“Dreams cross time„ Prose

By Istref Haxhillari

1. Repose of the frenzied soul

Darkness conquers the city, the seaside, the trees, and the entire earthly semblance slowly. Nascent pilgrimage of the Day dream throughout the night; there rings the crawling clock of secretly crossing the roads, where the dark night smiles at her white-eyed counterpart who is leaving. The veil of the night chews and swallows the last pieces of the day up, in a hurry. The lazy water, slowly echoing, murmurs unceasingly, perfuses and licks thirstily the sand burnt by the rays of the day. It leaves away powerless, it hops and it comes back again; it fails to reach where it has to, thus it turns back. It resembles the child, who tries to jump over the bank, but once reaching its edge, hesitant, he changes his mind and turns back to try the regular trial. The hazy memories within me prowl never resting like fog streams on the wrinkled water surface. Leaning at the foot of the huge pine tree, very close to the water, I stared at the constantly moving space filled with sparks of light through the twilight, out of which she is expected to come.
Anida leaves home ambling; frenzied, she crosses the road looking from the corner of the eye, and then she runs toward our pine tree hurriedly. In fact there are three pine trees in the pinery along the triangular sea, which contour a small area somewhat hidden from the road, stolen away from the eyes of the world.
The roots of the pines chew the grey juice of the earth and gaze at the leaves which rub and lick themselves shamelessly in the bronzed horizon of the end of the day. The chastity of the forest makes us feel at home in a small house or a four-wall room. We close the door and nobody enters our carrel, the sweet furtiveness where we live every moment, every day. Darkness coronates the exhausting dream and couples us longing.
The splendour of our meetings does not turn pale despite the calamity of the place, where nobody approaches because of the frightening shadow of the wolf-grass and Theodora's phantom like the eternal tidings of death in the sinkhole of Hell. Deep through the grey time, the pretty bride just a newcomer in the city, went mad because of the wolf-grass howl; she kept on living in search of the child who screaked that fatal night and died disfigured.
Since then people are afraid of coming closer to the place where there blooms the mulatto plant and nature fights blissfully - untouched, a virgin, and marvellous.
The frenzied soul germinates; it tempts me to pour out my heart and to tell the forest my secrets. All my life centres around her, the gravity centre of our universe. Time stops and I feel completely full, lacking nothing, therefore I want that that ethereal, unrepeatable meeting never ends. I hardly breathe when she is not close by me. I forget my house, my family duties, I forget my many tasks and I live in another world, in another planet. Could this be Paradise ?
- Nobody saw me - she said feeling childishly happy, and then leaning on the tiptoes, she hugged me.
A caressing drunk with the wave of longing, she shuddered as if she was cold, although it is the middle of summer and it is uncomfortably hot. Tender, her breasts-frenzied, her hair in flames, she convoluted around me longing aflutter. She draws me to the cheer of the grapes tender shoots creeping around the stately oaks, unshaken in the wind. As if she were a child, she only stares with her beautiful eyes which resemble to the two pieces of the sky of that August without a single cloud. The eyelashes like new pine-needles under the April snow hide the eyes: migrating birds afraid of frost.
She is wearing the purple blouse in blue and white stripes, which I like so much. The breast line - a platinum necklace on the mossy neck, ruffles lightly, displaying on the blue nebula, the charm they hide. The twisted lacing ruffles over the summer blouse and it hardly restrains the rampancy of breasts. May be she has taken the brassiere off or may be she has put the ones in the form of the fishing net on, but I am not in a hurry to uncover them; I want the thrilling flickering of the suffering soul to last a bit more. She knows my weakness, hence she snuggles, tumbled in the trap of my arms. Overflowing, I discern the heart beatings, the mild blood purl through the veins; in the dark I examine every detail well-known to me. My watery fingers touch the abyss-like relieves of the lilac spicy torso, while the gentle night turns aside, it closes its eyes and smiles mockingly. I put my right arm around her neck until I gently touch the breast, the most lustful fancy, magically woven on a woman's body. The top is upward and through the gossamer blouse, my hand penetrates everything. She laughs thrilled, full of desire, which is secretly inflamed through her enticing eyes.
