The Actress and the Writer. Part I

(Joan Miro, "Femme au Miroir" - 1957)

Nila loved the sound of his voice when he left her a message; Joseph preferred her words unspoken. She was a stage actress, by day and by night. He was a sports columnist, and poet of few themes.

“You’re overdramatic,” he whispered when they made love.
“Fuck me like you write,” she demanded, “Long and incomprehensible.”

It was through art that Joseph and Nila struggled to understand themselves and the complexity of their relationship. They were an esoteric couple; he was dangerously introspective and her moods swung like corollaries of April weather. “A couple of failed artists,” they used to joke. But in the waning months of that year she had become vaguely successful, while his sports columns were increasingly opaque and unread.

Joseph enjoyed gin and metaphysics. “The writer as the world’s failed hero” was his favourite theme, made explicit by the tattered black cape he too often wore. He spent sleepless nights on his laptop, writing sentences without endings, peeling through language toward some greater truth. Unsuccessful, he’d tiptoe from the apartment, wander to the local pub and analyze despondent men and their drinks. Nila would wake to the sound of the front door closing, feeling somehow betrayed in the hum and glow of the abandoned laptop. There were parts of Joseph that were always inaccessible, his inclinations and choice of attire dark and unpredictable. She no longer bothered to read the words on the screen.