Читать книгу Sun Alley - Cecilia Ştefănescu - Страница 6

He woke up with a heavy head and feeling nauseous. There was a commotion in the house, and he remembered that it was Sunday and that his parents were at home. The thought made him sad, because he would have to lie again that he was going out to play with the boys. For unknown reasons, his mother didn’t like Emi at all, and to avoid wry faces when he mentioned her, Sal preferred to mumble a lie. He heard a few knocks on the door, and then he heard his father’s voice urging him to wake up. It was nine o’clock sharp. He lay back down and closed his eyes. Outside he could hear the automated buzz of a drill press; its long, even noise had invaded his room and had now settled in his mind. In a way, it was pleasant not to think about anything, to let the wish to concentrate on anything in the exterior world beside the noise outside fade away and die. He propped his mind against it and abandoned himself to the feeling that he was floating above the bed, supported by the ceaseless sound. But the noise stopped and Sal jumped upright. His headache was now duller, its bolts seemingly digging into his skull with a squeak. The hustle and bustle outside his room got louder, and he could hear his mother’s shrill voice, chatting with the woman who was helping in the kitchen.

In less than an hour, Sal was back romping on the streets of the neighbourhood. First he had to stop at Toma’s to exchange games. He had no idea where he got them from, but at Toma’s he could always find Monopoly, Snakes and Ladders, Treasure Hunt, Spintop, Mikado… and now Tomo had allured him with a new and pompous game Sal had already heard an earful about called The Sphinx. Sal wasn’t much of a game freak, but he found playing in itself mind-expanding and it helped him to better orientate himself. It shed light on his friends and on the way in which he could approach them in tense situations. Actually, for some time, he had been regarding his friends and the streets they lived and walked on as a huge game with several strategic points, whose stakes were survival in isolation, keeping secrets and, last but not least, seducing the girls. Wasn’t that what he longed for all day long? Wasn’t that his carefully pursued aim? What would Harry have thought of him if he confessed one day that he’d rather chat with Emi instead of playing ball with them on the school field? How long would it have taken Harry to tell all the boys what he had found? An hour, perhaps, but Sal didn’t care; he wasn’t interested in what they said but in the fact that, once his friends abandoned him, the game wouldn’t matter any more. Once there would be no one left to hide from, his secret would disappear as well, vanishing with the ones that threatened it. And maybe, he assumed, the pleasure of getting together with Emi would disappear too, the pleasure of hearing her squeaking voice answer his phone calls at four o’clock in the afternoon, pretending not to know who was on the other end of the line as if it made no difference to her whatsoever who it might have been. The freedom of going to her place would have impaired their relationship. And the fact that they were hiding was steering them, one step at a time, to a more complex level, which he had trouble defining precisely but which he felt drew them together in an inexplicable and beautiful way.

Toma had the wealthiest family among them all. He lived in a proper house, with a ground floor and a first floor, with a terrace on which in summer the ping-pong table sat in state. The boys held championships, and they were always treated with iced Coke and all sorts of cakes laid out on a table brought especially for the purpose and set in a corner of the terrace. The championships made Sal especially happy because, when they gathered there, Toma was considerate enough to also invite the girls in the neighbourhood to liven up the atmosphere, and since the day Harry had decided it was so, Emi was one of those girls. Among the boys, warmed up by the exercise and competition, Sal and Emi felt as if they were in a cocoon. They would dart furtive glances at one another: their eyes speaking thousands of words, secretly making fun of their friends and flirting as if they had just met.

One day, Emi had dragged him through the labyrinth of what seemed to be Toma’s enormous house. The rooms were arranged in a circle; with doors that opened onto other rooms. You could start at any spot, then cross several rooms stuffed with paintings in thick frames – some simple wooden ones, others adorned and gilded, but now all crammed into each other – along the walls, You would bump against several old armchairs with silk upholstery arranged in symmetrical order and finally come full circle to where you had started. Sal loved to hang around that house and always discovered beautiful objects that he would touch hypnotically; he would have lingered for hours in contemplation if the boys hadn’t almost always called him back to play.