- I am wearing the fishnet ones - she said, but momently she cried painfully, since my hand had unconsciously pressed the fragile teat.
She stopped speaking for a while, being frightened by the cry which echoed for a long time in the dark. I do not want any words to be said while I hold her in my arms, since they unfasten this nebulous wonder, the hanging picture between image and appearance. Despite the way they are said, the words do not have the power to carry the incomprehensible, heavenly exhilaration which completely enwraps us in our green island. We have been in love since a year now, as they say, but deep under the sub conscience, I have the impression that I have loved her since very early, when we had not seen each-other yet and I did not know that somewhere there lived the creature I was waiting for since a long time, just as I was waiting for this magical moment.
In every union I see into new details of the body, the behaviour and radiant particular, which did not drain in hundreds of meetings. It always seems to us that there is only a first time for us, never a second, a third one. The saturation point never climaxes; continually, there remains something empty just like on a table where there is not enough food for all.
As I have tenderly enwrapped her, being fragile as a baby, I hold her head over my chest since I fear she might dissolve. The same care is displayed by the artists in the circus when touching the choosy glass goblets to keep the balance some metres high above ground surface.
Superfine, easily to be broken and much tender, she has become part of my being; her hands, her breast or her gills. I would be a lame-duck without her, as if I missed an eye or an arm, and I deeply feel the imagined disablement, often in a bodily form.
Sometime, being drowsy, I was on a wheel chair. I could not push it, wherefore people were looking at me sadly, compassionately, whispering to each-other:
- The poor thing! He is so young and handsome!
She reads my mind, surprisingly never being mistaken, as though the feeling is a special sense and it absorbs the whole marrow of my sub conscience, which can not be seen into by the eyes or sagacity!
- You haven't slept well; you have dreamt a bad dream.
- How do you know that? Are you a fortune-teller?
- Yes, I am a fortune-teller. You can't hide anything from me because guzzle all.
I am reminded of the fortune-tellers in fairy tales, who read your future on the huge palm of heaven filled with heady fragrances of the flowers and fabulous bird flights. I told her my dream the way I had experienced it, fearing that had I shared it incomplete, she would perceive it by the unusual darkening sense.
She started thinking. After a while, feeling sore, she uncoupled me. Vaporously looking through the darkness, frenzied, she said to me:
- If you ever forsake me, I will kill you with my own bare hands.
- Are you that brave? You can't even trample down a fly.
- I can't trample down a fly, but I can surely kill you.
Her courage frightened me; I felt she could really do it. I thought over the easiest way she would commit it. Here it is: She sits down, she picks a stone by the beach and when I am unaware, she smashes my skull with all her strength and then after I am laid down on the ground, she hits me several times until I breathe my last breath. When people found me the next day, they would surmise who I had quarrelled with and he, being stronger than me, had overcome me so tragically. Nobody would think that it was Anida who had killed me. Everyone would justify her since she would never hurt even a small creature, let alone a man; she could never do that.
The ugly death on its black bones shakes the black veil and violently flusters the tissues of the platinum dream. My face made permanently dingy because of death image, saddens her and she laughs again at my experiences, she surprisingly sees into, very easily. She comes closer, she kisses me right at the edge of my ear and then she gibbers:
- Only I can kill really kill you, because I love you very much. Those in love kill disregarding the consequences, you should know this well. A person, who has lost his love, has lost everything; he is left without the impulse to go on living, therefore he can easily commit a crime, a murder or suicide.
- Who told you that? Did you read that in a book?
- My own heart told me, which is more capable than those writers of yours.
We often quarrel at this point. She reads very little, she has got no patience, an unstable type; she never reaches the end, wherefore she only remembers excerpts in pages, half chapters, but never the contents of a book. She views the pictures in passing, she does not view them at the creator's angle, and she does not get the idea or the hidden meaning, she does not suffer staying for a long time in front of them. To make up this short-fall, she has got a strange soul and the absorbing abilities, which I haven't come across with anywhere.
