Читать книгу The beast of a thousand years - Ilmar Penna Marinho Junior - Страница 8

Chapter 2

CURATOR FERDINAND ROCHEMONT DE SAILLY had never imagined what was about to happen, especially in Brazil. The curator had been sincere in his profession of faith before the audience in the auditorium at the 21st Festival when he said he would do everything to recover any of the tapestry’s missing scenes, even if they weren’t the most famous of them. He had never imagined that it would intertwine, in a mysterious and fortunate way, with the fate of Leonardo and an astrologer, famous unknowns from overseas.

On that October 13th, 2006, the same day of curator Ferdinand de Sailly’s lecture, Leonardo Marcondes had received, in the morning, in Rio de Janeiro, the good news from the American banker. Everything was evolving as predicted in his first consultation with astrologer Lisa.

“Congratulations, Mr. Leonardo, the board of directors has authorized an increase in your line of credit. The bank has never granted such a high amount to a Brazilian client.”

The morning phone call had left no doubt about the international recognition that Leonard had become a powerful member of the privileged international financial society, above the law of ordinary men. The occasion would certainly deserve a celebration when he got home.

As predicted, it was already very late at night when Leonardo, lying on the bed in Lisa’s apartment, all of a sudden decided to get up and solemnly invite her, with no romance whatsoever.

There was nothing unusual in the invitation, as it was always him who took the initiative, since that remarkable first time.

Lisa continued with her Sudoku, majestic, until she concluded the right sequence. After marking the page with her Mont Blanc pen, she closed the booklet and put it below the lamp on the nightstand. Her almond eyes were fixed on Leonardo’s already naked body. She began to release the tiny buttons on her nightgown, and her beautiful lap appeared with her generous breasts. She pulled the hem of her nightgown above her waist, showing her bellybutton. She pulled it even higher. The protruding aureolas of her breasts were exposed in all their sensuality.

But that night he didn’t want to take long. After the first thrust, there were moans, sighs, obscene words, gasping, increasingly uncontrolled breathing. Five, seven, twelve, who knows how many minutes, until Leonardo lost control and let the torrent flow, untamed. Then came the restorative silence of those floating in nirvana. They cuddled until their breathing calmed down. After a deep sigh, Leo rose still lazily, turned on his side, and resumed his place on the left of the bed. Next to him, on the nightstand, the two cell phones, temporarily turned off, lay.

“It’s good, it’s very good”, Lisa sighed, her eyes sleepy with a delicious languor.

Leonardo liked to hear her thankful voice. Sometimes he lay sprawled on the bed, sort of facedown, staring at the closed shutters, through which, through two small slits in the window, a cool breeze, conducive to sleep, came in. But on that night of celebration, it was different. It took him a long time to fall asleep. His thoughts, muddied by dates, numbers, deaths, counted anxieties and fears. They only quieted down again when they were replaced by good memories and the emotions of that memorable afternoon when he met Lisa in her intimacy with the stars. Diffuse memories of prophetic visions and of the Milky Way outlined on her tanned shoulder. He recognized his life had changed after she read his astrological chart, when he was taken by a love spell.

Leonardo was suddenly surprised to see the “entities” arising from the mysterious cosmic light being incorporated by the unknown woman in the almost dim light of the room.

“Mr. Leonardo, I’m going to talk a little bit about astrology. When men began to look at the sky, more than ten thousand years ago, they realized they were integrated with the world. They began to notice that the course of life, the gifts and talents, and even the mood are influenced by the movement of the stars.”

Leonard watched the harmonious movements of her hands.

“It was when they discovered that it was possible to know their fate through their natal chart, which is a photograph of the sky at the exact time, on the day and place of birth. It’s the cosmic birth certificate of the person who comes into existence for the universe.”

At this moment, dog barking grew louder in the next room, but the astrologer went on without losing her concentration, raising her voice.

“Let’s start reading the twelve houses of the zodiac on your chart, each representing an area of your life. Here, on the top of the mandala, is the tenth house, which is the place of your professional life. From what you’ve told me when you called, this is your biggest concern right now. Well, you have four planets in this house: a stellium formed by Uranus, the Sun, Pluto, and Mercury. With these energies gathered, you have all the tools to be successful and achieve your goals.”

Completely entranced by Lisa’s words and beauty, Leonardo watched the complex dance of her fingers above the chart of the planets.

