Les mains...
What Rodin saw, what drew my eye, are other hands that are hard to categorize but if they are anything, they are ‘air’ hands (by palmistry terms). They are long-palmed, dry to the touch, the palms are finely etched with gentle markings and lines that often intersect forming stars and crosses (they say these are lucky, I wonder if they really are). He or she with air hands has hands that are soft, almost unbelievably soft, as if they have or had never worked (yet we know this, if we know the person, that this is simply not the case, yet still…) the hand is like silk, the fingers are long (piano-fingered perhaps is the term), spatulate and long. When the hand is fisted, the hand has prominent bone and knuckle which perhaps the bearer does not like, but to the lover, this may be irresistible for it only speaks to the fineness of the hand – the delicacy of the many bones here, and god, how we long for that hand, if it has not yet, and let us assume it has not, how we long and yearn for the touch of that hand or to touch it.
I’ve been there. I know whereof I speak.
Once, I held his hand. It was like this; he let me hold his hand to read the etchings there. I was to tell him his fortune. A friend told me, whispered, “Tell him what he wants to hear.” A novice reader, I can and could only read of love – past and present in anyone’s palm, and before giving me his hand he said “Don’t tell me now, write it down and send it to me.” I know why he did this. He did this because of the third party. Because what we did was verboten. Because we wanted to touch and this was our excuse. Here we were, a chance to touch, a legitimate (well, sort of,) to touch and we did. I wanted out. I thought about it – no – agonized for days – and decided this was perhaps not the best move given prior commitments on both ends. To touch his hand would be to fall deeper than I had already. To want more than I already did. I had made up my mind until there he was, there we were, and once seated at the crowded café, he suddenly swung around an extra chair and said, “You made a promise,” and turned his hand palm upward and put it on the table, the extra chair right next to him, waiting for me. So there was no way out now. No easy social way, in any event.
So there I was. I took his hand in mine. It was, as it looked, soft and delicate. So soft. The lines, I traced them with my finger, gently ran my finger along the ridges and knew that this made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. I knew as I touched him that he felt this all over his body, just as I would feel it if he touched my palm. If he felt what I felt, and I know that he did. Or perhaps I was wrong? Was I wrong? Only he could tell me that. It didn’t seem so, but then I…
I took his hand in my own palm, with his palm facing up so that I could see it. I never let go of his hand. It rested gently in the crook of mine, and with my other hand I took notes. Of course, I could have let go of his hand to take notes, but I didn’t. I could not. It didn’t seem right. I wanted to hold it. I didn’t want to let go. I held onto his hand, tracing the lines, trying hard to make sense of the lines, for a full-hour. Beneath the table, our knees, thighs, gently rested each against the other and neither of us made any attempt to move. We simply stayed like this, bits of us touching. So was I wrong? Did he…? Was I? Did I have it all wrong? Maybe I… But then….
I did write up his reading. It was 99% accurate he told me later. I was not surprised at all. I’ve always been good at readings. It runs in the family. We’re all gypsies of some kind, turning over tea-cups, reading tea-leaves, reading-palms and tarot cards, always some prescience, prescient dreams – always too true, sometimes good, sometimes bad.
Somehow, hands featured a lot in our notes - our affair, as it was. We sent pictures, We made comments. We sent songs. We noticed and we said and noted that we noticed. I told him, “I like your hands.” I taught him the French word, “les mains” and I let it roll off my tongue and heard him say it through a telephone wire as I rode in the back of a taxi and laughed half with joy and half with desire. I just wanted to be with him.
And I was. By some miracle I was. We were alone. We were alone and it was cool and we had been close all that morning and so as we made our way down the broad avenue, I took his arm, and he, he took my hand. Did you hear: he took my hand. This after I had sent him a photo of Rodin’s lovers hands – ‘les mains de mon amante’ – he knew what he was doing. He didn’t just hold my hand. He held my hand. He held tight. We made love with our hands. He squeezed his fingers between mine, he let his tips touch my tips, he squeezed for reassurance and when we had to let go, we took each other’s hand again because we could not let go. Wherever we went that day, we instinctively reached for the others hand. It was not enough. We met the next day, and as I write, I think it was more than anything just to touch again. Just to have that contact – a meeting of skin. Had we had our druthers (but then I… as he wrote on a postcard once, “I thought I understood about the hands, but then I… Did I….I thought I did, but…”) So you see, you can never be really sure, can you. And just when you think you are sure, you are not sure.