- The strength of the short-fall – I am reminded of the old principle – the same as the question of making up for the senses or the body members. Danish with only one hand, his left is very strong, nobody can break it and if he hits you, it harms you much more than any other fists.
Why should this happen? Is it part of the universe equilibrium? In the ancient times the scholars thought that Nature is afraid of emptiness and based on this regularity they explained the enigmas of the world. Fear of emptiness turned into a law, which mankind benefited a lot from. Based on this understanding there were constructed the absorbing pumps.
The same inert appearance is found among people. When Nature takes away one of the eyes, it strengthens the other in order to fill the created emptiness. Anida is taken away the taste of reading, the magic of books the inaccessible beauty of Nature descriptions, the incomparable shock caused by the pictures, therefore she has got that kind of empathy which frightens me.
The strange female soul not only makes up for, but more than that, it exceeds the emptiness of Art. The fluid sense or the hidden foreboding is likened to the eagle's look, which sights particulars on the earth surface from the loftiness.
The penetrating ability reaches the ends of magic, the ends of the impossible and the unbelievable, empathy, not only of the being, but also of the senses.
Three months ago I met Bjorda, who I had had a relationship with times ago. The truth was just a relationship, nothing else. Bjorda slipped over my being, a tangent which touches the sphere never putting pressure on it; she did not correct or change anything. In the evening Anida hugged me, but she immediately withdrew, confident, shocked, while smelling the strange aroma of my body. A bitchwolf that feels the sad unknown while very far away; a transfigured face by the poison of evil appearance, she spoke with hackles up:
- Who have you met with? Come on, tell me quick!
I was left dumbfounded and I could not come to my senses. I thought she had seen us by accident or somebody had told her.
- You can't lie to me! Don't try to hide! – She kept on reading my hesitation as if it were an open book.
- Anida! I meet many people, among them, women. It's the nature of my job, you know.
- Away with this! You have met a different woman and she is not your wife.
- Heck! – I thought. – What's happening?
Bad turned me pale. Perhaps I felt the same as the evildoers at the interrogator's when they are asked questions which force them to admit their guilt. Angry, beyond every imagination, turned pale because of tension, she threatened me:
- Either tell the truth or I will leave you! – And she was ready to leave.
- Anida! Please forgive me! It's true, I met a woman, but it's not a question of love, I swear! A long time ago, before we got to know each-other, we slept together several times, but nothing else. Today I just met her for politeness sake.
I had never seen and imagined such a horrible condition, exceedingly frantic. She broke out angrily like an evil avalanche; she foamed snickering in panic, about to reach the ends of madness. Under her multiple strength, she hit me with her hands and legs everywhere on my body; she scratched and bit my hand until it was covered with blood, but still she did not cool down. I grabbed her arms and she was not able to move. She was shouting, crying; she was shivering. The dote wrath grunted like a transfigured hydra; it jumped over the pine trunks, it scrabbled the innocent cheekbones and inflamed fluorescent sparks through the twilight. The disorderly breath condensed in the wet evening air.
I begged her, I begged her pardon, I swore by all that is holy to me until she calmed down. She kept on shivering, her face deformed unsightly and tears kept on running for a long time. That panic view was stamped as a photo on my mind, wherefore when she said “I will kill you”, I really believed her and I even got afraid as if I was face to face with a tough criminal and not a bobbysoxer.
- My God! – I murmured disturbed. – Anything can happen!
I had often thought of the idea of murder as a wages of sin, to the extent that time after time I seemed to physically experience it, but differently than she guessed. Her brothers could rightfully - since I had a relation to their sister, I got her into a mess; I was the cause that she was not getting married and they could not bear the shame - set an ambush somewhere. I would surely say that this was not true, this was just gossip spread around by those who wanted to hurt others, but they would not believe me and quarrelling would lead to murder. It could happen this way, not that Anida would kill me with her own little bare hands.
