A Man And A Woman Lived At The  Foot Of A Waterfall.

 

A man and a woman lived at the foot of a waterfall. In a wooden pavilion, furnished with a lot of cane mats on the floors and by carpets with various colorful rectangular patterns on the walls. Behind glass on shelves there were books, filed in rows. Flour, lentils, beans, and peas were randomly placed above the sink. Drinks in the fridge. An old computer in the oval study room. Medicine in a case in a cleaning cabinet. Mycosolon for herpes. Aspirin and Oscillococcinum for flu, Spasmoveralgin for migraine, various vitamines. Wine in a stone vaulted cellar, mild in winter, chilly in summer, beer on the seventh step.Having breakfast on the veranda, three fried eggs, shorts on, they were reading newpapers, a black bakelite radio, turn it up… more …thanks - blue cups, hot coffee, chips, bread and butter. Bikes in a little shed in the backyard. Not far from it a car in shade under a willow tree. A short way to the airport. A guest room, soft double bed. A narrow stream running through the kitchen and bathroom, continuing under the entrance, an oak foot-bridge, and joining the silence under the waterfall.

The foot-bridge was covered by a light, dewy moss , particularly at the end, where a man whose honour had been fatally offended was sitting on a chair. Small scissors are stuck in wood and a bone comb hangs from a hedge. The sun is shining on him from just above the horizon and its light divides his face in two. We can‘t therefore see clearly that he is only half-shaved, or the fact that his beard is half-cut.

 

Agoo, nothing can offend a man‘s honour like being half-shaved, hairy cheek in semi-shadow, the stubble opposite in setting sun, humiliated, as if pinned to the chair.

Agoo,  the man‘s honour was fatally offended.

Agoo, oh, the man is thinking, I wish the scissors could fly back to the woman´s hand  and I also wish the little comb could land back in her open palm.

Agoo, I wish everything was as it was before the quarrel which has led as far as this humiliation.

 

Crewcut  half - brain  is by no means able to recall how the whole row broke, what it was about, what was argued: Is there dust in the sea? In water? Was it Ophthalmo-Septonex or Ophthalmo-Framykoin that they couldn´t agree on, and which then rushed the scissors from the woman´s hands and led it with double-somersault into a groove between the planks of the jetty, hung the comb hanged in the hedge and pushed the woman back into the pavilion, screamed out in her and slammed the door? Howt did the man upset the woman to such an extent that she left him in that two-faced mask – from the east a young man, an old man from the west? Even if you nearly killed him he wouldn‘t remember how it started. Better to die than be that humiliated.

 

The man falls to his knees,  you think as if to say: it is horrible, it couldn‘t be worse, leave me be, I am finished, I don´t care…but to your amazement it is far from the end, on the contrary he grases something under the jetty and slides out a mirror skillfully mounted on little rails, left when he last shaved there. He examines his half-cut face closely before pressing it into the mirror, which he then places under the pier. He turns round, goes home and in the bedroom silently slips under the blanket and next to the woman, who breathes exaggeratedly loudly; he joins her in this nocturnal duel of sighs until they fall exhausted into unconsciousness.

 

In the morning they pretend nothing happened, they silently reconcile, to celebrate she changes the anti-mosquito capsule on their small device, to celebrate he runs out on the jetty, does a few exercises, sits down, and the scissors –schoops- joyfully finish his beard‘s cut.

 

Only, his honour had already  been fatally offended.