Love letter
Maria is not easily surprised. She is a fifty-year-old woman who lives alone with her cat. Her father died very young and her mother only a few years ago. Maria works as a secretary in a small private company. More precisely, she is a hygienist and a maid: her primary assignment is making coffee for the boss and the guests. She has no children of her own: her mother was very possessive and jealous of anyone who tried to get close to her. Kind of like Jelinek’s (and Haneke’s) piano teacher, only without any music. However, women were never interested in Maria, and men quickly lost interest as well: she was scared, without even a shadow of a smile on her face, full of mistrust and specters, quickly entering into conflict with anyone who in one way or another would try to approach her.
That is why one day she was very surprised when she came home to find a yellow envelope waiting for her on the doorstep. She picked it up from the floor, she opened it, and felt the softness of the hand-made paper caress her fingertips. She entered the house and, without taking her bag off her shoulder, sat down on the armchair in the living room, unfolded the piece of paper and began to read.
“Dear Maria,
I suppose you’ll find this strange, suspicious, sneaky or God knows what. But it doesn’t matter. What matters most is what I feel. (And here I remember this writer, this Bufalino guy: “I love her: but what does she have to do with it?”) So yes, what I feel is important, because what I feel is what defines me. And I feel gratitude towards you. And it’s not easy when I think of your behavior, but I’m curious, you know, and I don’t take things for granted. I am curious about your situation and I think I understand your sadness and your pain. It is not easy to sympathize with you: there is so much irrational anger and pain in you, and it would certainly be harmful for me to sympathize with it. What I sympathize with when I see you is the drop of light in you, the undeniable drop of the natural flow of things. That’s what I drink when I see you. Because I’ve seen you smile, and now I will just keep on trying, despite all the irrational anger and rage you carry inside. You know yourself how senseless and absurd your anger is. We’ve even talked about it; you’ve thought about it. I lent you poetry books to read, we exchanged opinions. You even showed me your own poems, and I read them and, to be honest, when I compare them with the scribblings of some of our contemporary poets, some of them my friends… That’s where I want to go. And if you don’t want to take me there, fine. No pressure. I will be patient; I will always be understanding. Your wounds are old and deep, and that should be respected. However, I will never stop believing in you. I will cultivate my calmness and my curiosity, my understanding and my kindness towards you. Grace is power. And because I know the meaning of love, I do have love for you…”
Maria read the letter with mild anxiety, but here she suddenly stopped. She was confused: the neighbor was sending her a love letter? With love for her? How could that be? After all the terrible things he had said and done to her. How could he talk about love now? Also, what about this: “I don’t care how you feel, what’s important is what I feel”. WOW! I, I, I! How appropriate! And what about my feelings, you prick? Get lost!
Slowly she calmed down and returned to the letter.
“…And it fills me with joy knowing that you too are a spark from the great fire from which we all come, to which we all return, as that sweet sweet creature, Gloria Anzaldúa, says.”
Maria hurled abruptly the piece of handmade paper, with cotton and herb petals in shades of pink and light green, and then stood up, grabbed a thick wooden slat that stood by the armchair and slammed three times fiercely on the ceiling – BAM. BAM. BAM. The ceiling in her kitchen was full of marks from those blows. “A spark from the great fire?!” he shouted quietly, suffocating her voice. “May fire burn you.” You fucking idiot.”
She threw the staff to the floor and sat back in the chair. She let out a deep breath and looked at the letter. “How can he not be ashamed?” she thought, but the letter was turned cheekily towards her. Letters don’t blush. Maria picked it up and read on.
“You are a cross to bear…”
“No, you’re a cross to bear, you little piece of shit!” she said aloud now, and hurled the letter again. She raised her hands (“What is this?!”), shook her head from side to side, and after a few seconds raised her eyebrows and exhaled. Then she bent down again and picked up the letter from the ground.