However painful to be accepted, our love is immoral, a shame, a sacrilege condemned by all. I was married; I had wonderful children and I had the graceful Helen full of goodness, who loves me her way, a woman highly regarded by the people who we live in midst of.
I have tried to convince myself that I lack nothing. From everywhere my life resembled perfection itself; it couldn't be better. But time was passing and against all meditative sophisms, I felt all the more unhappy.
This, until a year ago; at the age of thirty, it seemed to me that I was getting old very fast, that my life was falling apart and that I had not experienced any big thing in my life. Inwardly, I felt empty and nothing could fill my emptiness. Colourless days followed each-other at high tremendous speed and I exactly repeated the same actions I had performed two, three or ten years ago, just like in an old ritual, infinitely monotonous. I woke up having dreamt all kinds of dreams, which never left me; I stayed awake for hours, I examined acridity and I disgusted myself. Days were tossed off unendingly. I never smiled, I felt empty, I lacked ideas, reasons and hope.
I had climbed the ladder quickly, this due to my abilities, persistent work and dedication. A brilliant career! The others envied me, but I could discern nothing else on the closed, even horizon except for the cold joy of work, until Anida appeared. In work meetings, scientific meetings, my elegant, wise speech fascinated the listeners. Everybody honored me. When I started working, I forgot the inconceivable sorrow; the world seemed different and I could taste some happiness, but once I left work and headed home, I was once again overcome by sadness, tasteless evocation, worthless like vanity itself. Directly speaking, I could not find any reasons to justify the miserable, lamentable situation.
Now, many things have changed. Life is meaningful, but disturbance of the hagridden soul was never put out; it is just that it has changed its look and it has become colorful. Except for the love on fire coming to an end, its amorality, gossiping, and the continuous sorrow of conscience, everything else is quite different. When I leave Anida and get home, I fondle Era, a real angel, who can hardly satisfy her yearning, since I spend so little time with her, and then I fondle my compassionate and caring wife. I feel terribly bad, a dual monster. I have brought a child to life that I love very much, but the idea of an amoral, double-faced father, once again weighs me down terribly. I am cut in two like the mythological beings, half human-half snake; or like the sirens who had a human body and fish legs.
According to mythology, such strange monsters are destined to suffer disfiguration and they are disdained by all, therefore they stay away from the normal beings and they live away from the normal semblance. They try to hide the terrifying mutilation and they experience dualism, which is sadder than any other disfigurement. As an unending continuation of the thunderous, eternal growing ugliness, my night often turns the same as before, into the hell where good and evil appear in apocalyptic shapes and they torture me up to the point that I start crying while asleep; then I wake up frightened. Feebleness of the unacted secrecy reaches the ends of madness.
In my turbulent conscience, there begin to appear two quite different men who fight each-other unceasingly: the married man carrying the burden of the family and the lover, who, after much dualism and tossing and turning, has reached the repose of the frenzied soul. Continuously, they rhythmically switch places; when one comes, the other leaves away sad, reluctantly, looking forward to regain his lost rights. Opponents beyond reclaim, they never get together and they interact in a distance. Their rage is boundless. They are both equally loved by me, though they are different in all their revealed sights.

2. The trap of the orphan sin

The day loses its colour while I am away from him. It draws out and drags on as time is caught in the trap of memory and it flows slowly as if it will never end. Unconsciously, frenzied, I do diverse kinds of works, filled with the experiences of my hidden life. My hands move quickly, but I breathe in another place, in another moment. The vaporous memories turn pale fast, wherefore I crawl alone in search for his image, a reflection of his or a spark. Within myself I carry this emptiness, the pulse which beats dumbfounded in the sleepy bleakness. Perhaps absence is the violent cause of his presence.
It is said that love is only deserved by a person who daily fights for it. We are endowed with it from above, reasons scholarly Eordei.
- In a thousand people God chooses one whom he perfuses with the balm of inconceivable magic, wherefore grace and mystery have completely taken our conscience.
