“In history as in human life, regret does not bring back a lost moment and a thousand years will not recover something lost in a single hour.”

An empty bottle of beer, an empty glass (or a candle that has burnt to the end), an (empty?) box of matches, a few coins, and an unlit lamp rests on the nightstand. There is something else, too – a crinkled sheet of paper or an abandoned napkin, forgotten after last night’s dinner of roast beef and ginger pudding. The nightstand is covered with a white tablecloth on which, 759 nights ago, Charlotte had embroidered flowers usually found in the south of France: wood violet and red poppies. The nightstand has a small cupboard, or a cabinet. Stefan usually keeps some of his papers, a few pens, a copy of Canterbury Tales, and a few barbiturates in it. The cabinet, like the heart, is just a little open. Is it possible to know the fate of a person just by looking at his nightstand? 

Look at this picture in black and white. Look at it well. It’s crazy, it looks like Adolf and Eva on a death bed, probably this minimalist mustache fashion, and that mouth wide open as if it were haranguing the crowd. Like the gaping and monstrous mouth of Bacon’s Innocent… Except that this man, except that this couple was anything but Nazi. They died not of old age, but of fear.

Look at their hands. All the tenderness of the world is in this touch, caressing hands that still embrace each other after death. Of this amorous couple, I only remember this detail when I close my eyes. And her head, too, laid gently on his shoulder. An intimacy. A warmth, in these already cold bodies.

…


M & Mrs Hyde are the two tantric and trashy sides of a forgotten soul, with frequent Jungian mood, tiny red spot obsession, Bombay Sapphire passion, frequent insomnia, recurrent headaches, taste for Darjeeling, and fascination for words. Always travelling from East to West, and inversely.