Red... Blue... Red... Blue... Red... Blue...
The thin, yet slightly viscous stream of a scarlet fluid flowed slowly through the spaces among the cobblestones of the driveway. A little forward, it joined other ones as tiny branches to the same river, forming, further on, a small enamelled pond tinted of a bright red tone which was slowly growing in size right before her eyes.
Kneeling on the worn grey and dirty granite pavement, she examined the fallen body – slightly sideways, half face down - in the middle of the promenade. A mixture of confusion and deep pain pinched her breast, when she touched the young man’s still warm skin. Driven by a sense of duty, she tried to deprive herself of thinking about her feelings, trying to be strictly scientific as the professional detective she was, by analyzing just the situation and the facts. Being cruelly consumed by a strange stingy pain, however, she was not able to separate reason from emotion. She bit her lip, trying to hold back the tears which were flooding her eyes and her spirit that, in objection, responded with a sharp twinge piercing the organ pulsing inside her chest.
Control yourself, she thought. Control yourself...
Those eyes of an intense tone of blue sapphire, still open, did not seem to have been entirely surprised by fate. Actually they gave the impression of imperturbably contemplating the empty space ahead. The woman’s body shook slightly as she had the false impression that he just rested awkwardly on the hard floor of the street. She silently asked herself, mystified, what those eyes had seen before life was snatched away from them, sadly, violently and definitely.
Feeling awkwardly uneasy, she looked away from the scene that was lugubrious unfolded there, right before her eyes, in red... and blue...
The experts had arrived to scientifically examine all the details concerning the body and the place, collecting samples of everything they could. Someone deigned to carefully close the dead boy’s pale eyelids. He now seemed to sleep placidly...
Onlookers gathered together on the back, despite the barricade placed by the police around the scene. Her uneasiness grew worse on that situation. She thought of vultures around a dead animal, ready to attack at the first opportunity. That odd thought troubled her greatly, to the point of making her want to be far away from there, away and apart from everything and everyone.
In a normal situation she would consider a lifeless body as an object of study. The analyzed evidences would become irrefutable for the forensic laboratory experts to determine the cause of death and conduct investigations to the police.
That particular case, however, had shaken her nerves up. A sudden nausea was rising in her stomach and she felt the urge to throw up. It was not only some fresh air and a little rest she needed... it was essential to be away from that place immediately.
The intermittent flashing lights hurt her eyes, while the images intermingled in her mind, making it difficult to separate past and present, reality and imagination, memories and facts. Although that kind of 'show' was not new to her, the excess work hours without any rest were quickly bringing her patience to the boiling point.
The investigating policewoman - always tough, cold and impersonal - was beginning to show signs of weakness and stress. The fact of knowing the victim contributed greatly to increase her discomfort and instil a strange sense of guilt, which was beginning to weigh heavily on her tortured conscience. She was awake for longer than 24 hours. She knew she was not sleeping properly for several days and suspected the amount of ingested caffeine started causing hallucinations.
She realized, almost accidentally that on the other side of the small crowd of onlookers, she was being observed by a certain pair of deep blue eyes - like the waters of the Pacific Ocean. He was there, aware of every move she made, as if studying her with great interest. If he was watching her like a prey, preparing to attack at the first opportunity, she was not really sure, but the sight made her somehow restless and uncomfortable. She still did not know what the relationship he had with that context was, but the instinct of a well-trained police officer lit a red light within and alerted her to the fact that he was neither an innocent nor a casual curious spectator.
She frowned, looking in that direction, but a minor distraction made her lose eye contact with the boy. When she looked back for Misha in the crowd, he was already gone. She wondered if she had really seen him or had imagined that scene.
Red... blue... red... blue...
The spinning lights on the police cars painted the night with almost unreal shades of colours. The woman's eyes began to lose focus, gradually, as she sought, behind the police line, the presence of the character she was not sure to have really seen. The sounds of voices, sirens and traffic were slowly becoming distant... She felt her legs go weak and, luckily, was close enough to the car, so she could keep herself up. She stared at the coloured turning lights in an attempt to stay focused, but her mind began to wander in time...
The cobalt-blue eyes... the red light beam filtered through the stained glass window... other eyes of a different tone of sapphire... the explosion in red within her... the open blue eyes of the boy lying on the ground... the puddle of bright red blood around the dead body...
- Stop staring at those lights this way...
She felt a firm tug on the arm, bringing her back to reality...
***
- I really enjoy being here with you... I feel safe and well protected, like every woman should actually feel...
Lying beside him, in a large double bed, she waited for a reaction. The declaration was only followed by a deep sigh. She turned to him and saw a silent tear slowly running down the side of his face.