I believe it, not because he says it, but because I deeply feel the irresistible truth. To him I look so fragile, that desire is heating up in him to protect me from something and then to stay with me alone. Bound and ecstatic he infinitely appreciates the disturbed soul and somewhat indecent my external inferior parts.
I adore him endlessly and I boast on his intelligence. He studies so much that I become agitated and I feel weak. How on earth I am not able to read a book till the end? He brought me a picture, an imitation after Brüner, where there has been presented a child crying. On his right eye, the tear has fallen down up to the chin. Shockingly he touched details of the picture; he guessed the impulse of sobbing, the shape of the tear and he was ready to cry. Possessing a stone-like patience he made Sisyphean steps in an effort to grip the incomprehensible, zigzags, shadowing, and superposition of the sight.
I stared concentrated, but I was not touched and I was not left with any impressions. Children quarrel and cry moodily, when any of their desires is not met or simply to draw the others' attention. I was about to laugh when I saw him tearful because of a picture, as if there was a living creature undergoing a very troublesome sorrow. I kept myself under control, I pretended to be sad and shocked, but no success.
- Don't you feel or understand the unusual child's sobbing? It's Brüner's hand, his original pictures are sold for millions of dollars – he said to me feeling hurt.
As always, quarrelling broke out. He droops at this lack of mine, but it is not my fault that I am not good such things. Either, I do not understand anything, because my mind rampages escaping I do not know where, or I often fall asleep. Sometime I could hardly read the obligatory mimeographed textbooks at the University, let alone waste time with fairy tales made up by the writers.
To be honest, I like love stories, where the characters kiss or have sex, where they touch each-other, get undressed, but these are rare and Eordei does not like them. “Literature is the art which should touch the finest tendons of human soul, not a lustful experience” – he often says to me. At this point I get really tired and I do not understand him, however hard I try. Could I get a thrill by reading the book pages, the same as I get when I just remember Dei's name?
Still very young, I had just oriented myself in life, my mother often used to talk to me about honour, especially about relations to the males. A girl should be careful because boys tease her, entice her, they use her and then they throw her away like a squeezed lemon. I should become an honest girl, minding my own business, and in due time and moment get married to a good man.
I was not lucky however hard I tried.
I got afraid when a girl's nature appeared the first time, but soon I got used to it and I joyfully waited for the cycle, which made me feel a woman in my depths. I did not like the washed-out usual; I wanted to be different from the others, special and interesting. Fashion was part of magic. I knew that a woman loses some magic each time she takes a piece of clothing off, but I felt that it increases as soon as I revealed a part of privacy, wherefore I felt I wanted to yell at someone, I do not know:
- I am thoroughly clean. Come and make me dirty!
I felt that boys like you more if you are a bit downgrade. The sweetness of sin invited me unceasingly and drove me to crazy temptations. The spring of the early youthfulness stretched out the profuse hands on my young body.
I lost my virginity in the third year of the Secondary School to the Literature teacher, who was single, and did not have children. Being under the curse, other married men followed later. The professor was handsome, finical and so much capable, that all of us girls fell in love with him. When he explained the lesson, he put his heart to his meditation, he turned into the literary character, and he acted so elegantly that we were left breathless. Based on a novel of the Russian literature he commented nearly the whole time on the unusual, fresh love of the two young people. It was one of the rare creations, which touched the finest tendons of the woman's nature. He truthfully described attracting pieces, graceful sparkles so voluptuous that I disfigured. Heaven sat close to Earth and the lukewarm night, their night-blue dress, they confusedly modelled goose-flesh under my rose skin. The pressed down memory hectically opened the boundless doors of the insolent horizon, where there freshened their nightly dreams, caresses of the grass waved by the wind.
The secret meetings, kisses at twilights in the coppices, hugging each-other, the boom of the blood on fire - I almost sensed all of these close by me and I was left spouted, bending forward on the desk. When the class was over, the professor motioned to follow him.
- Anida! I was impressed by your sobbing. Did you like it?
- Yes, a lot. – I answered. – Where can I find it?
