Free Listen to My Voice by Susanna Tamaro Page A

fraction of you. We offered each other, reciprocally, the best part of ourselves, the one each of us knew the other wouldn’t be able to resist
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    The same thing happens with flowers. To attract the pollinator, the corolla exhibits extraordinary colours, but once the act is completed, the petals fall, and little is left of the flower’s former splendour
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    There’s nothing shocking about this – it’s a law of nature. All couplings occur as a result of various forms of seduction. Every species, from flowers to humans, has its own ways. But just as the bee can’t say ‘I love you’ to the flower, so too are we unable to lie through our teeth and say we love each other. In these honest, forthright times, the only thing we can properly say (as the bee says to the flower and vice versa) is, ‘You’re necessary to me’
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    Years ago, in a difficult moment of my life, I felt the necessity of immersing myself in freshness for a month or two. At the same time, I was necessary to you, too – at least, I hope so – as a means of opening your eyes to some complex questions. And of course, there was the undeniable pleasure our bodies gave each other. And pleasure – beyond the orgasmic enjoyment itself – is also extraordinarily subversive. Meeting you again after a few years confirmed our bodies’ magnificent mutual attraction
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    What I’ve said up to this point logically applies to the arrival of a child as well. The flowers that let themselves be fecundated by pollen surely don’t do it for pleasure; they do it to assure the survival of their kind, to guarantee that other flowers like them will exist in the future
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    The same mechanism is innate in human beings as well. Despite the complexity of our minds, our bodies want only to reproduce themselves. To them, as to the flowers, it makes no difference whatsoever whether we love each other or not, or how overwhelming the orgasm was. A birth can just as easily be the result of a rape, or of a premature ejaculation. Out of two hundred and fifty thousand spermatozoa, there’s only ever one that wins the race – the best, the strongest, the luckiest, the most dishonest – it makes no difference. What matters is that life is replicated and passed on. And that’s what happened in your case, too. It’s a law of nature
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    To tell you the truth, I ought to slap your wrists a little. Why didn’t you take some preventative measures? I know you’re dreamy and romantic, but do you still believe in baby delivery by stork? Or maybe what you desired, not so unconsciously, but clearly, wilfully, was a connection, a link that would bind me to you once and for all?
    Probably, given the depth and the archaic nature of your conditioning, and even though you don’t realise it, what you (like so many of your female friends) truly want is only the certainty of a future as part of a couple. Some men, faced with women’s biological and primeval blackmail, lower their guard and yield. They do it because they’re weak or banal or afflicted by the innate and unconquerable fear of death. Who but their child can guarantee them eternity?
    Many yield, but not I. Any vacillation I might indulge in is blocked by the idea that the baby growing inside you will be not only a stranger, but also a tyrant capable of consuming the energy of our days, a parasite capable of devouring – without any sense of guilt – the people who brought it into the world. I would never be able to know it and therefore never able to love it. You won’t be able to either, despite your having carried it in your womb. One morning you’ll wake up with a realisation: you’ve brought an interloper into the house, and that interloper has the face of an enemy
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    All that having been said, I don’t want to influence you in any way. As you and your friends chant in your marches, ‘My womb is mine, I’ll manage it myself’. Do what you want. If you want to keep it, keep it; if you want an abortion, I have no objection.