In the foyer of a cinema a man headed to the bar and asked for a coffee. Some distance off a woman was passing the time by looking over the posters advertising upcoming films. His name was Armando, and hers Artemísia.
A second man, Arnaldo, came out of the men’s room, went up to the bar and, recognizing Armando, greeted him effusively.
Their noisy conversation caught Artemísia’s attention, and from across the foyer she recognized Arnaldo. She gave a little wave and, without further ado, went over to say hello.
After being introduced to Armando, Artemísia and Arnaldo began chatting, asking after this or that person.
When Armando started to talk about the film, Arnaldo, who had already seen it, spun about almost without saying good-by and immediately disappeared into the gathering crowd in front of the theatre’s entrance.
Artemísia and Armando were suddenly left to their own devices. At first they looked at each other without really knowing what to say or do. They’d never met before, but everything pointed to the fact that they would be seeing the film together. That Arnaldo was a mutual friend seemed good enough reason as any for not just going their own ways.
Lacking anything better to talk about, Armando suddenly said:
- You could have worn other shoes!
Artemísia hesitated for a couple of seconds, looking at him as though she’d failed to understand such sudden familiarity, but pulling herself together, though hardly masking her astonishment, she shot back with the following:
- Don’t tell me that my shoes upset you… – and then, with even less embarrassment: – Are you always so cheeky and insulting?!
- Only on special occasions, he piped back.
- You didn’t even beat around the bush…
- I like to get straight to the point…
- It’s not like you know me well enough, I mean to speak like that.
- But it’s only by speaking my mind that I’ll get to know you better.
Artemísa stood there, her arms crossed, staring straight at Armando. She argued that it wasn’t possible to know people from one minute to another, but he responded that people should save time, speed things up, cut conversational corners.
In Artemísia’s opinion, however, conversations weren’t much help because people were usually too superficial, and not very forthcoming. We can only see what someone’s really like in the day to day, in real life, in those difficult moments.
Armando thought words were essential, even when they didn’t actually portray a person accurately. That’s because you can also learn a lot through lies.
But she said that wasn’t really how it worked, that lies made people stray from their true path, and so words were a waste of time.
- But you’re working on the assumption that words are only capable of lying – said Armando.
- If they don’t lie, they’re pretty good at skirting the truth – she said.
- But words are a way for people to break the ice!
- I don’t think so. It’s eye contact that normally comes first…
- The eye has more to do with film…
- And I suppose you’ve always considered cinema to be one of life’s greatest truths?
In the meantime, they heard the chime indicating that the film was about to begin, and both of them moved toward the stairs. Armando looked for the tickets in his shirt pocket, then his pants, then once again in his shirt pocket…
As they climbed the stairs to the theatre, Armando wanted to know where Artemísia had been born, but only got an evasive answer about the film they were about to see, which made him think that it was not the best moment to take up the subject.
The important thing, now, was to not let Artemísia get away, or that she didn’t meet anyone else, which would consign him to a secondary role, leaving him alone and adrift in a dark theatre amidst the shadows of summer-drenched heads.
But she hurried to find a seat and indicated that he should sit beside her.
- I hope you don’t start discussing my shoes again – she said with a wry smile.
- We’ll solve that problem after the film – he retorted.
At that very moment, the lights dimmed and the screen filled with light and movement.
They ceased talking. The proximity they found themselves in seemed to protect them from anything unexpected that might occur.
No matter how much attention he gave to the film, Armando could not bring himself to concentrate. He kept thinking about Artemísia. He knew that it would be absurd when it came to talking about the film afterwards to not have a clue about what had transpired on the screen. He could complain of a headache, but this would rule out the possibility of inviting her out for a drink.
Armando peeked at Artemísia from the corner of his eye and noticed that she was leaning away from him, with her hand on her chin, all eyes ahead, absorbed by what was happening on the screen. He tried to imagine what she could be thinking about, but at the moment it was impossible to know. There were people whose thoughts he could divine with relative ease, follow their development, their hesitations and ramifications, but Artemísia was not one of them. Especially in a dark theatre. It wasn’t possible to see the details of her skin, her mouth, her hands, all those things which would otherwise come together in some essential way and allow for the understanding of contexts.