- If you want, you can come to my house today in the afternoon – he replied flippantly and off he went.
I was really happy. The adorable Literature teacher considered me special compared to the others. Deep inside the secret part of my being, I went farther than the usual. May be he would kiss me, caress me or he would go beyond that. Such thoughts added to my turbulence, as well as to my fear of the unknown.
Up to that time, I had been kissed by two boys. Marsel, while we were both talking in class, approached, and not saying even a word, he stuck his lips at the very edge of my neck. I looked at him surprised; scandalized, I noisily pushed him away and hackled:
- What do you surmise of me and rush on as a crazy man? I will teach you a good lesson!
He was scared to death. He froze and did not dare say a word. He left the classroom crushed and disappointed. I did not experience anything in that idiotic touch. I had imagined the first kiss differently, but he ruined the delicacy I had dreamt about. I forgot about it very soon. Fear kept Marsel bound for days; he looked begging, guilty and he never thought of repeating that again.
We, girls are different from what males surmise of us, who guess sorts of light experiences. They think that we are ready to do what they want, provided that they kiss us or hug us, keeping us tightened to their body. I can not bear them and they have never impressed me. Such types can never understand a woman's heart; neither can they really ever love; they swim in empty spaces.
The other one was the timid and clumsy Nesti, who was always staring at me in class, during the class breaks or in the street. I caught him under the balcony of my house incidentally, while he was walking slowly and was secretly looking at the windows. I felt that he was burning while shuddering, shudders being as darkly bright as the star of love itself. A secret light inflamed his eyes in every look and the words outspoken at random were tinctured peony-like. I felt good, though I was not experiencing anything; I laughed when he spoke to me, and he was shivering. I was curious what he would do if we were left alone, but I feared the others would see us; wherefore I delayed the moment he would have the chance to reveal himself. One early evening I left home feeling empty in my soul, sad inwardly and apparently not tempted. My monotony was impoverishing; a dusty affliction, abradant acid biting everything, the triumph of the heinous nought. A pallid drowsing light flopped down over the houses and the sky seemed it would fall one floor lower. The heavenly tree of the stars hung heavily carrying the wet night fruits. The forsaken wind in the smoky loneliness caressed me, her early friend compassionately and I felt better. Having wandered for a while in the constantly moving space of the grey twilight, my glance caught a glimpse of the shadow leaning on the wall of the courtyard. He shivered caught in the trap of guilt.
- Nesti, what are you doing here? What are you here for?
Howsoever I tried I did not speak sore, but I used some compassion. He felt my weakness indistinctly; he drove hesitancy away with much difficulty and he stared at me yearning:
- I came for you. I couldn't wait until tomorrow – he murmured - his head bowed, tearful, and ashamed.
A light autumn wind was blowing which caressed his curly hair. It was one of those evenings which make your soul melt within you; they lift you up and they tumble you down somewhere unknown. We were so close that I could feel his male aroma which tickled my nose and I got turned on. I did not say a word and we stayed - our heads bowed, thinking. The lane was empty, not even the slightest human peep and I was alone with a boy, while in the empty, dusky world there was but a grey silence, deeply asleep. After a while, I said:
- We are very young. It's not good. Go now!
He did not move away. The sound of the hoarse voice gave him courage; hesitant, he stretched his shaking hand and then let it slip upon the finely combed hair. He discerned the thrilling waiting, drew me close to him violently and touched my lips erect. I kissed him too. The irresistible temptation went through my body, the same as the magnetized state when the electricity goes through. From afar the ribbon of the streets in the light produced by the discharge of the lamps using the inert gas was flowing like lava. In this disorderly mess of the magic moment thoughts stiffened and ideas were crushed in pieces, wherefore I did not want to leave. The desires were infinite and the whole being was feverishly searching for the sweet unknown. My lips were dried up and I could not control myself any longer, but I heard steps in the street. Frightened, I pushed him away and I went in.
I could not sleep that night. Disoriented, I remembered Nesti and I did not make way for the mess of the body and soul. While sleepy, I felt his kiss and I shivered with fire in bed until I woke up.
