The Promise of a Wrong Love

Or a peek into an anti-romance

Hello, Mentatrix readers! I hope your week went well, just as mine. If you’re reading this, thank you! From my previous life as a teacher, I remember how good it felt when I could get my students responding, engaging, even if only through eye contact. There’s nothing more daunting and disconcerting than talking at a wall. You being here, even if only reading without commenting or liking, is that response that pushes me to keep posting.

Today it’s one for fiction.

I realised I’ve started toying with the idea of writing a romance novel(la), and I posted the opening scene, in a very raw form, here:

Mindful Desires: Lady Chatterley's Modern Twist

But then, I like to call my novel soon to go out on Amazon, Lili Comes to Herself, an “anti-romance”. Well, among other things :).

What is an anti-romance, in my personal glossary?

A story that ticks the boxes of a romance — two protagonists engaged in some romantic affair — but the foundation for that apparently romantic engagement isn’t about romantic feelings.

So here’s an excerpt from Lili Comes to Herself that speaks about this false promise of love.

Just a reminder of who Lili is, and what this coming-of-age novel is all about:

Hope you enjoy reading this!

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Now it was almost Christmas and Vlad was frantic about getting her a Christmas tree. He also kept telling how his mother was procuring supplies for the Christmas feast judiciously, and how Dr Baci had announced they were taking a vacation, going to Geneva over New Year’s – and the kids were welcome to join, too. Dr Baci had got an invitation from an international surgeons’ club, to be held early January in Geneva.

Geneva was, to her, a place on a map that would forever stay just there, on a map.

There was no money in their household and she couldn’t picture herself there, as if an unthinkable leap into the screen, hopping into the film, would be required. But – what clothes to wear, how to move her hands, who to be? The Lili she knew was petrified in a state of inadequacy. For Geneva she would also need to have a passport and sign hundreds of application forms and written declarations that would never be approved in time – or maybe they would, for Dr Baci’s sake? She suspected the surgeon didn’t enjoy that high a privilege, after all.

Vlad mentioned the New Year’s party repeatedly, in excited anticipation, as if he could see it with his mind’s eye.

In fact, why couldn’t they go? Money wasn’t a problem, there’s enough to go round!

“And don’t you worry, Daddy’s going to see that we get the visa clearance!” he asserted with conviction, looking her straight in the eyes.

His conviction started Lili’s mind into producing occasional, but recurring pictures of themselves celebrating the New Year in a luxurious hotel in Geneva (any hotel in Geneva was bound to be luxurious). Against all odds, the year might get a cinematic end. Vlad, her treasure, her passport to a bountiful future, would make this, too, possible. Her picture-loving mind longed to return to its creative habit, but she quickly dismissed such fantasies.

She had little bandwidth for feelings and reflections.

Her day-to-day focus was just on getting through the day. Vlad stood out in that routine most, but she had mixed feelings about him. She was barely nineteen now, and being in love, perhaps even about to get engaged, including the perks of the Bacis’ generosity, their car and their mountain cottage – it all should have felt a bit more intense, she thought. A bit more like her life was live.

Nothing was live at the moment, though. It was being filtered through various gates of a mind that had crashed in the gloom of her house, the emptiness of her days, the aftermath of recent events, the obscurity of her motives in being with Vlad.

That was anything but live. It was more like karaoke. She just kept moving her lips to the text of the music, getting more familiar with it, to the point where she was tempted to believe that it was the live thing.

“See what I mean? That’s what our life would be like,” Vlad points out, arching his bushy eyebrows. His earnest face is both touching and remotely hilarious. “Forget about just Geneva – in general. Everything we have would be yours, too. My old ones love you, you’re already like a daughter to them, and of course I love you, you know that, but just so you understand, you got everything, everything’s at your feet, you only need to say the word. Dad could arrange for us to go on honeymoon somewhere nice in France, or Austria, and Mom, she’d help us too, you know, we wouldn’t be like – well, on our own, you having to do household chores, no, you’d have your classes, just like me, but we’d all be a family together—”

“So there is some room left in this fantasy for my classes, I appreciate that,” Lili counters, half teasing, half seeking reassurance.

Or maybe that’s the condition the deal hinges on. “And what if I wasn’t going to any classes? No university? What then? Would your parents still love me like a daughter?”

He stops breathing for a second and frowns in confusion.

“What do you mean, no university?”

“I don’t know, we’re just fantasising here, right?” Lili leans back, sensing a danger she hasn’t yet considered. “I’m just wondering if they’d still love me like a daughter if I failed university again – and again, who knows?”

“Of course they would, what kind of question is that? Once a family, always a family, no matter what! You could also choose another course with less admission hassle and when you graduate you could just stay home, in fact, there would be no pressure for you to earn money. You could have all the time in the world to do what you like.”

To do what she likes.

“When I graduate, Dad would be sure to get me a good post, we could move out and find a place of our own, you’d decorate it the way you want it—”

“Hold on a sec, Vlad,” Lili shakes her head. “What’s all this fantasising? All this ‘Oh we would and we could and—’”

“That’s the point, Lili.” Vlad rises on his elbow and bends over to her. They’re lying face to face on her bed, propping their heads on their hands, arms bent in triangles. “It’s not a fantasy! It’s right here, under your nose, you only have to reach out and it becomes reality, any moment! You can already get a taste of it, us, a family, our cottage in Busteni, meeting my friends. Wherever we go, you’re my precious other half, haven’t you noticed? I’d take care of you – I already take care of you, and your smile is my daily objective,” he declares.

Lili bursts out laughing and lays her head on her arm. She’s almost charmed by so much devotion, if only it didn’t ring again like her sitting on a throne high up while her loyal servants are busy fulfilling her wishes. She would have everything at her feet, he says? All that submission and being taken care of, which feels so touching, involves remoteness and solitude. Instead of having anything at her feet, she’d much rather have a man to look up at.

“A life without big worries, what’s wrong with that? Where nothing’s too bad not to be made right again, and where we all love you.”

“This whole conversation, Vlad, is so childish,” Lili shakes her head, smiling. She resents her condescending manner, but somehow Vlad wrings it out of her every so often.

“Childish?” Vlad’s eyes bulge out. “Why, because I love you and I’m putting everything I have at your feet?”

Her feet, again. Oh. “Yes, no, I know,” Lili searches for the right words but doesn’t know exactly what she’s looking for. Vlad’s persuasion is what she finds amusing. It’s almost like her pleading with Yimmi Papa for another bedtime story, throwing in for ammunition all sorts of arguments and claims, the difference being she was asking for a story back then, while Vlad here is after a marriage.