Scar (from the Munich Tales)

SCAR
By Michael Kroetch

As a child she´d lost her left eyebrow in a fire. The scar, which should have been ugly and probably would have been on another woman, was for her a mark of distinction. She used the scar as a way of separating out people she met. How people dealt with it told her who they were, not who she was. She traveled extensively and continuously, always picking up new languages, always broadening her range of experience. But because she was so often in new situations she´d never been in before, she often did things wrong and made a bit of a fool of herself. But she didn´t mind too much. She laughed a lot at herself, and she had a nice laugh. One friend described her laugh as being as beautiful as a gold coin twirling down to the bottom of a well, making your wish come true. She hadn´t known exactly what he´d meant and he´d been a bit drunk at the time, but she´d liked the image. It reminded her somehow of her father. He´d perished in the same fire that claimed her eyebrow and had lost his life in the process of saving hers. To him she had always been special. When she was still very young, her mother told her the scar was the mark of his last kiss. She´d never forgotten this and also never mentioned it to anyone. And at times when all her courage had been washed away and she felt she could not go on, she would often look at the scar and sense her father there with her. During her travels, she always tried to help others feel some of what she had inside because of the scar. This is possibly what made her charm so deep and lasting to those who encountered it. One man took particular interest in her charm. He wore cowboy boots, had a gold earring like a pirate might, and knew how to make her laugh. She liked this. Soon between them there formed a special bond. It grew stronger as their weeks together turned into months and the comfort they felt when united surpassed even her need to keep traveling. She opened more to him than she had to probably anyone before and let him kiss and touch her anywhere—except on the scar. That was the sanctum, the spot most people noticed first but which, ironically, was also most private and which she never let anyone approach. Not even her mother and now not even him. He seemed fine with this and she appreciated his restraint. Despite how close she felt to him, the scar was still her most carefully guarded secret and she just could not bring herself to tell him anything about it—even though almost every part of her desperately wanted to. Much to her surprise and pleasure, he never once came anywhere even close to the topic in any of the hundreds of discussions they´d had. It seemed he somehow knew how sensitive she was about it without ever needing to be told. When she thought about it, this made her trust him even more. Then a strange idea came into her head. She wondered if maybe he somehow did not even see her scar? Was it possible? She looked in the mirror. It was definitely still there, which made her sigh in relief. But the more closely she looked at it, the more she noticed that it had grown somewhat fainter than it ever had been before. Every day thereafter as soon as she woke up, the first thing she did was look in the mirror. There was no way around it, the scar was definitely fading away on her. She did not know what to do. She felt total panic. Fear shot through every bone in her body. She was losing who she was. She knew it had to be his fault for making her fall in love with him. She thought quickly how to end things with him. If she did, and did it now, she would at least keep a little bit of her scar. Then she looked again at the faint outline of it that remained and knew she would not leave this man.