i remember the years back then when in a castle built by some demented baron we shared a room. what was then the expression that you used? we talked for the whole evening. in the morning all had the wrong idea, and it was january. nobody knew what happened in that room, much less the two of us.
i wish that i could now remember the words that you used then. i just remember your offer to share a toothbrush and i remember curling under my feather bed next to you listening to your stories. you invented a lot of those didn't you? they were good stories and i have forgotten them all. that there were no actual facts or veracity somehow never bothered me. you gave me all the intimacy that i could then afford. i remember your voice, and that was all that mattered then, your voice. i listened.
i do not understand this world. i certainly did not understand the world then, and on occasions you opened up a few windows of understanding. i remember once talking with your father and how very understanding and supportive he was. it has been many many years and we have lost touch. your adventure was clearly very different from mine from the beginning, we just happen to have been born on the same day and for a few years i had fallen in love with your coffee machine. i also fell in love with the image of you then. with you, i could not have dealt you. you, not the doll, but the real flesh and bone you, would have overwhelmed me. i loved you as a little girl loves a precious doll. you were my precious doll then, and i suspect that you will remain my precious doll who on occasions opened a window of understanding into my confusion.
it would be good to talk to you one of these days, but there is no need. not long ago i read a letter that you sent me after that night in the castle, and i can only imagine that you wrote it all with sincerity. i also remember when i first read that letter that i then knew that i had not let you into any part of my world and that my sentiments were opaque and foreign to you. the clown's mask had not dropped, this clown's mask rarely drops.
it was not until yesterday that i realized that in finding you again, another circle in my life has closed. just a few weeks ago i watched a film based on the book that you gave me as a going away gift. i remember that book well, and i remember that i loved the story. perhaps, one of these days we will bump into each other at the opera. when a clown drops its mask, sometimes it finds itself at the opera.
