The whole plaza seems to be made of marble. The ground is tiled with marble, the same marble that the building that surrounds two sides is made of. And the huge, quaint library seems to be made, at least in part, of the same thing. Its windows are supposedly made of mica so that enough light gets in but you can't see the interior from the outside. And the fourth side is just the road that passes by.
When I stand in the middle of the plaza I usually feel differently depending on where I am facing and when I am there. Usually there are lots of students streaming through. The building that takes up two sides has the dining hall for the first year students. If I am facing that building I can see the memorial to the fallen soldiers from this university who sacrificed their lives during the first World War. And a day like today, when it is very cold, a Sunday when most students are studying in the plethora of locales for the studious minds here, I find myself alone. Facing this building that also holds many concerts, I feel awed.
Or I should.
But I am distracted. In the center, where I am standing, is a semicircular bench, also made of marble, but the actual seat is made of a black marble, unlike the ivory type that engulfs you when you are here. It's winter so I imagine the bench is extremely cold, given, especially, that yesterday was the coldest day this year. But in my mind I remember a warmer day. It was a warmer evening, actually. It was summer, nearly two years ago. And there were people, and it wasn't quiet. There was music and these people, all of whom I knew, were dancing under the stars, in front of the huge stone tributes to the fallen whose names none of us would recognize, and that most of us didn't care. It was in this somber setting that lively music, music of love and disappointment, music of simplified courtship, was playing while the people, we, were dancing a dance of simplified courtship, pretend courtship. The dance of tango. The one where you improvise to the music and to your own brew of seduction, for a few minutes. And while couples were in their embraces, trying to figure out how to connect to the dance and to each other, and while some others were just sitting down, watching, two people were sitting somewhere else, not at the bench, but still facing the circle of people dancing. They were sitting on these steps that form small concentric circles in which the center was an obelisk, probably also a tribute to the fallen. The steps are of the same ivory marble, while the obelisk is of metal cast in the same traditional manner compatible with the rest of the surroundings, in stark contrast to the sculpture on the other side of the inner circle, behind the dancers, which was a huge, modernist jumble of iron painted in red. I was standing by that red jumble of modernism whose abstract meaning always eluded me, but I was standing by that that sculpture, observing the two sitting on the steps of conservative ideas directly across from me.
They weren't looking at each other; they were looking at the dancers, but surely, they were just blankly staring. They were having a conversation, but with them, I can never be sure what their real emotions were. He was always stoic when talking to her ever since their overdramatic breakup more than a year ago. He was still suffering, from what I have gathered over the times. But you couldn't see any sign of suffering on his face that night if you were seeking the familiar demeanor of a suffering man. He wasn't smiling, that was for sure. She wasn't smiling either, but she maintained her cool demeanor. She had an airiness not only in her facial expression but also in her gestures, in her posture, and, if she were walking, in her gait. She was very thin but not sickly so, and most men who pass by her turn to look at her once more, affected not so much by a raw beauty but rather more by this airiness, this dame-like confidence, in her movements, in the way she absorbed her surroundings. He, on the other hand, betrayed nothing, neither incompetence and ignorance nor mastery and understanding of his surroundings. And when I saw them sitting together, with a distance large enough to reflect a cooled relationship, I couldn't help noticing how different they were and wondered how they could have been together for more than a year. His lips moved to utter his words, but his facial muscles, like the muscles of his limbs and torso, didn't move at all. I wondered if he was even breathing. He never took his eyes off the dancers, didn't attempt to look at her, even to turn his body towards her. They have established an equilibrium where they didn't have to feel rude to each other but not any closer than whatever wall was standing between them.
She was much more gesticulating. Though her facial expression didn't tell me what they could have been talking about, it was animate. Her right hand was holding her keychain, and she was, from time to time, twirling it. The other arm she would from time to time move to a different position. And she would change the weight from one bent knee to another. At some point she rested her chin on her arms, which were crossed over her bent knees, as she listened to what he was saying. Or I assumed she was listening. But like him, she kept her eyes on the dancers. And like him, I would guess, she wasn't really paying attention to the dance.
The dance was what brought them together the first place. More than two years ago when she started it and he was happy to teach her, help her, and by doing so establishing a relationship with her that would raise edifices of hopes over that year. And now those edifices have crumbled on their own weights over the basis of the simplified, pretend love of tango, a music that professes its own cruelty just because that was how love was, especially when simplified, diluted, and abstracted from reality. And if I were them, either one of them, especially her, as I watched the dancers, I surely hope none of them would try to build similar edifices over such delusional feelings from a music that's as beautiful and cruel as any man would find the most elusive and beautiful woman. Every song that was being played that moment expressed this cruelty, as if responding to the words they probably weren't expressing to each other, for those words represented sentiments long lost, long buried, but, at least to him, unforgotten. It was the sentiment buried with those words that fixed his face, his body, like formaldehyde on a dead soul in a jar.
His eyes didn't see her, but he could smell her. It must have been painfully familiar even a year later. He could hear her voice, which also carried that airiness, the charm in her whole body, and that must have stung him ever more, brewing ever greater anger and frustration that was the formaldehyde.
I finally walked over, with a smile, pretending that I wasn't affected by the tension so obviously engulfing them as if they were sitting in molasses. I greeted her, although we were more than just friends. And I asked if she wanted to dance.
Yes, she and I also met in the music that had hurt him.
He didn't look at me. His pause in speaking was the only acknowledgment that I had presented myself, but his muscles, now including the lips, remained stiff. Until, of course, when I invited her to dance. He shook his head, slightly but noticeably, while she explained to me why she couldn't dance with those shoes she had on. I accepted her rejection gracefully, but my heart was pounding because of him. I was, in retrospect, afraid of him, afraid of the effect of my presence on him. I excused myself, but was so nervous that I don't think I remembered to excuse myself to him.
I'd later find out from her what they were talking about. She and I would talk more about him. But now, being in the same place, this same, haughty plaza of conservatism punctured only by this red jumble to my right, I recall that summer night. I recall the music, the lyrics, the couples dancing, and how all that seemed centered around these two estranged human beings sitting on the steps to commemorate the dead who have suffered infinitely greater anguish and whose loved ones suffered in equal measure.
The chilly wind picks up a bit, though here, protected in three sides by ominous structures, such wind is uncommon. I am going to leave this place, leave the memories, for now. Leave the couples dancing but would separate as soon as the music stopped. The dancers would regroup into different couples, just as I had regrouped with her at some point, after which I would suffer the same fate he did. Except that she and I would not have the same piece of memory as he did with her, sitting there, stoically, among the spirits that we refuse to forget, even when we want to.
