TE23 Double Feature

Anke Laufer

“The Silver Moth”

watched me fish my van keys out of my trouser pocket with my free hand, and then spill the coffee everywhere with a large, clumsy jerk of my arm as I got in. Now I’d made her laugh. So I got out again and walked over to her. “I always bring plenty of coffee. It’s a long journey,” she said. She pulled a thermos flask out of her shoulder bag and refilled my paper cup. She had this slight accent that I keep wracking my brains over and still can’t quite place. She told me she was on her way to visit her elderly father for his birthday, like she did every year, but she didn’t say where she had come from or where she was going. She popped her chewing gum. When the storm broke, we went on talking in my van. She struggled out of her raincoat as the rain hammered on the roof and the thunder rolled past above our heads. Every so often, lightning lit up the view for a second; the woods became a silhouette. Under the coat, she smelled of damp skin and peppermint gum.

We talked about a Dylan song that was playing on the radio, about poems and wolves, larks in flight, jubilees, rebellions and plane crashes. It was as though she was feeling around in the darkness deep inside me, looking for a switch – patiently, doggedly. Until she found it and made the chandeliers flicker into life, my interior a ballroom, ready for the grand gala. It was incredible. She told me about her husband and her children, who were nearly grown up now; about a house on the edge of town. I told her about my divorce. We read one another’s faces as we listened, in the same way you read a poem: not just the words but the blank spaces, too. Though as it got darker and her face began to blur, I realised we were both managing with much less. We were feeling our way, hand over hand, along the sound of our voices. Until the headlights of a passing lorry unexpectedly raked across her face and I saw my hope reflected in it – bright, soft and naked. When the darkness returned, I reached for her hand and, when she didn’t shrink back, I pulled her gently towards me and gave her 185

184