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.
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)