That day, Emi had sneaked in from the terrace and beckoned him to follow her. They crossed two rooms to get to a third, which was usually locked and where he discovered a cabinet full of old weapons in one of the dark corners they hadn’t managed to explore so far. Getting closer and pressing his nose to the window, Sal saw a few pistols with inwrought wooden butts placed next to two rifles, a harquebus and a musket and, in the middle, three swords aligned next to their scabbards with inlaid oriental decoration. The swords seemed to be the oldest items.

Sal touched the wooden edges of the cabinet with his fingers. He wished he could open it a little and hold in his hand the marvels gleaming beneath the window, but the weapons were locked away.

‘What are you doing here?’

Emi was glancing at him, amused. He showed her the cabinet. ‘Look!’

Emi drew near and looked over his shoulder. The weapons didn’t seem to make such an impression on her. She shrugged her shoulders and grabbed his hand. ‘Come on! I’ll show you something else!’

But Sal stubbornly refused to move. ‘Just stay a little while!’

Emi pursed her lips and plonked herself in a bergère, as Toma’s mother would bombastically call it. She lifted her knees to her chin and propped her yellow sandals on the pink silk. ‘What are you up to?’

Sal tried again to see if he could open the glass that separated him from the weapons.

‘Do you want me to tell you a story?’

She raised an eyebrow. ‘Uh-huh,’ she said, screwing up her face and huddling in the armchair.

‘It’s the story of two people, a man and a woman, who loved each other wondrously but, for reasons yet unknown, didn’t manage to stay together, and their story had a sad end…’

Emi winced, shivering all over. Sal propped his elbows against the cabinet’s window, took a deep breath and started.

‘First, I have to tell you about the boy. Ever since birth, Tristan – for that was his name – had an unfortunate destiny. He didn’t get to know his father, who had died on the battlefield, or his mother, who had died while giving birth to him. That’s where, I believe, his name came from: Tristan, from triste… The boy is adopted by his uncle, a powerful king, and raised at his court. But as you can foresee, Tristan is no ordinary child. He is brave and smart and has a magic lamp, but he also has a special capacity; that of seeing things that others don’t see. Moreover, he has warrior blood flowing through his veins. So, hearing that his Uncle Mark’s kingdom is haunted by a child-eating ogre, he sets out to challenge the monster and kills it. During the fight, however, Tristan is poisoned by an arrow. Resigned to the idea of death, he sets out to meet his end like a true hero: at sea.’

Emi sat flabbergasted in the armchair open-mouthed in wonder.

‘Well, and since love has its own way, Tristan was soon brought to the shore of the kingdom whose princess was called Isolde. And she is the one who saves him from death. But Tristan is so blind that he doesn’t notice the beautiful girl with black curly hair cascading down over her shoulders and goes back to battle instead. And he keeps fighting until, one day, he is summoned by his uncle and ordered to find the girl whose arms are snow-white and whose hair is black and curly, covering her shoulders, so that she can become his wife and his queen.’

‘Isolde,’ Emi whispered.

‘Tristan set out to search for the woman described by Uncle Mark, not realising that it was Isolde he was seeking. And, as love has its own way, once again Tristan reached the shore of the kingdom whose princess was called Isolde. And there he finds the royal stronghold besieged by the barefaced man whom he had been warned against. Sure enough, as any barefaced man is wont to do, this one tries to deceive him, but Tristan figures it out in time and manages to kill him. However, as he is hurt again in the battle, Isolde nurses him for the second time and saves him from death. Taking a better look at her, Tristan understands that she is the chosen one his uncle has ordered him to find, and so he sails away back home with her.’

‘What about her? What does she say?’

‘Well, I suppose she says nothing; she wants to be a queen.’

Emi seemed to brood for a while, making a disappointed face.

