TE16 Turkish Delight

Mario Levi

12 The Chinese Restaurant

Sonowonceagain I findmyself at thesamedeadendorawakening. A familiar gloom descends upon me and I think of the songs, the intoxications that are identical to escape, the summer clothes that are kept waiting in mourning, endless mourning, forgotten Four O’Clocks wilting somewhere. I also dream of the icy scent of aniseed, it half-scares and half-revolts me. Perhaps that’s why I think that every person dies a different way in each relationship, is spent in a different way. Something shakes me to the core, something I still can’t seem to name collapses once more in our tiny, quiet lives woven out of isolation. I want to tell myself once more, no matter how hard it is, that you won’t be returning to this manuscript, this story that gives no clues as to when it will be written. Consequently I’m reborn into a certain sorrow, dreaming of the scent of September, thinking that possibilities are endless and will surely give us fresh games to exist within, but still apprehensive about being confronted with my questions and my lack of answers. Where was the original error, for instance, the actual error that brought me, us, here? In my likening you, always, to poetry, or sanctuary, or desolation? Or the fact that I had lost my way, once again, in this lengthy text, or my excessive pushing of boundaries or my becoming besotted, once again, with being a hero, a self-professed charmer? Was there nothing wrong with this picture, and if not, should it all be seen as the natural, unavoidable result of a passion condemned to remain unfulfilled? There was a time when the effort to answer this last 32