Stares (Final Part)

I no longer knew whether to believe in everything, anything or nothing at all, for I could not clearly distinguish when I was dreaming or when those things were really happening. For the sake of my sanity I decided to accept that there is a bit of truth in everything.

Although still somewhat clumsy by the effect of the medication, which ran in great quantity through my veins, blurring reality and confusing my perception, I read the message still open in my hand again and again.

"Don’t be afraid of what will come up for you in the future. Our minds are extremely powerful. A man who does not believe in anything, does not have many reasons to live.

You are not alone! We've always been around.

Come to the place where we met before as soon as you can. "

Although I considered the content quite intriguing and vague, that message, for some reason, seemed to bring a hidden meaning that I did not immediately understand.

*** 

For a few days I followed the diet, took my medications seriously, and committed myself to physiotherapy to speed my way out of that place. I knew it was imperative to get well soon. In those days, I was practically alone all the time and did not receive any visitors except for the nurses and the doctors, which, in a way, was a good sign.

Better left alone than...

I urgently needed to return to my quiet boring life and the less intrusion I would have during the recovery process, the better it would be. I took that lack of interference as a gift and tried to do my best to build up my strength and health as quickly as possible.

But the words, put that way in the message, would not leave my mind at ease...

***

- We had to leave you alone, so you could recover faster.

- I should have known there was something behind that apparent serenity...

- The final diagnosis was given. The doctor is on his way. We better leave you alone, now.

The doctor entered the small hospital room less than one minute after they left. I was sitting on the bed when he handed me a report and allowed me to read it before telling me anything.

***

I held the small dark wooden box in my hands, still closed, with an unusual affection. I was melancholic and that nostalgia made sense in the face of what I had just read. I sat down on the floor of the room and slid forward the thin cover, decorated with small and delicate arabesques, detaching it from the main body of the box and placing it near my leg.

My little travel souvenirs from other eras, lay dormant in the background covered with a fine burgundy velvet: a brown urchin, the fragile dried and empty flower petal shaped husk of a Physalis, a few seashells, two pebbles smoothed by the constant action of the river water, a bronze kitten, smaller than my thumb, a piece of scrolled paper given to me on the street by a stranger, where my favourite phrase was written,...

“Be careful of what you wish for, it might just come true"...

Funny that I had never noticed that there was a symbol drawn on the outside of the paper scroll, which was now familiar to me: a stylized eye. After a brief survey, I discovered that it was the symbol of knowledge. That made all sense…

On the bookshelf above my head, the mahogany shelves served as a frame for my collection of art books, where the life and work of Salvador Dalí stood out, not only because it was placed right in the centre, but because it was the most colourful and significant volume of all.

I thought of how my life fit into the few records left inside that small room, with the window facing the seaside.

So little in quantity and so much in emotional load... my living in this strange world...

I had decided to leave it all behind. Going away, that way, was a difficult decision, but it had to be done. I had not told anyone, and for all intents and purposes it was just another trip, like so many others… but it was not really that simple...

***

My soul was heavy, as if a very dark shadow hung over me, in spite of the warm and sunny day and the sky being almost as clear as my prospects for the future.

The piece of paper, with the most important information of my life, was still in my fingers. My gaze was lost in the horizon. The sea roared against the great rocks at the corner of the beach. It seemed to want to challenge me to face the great secret.

My mind came back in time a little to rekindle the memory of the decisive moment...

***

I read the report, with the diagnosis, in deep silence. There was not much doubt for interpretation. I looked up and saw that the doctor was staring at me very seriously, unable to hide the worry in his face.

- Any doubt?

- Only one. How long, I still have?

- It's hard to tell. In brain damages caused by clots this size, there is no way to give an accurate answer. It may be just days... Since we cannot operate, everything depends on the patient... We've had cases...

He stooped the sentence halfway. My expression told him, clearly, that I was not interested in other cases...

- Got it. Was that the reason for the hallucinations?

He smiled lightly. That sad smile made me feel completely lost and unsupported. How many times had he had to do the same procedure, knowing that the control over the lives of his patients was not in his hands, after all...

I stood up, shook his hand, and walked slowly out along the bright corridor where the morning sunlight coming in from the rectangular windows sketched obtuse geometric figures on the walls.

Inside, I felt a huge void, like nothing ever before.

***

The shrill lament of a solitary seagull brought me back immediately to the present and I broke my silence.

- We spend an entire lifetime searching for the purpose and the reason why we are here and now, without realizing that the true meaning of life is simply to live! There is no reward, no eternal life, no heaven and no hell...