“See this big quadrature here on your map? It represents the challenges you must break through to get what you want. No one can escape their fate.”

The astrologer paused. She took a sip of Coca-Cola, looked deeply in the consultant’s green eyes, and went on:

“This Moon in the fourth house, in Aquarius, indicates that you are someone who cares deeply about family. But the many challenging aspects of your chart indicate that you may have been separated from them.”

Lisa took another sip from the soda and resumed the reading, in a trance with her deities.

“I did the transits in your chart back and forth, studied what happened during some stages of your life. It’s all there: the first hurdle you had was around when you were twenty-five years old, when Uranus made exact conjunction with your Sun. Then you lost someone very dear to you, right?”

Leonardo shivered and agreed, nodding. He wanted to say something, but she waved her hand, signaling that he should not interrupt her, and read the chart with an emotional tone.

“The chart shows that your father didn’t die of natural causes. This caused a profound impact on you, especially because it was something sudden and unexpected. The astrological transit shows that everything collapsed around your father and, when he departed from this life, you were taken by an extraordinary rage against the world. Your mother died sometime later. It’s here, in Neptune’s quadrature with your Moon. It was from an incurable disease.”

Lisa saw his eyes turn grey, fraught with pain and suffering. She then decided to dismiss the formal treatment.

“Your father was everything to you. No one understood your anger against the world! Then you married the girl who you were dating. When the first Saturn return happened, you had a son. There’s a Moon in the fourth house. This is very good. It means that even with all your duties, you’ll always find time to take care of him. You two have a lot of affinities. What’s his name?”

“Lucca”, he answered, lowering his head slightly.

“It’s a beautiful name. You’ll always have an ally at home in him.” Lisa took another sip from the soda and went on. “Your solar revolution shows that this year will be very hectic, because when Pluto forms aspects with the personal planets, it comes with an amazing transformative power. Those things that are no longer useful are eliminated to make way to new things. Pluto is entering your twelfth house. It will take out all the things that were repressed. It’s like an earthquake.”

Leonardo kept listening for another half hour, his eyes fixed on the colored symbols of his chart.

“Everything indicates that the time to learn how to deal with the things that are blocking this decisive moment in your life has come. You are an ambitious person and will know how to use all the means you have to achieve your goals. The prediction is that you’ll get everything that you wish for. The power you’ll have in your hands is amazing, if you know how to use the transformative energy of Pluto, the god of darkness, to evolve. Be very careful with the underground and fire.”

They heard scratching and more intense barks from the dogs, maybe hungry. Lisa wasn’t disturbed by it and went on.

“Many good, promising things are about to happen. I may be wrong but, in this year of transformations, you have everything to become a great boss. There’s even a specific time for them to be fulfilled. You’re going to pay a price that only you can say if it’s high or fair. Well, this is all I can read from your chart.”

“Ms. Lisa, I’m sorry, but I feel that you’re hiding something from my current life”, he complained, noticing some embarrassment after an hour of consultation, thus ending a session that seemed vaguely based on astrology and seduction.

“I didn’t hide anything. Reading a chart is not fortune-telling. Please, Mr. Leonardo, your consultation is over.”

After the warning, he saw her tilt her thin neck and her breasts, outlined in her thin blouse, heave, before a long, mysterious sigh.

“Excuse me”, muttered the astrologer, standing up as if she wanted to cheat time with a strategic pause. From the kitchen door, she asked, “Would you like a glass of water? Tonic?”

“No, thank you. I would like to continue with the consultation, please.”

Lisa didn’t return immediately, but when she came nearer, she was bringing more soda on the silver tray, a sign that she was willing to resume the reading with more information, and that was what she did for another thirty minutes with other revelations, concluding:

“Understand, Mr. Leonardo: I cannot change your chart. You will be dealing with very profound things in your inner self. If you make the right decisions, things will flow and your life will be transformed for the better. You’ll experience very tense moments because you’ll go through a phase of many changes.”

“I promise I won’t stay still.”

“Here’s Jupiter, the planet of optimism, signaling a period of great expansion. Your life will be transformed. Of course, you will be tested to become the wealthy man your father wanted to be.”

He stared at her, gritting his teeth at the mention of his father.

“It’s not a coincidence that you’re here today to rethink your life. You’ll have the help of powerful forces. All these energies will act in your favor. A former Brazilian president, in an adverse political context, disregarded them, calling them ‘hidden forces’. In your case, they are going to help you to get where you want. It’s only a matter of time.”