In the days to come, I was reminded of my mother and sisters' words and I tried hard to keep away from him. His looks cut me deep in my soul, but I did not give up and he dared not come any closer. I never gave him another chance, although I felt very bad about him and myself.
Then, with the full imposing gravity, appeared the Literature teacher who attracted me providentially. My feminine attention was drawn towards this grown-up man and I forgot Nesti who kept on burning in secret dolefully. Shocked and diseased, I knocked at the door of his apartment carrying a pack of Turkish delight in my hands. I expected the door would be open by his wife or any other family members, when suddenly in the pink space there appeared the smiling teacher: elegant and impressing as always.
- Welcome Anida! It is a pleasure to welcome such a beautiful and nice guest at home!
He expressed himself fluently, choosing the words. It seemed to me that I had met the most erudite person imaginable. Blushing, perplexed, I answered instinctively:
- Nice to meet you! This pack of Turkish delight is for your mother – and I put them on the table.
- Oh! How kind of you! – He answered and then continued:
- My mother would be very glad, but unfortunately she is not at home. My mother and my wife went to visit someone and as you see, I am alone, an old and turned aside single, not cared about by anybody.
I could hardly come to an understanding of the trap laid by his words, and I did not understand the context completely. My heart jammed; I was on needles and pins. There were only us in the room, me and him - a male twice as big as me, experienced, confident. This was not the simpleminded Nesti, whom I fooled around the way I wanted. Deep in my inward being, I was feeling an incomprehensible inquietude. What if he kisses me? I was sweating.
He sensed my inquietude, and what is more, the reason I looked absent-minded. He approached slowly; he put his hand over my sprayed hair and spoke to me in a sweet, shivering with lust voice:
- Are you afraid? Tell me the truth!
- No, I am not. Why should I be afraid? I came for the book – I spoke raving and I tried to leave, but very slowly and hesitant.
Hands are endowed with a heavenly power to heal the body diseases or to dull the sorrows of the soul. He sensed I was being divided in two parts, he did not take his hand off me, but immediately, while I was not able to resist, he bowed and kissed me passionately. I gently tried to push him away, but I couldn't.
Everything happened so quickly that I was not able to remember any other details later. I felt pain, pleasure, and drunkenness which boomed my whole body. I nearly fainted in his hands, leaning full of pleasure. I deeply felt that lust for the genesis is impartible, often portentous, torturing, and full of hallucinating resplendence.
He had taken all the measures.
After the pleasure experienced at the beginning, I was slowly overwhelmed with sadness. I felt humiliated, raped, and deceived as never before, but I was not innocent. It took me days to get used to the new situation. I wasn't a virgin any more, but experience encouraged me. It would happen one day. I was set free from a kind of fear often horribly strong, which is experienced by all the girls of this age.
The playful behaviour changed; I became thoughtful and suspicious. I felt guilty because I betrayed my mother's trust, the person that I loved very much. Before this, I used to take everything easy, I used to fool the males around the way I wanted when they kept around me and I played with the flaming desires I easily read in their eyes. After a while I did not care about the first ones and I eye-caressed another one. I danced gently among the thorns, but I did not become obsessed. I enjoyed the reputation of a sensual girl, rather naïve, but no one could boast that he had laid his hands on me.
Now, the flow of life in relation to its feminine essence changed. I could not look my mother right in her eyes; I had unfaithfully betrayed her, so I tried to recompense the loss by living out a touching dedication in behaviour, work, and caring for my sisters and brothers. Hidden behind the hurt, serious and attentive smile, I put an end to game of feelings with the gusty boys. I looked at myself in the mirror and I noticed an emphatic metamorphosis.
Pensive eyes and the two little crow's feet seemed as if they hid the secret, gloomy sorrow. How much gushing forth of lightning out of the throats of the storms of guilt! The new reality, a forest of shy roses trapped in the trap of the lilac worsening, became now the residence of my own fancy. How could the dirty present, paralytic, missing both its feet reach the future dreamt about everyday by my mother?