- But for many, it is so much easier to "believe" in an all-powerful, over-manipulated truth and to live a big lie, which makes them happy, hopeful and lighter.

- If on the one hand it is simple, on the other hand it is extremely complicated, because we only realize that we had not enjoyed the best life can offer, when we have lost almost everything.

- Eternity is just a concept. The intensity of what we live is far more important than anything else...

The man with ginger hair and dark blue eyes, sitting next to me, faced me and stared into my eyes once more. Then, standing up, he lightly touched my shoulder, turned and left me sitting there following his walk away from me with sad eyes. Before disappearing behind the little sand dune, he turned around and waved. From afar, his eyes, although it was perhaps and only my impression, glowed with that power it did on the first time. He moved his lips and I, at that moment, fully realized what he meant.

I tore the paper into very small pieces, several times, and opened my hands, letting the wind carry away those tiny white confetti, tainted by the black fragments of the printer ink, which no longer had the same force of a few seconds ago, when the letters made words and those, brought together, composed one of the most difficult information my reason had to digest.

I got up and walked to the car which was parked next to the little restaurant. As I entered, the woman seated in the shadow of a large red and white umbrella rose and came toward me, walking steadily on top of her stiletto heels and defying the notion of balance. The elegant suit and the way she kept her hair lined up in a bun on the top of her attractive head gave me a sense that beauty, despite being a very personal concept, was a reality that always made me feel so peaceful. She opened the passenger door and said, smiling:

- Are you ready? Let's go?

I smiled, lightly, without saying anything. I just turned the key in the ignition and drove the car out of the parking lot.

In my mind, the message mumbled so many times by the redheaded man, was still evident and kept repeating in my memory, over and over again.

"You're not alone!"...

I had always believed, however, that in reality, from the beginning to the end of our lives, we had always been alone...

I adjusted the rear view mirror to check if the transport case in the back seat was securely fastened to the seat belt. The cat, an ordinary European tabby, was dozing calmly in it.

Maybe they're right, after all…

Demon (Part 3 of 3)

I spent the day thinking about the possible meaning of that little message. My concentration got fuzzy from time to time and I could only have some flashes of memory about the previous night. Fortunately the daily tasks at work were enough to keep me busy without stopping me, however, of thinking from time to time on what could have happened.

I tried to organize, methodically, the little information that was hidden in my mind, as if trying to confuse me even more. I decided I had to make a careful trip in my memory and take some notes, so to organize the facts, but I ended up forgetting that I had taken that decision.

On my way home, I stopped at the take-away at the corner and bought myself some food. I did not want to cook. Moreover, I so much needed a good rest.

I looked at myself in the mirror and noticed the dark circles that surrounded my eyes. They seemed deeper than usual. Perhaps the exhaustion had caused me more than a simple change in my physical appearance. I thought it would be best to lie down and try to get some sleep, hoping maybe a good sleep would improve my memory and my appearance.

I closed my eyes and tried to relax. I had to try to remember how it all started. I fell asleep before even thinking of anything else.

***

I took the wrong direction, when turning around the corner in one of the corridors of the University campus. It was a mistake I used to make, so I decided to continue through the back corridors to get somewhere anyhow. My sense of direction had always been very poor. Apparently, my ability to choose lovers, too. I met many people: students, professors and general staff personnel, who did not pay much attention to me, because they were too busy with their own problems. I passed over the library and the bar, then took the direction of the restrooms, climbing a flight of few steps and going through a dark iron gate. I could only find the changing rooms with showers and went back to the hall, to try and find the loo. I went back down the same stairs and took a left and then a right exit. There was an entrance to a clearing, leading to the shady woods.

An old woman walked to me. She had dishevelled hair and walked half bent. She offered me something that I refused, but she laughed and told me that I should accept it. Then she gave me a small gift, placing it carefully in the palm of my hand.  I saw that there were some roots of very old trees, hanging down from the dark walls behind her. The sunlight came through a slot on the left, falling on her head, making her hair look whiter and her teeth darker. A worn and almost colourless woollen shawl, was wrapped around her shoulders. 

The woman smiled. She was not scary, in spite of that strange aspect she had. When she explained the reason of wanting to give me the little artefact, I felt a kind of relief.

- It is for protection. So you will never need to fear no evil. it will be useful... soon...

I thanked the woman, put the small gift in my coat pocket and left. She kept on watching me until I disappeared through one of the passageways that led me back to the classrooms. I completely forgot I needed to go to the bathroom. An insistent bell ringing in the distance caught my attention when I walked over a less sunny area in the complex of buildings of the university. 

I looked back to see if I was safe. Something in my subconscious was telling me to be careful. I put my hand in my pocket and realized I had not examined the small object with the attention I should.