‘Wait. So on their way back, Isolde’s handmaid, a redoubtable witch, accidentally makes both of them drink a magic potion meant to make people fall in love for life. And the poor things drink it, and that’s when all the madness begins. Tristan falls in love with Isolde, and Isolde with Tristan. Love pushes them into each other’s arms, and all through their voyage they live as husband and wife, you know… but sometimes love is not enough. So at the end of the voyage, Isolde decides that she was destined to be queen. You might wonder how come love wasn’t enough… so did I, but I haven’t found an answer. The fact is that Isolde rushed into the uncle’s arms, secretly shedding a tear for Tristan. But rumour had already reached the king that his white queen, Isolde, had lost her innocence during her journey at sea with his nephew. And the anger caused by jealousy knows no limits. With extra -ordinary courage, perhaps even bordering on recklessness and pretence, Isolde volunteers to pass a test. She is ready to dip her hand in a molten tar cauldron under the oath that she had only been in the arms of two men, Mark and the monk who had helped her jump ashore from the boat. Isolde dunks her hand in the molten tar cauldron and, to the surprise of everyone present, she takes it out white as snow. But who do you think had been hiding under the robe of the monk who had helped her jump ashore?’

‘Tristan,’ Emi whispered, her face beaming with admiration and joy.

‘Yes. Do you realise? What a liar!’

‘Yes, Sal, she lied because she loved him. It doesn’t count.’

Sal, taken aback, was now gawping at Emi. How could she say something like that? A lie was a lie, and Isolde, aside from cheating on her husband, had also lied to him unblinkingly. And love – he pondered for a while – love can’t justify such things. Not to mention the fact that Isolde wasn’t really in love with Tristan; it was the potion that had poisoned their blood and was now talking through her mouth. He rattled off his theory to Emi, but she made a wry face and answered:

‘You say that because you have never been in love!’

The light had stopped shining, the wind had stopped blowing, the sounds had stopped vibrating and Sal’s heart had stopped beating. Everything had stopped dead. He didn’t dare ask her a thing, but unyieldingly carried on his story as if nothing had been said.

‘Then Isolde married King Mark and became what she had always wished to be: a queen.’

But the spell between them had been broken. Sal rooted for the brave knight, Emi for the deceitful adventuress. Emi could feel the grudge, the resentment and the misapprehension in Sal’s voice. The only thing that prevented her from leaving was the curiosity of seeing what would follow.

‘But the couple’s love affair on the ship had been witnessed by other people, who started to talk, and the talk eventually reached the king. Doubt-stricken, Mark chased Tristan away, hoping he would rid himself of his nephew. But Tristan, like a true hero, held his ground. His love for Isolde was stronger than any threat.’

Emi was fidgeting on her chair impatiently. ‘Well, I’d rather you told me how it ends. Do they stay together?’

‘Yes and no… Actually, they die in each other’s arms. So they stay together, but it kind of doesn’t matter anymore.’

Emi seemed to miss the point at first; then she jumped right up from the armchair. ‘You are mistaken. If they die together, as you say, then thereafter they are still together! Love has conquered all!’

Sal looked again at the locked weapon cabinet. ‘One evening, after they run away from King Mark’s court, Tristan and Isolde wander through a dark forest and becoming very tired, they lie down under a tree. In the morning, the king’s men find them sleeping side by side, with Tristan’s sword lying between them. They say it was a symbol of innocence, but I think it’s just a sign that their love was doomed.’

Sal took a break to behold the reflection of his pale face in the window, furrowed by the gleaming blade.

‘There is no hereafter; this world here is all there is. If I took this sword and ran it into my stomach, I would abide with you for a while: I would probably see you screaming and crying, and then, in my eyes, you would disappear and there would be nothing left. The only things that would exist after that would be the room, the weapon cabinet, the furniture, you and my gradually cooling and decomposing body.’

He remained gazing straight ahead for a few moments. Images of the story unrolled before his eyes like a slide show. He was trying to visualise the two lovers, but what he saw instead were a few familiar neighbourhood streets and himself stopping in front of a house that seemed very familiar: a house with a ground floor and a first floor. There, at the upper storey, the window was open and a piece of the white curtain was flapping outside like a flag of surrender.

