TE23 Double Feature

Anke Laufer

“The Silver Moth”

You will say that in the end, it was just a silver chewing-gum wrapper. Discarded and meaningless. Like our kiss. But I don’t believe in coincidences. Poets believe in signs, in peeling layers, in meanings heaped one on top of another. She had been there. She had waited for me. I had let her down. I sat in the van, staring out. That evening, the carpark was full of people. They were laughing and arguing, stretching their limbs, biting into snacks, sipping from their paper cups. But my own loneliness was a thicket, dense and inscrutable as the woods that stretched away on the other side of the motorway, greedy as the maw of a predator. It was weeks before a bright thought pierced the sorrow – something I could cling on to. If she had come this one time, then, like me, she hadn’t given up. All I had to do was wait for the next anniversary. This time, I didn’t want to leave anything to chance. Even before the turn of the year I made plans, bought a new, sky-blue shirt and an aftershave that smelled of oranges 190

and cedarwood. In my daydreams I rehearsed our first dialogues. It made me perhaps more joyful than I had ever been. The power of imagination is a mighty hydraulic lift. But in the year that followed, everything was different. Like nothing that had gone before. Like nothing any of us could have imagined. You know. No one was allowed to meet up in carparks any more, and kissing was most definitely not allowed. You weren’t even allowed to go for a drive. I sat in my van beneath the chestnut trees, glad I had everything I needed. I cooked spaghetti, made casseroles, read as many books as I could and let the time pass. The lottery outlet was closed, so I didn’t fill in my ticket for the weekly jackpot. It would have seemed pointless anyway. When our anniversary arrived, I put on the still unworn sky-blue shirt, bought a few bottles of beer and drank myself into oblivion on my lopsided steps. Inside, the television was on and a scientist was trying to explain to people why they should look after one another. 191