The bell rang again, that time closer to me. When I turned around, I bumped into a person coming out of one of the rooms. If it was not for the arms that held me firmly, I would have crashed against his body with some violence, but the man had a quick reaction. Those green eyes then were fixed on mine and I felt a kind of unsettling dizziness. I was face to face with a man whose eyes disturbed me more than I expected. He grinned. The bell rang again. He released my arms and I felt I completely lost my balance and started to fall...

The sensation of falling, for a time longer than the expected caused me a strange discomfort in the stomach. I thought I was fainting. I tried to prevent myself from falling, using my hands, but could not. I felt my vision darken suddenly.

***

I screamed. I jumped out of the bed, in a state of complete distress, trying to protect me from the inevitable. I cursed the darkness when I realized what was happening.

- Damn! It was only a dream!

My body was sweaty and sore. The palm of my hand was sore too, probably because of the pressure of my own nails. My head was still uneasy. The alarm went on and on. I recognized that as the sound of the damn bell in my dream...

Then, as if a door had been opened, I remembered...

***

When we got to the hotel, my sobriety was still fully active. We stayed in silence almost all the time, roughly looking at each other in the elevator that looked too big for the two of us. I remember we called the reception and ordered a bottle of wine, as soon as we got in the room.

The phone rang then, and I found that sound rather unusual, but interesting at the same time. He told me it was his favourite song and sang some verses of it.

“Если хочешь идти, иди; если хочешь забыть, забудь

  Только знай, что в конце пути никогда уже не вернуть”…

(Yesli khochesh' idti, idi; yesli khochesh' zabyt', zabud'

Tol'ko znay, chto v kontse puti nikogda uzhe ne vernut...')*

He switched it off without answering it and turned all his attention to me. One thing that caused me a good impression about him, from the beginning, was that when he paid his attention, he definitely did it fully and completely. His green eyes scrutinize me from head to toe, before he touched me, making me feel as if he was undressing both my body and my soul... and it was a very strange feeling, I must confess, though not exactly uncomfortable. No one had ever been as considerate to me as he was at that moment in time.

The wine, which was delivered by the room service, was delicately dry and aromatically palatable. It quickly rose to my head, because I had an empty stomach. I could not even remember the last time I had had some meal that day. I've always had been very aware of how to control the level of alcohol in my blood, so I felt I should go easy on the booze. He noticed it and slowed down too, politely. Being drunk would definitely spoil the purpose of that meeting and we knew it.

***

My phone rang, making my concentration dissipate instantly and immediately. I got carried away by those memories and forgot completely I had a meeting at work very early in the morning.  I was already late and people got worried because I had never been late for a meeting before. I had to run. At least, things were getting clearer, though not completely... yet... in my memory...

***

The meeting went on smoothly, in spite of my delay, for which I had to apologize a million times, feeling guilty for my lack of responsibility to the commitments assumed. I must have shown a very sickly face, because it was soon pushed aside and the meeting continued to its end without further mishaps.

Early in the afternoon, when I left for lunch and needed my wallet, I came again across the little message, written with the strange and familiar handwriting, that had me intrigued so much. I had to unveil that madness, for once and for all, before I lost my already unsettled mind.

Blessed internet that offers us possibilities to research everything and to translate what we do not know, even being in a completely unknown idiom. I found a language tool and tried to reproduce the Cyrillic characters the best I could, with the ones that closer resembled those written in the little message laying on my desk. I changed it to another research tool and found out, after a few attempts, that it was part of a song, which had been very successful a few years before. Then I translated the short message, recognizing it, immediately. My curiosity sometimes goes to extremes.

The words danced in front of my eyes and then the pieces fell into their right places in my head.

"Если хочешь идти, иди; если забыть хочешь, забудь

  Только знай, что в конце пути никогда уже не вернуть... "*

("If you want go, go; if you want to forget, forget

  But be aware that, at the end of the road, there is no turning back... ")

***

When he undressed me the other night, the lights in the hotel room were still on. I let him explore my body, with the same attention he had shown in the car, a few minutes before. He was an expert and I gave myself in, without fear, to his touch.

He was still wearing a white cotton tank top, quite tight to his athletic body, while we were in the preliminaries. I lifted the garment and started exploring his pale torso, which was not excessively toned, but it was beautiful nonetheless. He turned the main light off and left only one of the lamps lit by the bedside. In the dim light, I stripped him of the last piece of clothing and kissed him in the chest, neck and mouth. My hands caressed his back and I had the feeling of having touched something I did not expect.

