TONIA LALOUSI
The Last Symphony
How far would you go
to reach perfection?
BOOK TITLE
The Last Symphony
ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE
Η Τελευταία Συμφωνία
by Lexitipon Publications, Athens 2019
AUTHOR
Tonia Lalousi
TRANSLATION
Spyros Paraskevopoulos
TRANSLATION EDITOR
Ilias Karampelas
Copyright © Tonia Lalousi, Athens 2021
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
ISBN-13: 978-618-00-2702-0
ISBN (ebook): 978-618-85304-0-9
You can contact the author:
Email: [email protected]
Instagram: @tonia_lalousi
Website: www.tonialalousi.weebly.com
To my readers
Contents
Prologue
Increasing entropy
Illegal investigation
The Last Symphony
Prison without bars
Black - White
Red applause
Disguised freedom
The sacrifice of perfection
Dancing is the secret language of the soul
The tattoo of melody
Imprinted secrets
Potential victim
One - Zero
The height of the summit
Contradictory truth
The science of balance
A trip to Moscow
Why become mediocre?
Posthumous fame
Return to the end
The mirror
Prologue
He opens his eyes. He finds himself lying on his back. He is surrounded by a trembling white light which fades into shadows. He slowly lifts his legs. He throws his head backwards and leans it on the ice. The skin of his head cools. It is a pleasant feeling of relief to an inflaming mind. His fair hair freezes from the microscopic crystals. He sways the lower limbs. He feels strong, capable for anything, at the same time he feels weak even for the slightest movement. He grabs his neck as if he is trying to restrict it. He shifts his weight from the waist to his knees. He falls forward. The fingers of his hands touch his overall, sleeveless, red tracksuit. He feels cold. He opens and closes his eyelids and faces a man.
The man is dressed in the shades of ice. He is wearing a grey shirt with grey trousers and a grey gabardine with scattered laces, which are hanging like long ribbons. His hair is fair, in the color of platinum, combed in one perfect parting. His feet are bare on the ice, transferring the temperature to his gaze. His hands are intertwined vertically. The left supports the right and the fingers of the first point to his chin. The index finger moves along the neck and stops at Adam’s apple. He half-closes his eyes and looks at the young man with the red tracksuit.
He retreats. He reaches a white wall standing on his knees. He stands up. The man opens his gabardine, takes it off with airy movements, as if dancing in the rhythm of a melody, and keeps it spread out in front of him. He shakes it in the void and throws down the young man. Fiery flames are created around him, but instead of melting the ice, they stabilize and trap it. The young man is forced to move between them. He keeps fighting until the fire retreats.
The man with the gabardine brings a full-body mirror and places it in front of the young man with the red tracksuit. The visual contact of the latter with his reflection completely throws the already disturbed balance of his mind off. He visualizes himself wearing black jeans and a white shirt. The man, the young man, and his reflection are the same person with a different look. The gabardine rotates with mastery in the air and lands precisely on the fingers of its owner. Simultaneously, the young man begins a new battle.
He wide-spreads the legs, falls on the ice, and forms a perfectly straight line. He faces his reflection in the mirror. He himself cannot manage it. His legs try to straighten but remain several inches above the ice. A perfect turn of the man around his axis makes the young man get up.
He continues his attempt. He supports his weight on the left leg and lifts up the right. He catches a glimpse of the man, before looking into the mirror. He raises the right leg, lowers it bending the knee, and stretches it again to the top. This balance seems impossible to be achieved in the eyes of the young man. Behind the mirror, he has begun to resign, after many unsuccessful attempts.
The gabardine rotates up, around, and under the man’s perfect body. As the absolute ruler, he wraps it like a mantle and brings it forward, always keeping the balance and absolute control of each movement. The young man tries some turning movements with his hands while lifting his left leg high up. The answer of the reflection is repeating turns around an imaginary axis, making the shirt swirl around his waist. He fails again.
