Silently Goes The Night-Tano Katusha
Silently Goes the Night
By Tano Katusha
She was new, spoke in a soft monotone, and rolled her own cigarettes. All of us there smoked too, all of us had similar addictions, all of us had that same bug crawling through our skin, and all of us had the same cancer tearing through our veins. We were all victims of the liquid, were all fiends now for smokes and caffeine, the only drugs that we were now allowed to take. We were all chain smokers. We all tore open our packs as soon as the meetings began, but she, she was the only one who rolled her own, and for some reason, for some reason this minor peculiarity fascinated me from the moment she entered the room.
From the first time she came in I started to stare at her as she’d do those whatever-motions with her hands, fixing up smoke after smoke, and I’d look on as her fair and thinly tanned, almost bronzed hands intricately twisted up each hand-rolled little beauty. I wanted to ask her for one but we never sat close enough to one another, we never got close enough to really connect. And as she raised each one of those cigarette to her mouth my want to get closer only grew. I yearned to sit there next to her so as to get a whiff of the whatever perfume she was wearing; I desired a taste, a small sample of the area in which she occupied, I wanted a small something of this woman in my nostrils, a piece of her to inhale that would absorb its way into my lungs, a piece that I’d be able to keep within me as our time dragged on in the large, smoke-filled room together.
I don’t think that anyone else noticed her little habits; everyone else in the room seemed to be too involved in their own sob stories, their own coffee drinking, their own chain smoking, they were all too occupied by their own nonsense chatter and personal games of making the minutes pass bye as easily and comfortably as they could and it really appeared as though she was going about it all unnoticed. She’d roll, she’d smoke, and she’d get up to refill her paper coffee cup, sit back down, and no one looked as though they noticed. I felt as though I was the only man that was witnessing this woman. And I couldn’t understand how no one else was amazed by her. It felt as though I was the only one who saw her. I felt as though if I wasn’t there she wouldn’t exist. I’d watch every move she made and from my position in the room I could watch her without being noticed. I could look into her eyes without making eye contact and I could speak without her seeing the exact motion of my lips. I sat across and aside from her in the circle and I knew that she couldn’t see me directly, my profile the only part of my face she could make out. I was embarrassed by her and I didn’t dare approach or get close to her.
And as I sat there I timed her and every twenty minutes or so she’d dip into that tiny blue pouch with those strange and foreign letters on it that she kept in her pocketbook, the pouch that was stuffed with the shredded remains of so many dried tobacco leaves, and with her fingers she’d retrieve a full pinch of stringy brown soon-to-be-smoked tobacco and go about doing what it was that was so captivating to me. She’d hold it there between her fingers and I’d watch from the corner of my eye as she’d tear a piece of rolling paper from the small little book that she kept in the front pocket of her jeans. I could never manage to hand roll, I hadn’t the dexterity or the patience. I always found that people who rolled their own smokes had more to say about the quality of tobacco and the quality of things in general, they were people who savored things. I found that people who did things like rolled their own smokes were also a little classier than your average smoker, and weren’t satisfied settling for the smokes that were sold at bodegas, in supermarkets, and at the lotto stores.
I started to believe that she was of a higher breed than I. It was about her face and in her demeanor. She wasn’t like the rest of us. She must be here because of some mistake I thought, just some bad period in her life. She couldn’t be like us. That wasn’t possible. People like us were at the bottom and people like us smoked the cheapest brand of cigarettes you could buy. We didn’t care about quality, we just needed the nicotine. We just needed our lungs to be filled with something because that was all that was left for us, the only addiction that we could still afford.
This woman was unattainably beautiful, had dangly black hair that crawled its way along her shoulders and it looked as though she never combed it for it was wild, savage, the locks the color of raven hard midnight and they surrounded her face and made her appear as though she was the painted virgin herself or a sculpted something, a piece of ancient Grecian sculpture, a thing grand and untouchable. I hadn’t fascinating hair or magnificent features. My hair was brown and simple, unnoticeable, unremarkable and my body was pedestrian in appearance. I was short, a man like any other. But she, she was tall, much taller than me and had large nebulous green eyes that seemed to never close; her eyes like those of a cat’s, open always, forever scanning the surrounding environment and stoic, so stoic that they revealed nothing other than confidence. They were eerily calm those eyes and they made you wonder what they hell she was feeling, thinking, going through, mulling over in her mind. My eyes weren’t windows to anything greater. My eyes were pale blue and said little. I had a common face too, a common build, and there was nothing special about me that would make a woman stop and stare, let alone this woman. But I was fixed on her from the moment she arrived at the meeting. She was all that I imagined tragic beauty to be. Her lips were full and spoke of centuries, her breasts not too large, and her frame regal, looking as though she was put together by the hands of a team of gods, each piece of her elegant, screaming with humbly lovely accents of what a woman should be.