I ran my fingers, very gently, on what seemed to me to be two scars. I felt his muscles tensed. I turned his body to the side so I could see better. He tried to stop me from exploring that, using some tricks, but I insisted, forcing him to turn around and he finally gave up.

There were two scars, maybe the size of a hand, one on each side of his back, just below the shoulder height. From each of them, very detailed wings were tattooed.

The seriousness with which I looked at them, in the poorly lit room, made him react immediately.

- I did not want you to panic when seeing them...

- Should I be afraid?

- No. Do not be. This is now part of my past only....  Do not ask anything else, please...

He turned out the light and held me, kissing me with a passion that seemed to border some despair. I let myself go for it, this time, completely.

Inside, I had the feeling that a fire ignited and burned all my body up, for all time, that very night... until I fell asleep in complete exhaustion.

I had the vague impression to have seen him leaving the room, still the middle of the night, but I was not really sure.

"Если хочешь идти, иди; если забыть хочешь, забудь...

  (If you want to go, go; if you want to forget, forget)... *

***

After remembering and understanding what had happened, I tried to contact him by telephone, for days, but without success. I always ended up in the message box, but I hung up without saying anything. I did not want to leave him messages. I wanted to talk to him; to hear his voice. Maybe he was trying to avoid me or needed some time and space. Maybe I had crossed the barrier of curiosity, when I insisted on seeing the scars on his back... I would never know...

In his absence, missing him and thinking a lot about him, many times a day, I heard that song over and over and over again, feeling extremely touched every time I heard those chords.

That young demon, with pale skin and light eyes, had led me to temptation and won not only my body but also my soul, which then began to burn with passion for him. I had not much that was mine, really... besides the soul that was corrupted by some deadly sins and uncontrolled weakness...

In essence, he was not really a demon: he was just a fallen angel, devoid of his wings, but not disallowed from flying. And I must confess that I missed him... I missed him a lot, to be honest...

***

He'd gone over a week since we had our last meeting. I had received no sign of him since then whatsoever. With a little sadness filling my heart, I decided to give up trying to re-contact him.

On Friday night I was reading in the bedroom, when the doorbell rang.

- Who can it be, this time of the night?

I got up almost automatically and without thinking and walked to the door. I looked through the peephole and saw that there was a man standing, with his bald head slightly lowered. I opened the door and came across my fallen angel standing in front of me.

- It was not easy to find this address...

I did not know whether to laugh or cry. I simply pulled him inside and closed the door. He hugged me, trying to hide the blush on his cheeks and a funny smile.

- Why this smile and this blush?

- I've missed you...

- Oh, have you?

He smiled again, awkwardly. I laughed at the way he looked and acted like a shy boy, perhaps by pretending, perhaps by charm, or even feeling really gauche. I pressed his body against mine, with extreme tenderness. I whispered my mind and heart:

- You have no idea how much I missed you too...

He held me tighter, then ran his hand on my neck and kissed me. His fingers played with the metallic texture hanging around my neck.

- What is this?

He was referring to the hanging pendant on a silver chain, which was not there the first time we were together. The strange little silver cross, which I had found on the bedside table, remarkably, was the same the old woman had given me in the dream and I had no idea how it ended up in my room.

I had a delicate and very fine silver chain, which had been given to me, as a child, by my mother and that I kept in a box, with great care, in a drawer. I decided to use it to match with the small talisman. I did not want to reveal the true meaning of wearing a Russian Orthodox cross, hanging around my neck, so I lied both by fear and to make sure I was in no danger, being with him. I felt I should protect myself, anyway, for good or for bad.

- I think it is beautiful. It is silver.

- Yes, it's beautiful...very beautiful...

He touched the little artefact and kissed me again. I breathed relieved, being sure, then, that my apprehension was totally unfounded.

- I missed  you so much. I think I fell in love with you.

- You think? But you should not fall in love so inadvertently with a complete stranger...

- Among what I should, what I want, what I feel and what I like, there is a distance of many thousand kilometres ...

- I thought a lot before coming after you. I tried to avoid it. I also fought my own demons and insecurities, but I realized that one cannot avoid the inevitable.

- Well... If it is inevitable...

In my mind, a song repeated, endlessly, the refrain that had confused my head for days and that seemed to make much sense at that moment.

No, I neither wanted to go nor did I ever want to forget... anything... again...

"Если хочешь идти, иди; если забыть хочешь, забудь

   Только знай, что в конце пути никогда уже не вернуть ...”

("If you want to go, go; if you want to forget, forget it;

 Just know that, at the end of the road, there is no turning back... ") *

***

* From:  Филипп Киркоров - Снег 

                (Phillip Kirkorov - Sneg)