Legs could give a clue, whether they were spread, crossed, drawn together, tucked up, or extended. These he could observe without too much difficulty, in spite of the darkness. There was enough light slipping off the screen to the floor to create a subtle haze which lit up objects out of nothing, and made them rise up out the impenetrable darkness.
Artemísia had her right leg crossed over her left, unmoving, and apparently serene with no recollection of the shoes. Meanwhile, as time passed her body unwound, and, at a certain moment, her arm touched Armando’s. But neither of them seemed to worry enough to withdraw an arm, probably because the distance between the two seats was so slight.
Within seconds is became clear that both of them were rapidly analyzing the meaning of their arms touching like that, like a first outlawed kiss in the dark attic of adolescence.
As they stared fixedly at the screen, they were both thinking. And the more fixedly they observed the large, luminous images, the more concentrated they became on the exact point at which their arms were united.
Those moments of utter immobility, gazing beyond the screen at the unknown, were crucial for everything that was to follow. If one of them had drawn back, Artemísia and Armando would never to this day have known each other.
The mutual consent in the gesture, the position of the arms, the pressure in the muscles, fired a process of gravitation, one to the other. In her wordlessness, there was something captivating about Artemísia, something arresting that assured, something winning. Armando’s muteness disturbed one, raised questions, accelerated those intervals between presentments.
Their arms touched in a kind of micro-zone of flesh, without a single protruding vein, or a wrinkle in the skin. The touching skin was sweet beneath the single truss of light that crossed the theatre from one end to the other.
For Artemísia, Armando’s arm was a cinema that had come unstuck from the illuminated screen and glued itself to her skin without warning. She didn’t worry about what he might think. Yet to maintain physical contact would be to send out a message that Armando would naturally be free to interpret…
In turn, he didn’t want to give the idea that he was ready to take advantage of an apparently easy or casual situation. Since he didn’t know Artemísia, it was hard for him to understand if their arms were touching intentionally, or not. But withdrawing his arm might give the idea that he did not want to get involved, or that the contact was disagreeable to him. Which was not true.
The way she had reacted to his shoe comments had not been completely discouraging. At least, she’d given him the chance to stake his views without any inhibitions, which, from the outset, indicated he’d got off on the right foot.
Armando had sensed something in her eyes. Something like consent, some boldness, a sense of danger, or a carelessness that held out a flicker of encouragement, but betrayed nothing premeditated, none of the typical schemes. Then again, he wasn’t really a schemer either. When he came across this tendency in others, he quickly dismissed them. And if, for whatever reason, he found himself beginning to scheme, he didn’t hesitate to drop everything, even if he was the one who ended up getting burnt.
Armando wondered if what he was feeling might not be just an illusion. After all, Artemísia was only there with him because of a film. It wasn’t like she’d specifically made a date with him. And so, the most natural thing to conclude would be that this contact between their two arms was spontaneous, a product of chance. Nevertheless, the situation would become part of their shared history. Independent of the dimension and consequences of its impact, Artemísia and Armando would be marked (to greater or lesser extent) by the unforeseen darkness of a movie theatre. By the way in which it would either bring them together or make them drift apart.
Artemísia added up how much time her arm had been touching Armando’s. “If this goes on for another two or three minutes, should I start to get worried…” she thought to herself.
After more or less this amount of time had gone by, without any change in the situation, she considered the idea of picking herself up and leaving the cinema, and yet even while she analyzed the various possibilities, she came to the conclusion that, if she did do this, she might be rashly and unjustly playing with fate. As an alternative, she thought about going to the bathroom, which opened the door to another solution: returning she might get lost, and not find her seat, which would oblige her to sit somewhere else until the end of the film; after, she could always explain her muddle to Armando who would certainly not read anything into it.