Losing my virginity had only one parching advantage; no one was made aware of it.
The secret harrowed the turbulent conscience somehow; it justified the fresh entertainment, so I accepted the professor's invitation to his house as well as to a friend's of his who had temporarily gone abroad some more times. The only relation to him was the sex delight, nothing else. When I left, I erased it from my memory as if it had never happened. In the course of time, in class even, I did not care as I used to before. He practised safe sex, so I was released free and easily into the pleasures of the evil temptation. I was wholly released; I fell down into a reddish sea of gladness.
After that the males rarely entered my life and they left me with no impression. Some of my friends suffered bitter dramas in their love relationships. Zana hung herself with the bed sheets in the midst of the night, when we all slept. She loved the handsome Poli a lot; we all knew about him and we left the room when he came.
Feeling happy, Zana told us everything and we listened to her breath taken, and full of envy. Eventually, he rarely came and started to leave away slowly. Zana was painfully afflicted. She secluded herself more and more. The two little crow's feet were still there when she passed away. We tried hard to stay close to her and to get her going on, but she could not bear it. We all experienced the horror of that unforgettable moment: Zana's disfigurement, her tongue stretched out terribly and the urine still dropping on the wet floor. This horrible kind of death led us towards thinking. We were seeing life as it really was, hard and restive and we all abandoned our adventures for some time.
The experience gained during those years at the University convinced me about my mother's right advices:
“Males bother you, they woo you until they squeeze you like a lemon and then they throw you away.” Didn't poor Zana's death who had a great saint-like spirit witness this?
Until today no male did ever get stuck on my mind and they did not leave me with any pieces of memory. The relationships to them were momentary, just partners as all the other girls. We did not know any other girls who still remained a virgin. Even more, remaining a virgin was experienced as weakness, inability, an old-fashioned mentality.
Amidst the confusing whirlwind of the exams, I did not have sex for weeks and months, but desire was never burnt out, it always burned. Nearly every night I experienced sex to males until I masturbated while sleeping and I was temporarily released. Then I forgot that they existed. I am not guilty; not only because this is the way I was formed, but life taught me that we are looking for an only man's love in order to forget about him, not to think about him anymore.
Everything is different with Eordei; different from all the past, momentary, unstable experiences. I am wholly stuck and I never get satisfied with him. After every meeting, when I leave, a part of mine is left there, a pledge of the thirsty soul, whom I feel even physically at times. I always miss something which I search for unceasingly and I find that in our green shelter at the shore of the noisy sea. Helpless, I wait for the moment when the spotted dimity of night, which I like very much, hangs. Look! The time is now and he is waiting for me leaning against our pine. Vacuum of the day and emptiness of leaving sadden us but the bronzed dusk invites us to fill it up.
I leave home and I freely fly towards the end of the narrow street. The boulevard, on which there walk occasional passers-by, is a delicate hindrance. I hide myself for a while against the wall, I have a glance at both sides of the wide road, then I run to our nest, I embrace him with all of my strength, I hug him impetuously and I rest my head on his chest. Here is the paradise where I rest happily, without which I would surely die. My love is like the bird in the legend which did have no feet, it could not land anywhere and therefore it died flying.
He remains a bit serious, a man as he is, but I know he can hardly help it. He carefully wraps his arm around me as if I am a precious object, then he ends up with the breast. That is his weak point, Achilles' heel. He smoothly caresses the top. Oh my God! How I feel it! I shiver wholly as if it is mid of winter. I know he is trying to get which bras I am wearing or If I am wearing bras at all.
- It's not worth wearing bras, - he says.
- Your breasts were carved by Michelangelo, an angel of God on earth. When God wants to create something perfect, God always chooses the artist angel.
- I am wearing the fishnet ones, I said, but he grasped me and I yelled at the top of my voice because of pain.
We fear someone out there in the dark heard us. He pretends he does not mind, but I clearly discern uprising in his silhouette.

Translated by Andi Kosta

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