This story is almost 30 years old now. I’ve tweaked it over the years but it was essentially written in 1992. While not a great story, what I like about it is that back in the early nineties I was trying to imagine virtual living, a world of physical detachment and informed less by reality than by a world as we might choose to create it in our minds and on our screens. It’s called:
Arabeth and Rupert
She was larger than most people would choose. But I liked that back then. I’ve always felt comfortable with that sort of woman. It wasn’t based on anything that’s true, but what is? To me, a larger woman suggested something of comfort. I suppose I was projecting a matronly nurturer onto her. But that was at the first. I changed her many times after that.
I never did get her hair in a style I liked. It went through all the colours, was short and long, curled and straight, marcelled, bobbed, waved, and so on. It changed weekly.
It was her eyes and mouth that never changed. Her lips always had the slightly askew smile, even when she was angry or unhappy. And the eyes never lost their dusky quality. Even today, I believe they are the same, though it’s been a year and a half since we last met. Her hair still changes every week, I hope, though there are weeks when I do not think of her nor she of me.
We went to so many places together that I confuse them. I can’t remember where we first met. It may have been that Scottish university. May have. I can’t be sure. But I think it’s possible because it’s where she repeatedly leads me, though we no longer have encounters there. Or anywhere.
It was at that university that we named her. We were chatting and had somehow moved onto the business of names. We decided those we had were dull and too easily recognized by others. We didn’t like the idea of “handles”, but it seemed necessary. Ours was to be a secret love, the best sort. Love thrives in shadows, with hints and suggestions, always enticing, never fully known or owned.
I named her Arabeth. I’m not sure why. It seemed like one I had made up from the parts of other names, but it’s not. It’s a real name, Hebrew I think. I must have heard it somewhere. All I really knew about the name is that I liked it.
She called me Rupert, after the British bear we discovered we had in common. We found that as children we had both loved him. Others had their Winnie the Pooh, but we had Rupert and his scarf and Arabeth chose to name me after him. It may sound strange, but I was very proud of that name and of the fact that it was Arabeth who had chosen to give it to me.
Named, and thus unknown, we were free to travel anywhere — and we travelled just about everywhere. The world’s museums, universities, galleries, restaurants…we did them all.
We would often make dates to meet at a particular place in a particular part of the world to have dinner together. Both of us had clocks set to Greenwich mean, so we would know exactly when to meet. It was a bit of trouble, but it was also a peculiar kind of fun. We alternated, because of our true places in real time. If I was to eat at midnight and she was to join me, it would be the early morning hours for her, a time when wine doesn’t sit as easily as at supper hours. Or if we had arranged it so she could dine in the dimming evening, it would be just past mid-morning for me. But we made it work because we wanted to be together.
When the hour was awkward for me, I would shut all the drapes and blinds in the room. I even went out and got heavy, maroon curtains for my windows, dark and impenetrable, more appropriate to the early 19th century than today. In the dark, I would light candles and create an evening I could sit within and join her over whatever foods and wines we had chosen for that particular day.
We dined everywhere. On the Thames. At the opera in Rome. Once, we went to Disneyland (though Arabeth seemed to like that more than I did).
At work, I was often teased about having a “secret love”. It seemed to bother some friends once they found out they couldn’t meet Arabeth. They always got puzzled expressions when I would tell them she couldn’t make it; she was out of the country. Once, someone asked, “Is she ever in the country?”
“Oh, yes,” I told him. “Only a few weeks ago we were at the National Gallery in Ottawa.”
“When did you go there? I don’t remember hearing about you leaving town.”
I shrugged, convinced they wouldn’t have understood. Besides, it was a secret love. I didn’t enjoy speaking about it.
Throughout the relationship, I continually changed her appearance. I heightened her cheekbones; I lowered them. I darkened her skin and lightened it. In one month she went from being a rather healthy Nordic blonde to a undefined mulatto to a cheerful African black to a reserved Asian woman, possibly of Korean extraction. Throughout all the changes, the smile remained, as did the eyes. Today, they are all that remain. And the name: Arabeth.
I was the one who ended it, though I hadn’t intended to. Having constantly altered the image I made for her, it one day occurred to me that we should exchange true images. Why not see who Arabeth was? Why not let her see Rupert?
The mistake was in failing to understand the nature of a secret love. It flourishes in concealment. Like a mystery, once known it is over.
I didn’t understand this immediately. I only knew that I could no longer alter the image I had of her. The true image was before me: a woman, like any woman, neither unsightly nor striking. Just a woman. It was impossible to attach the name Arabeth to the image. I know now that it was impossible because the true image was of another woman, not Arabeth.
Arabeth existed elsewhere, in lands of axon roads and dendrite paths, bytes and microfibers. Or perhaps she didn’t exist anywhere. Perhaps I had killed her, as I had Rupert.
I did not hear from her again. Once my true image had been sent, she was gone. After a while, I realized she had been drawing and redrawing me, as Rupert, just as I had her, as Arabeth. The true pictures had had the effect of rigor mortis on the secretive lovers we had been. Fluidity was lost. Imagination was lost. Arabeth and Rupert were not to be found.
I think she hates me for it, too. I still move about the world with the ease of before, though not with the passion or desire. But I move. And I am constantly coming across footprints left by Arabeth, though I can never trace them.
I believe she leaves them to punish me. They are her way of saying, “See what you’ve done? You’ve exposed us to light, and we’ve vanished into it. Our love was never meant to be seen or consummated. There is nothing special about us now.”
She is right. There is nothing special about us. That may be why all secret loves end. None of us is special. We can only pretend we are, and only for a time.
January 1992