But suddenly Artemísia felt she might be going a bit too far. A strategy like that might push him away forever. Relationships between people didn’t always obey logic.
And so, she stayed in her chair, as though she were suffering from a lack of ideas, of plans, a lack of places to go to. She was a long way from the film which glided past her eyes.
For his part, Armando came to the conclusion that the best thing would be to apply a bit of pressure with his arm, to see if Artemísia reacted. And the way she reacted. Because, if up until that moment, the contact could be viewed as fortuitous, after another moment of more obvious pressure, her attitude would no longer leave any margin for doubt. Then each one’s space for maneuver would be clearly reduced.
Armando did exactly that. And Artemísia’s reaction was to take advantage of this to smooth her hair with precisely the hand that belonged to this arm, and she did it in that very moment the pressure from Armando’s arm increased, which prevented him from coming to any conclusion, since the gesture was perfectly synchronized with his decision.
Afterwards, Artemísia did not return her arm to the same position, leaving Armando clearly adrift, without knowing what to do, whether to pull back, or try to bring himself a bit closer to the arm, which she had tucked in close to her hip.
Armando feared going too far because she, might suddenly jump up from her seat and accuse him of harassing her, call the usher and later go to the police to lodge a complaint. People are capable of everything. And the truth is that he didn’t know how far Artemísia was capable of going.
In order not to ruin what was to come, he decided to wait for a new movement on her part, to see if their arms touched once again, to see if she sent out another little message, to see whether or not the first contact had been simple accident.
Artemísia, for her part, waited for the moment she might again smooth her hair, and afterwards place her arm once more next to Armando’s. She proceeded with a seemingly natural air, so as to keep him from decoding her intentions. She didn’t want him to leap into things, nor give up altogether. If she wanted to get to know him she’d have to make him walk a tightrope for as long as possible. This was the only way she had to study the vacillations in his character, his hesitations of mind, his behavioral ramblings.
He wanted to avoid letting yet another instance of synchronic arm movement turn out in her favor. To do so, he took every precaution, observing Artemísia out of the corner of his eye.
When he saw her once again lift her hand to her hair, he seized upon the opportunity to straighten himself in his chair, at the same time placing his hands between his legs, thereby avoiding ending up embarrassed by the situation.
Her arm remained immobile on the armrest, unprotected and abandoned. He felt that he had won this time. Consequently, it would hardly be worth beating around the bush when next an opportunity presented itself.
Right away he placed his arm next to hers, touching it lightly, and then awaited the thunderstorm, the scream, the rejection!
But she didn’t reject him, though she’d also not moved her arm one millimeter in his direction. Had she taken the latter option, it would be understood that she was accepting him without a margin of doubt, that she wanted him, that she desired him.
In practice, Armando still had very few indications. Meanwhile she was coming to the conclusion that his taking his hands from between his legs and once again placing his arm next to hers hardly added anything to what she already knew about him. Perhaps she could read something into the relatively small amount of time he’d needed to respond to her rapprochement — clearly and expression of ordinary insecurity.
After the movements of the arms, which had touched and then drawn apart, neither of them had any new or concrete data to go on. Both opted for the security of their positions. Of course, the precise amount of millimeters reserved for each person’s resting arm was predetermined by the disposition of the theatre’s seats.
They spent the rest of the film, side by side, ignoring each other. It seemed that nothing would happen between them. Neither arm contact, or secret thoughts, nor cautious gestures ventured forth into the shadows. They had the look of a couple grown suddenly angry with each other for no reason at all, and it seemed that neither one would be able to put things right in the immediate future. Their bodies would remain immobile for as long as the darkness permitted. The slicing light of the projector trembled metallically above them.
But she only seemed to be angry. Actually, Artemísia and Armando were reaching a level of understanding which few people would have been capable of achieving. Even if they had no immediate motive for getting closer, nothing had actually happened that would have caused them to drop the whole thing. Nor had they become irreversibly irritated with each other. The serenity that had been created in that zone shared by their two arms was an obvious sign that they had all the time in the world to get to know each other.