The young man in the red tracksuit falls onto the floor. He cannot achieve perfection. He cannot reach the summit. The man is dancing on the tips of his toes. He flies in the air, forming a solitary angle of one hundred and eighty degrees. He supports his weight on his right hand and pushes the gabardine. The young man observes him. He is waiting for him to fail, but it never happens. The man gets up, grabs the gabardine in the air with one hand, and smiles sardonically.
The reflection steps back. The young man holds his head and pulls his hair. He bends down. He holds his body. His mind explodes. His body freezes. It hurts. He himself behind the mirror retreats, walking towards the white wall. The fingers are wrapped around his neck, getting ready for the end.
With a subtle movement of the fingers, the man indicates to the youngster the next step. The index finger aims at the full body mirror. The man’s eyes go up and down, pushing the target to its selection. He looks at his reflection for the last time. He himself has collapsed. He is ready to surrender. He has to catch up with him. He gets up, speeds up, and falls on the mirror, breaking it off in hundreds of microscopic pieces of glass.
He goes on the opposite side and falls onto the floor. There is no ice. There is no sense of cold or hot. He meets the absolute void. A sterile white in an invisible light. He looks around him. He is searching for his reflection, but there is nobody. He lowers his eyes on him. The red tracksuit has disappeared. His body is wrapped with the grey gabardine, with the sleeves worn inside out. The right sleeve on the left hand and the left sleeve on the right one. The laces wrap his hands behind his back and throw him face down on the floor.
He turns his head to the left. He sees a shadow on the colorless wall. In the next minute, all his prior efforts are captured. He sees himself in the red uniform. He sees the perfect opening of the legs. The rotational movement of the hands with absolute accuracy. He sees one of his legs high in ideal alignment with the trunk, perpendicular to the opening of his hands. He sees that all his efforts were successful. His eyes are brimmed with tears, hurt, become heavier, until they meet the sheer darkness.
Increasing entropy
‘‘Enough is enough, Peter!’’ he slaps his palm up on the desk. ‘‘Learn at last when you need to stop. You can’t hunt ghosts for an entire life!’’ The commander’s voice is furious. Non-negotiable.
‘‘If you think that doing properly my job makes me a whimsical police officer, then I have no place here.’’ He aims with his index finger the point which his superior had slapped up earlier.
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br /> ‘‘In every case you undertake we lose precious time. While you are searching for answers to questions that have already been answered, some other people out there are in danger. I am not willing to give you another opportunity… I know how important you are to this Force, but when a case is closed and especially from the evidence that you and your colleagues have found, then you should accept it and move on.’’
Peter smiles mockingly. ‘‘Every suicide is a potentially well-planned assassination, Sir. The medical expert agreed with me!’’ emphasizing the doctor’s specialty, in an attempt to weaken the validity of his interlocutor’s speech.
‘‘There are other meticulous and extravagant people like you, I won’t object to that. However, there are moments you should stop.’’
The commander warns him. I stand behind Peter as a silent observer. My gaze falls on the library window with the innumerable files I bet they lack archiving. My brunette figure looks weak. Maybe it's because I'm a little over 50 kilos. Maybe it's because my attitude is defensive.
‘‘Meticulous and extravagant… You attribute correct characteristics to people who pay attention in detail and search for any potential scenarios, even the most excessive one, to discover the truth. I am glad you recognize our work, at least subconsciously, Sir…’’ he is clearly ironic, acknowledging the difficult position in which he is placing himself.
His opponent sighs. Peter straightens his body to show his superiority over the disobedient police officer. The confidence he radiates irritates him. It always irritated him.
‘‘Apart from searching for the truth, you need to learn to accept it as well, Peter.’’
My proud criminologist raises his neck. He is not going to admit that he is wrong. ‘‘I accept only what passes through the filter of my consciousness.’’
The commander puts his hands deep in the front pockets of his trousers and stretches back on the heels of his shoes. ‘‘Let’s hope that next time the filter of your consciousness won’t appear in the form of blinders in your eyes. I don’t want anything else from you. Magda, don’t do the same. You may go,’’ he concludes with another warning, and we leave his office without accepting it.