In a spontaneous gesture of affection, she gently touched his wet face. An uncomfortable feeling enveloped her mind, as if it was the harbinger of a tragedy approaching apace.
He gave another sigh and said:
- Just do not make me suffer, please. I've been through a lot of pain in my life. I do not know how much more I would be able to withstand...
At a time when they should be relaxed and happy, making plans for the future or laughing at silly things, he suddenly seemed to be so distant and so lost... without any perspective in life...
She hugged him tightly, not saying anything. He surrendered to that statement of tenderness and wept with his head on the shoulders of the woman who, at that time, showed up a strong support to him while he collapsed in front of her, letting all his defences fall apart, without the fear of looking ridiculous. How fragile and needy that man seemed to be, while nestled in her arms... His cry was sad... anxious... convulsive...
She kissed his head, with soft and genuine affection.
(Twenty-six years old and already so suffered? Who had done this to you, my child? Who hurt you this much at the point of leaving you so disillusioned... so fragile?)
A whisper in the ear was all she could offer. He sighed and apparently calmed down, still holding her.
- Do not be afraid, my boy, to look weak. You do not have to be strong always. The past that brought you here is left behind. Let it stay where it belongs. It may have made you who you are today, but it doesn’t need to determine who you will be tomorrow. Whatever happened, my dear friend, is past now. The present is here... with me. What comes ahead depends only on you... and me... but the best is yet to come... believe me... To tell you the truth, I have no nostalgia for the past I lived. I believe in a better future and I want you to be part of it. Trust in your heart... and in mine... Give a chance for both of us for this relationship to work.
He did not answer. He was silent, as if trying to absorb the meaning of those words, digesting them slowly, not before chewing them a large number of times. He knew she was right but had no assurance he was ready to give up completely. He felt like someone threw in the cold, dark and uncertain ocean, on a stormy night.
She realized that, after all, they were both shipwrecked in a sea of past disappointments and were afraid of having their hearts hurt, as had happened countless times, at least in her case. He also seemed to have experienced deep disappointments - those that make fear overshadow reason and block emotion. Afraid to suffer, either lover restricted the 'allow oneself to face' whatever life could offer them, open and intensely, for as long as the affective relationship could deserve to last...
Although encouraging him, she realized that she was also scared.... In fact, she felt increasingly anxious and scared...
- I need some time... alone... I'm so confused right now...
(Oh, God... what is this now?)
At that moment she seemed to distance herself from those blue eyes and from that naughty boyish smile, which she had inadvertently fallen for. That request had sunk in her heart like a huge rock falling in the calm waters of a lake and raising a massive wave of apprehension... It was hard to believe he said that, like that, then and there...
(How many mistakes can be made until a person is convinced that they are only being repeated indefinitely?)
***
She left her friend, still somewhat suspicious, by the nearest metro station, after guaranteeing she was fine and could drive home safely. She went on alone, anticipating the sensation and comfort of a warm bath and the large and comfortable bed. The night lights passed practically unnoticed by the car windows as she crossed the city streets at limit speed.
Red...
The sudden change in the colour of the traffic light ahead made her hit the brakes hard. A fire truck, followed by an ambulance - both with sirens blaring - passed at high speed by the street cross section she stopped at.
She saw herself among images brought to her active and conscious mind, surrounded by arms, hands, broken glass and voices she heard but could not really understand. Suddenly the lights, voices and people disappeared and she ceased to feel pain, falling into the deep void of an immense and silent black hole...
She remembered, then, when she woke up from the unconsciousness she was for a good and long season. The tragic car accident left her between life and death in a coma for more than a long time. She had lost, definitively and irretrievably, the one she had loved. The husband could not resist the impact of the collision and died instantly. To her, life was restored, but not without a price.
While in the hospital, people who visited brought her gifts and flowers, clumsy attempts - in her view - to alleviate the pain and loneliness of the loss and post-coma recovery. She felt defeated and probably assumed that she had no right to the presents people brought her. The compensation seemed unfair and improper to her. Flowers and gifts have, then, represented a big loss, so she loathed them with all her strength.
From that time on she became disappointed for the rest of her life, feeling aversion to any and every occasion that would have any relation with gifts. Paradigms that repeated themselves over and over again. She continued to be carried away by the pattern behaviour that she had less right than others to those gifts. She wanted to satisfy the desires of others, without thinking on what she really wanted.
(Life, by irony or malice, as a result of the accident, deprived me of the right to procreate. I mistook it with the right to love and assumed I had to be tough, insensitive and almost masculine, even in the way I dressed. My few relationships after that had been fleeting, with no depth at all. In the only two times I had at least hoped to have someone for longer, I had been surprised by the sad and cruel blows of destiny. I seem to have a heavy 'karma' to pay and that is costing me dearly...)