He did take my hand again. He took it and I believe – believe – he wanted more. I wanted more. But that’s for somewhere else – another time perhaps I’ll tell that story, or maybe not. But then, that day, we ran across the street our hands, fingers linked, laced. We looked like a still from a film as we ran, ducking through the drizzle and the grey day, as we held hands and said a long, awful goodbye at a taxi stand. How many times did we let go, pick up hands again? Many. I could not let go. Maybe he could not? That’s his story. We kissed, but not how we ….(or was I alone in that?). Almost. Close. His mouth gracing the side of my lips but not quite. An almost kiss, and then I was whisked away, a blur lost to the traffic and it blurred more as the alligator tears fell from my eyes blurring the East River. We had come so close. We had been so close. We were a heartbeat away, then I was so far away, moving faster and faster and I knew then that we would never have this chance again. Maybe never. Not for a long time anyway.
His hands. I have photographs of them before I held them. I have photographs since. I do not have photographs of when. Of then. I never did document that time, despite my natural inclination. It is as if that time never happened, which is appropriate for what occurred then, or what could occur and still might for who knows. Where there is desire, but life is complicated for both, and perhaps that is a reason for, or is it a reason against? He tells me he is afraid, but does not say of what. He does not hold my hand when he says this because he barely says it through a crackling wire. His hands, that brief time then, what did it mean? Anything? Surely we do not just go about holding hands with people. This I know, certainly not under the circumstances, and not the way we did. Not the way we did. But where does it leave us if he is afraid? It leaves me alone, that is certain. It leaves me alone with no more than a postcard that reads, “Did I understand about the hands, I thought I did, but then I…” and then my reply, to which I answered, “Absolutely, resolutely…”
It leaves me with a photograph of Rodin’s Les mains de mon amante tucked away with the postcard, a duplicate of which I put into a beautiful card the other day, with no note – for what could I say? – there is nothing left but an ellipsis left where he left off, he left me with dead air. He left me with my hand extended and no hand to pull me back up and so then I am free-falling. So I put the photo in the card, in the envelop and I posted both with no note. None required. He can or did make of it what he will. I could take a guess, but I prefer not to guess anymore. I do understand Rodin. I do understand the power of a lover’s hands. I understand far too well how easily we trip, we stumble, we fall on our face,. butter-side down in love over the smallest of things and what we need to get back up is a hand. It’s strange, in dreams, before that day, and after, after until he suddenly grew afraid and cold, he was my savior – I would run, run, run, chased by something, who knows what, but always he was there at the end; I would see nothing but an arm extended and when pulled to safety it was to him that I was pulled and I found him. Once there, once in the same place as he (in the dream), I would always sit with him, take his hands, flip both over and read the fine markings there, tracing the lines, so, so, so soft. I know this meant something. I’m certain it does. Jung says this means passion. It means yearning. Something along those lines. I cannot remember exactly, but I did look it up. I remember thinking, He’s right.
I can tell you, I don’t see those hands anymore. They do not rescue me. I have not seem them in dreams or at all. I could miss them if I allow myself to think about it. I could write poems about them as I have, but I choose not to. Life is, after all, love is, a choice. Desire is not a choice. I can do nothing about my desire, but what I can do is close the door on it. I don’t want to. It hurts too much, but I take this hand, remarkably similar to his own hand – pale and spatulate and fine-boned and with fine-etchings and I divine both of our future and in it what I see is this – That his hand is no more than just that – someone’s hand. Les mains. Not Rodin’s … les mains… How we romanticize. How stupid of me to be a poet. How utterly stupid to drop my guard with someone I had not known for so long. Rarely do I drop my guard, but this once I did, and this time, it was a hand of a would-be, perhaps lover that took his hand an plunged a knife straight into my back, another through the heart for good measure.
So then, I give up. You win. Is this what you really wanted - for me to quit, or was this a test of my love? You slap too hard, dear, and I’m too old for such games. Most of us are, and besides all of this, it’s stupid anyway.
Whether he meant to or not is neither here nor there. This is what he accomplished. His hands slapped me with his nonsensical words, his renege of all that happened (as if it had meant nothing, But then I… to quote him…). He left me red-faced and raw from those slaps… Such things his hands are capable of. How well I have learned my lesson.
