Her fingernails are dirty. The contrast with the otherwise polished environment of the old-fashioned restaurant makes her uncomfortable. The right hand leans on the table next to her plate, next to the knives. She hasn't touched the wine yet and she doesn't realize that her fingernails, with the brownish matter between the white part of the nail and the tender flesh of the fingertips, are making him, sitting in front of her, very uncomfortable. He points it out.

‘Your fingernails are dirty.’

‘What?’

‘You have dirt under your fingernails. It looks like you have been working in a field.’

He continues: ‘It's just inappropriate in a place like this. But also in general. It looks like you don't take care of yourself.’ And ‘You're so pretty you could make the extra effort.’

 

I will not let myself drown in your eyes for fear of wounds yet to come. Thoughts of abandonment wash over me and I savour the bittersweet taste of solitude. A black line beneath the fingernails–what remains of your skin on my hands. Blue circles beneath the eyes–what remains of the tears from the day before.

 

She looks up from her plate and into his eyes. His meanness makes her aware that she desperately wants to have sex with him. When they sleep together, she often fantasizes about a curious but lonely princess who lives isolated from the rest of the world in a gritty, humid, medieval stone castle. The story plays out in an extemporal reality set in the Northern European Middle Age. There's no electricity and everyone in this story is a little gritty. People live at the mercy of stench and dirt. Someone, residing in a castle, has quite a few luxuries though.

 

‘A princess without a castle, that's what you are.’ Her father used to tell her. In retrospect she thinks that he was talking more about himself and projecting his need for social mobility, the hunger for power, social and economic, blindly accepting symbols representing wealth and ease. What both her parents wished for was inherited wealth, not filthy new money. They always dreamed about the privilege of squandering it for meaningless stuff, about judging bad taste choices of the people around them. Independently wealthy enough to feel superior and not to care about the cost of living.

 

In one of the many bedrooms of the gloomy castle resided the young princess who had just been promised by her family to a foreign Lord. She had lived in the castle all her life, and only on some rare summer days was she allowed to ride out into the woods just outside the residence but always accompanied by a servant. The girl grew up curious about the ways of the world, because even if she hadn't seen much of it for herself, she used to sneak into the forbidden part of the library at night and read all kinds of books that spoke to her about the strange, mysterious, and at times cruel world beyond the walls. In those books she had read stories of chivalry, about men and women who had loved, hated, adored, and sometimes killed each other over misunderstandings or infinite devotion. She became very curious, and page by page discovered what romance is. She enjoyed especially those chapters when characters would be drawn apart by some unfortunate circumstance, or when two protagonists would tease and pretend to despise each other only to later reconcile – but the ultimate reconciliation, the full meaning of love, she could not quite grasp yet. And since she would be married to an older stranger soon, she began to worry about her own lack of experience in the realm of lovemaking. The books she had been reading became very unclear at times, and a great many metaphors about birds and bees and pollination were used to speak about something that seemed to be the ultimate goal of all encounters between lovers. What she enjoyed most was the moment when two characters touched skin for the first time. A glittering sensation pervaded all her body and the princess felt that she wanted more of this feeling, almost like cherry eating and not being able to stop; she would become insatiably dizzy from the promise of passion.

 

The park is sinister at night and the huge fortress that is the children's playground in her neighbourhood looms among the trees. No one plays at this time of the evening and besides squirrels and insects only lonesome dog walkers cross its cobblestoned paths. After dinner she and her boyfriend walk home and sit for a while on a bench in the darkness of the park, beneath the thick foliage of sycamore trees – just the time to give him a hand job before it starts to rain again. Her pants are wet from the humid bench when they get home.

 

On a hot August morning, the fantasy princess had entered her parents' wing of the house very early because she could not sleep and couldn't find her maid to ask for fresh towels. The door to their bedroom was wide open, and there they were, sprawled naked on the big mattress, still fast asleep. She had never seen their naked bodies before, nor for that matter any naked body – she had only seen her own in the mirror and which she had observed thoroughly when she was alone. She wasn't surprised that her mother's body resembled hers, but she was shocked to see that her father had an appendage between his legs that was much larger than a dog's but smaller than a horse's. It lay soft and harmless on his thigh and looked as if it was wrapped in a thick layer of skin. She didn't talk to anyone about this occurrence and forgot about it soon after – until the days of her encounter with her promised husband were approaching. So that is what men and women do together, she thought. They lay naked in bed next to each other and might touch occasionally. Her curiosity was strong, and the feeling that there was something more to know about being alone with the other sex in private kept nagging at her.

October was approaching and the days were gradually becoming shorter. The marriage was set for December, which was unusual, because these things usually happened in late spring – but the foreign Lord lived in a country so far away that the seasons worked differently, as her tutor had explained, and they were bound to go back to his land for their honeymoon.

One night, when a maid came into her chamber to check if there were still enough candles to light the room and firewood in the chimney to keep her warm, the princess blurted out, very impulsively and inappropriately: ‘What happens when a man lays in bed with a woman?’ The maid was only a couple of years older than her, but she had observed her talk to the butcher and to the errand boy very confidently and had a feeling she might have some experience in this department. The princess also asked her, very seriously, to be frank and direct and not to be afraid to shock her, as she was now old enough to marry. She feared the maid would laugh or mock her – but instead the maid leaned closer and whispered in a deep, husky voice that it would be best if she showed her, as she was not very good with words. She took her by the hand and brought her in front of the tall mirror.

 

When he puts his fingers into her mouth to wet them before he can slide them between her legs, she realizes that his fingernails are also dirty and reflects upon the fact that they must have been already dirty before, while they were eating.

 

The princess was wearing only a thin white nightgown with silk bows on the wide neckline. In a swift movement, the servant – now standing behind her – untied the ribbons, and the fabric fell open at the bosom. With delicate fingers she started stroking her lady's firm breasts, and her nipples hardened quickly. The feeling of this touch brought a new sensation to the younger woman's lower belly, and her cheeks flushed. ‘Let the man caress you and get to know your body,’ the older one said. She slipped her hand out from the nightgown and began caressing the princess's stomach through the thin layer of fabric. The princess could feel the other woman's body pressing into hers. Without saying anything, the maid began rubbing her most secret and intimate recesses, running her fingers up and down, up and down, lightly and repeatedly. ‘Take it off,’ she said. And the dress slipped easily onto the floor. Plump, glistening, open ripe fruit – a wave of new luxurious sensations pervaded her body and for the first time the princess felt whole. Then the other woman stopped. ‘This is what a man will do to you before he makes you his.’

 

Like dew water running down the leaves and towards the ground, along the green flesh of the plant, from the small tip of the bud to the back of my hand, tears vanish into a halo, absorbed into the fabric of time. With your tongue you dried my eyes and tasted the salt of my sea. Submerged in the midnight green of the park, we stand holding each other until it begins to rain and I remember the present.