And as the time and the meetings past I’d do the usual and listen to the stories the others told; I’d smoke like all the rest, I’d drink the cups of burnt coffee too but for some reason, for some reason I needed to look over at her, she was like some calming beacon on these strange shores of ours; she was an oddity to me, something that needed to be studied, and when she went through her rituals that made her more than just a nametag, those rituals that made her more than just another body, I’d wonder where she came from, what it was exactly that she was truly thinking about.
She’d talk like the all the rest of us but I could tell that she was leaving things out, that she was hiding something, but I couldn’t tell what, I couldn’t tell what greater pain she was holding onto within, or if there even was one. She seemed misplaced, more unlike us than anyone else I’ve ever seen before. I wanted to talk to this majestic after the meetings but I was never any good with people one-to-one so I just sat there on the other side of the room, from my far off position in the circle, and watched her, watched and waited for the right words to come out so then maybe I’d have something to relate to her about, something that I could use to say anything to her. But she never revealed too much, let alone enough to start a common conversation.
It was hard to hear her at times because she sat by the window, on the farthest side of the circle, and the outside traffic, the horns, the screaming, the laughter, the sirens would occasionally interrupt her and you’d have to listen hard but it was worth it, worth the labor to hear her voice. And I’d listen intently when she spoke. It was unimaginable to me to deny her voice, it was impossible to deny the visage of this someone who was surely here for someone else and not here for her own addictions.
She only spoke of family and the lack thereof, superficial topics too, but she spoke of missed connections as well and the damage that this bug creates. It was hard to gauge whether or not she was as ill as us or one of the people that so many of us have wronged in our lives, one of the innocents, one of the bystanders like so many wives, sisters, mothers, and nieces that have been hurt along the way.
I was captivated by the way she spoke. She had a perfect cadence in her voice, an authority that made you feel inadequate but you couldn’t turn your ears away from her when she spoke. You couldn’t shun that voice. It was smooth, constant, fluid, and it filled the room like good autumn air. Her tranquilly chosen words tumbled from her mouth like cool, dead leaves from some magnificent oak and it warmed you, comforted you. Her command of the English language was something seldom heard; she sounded like the women of old black and white movies, the kind of women who don’t exist anymore and to me her voice was that of a good mother, a woman who was woman.
The meetings were held at the First Baptist Church of Greater New York at the corner of One Hundred & Sixtieth Street & St. Nick’s. And we congregated in the basement like a pathetic herd of tired roaches and we huddled together down there, next to one another in that large open circle on those cold metal fold-out chairs, close enough to one another but far enough away so as not get too familiar with our closest other. And we were there, ashamedly, like circus animals fresh out of their cages but still too afraid to roam free. And as time pulled its way along we, each of us, stayed put in our chairs and did the usual, the routine of the meetings. We talked, we smoked, and when it was time to refill our coffee cups we’d get up nervously and pace like dreadful zombies over to the pot of scorched coffee then return to our seats tiredly. And as we gathered round, drinking that horrible coffee, smoking those cheap cigarettes, going over each miserable reason for why each of us were there, trying our best to reassure the other that it was alright, that it was all part of living, that our mistakes were forgivable but we reached no answers, only questions and regrets were born each night.
And then one evening, one night she stopped coming. After a few weeks of waiting I couldn’t do it anymore. I went home and lit a cigarette, pulled my last unopened bottle of liquor out from underneath the sink, and poured myself a large tumbler full of vodka and ice. There was nothing left to hold onto, so I sat there on my bed and thought about how it would feel to have her hair rubbing up against the side of my face and I cursed myself for never getting close enough to her to get that lung full of her scent that was probably the most exquisite aroma I’d ever inhale. I damned myself for not having the memory of what it was like that she smelled of. I only had an idea and ideas are good for nothing and silently went the night as I drank myself into a long, long slumber…the only place where she now resides.
Copyright C 2007 Tano Katusha