my love's room I knew it immediately, for I felt her behind the door almost fainted with desire, and only I could revive her; and I entered her room, and I did not use the door. And she was sitting up in the bed, and she was naked, her soft breasts hanging like ripe fruit, the fruit that the snake tempted Adam with at the beginning of time; and I was pure passion, I was raw emotion, and I ran toward her, and her eyes grew wide as she saw me approach, and her mouth opened and she screamed. And then my love hopped up onto the bed and hiding her breasts behind her left hand grabbed with her right a thick brick which had been lying on it (why did my love have a brick on her bed? was she perhaps a master in ancient arts of sexual intimacy which required something hard as concrete? The thought excited me even more). And yet - what was my love doing? She had lifted it and brought back her arm to throw… before me as a welcome?… no - ON me.. I moved to dodge out of the boulder's path, too late, too late, the thing's shadow fell over me in a rush of air; and then total blackness. Yet even before I surrendered to unconsciousness I heard her scream one word. "MOUSE!".

I came to outside, the sun not yet risen, but its return being announced by some brisk breezes. Needless to say I was shocked - shocked to the core that something like this could happen. Yet the more I thought about it, the more I realized how there could be only one possible explanation. A curse had been put on my love! An enemy of mine had visited the right marabout - perhaps seeing my success with her (perhaps even hiding by the side of the road the fateful day she gave me her message) - and the marabout had placed a veil over her eyes. So when she saw me she thought me a mouse (oh most insulting of curses: I - a man - reduced to a mouse, to smelly vermin who everyone reviled!). Oh what injustice!

I am not a mouse. I have never been a mouse. Yes, sometimes when I am not beside my love (for I go to sit with her only every night, when she is asleep and cannot be alarmed, watching her pretty features slack with slumber, her lower lip fluttering as snores blow past it) I find myself in a small hole under the floorboards, smelling of dank hair and chuyi yaapa, but this is only a dream - I awaken from it as soon as I am with my love again.

I am patient - I will wait. The curse will be lifted - I will wait. Though it take three decades, though it take five. My love and I will be re-united. I will neither cheat on her nor pursue any other objective in my life. I will wait for her, living on the streets and eating out of garbage dumps. I will hide from people when they see me. I will bide my time.

For I am a man.