“…Except when we have parties up on the roof: the police know me, they know you, and they don’t take you seriously, so we’re fine up there. I should be grateful to you for that, in a way. I should also thank you for your efforts to teach me patience. And love for ‘the enemies’. Because there is no such thing as enemies: there are only wounded people who live in delusion and mislead others. But you have taught me the disarming power of love. Of my love. It worked for us once, with these books, I can’t wait for it to work for us again. I have other books; they are waiting for you on the grey cupboard in my living room. It’s unbelievable: I am here to serve you, whatever you might need, if you happen to need anything at all. And that principle of mine gives me so much confidence. Because I mean it. And it remains inspiring to think of you sitting around the table with us on the roof terrace. It is something to aspire to, it is a feeling to empathize with. A feeling that carries a story with it when I empathize with it. In fact, your whole appearance carries a story and helps me to represent and celebrate the natural flow of things. And that makes me grateful. And humble. See, what a perversion: I look forward to your future curses: it’s as if that is the mud that I need to try to make gold out of it. Gold for me, at least; for me, for sure.
Yours sincerely, the neighbor from above”
Maria read the letter and put it down on the table. She didn’t know what to think. This person must have serious mental issues. After all, who would write such a letter after behaving as violently as he did six months ago, when the salad incident happened? His words from that day still echoed in her head.
“How can you be so miserable?” he said, standing outside her apartment door with a bowl of salad in his hands. “How can it be a problem for you that I do my fucking salad at home?! How dare you bang on the ceiling? Why?! I’m making a salad, not noise, okay?! All I do is live here, in my flat, I just try to live life, as a normal person, as something that you – ARE NOT! Why do I have to suffer your misery, your terrible lack of human feeling and empathy?”
Maria remembers. She just stood there, unable to utter a word. But he didn’t stop.
“I don’t have a problem: you have a problem with me. I just exist here in my flat, and I love life, it’s nice, I love friends. But you are pure misery and you only find meaning in making other people’s lives miserable. I hate you. You’re a curse, a cockroach that just won’t go away. I live in this flat, yes, it’s true, and when I first met you and your mother, she told me: ‘The shirt is the closest thing to a person, and the second closest thing is the neighbor. So what? So fucking what, for fuck’s sake?! Fuck fuck fuck!”
Now she sat by his letter and remembered the terrible things he had said. She felt hurt again. Why did she have to bring up her mother that day? Her mother had not had an easy life: can’t people at least let her rest in peace? But now, reading this letter, Maria also remembered the last words he had said to her, after he had so rudely insulted her. “God damn it…” he said. “All this anger I feel… it’s so exhausting, so sad, and so… miserable.”
Maria almost felt sorry for him. She remembered last spring and the coffee they had had on the terrace. They sat and talked. It was midday, the sun was shining, the wind carried the scent of jasmine from somewhere. For a moment, life looked like a detergent advert. They were almost friends. She remembered him that day: he seemed to try to make things right between them, but she knows he was trying to manipulate her. Exactly like now with this letter. “Love”. No, no one can manipulate her. And she certainly cannot be manipulated by a thirty-six-year-old petty “writer”. Well, most of the time he’s quiet, but… but when he makes some noise, well… man, it pierces her ears, and somehow this noise stays in her head, and it doesn’t stop. It is impossible. This writer eventually leaves the apartment at one point after making the noise, but the noise stays with her, tormenting her for hours and hours.
Maria took one last look at the letter. She could already feel the wrath following the next noise her neighbor will make. What will it be? Winter is coming. Will he drop a log on the parquet? Or will he make “salad” again?
The auto-fiction short story “Love letter” was written at the pilot workshop on creative writing (short story of auto-fiction) “On the natural flow of things”, which took place in the second half of 2023. The short story was written by Živko Grozdanoski, author of the workshop and one of the three participants in the first edition. “Love letter” was written along with the writing of the short stories “The Weekend” and “Tiles”, by Lаetty and Anna, the two “co-travellers” in the workshop and it was translated into English by its author and with the help of the web-service Deepl.com.