15 April 2025

Faceless women

Ten metres away, her perfume arrived before she did – a wave of something like bruised lilacs and expensive confidence, a scent that didn't ask for permission but announced her arrival. She was dressed all in black, except for a white blouse. Her ankle-long, dark cardigan seemed unnecessary in this warm afternoon sun. But it was still April only; it could get cold in the evening in the bay of Napoli.

Despite the constant bird chirping, I had fallen asleep on the stone bench when she arrived. It was only when I walked around the small park that I noticed her. She was sitting on the ledge. I saw her legs stretched out and her arms embracing the standing man, similarly clad in black. They didn't make a sound as they were kissing deeply, tightly hugging.

When I saw them again in the park half an hour later, they were sitting on one of the stone benches. Her long auburn hair was cascading down her back. Their faces were so close to one another, they were holding on to each other so firmly, it was as if the slightest breeze risked separating them for ever. And yet their slow, noiseless embrace was particularly touching: they were completely absorbed into each other, the world around them had ceased to exist.

Were they having an affair? Office colleagues who had escaped from work or were on an errand? He looked anxiously in my direction before pulling out a cigarette; a pang of awkwardness hit me – the unwilling voyeur – and I quickly looked away, granting them back their fragile privacy. He stood up and smoked while gazing towards the sea. Her hands had been delicately caressing his face. Perhaps had she been comforting him, reassuring him silently?

I never got to see her face; it remained turned into his shoulder, hidden from my view across the park. Perhaps that very anonymity was part of the pull, allowing her to become a canvas onto which my own remembered intimacies could be projected. I kept noticing them upon my repeated comings and goings around the park, but her face remained a mystery. Her face cradled in his neck, his arms around her waist, his fingers gently stroking her back – a simple, possessive gesture that suddenly threw open a door in my own mind.

And just like that, the anonymity of the woman before me seemed to merge with the fading faces of my past, reigniting memories: the honeymoon phase of a new relationship; the scent of a woman's skin when I was holding her in my arms, pressed against the office wall; the flowing yellow dress of another woman who had come to pick me up at the airport; her naturally voluptuous lips whose outline I could observe when I watched her drive. But time inevitably blurred the fine details of their faces, letting them soften and fade from sharp focus. Even if they had not faded, they would have inexorably aged, becoming shadows of their former selves.

Do I sound stuck inside the past? At times, I had tried, it is true, to relive the past – it cruelly never worked. People had inevitably – and most certainly healthily in the case of broken romantic relationships – moved on. Once or twice, friends from long ago had reached out. But I found I couldn't respond differently than others had once responded to me: by gently making it clear that decades had passed, that I wasn't the same person, and that a simple "update" felt hollow, disconnected from the currents of thought and feeling that define who I am now. It’s a stark contrast to the effortless absorption I witnessed on the bench, a sign that some connections are sealed in their own time, resistant to later revival.

No, it’s not about trying to relive the past, that pipe dream. It’s about preserving the good memories that enriched my life and, possibly, what it takes to create similar ones – not the same ones – without falling into old traps of disillusion or heartbreak. Perhaps observing moments like the one in the park isn't about futilely longing for the past, but about recognising the enduring human need for connection – a quiet reminder that the search for connection is never truly over.