She became a bitter loner who had no expectations on emotions and other immaterial things. She had decided to devote herself entirely to the work, since her life was not much more beyond that. The long hours of hard and obsessive work drove her away from the thoughts of even relating to someone emotionally. What she valued most was some peace, quiet and the comfort of silence, when she returned home at the end of the day, where the faithful Ginger always waited at the door, invariably greeting her arrival and always willing to get a little attention and waiting to be fed properly.
They had a very special and unique relationship. They spent their free time together, whenever possible, in silence or quietly listening to music, clinging to each other, lying on the sofa, on cold days, under a thick blanket. It was he who listened, perhaps without understanding when the woman went into depression mode, but the cat never complained - just looked in her eyes, as if saying: 'I do not know if I quite understand what you say, but I'm here, giving you all the support you need '.
She smiled sadly at the thought of her four-legged fellow and returned to the reality of the present moment.
The traffic light had been in the red for what she took for too long a time. Her head could not stay focused on anything for more than a few fractions of seconds. Her thoughts invariably returned to the scene and to the watching eyes, which were as if analyzing her movements or showing something else: perhaps a sign of retaliation. It was as if, consciously, she was being punished for not having helped him. And what if he were taking revenge by taking something he knew she held dearly, to compensate for the night he had to spend in jail for not being able to pay his bail?
The light changed to green and she went on through the city streets, semi-aware of what she was doing, relying more on instinct than on her alertness. A pang of pain struck her temples and the muscles in her neck tingled. Tension, she thought... She had to stop.
She was already seeing different eyes in every different place. She was not sure she was fascinated or in complete hallucination. She could not stop thinking about those charming and expressive blue eyes, which were part of her recent past and that were so cruel and violently snatched from her.
Getting home was a strange experience, which she could not remember very clearly. There seemed to be a mist in her eyes and in her discernment. She was almost semi-conscious. She just realized where she was, after leaving the car, walking to the lobby door and letting the keys she had in her hand fall onto the ground.
It was like waking up from a strange trance. Her head seemed to be in a turmoil and the thoughts did not fit in anywhere... they were like a sequence of images passing through randomly and quickly.
She was not sure how she arrived at the apartment door. She entered and threw the keys on the table in the lobby, heading for the kitchen to prepare something to eat.
Ginger was waiting, naturally anxious, like every day when she came home and greeted her by hitting her leg with his head: sign that it was time for his food. She fed the pet and prepared herself a cheese sandwich, an easy and convenient meal as it was already quite late at night.
A glass of her favourite red wine soothed her temper and relaxed her tense body. The shower would have to wait. She threw herself on the sofa shortly thereafter, still fully dressed, throwing the shoes to the side, to the despair of the cat, who abhorred any kind of mess. Her little fellow approached, lay down on her chest, purring with satisfaction and looking deep into her eyes, as he often did when he wanted to be cuddled.
She fell asleep right there, too tired to do anything productive.
Blue eyes pursued her through the night, in dreams full of agony and cold sweat - a restless sleep - so often lately. She woke up still too early in the morning, more tired than if she had not slept, mostly because of the little comfort of the couch... She got up feeling cold, took a warm shower, wrapped herself in a bathrobe and went to the kitchen in order to prepare something hot to drink. She was still so tense that would she could not get back to sleep, anyway.
A good cup of strong coffee would leave her awake enough to think more coherently and evaluate the circumstances and events of the last day. She needed to gather the facts logically. She had to try to follow a line of reason that would lead to a proper conclusion, or at least give her a clue how to unravel that mystery. Her instinct was pointing to a direction, but she needed more specific facts and she knew she would have to struggle enough to get them right.
The woman began to take hasty notes, without much order, as in a brainstorming, trying to organize the details still fresh in her memory. The apparent calm in the dead boy’s face still intrigued her. For what reason the frozen look did not show any surprises in the last event of his life, she still could not understand.
But what tormented her most at that moment was to discover the relationship Misha had with that whole scene. It could not be only a twist of fate, his being there, at that specific time. It was a behaviour that she would not accept based on what she knew of him. She tried endlessly, but her head was beginning to show signs of fatigue.
That old and known pain, was back to annoy her, preventing her from thinking clearly. She felt the muscles behind her neck and shoulders tingle. She instinctively passed her fingertips over the sore muscles... To the heat rising up her spine, followed a delightfully comfortable dizziness, as if it was the numbness caused by the ingestion of a large glass of wine, in an empty stomach. She closed her eyes and sank into a smooth and quiet darkness, losing completely all her senses...