They found him collapsed on the floor, his left hand full of blood, lying among the glass shards of the weapon cabinet from which pieces of glass were still hanging. Sal only came back to his senses when they reached the hospital, but even then he couldn’t manage to explain where he had got the urge to run his small fist through the shiny, transparent surface.

That’s when his warrior image had sprung into the minds of the boys. They had only seen something like that in action films–although Sal thought he resembled Clark Kent, lying breathless on the floor, more than Superman. On the white sheet, on one of the six beds in the desolate ward of the emergency hospital, Sal contemplated the gauze bandage under which his warm hand pulsated. For the first time, he encountered that dull pain, getting sharp now and again, that suddenly separated his body from his mind. A new body was being born on his inside, growing under his skin, different from all he had felt so far. It felt different from the bike spills and from the blows received from the gang of bullies on Toma’s street, the fifteen- or sixteen-year-old tough guys who had put their bikes away in the attic long before and were now shamelessly touching and poking girls.

The pain had seeped into his blood and was now forcefully pushed through his arteries, making his blood cells rush chaotically through all his organs – this unprecedented pain that had thrown him into the seclusion of the white hospital ward, made him stay with his eyes riveted to the ceiling for several hours in which not a thought, not even the most trifling and insignificant of thoughts, crossed his mind. His senses were petrified in a barren dream; his mind was stuck on his own inverted image into which, little by little, he descended.

If you wish, you can do anything. You can jump with the soles of your feet right on the ceiling; you can hop around the neon lamps placed in the middle of the room like cracks in the walls of an open box through which sunshine seeps in. You can brush away the cobwebs in the corner and you can write your name in the dust. You can stay there, hanging unseen. But at the slightest relaxation of the mind, the image would turn back over, and the dizziness would make Sal close his eyes and jump off the bed with his feet on the floor. And, one Sunday before lunch, while he was heading to Toma’s to get a new game, the truth suddenly hit him, with the force of a boomerang returning to the present after a circuit of his personal history and jolting him out of his dream.

That evening on the ward – with his ears whizzing, feeling dizzy from the iodine smell after an unsuccessful attempt to sleep – he felt an obscure urge to climb down from his bed and leave his room. Now that he was alone, he wanted to take a few aimless steps on the neon-lit hall of the hospital. He advanced on the circular aisle without encountering anybody, without hearing any sound apart from the jerky whoosh of a machine that was pumping air. When he thought he had gone all the way round and was about to return to his room, he opened the door of ward number 23 and saw before him a woman with black, curly shoulder-length hair held in place by a plastic hair band. She must have been around thirty, with a very pale complexion and round eyes like two black buttons. She was sitting on the edge of her bed, dressed in a T-shirt that only just covered her briefs. Sal drew back a step, but the woman reached an arm toward him.

‘Wait!’

He stood still with his hand on the doorknob, daring neither to enter nor to cut and run out the door. He realised now that he had felt like leaving the room and running away from that pale and long-suffering lady. But she beckoned him to come in. And, as Sal advanced, her eyes became increasingly vivid and bright, as if two gems had grown inside them and taken the shape of the cheap buttons on his mother’s two-piece suit.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Mary Jane,’ a smooth voice murmured in his ear, and he almost felt Emi’s lips tickling his nape. The woman reached her arms out to him, and Sal advanced until he found his hands grasped by the woman’s translucent hands, which had bluish veins protruding through the skin.

‘Are you lost?’

Sal relaxed. Instead of chilling him, the cold touch gave him a feeling of comfort and bliss. The gems had become eyes, the wiry hair had become silky and the skin on her cheekbones was glowing with colour.

‘I’m looking for my ward.’

‘What’s the matter with you?’

‘I cut my wrists and I lost a lot of blood.’

The woman touched the tips of his fingers sticking out from under the bandage. ‘If you need anything, just tell me. What did you say your name was?’

‘Sal.’