She paused, staring at a point in the solar revolution chart as if she had discovered something astonishing.

“There’s something weird showing up right here.”

“What do you mean?” asked Leonardo, curious.

“It’s as if there’s a shadow, someone with whom you’re going to make a pact. You’ll have a lot of money, much more than you imagine. You can lose everything, but not the money. This shadow is associated with a situation of many surprises. It will force you to live on the edge from now on. Never forget that!”

A gust of air came through the window. There was something mysterious, evil, in the spontaneity with which the gust blew the charts.

“I’m going to act, Lisa, I promise”, he replied, using for the first time the name of the astrologer with a surprising intimacy.

At that very moment, totally seduced by her looks, he asked something about her tan and lightly felt the skin on Lisa’s bare shoulder, who did not react to his bold touch. She just closed the eyelids of her hazel eyes. Leonardo’s fingertips then went on. They reached the back of her neck. His arm wrapped around her neck to then pull it gently and kiss her on her half-open lips without lipstick.

On the way down, in the elevator, after the happy ending of the astrological consultation, Leonardo was totally convinced:

“I’m living on the edge.”

What surprised him the most were the wild twists of fate and passion. They were always unpredictable. Lisa’s final words came to his mind. He would not forget the omens of the stars, let alone the abundance of money spilling over the edge of his chart.

*

Something weird had made Lisa get interested in studying that chart, where death and greed teemed. This only made her curiosity grow. After she’d typed the data, day, month, year, time and place of birth, she saw the path of his planetary cycles appear on the computer screen. And, very shaken, she saw that his chart was the complement to her own. The degrees of the ascendant were identical, planetary twins, and equal in the matters of soul and body. The most astonishing revelation would come later, when she put his solar revolution on top of her own chart. She was able to identify the arrival of a new man, nameless in her chart, about to bring major changes to her quiet day-to-day life.

After Leonardo’s fiery touch and a kiss, Lisa threw herself in his arms. She felt all the heat and the smell of lavender of his manly body. They let their tongues linger on the craving of the kisses, with no beginning or end, as if it was the first time they had ever been kissed. The mutual caresses intensified wildly between the woman and the man of perfect astral conjunction. They could no longer hear the dogs bark jealously. Lisa let her shirt fall to the floor. The mouth of that man out of his mind went down to her breasts. The living room carpet was present so as not to delay the surrender. Wearing only her skirt and kissing his ear, she whispered to him that she had her period. The trespasser didn’t seem disturbed by the detail. On the contrary, that man, as unknown as he was known, hurried to pull off her lacy panties and penetrate her. And after the exaltation of the passionate bodies and the bright conjunction of the planets, they would never be the same again.

When the earthquake was over, nothing moved on the earth and the sky. Not a whisper, just the silence of the blessed. Lisa thought about the power of passion, what He must have felt when He created man. It was late already. There was no way of not communicating that a consultant from Petrópolis would arrive at any moment. Leonardo sympathized with her professional integrity. He rose quickly from the carpet and standing, naked, regained that unique look, one she had never seen from any other man. He asked if he could take a shower. Completely dizzy with everything that had happened, she tried to put things back in their place while she was alone in the room, realigning the couch and chairs. She realized how unlikely it was to return to her former calmness with the scent of him pervading her hands, down the pores of her neck, breasts, arms, hands, buttocks, legs, pubis, all over her body, in delicious indolence. She wanted to wrap her long legs around him on her flowery sheets.

Later, during a long bath, she recalled some of the things she’s read on Leonardo’s solar chart. Some tragic events. She relived the moment when she shuddered upon hearing form his sexy mouth the confession that he had entertained the thought of committing the same foolishness as his father. The revelation left her livid and speechless as she continued the reading. She thought it was advisable to pause and invoke the deities to help her in counseling the imponderable of astrology.

When they were saying goodbye, with a long kiss by the elevator door, Lisa made him swear that he would never again think about his father’s outrageous anger, which had led her to a panic she had never felt before. And, before leaving, he, with an ardently seductive smile, made her promise that they would meet later at a motel, since his wife and son were absent from Rio in Itaipava and would not arrive until the following day. He was adamant that it had to be in a motel. Lisa accepted the offer, not knowing where she had found the courage to accept the great challenge of fate.