Brown Scarf Blues by Mois Benarroch Page B

every day and he would look at me, I couldn’t quite understand what he saw in my broken, shattered body, but I was sure he was looking. I used to ride the 28 bus that ran between the two Hebrew University campuses, the one at Givat Ram and the one on Mount Scopus, almost always with a friend. I was afraid to walk alone, though I was used to my crutches and almost never fell. At one point, instead of playing coy I started looking back at him, and there were even times when I would sit directly behind or in front of him. I think that made him nervous. But he kept looking at me. Then one day I learned that his name was Charly, someone said “Hello, Charly” at the station. He just said “Hello” and did not chat with the other student at all. To me, he looked like someone in a post-traumatic state after a severe shock. Maybe an accident, I couldn’t hide my trauma, it showed, but his seemed much deeper and sadder. There was never a sadder teenager. Maybe I used to come off that way, but by then I had started laughing again, and though I found it hard to accept my broken, shattered body, I now tolerated it. And I had no shortage of lovers or suitors, because I laughed and, of course, I was young. I’m not clear what happened next but I think at some point we began talking, what makes me nuts is I’m not sure if it was him or another guy who looked like him, we began talking and suddenly he opened up, started telling me about his childhood in Morocco, we started talking on the bus around 2 p.m. and we stayed together until the middle of the night, usually he got out at Ramat Eshkol, a good neighborhood back then, about five stops from the dorm, but he didn’t get out that time and we wound up in my room, we both did that naturally, he asked if I found it hard to walk with the crutches, and if I needed help, a question I hated but coming from his mouth it seemed very sweet, and then we reached the room and, being young and without giving it much thought, we made love, and then I called him Charly and told him my name, he asked how I knew his name and then I kissed him on the mouth, his saliva tasted very sweet to me, to the point where it crossed my mind he might have diabetes and maybe that was a symptom, I don’t know why or if that had something to do with it, but I’ve never tasted such sweet saliva again in my life, he kissed badly, like someone with a cold, because I think he had a breathing problem, we made love, he didn’t say anything about my leg though he did stroke my stump very delicately, it was the first time I liked that, and afterwards it was something I asked for from all the men I made love with, they won’t all do it, most get scared. The first time was short and quick, or that’s how I remember it, then in the evening we made love again, in between he talked to me about his childhood, about the shock of arriving in Israel when he was fifteen, and especially he spoke about poetry, he said he wanted to be a writer and write novels but he spoke only of poetry. He told me about an American poet I’d never heard of called Mark Strand, I later read his poetry and liked it, I think I must have been one of his first readers, or one of his first readers outside the U.S. anyway, because he had only published a couple of books. I don’t read much poetry but I think he’s now a famous, well-regarded poet. Around four o’clock I fell asleep and I heard him open the door and leave. I said nothing. We never saw each other again. That’s how it had to end, we didn’t exchange addresses or phone numbers or anything. It took him so long to connect with me and I left less than a week after that encounter, and maybe the encounter even happened because I was leaving and sometimes two hearts must find each other in this world to exchange something, later I saw he had become a famous poet and I remembered him when I saw his photo, or was it someone else? Honestly, I’m not sure it was him. I think it’s awful