He usually treats every case with strict self-control and impartiality, however, if something comes in confrontation with his instinct, he makes us look for evidence that nearly always does not exist. Those are the moments when his ego collides with me, the commander, the - easy target - Andrew, with the Directorate of Criminological Investigations, with anyone unlucky found in front of him…
He enters the office, letting the door bang behind him. His fist finds its place on the full of moisture wall. He averts his glance from the bright light which enters generously into our square office and meets my eyes.
‘‘What are you waiting for? To admit that you were right? Yes, OK, this time I was wrong…’’ he states and opens the collection with the towers of selfishness. One of those self-destructs in front of me.
He walks around the office. He seeks support on the grey wall, which is the new - unique - optical field for him. I do not approach him. I know that in such moments he needs to stay alone, to find time to regain his sovereignty. This childish, as I call it, way of reacting makes me fall in love with him even more each and every moment. I love this irritating man who always wants to be right, who constantly seeks to be the centre of attention and admiration, who seeks perfection and truth. He is the man who needs to exercise control over everyone and everything and most of the times he succeeds.
‘‘I should learn to accept the truth…’’ I hear his laughter without looking at him. This spastic, nervous laughter that covers a series of outbursts of anger from his interior. ‘‘I can’t stand him, Magda…’’ he puffs and blows, and I look at my watch, timing the duration of his monologue. ‘‘Of course, I also exceeded the limits this time…’’
I open my eyes wide at the hearing of this acceptance. I keep being in the same ecstatic posture until he turns towards me and I hurry to arm my gaze with elements of understanding, support, and confirmation…
I am mocking him.
‘‘Don’t look at me like that, Magda! You know very well that I’m not crazy and I don’t hunt ghosts as the other dared to support.’’
The caustic attitude to power is one of the first signs that show that his temporary collapse is nearing completion. It is the best time to support my opinion. Every time the same ritual. ‘‘My love, you aren’t crazy… You are an extravagant.’’
He smiles. I smile. He smiles again.
Clearly, he wants to terrify me.
‘‘Magda…’’
‘‘When we know ourselves, we can face everything. You were the one who taught me that, weren’t you?’’ I return an erotic but simultaneously ironic smile, preparing one more quarrel of ours.
His eyes sparkle momentarily. He admires me. I impressed him.
‘‘The awareness of our psychic world is strengthened only if we avoid its notification. Let’s suppose that I am an extravagant. If I can convince you of the contrary, I will have recognized my weakness, after I will have launched its decentralization and I will have turned it into a dynamic feature of enforcement,’’ he raises his eyebrow, believing that he just threw me against the wall.
I look up to the ceiling. ‘‘This reasoning course itself expresses the highest reflection of an exaggeration, Peter…’’ I mock him again, remaining in a fairly high level of self-awareness.
‘‘Can you prove it, Mrs. Iliopoulou?’’
His soft voice distracts me. ‘‘Neither can you prove your own theory.’’ I play dangerously.
‘‘I just did it.’’ His dark eyes are enjoying our word game. In particular, they are enjoying the power they are having over me. ‘‘The theory is the last step of the scientific method for the orthodoxy of a case, Magda…’’ he says with a mild manner.
I look at him while frowning, scolding my proud self for this defeat. My mind is seeking ways for revenge when a hesitant, official knocking on the door interrupts my unsuccessful reasoning.
‘‘Antonella told me to bring you these…’’ Andrew walks behind my desk and leaves some pages in front of Peter.
‘‘And what are you? Her maid?’’ he answers back and in such a way it is clear to whom he will break out his nerves this time. Once again.
My dear friend and colleague seems to be thinking about the question before answering to him. ‘‘She was just talking on the telephone and…We were talking about the case and I thought…’’
‘‘And what are the cases of the homicide department to be discussed in the corridors, Andrew? Please come to your senses…’’ He rolls up the sleeves of his shirt and sits on the chair. He shuffles his hair to achieve a more unkempt hairstyle or to burst out the irritation that still survives within him.
Andrew retreats, walking towards the door, leaving uncommented Peter’s shots. ‘‘I will be in my office, Magda…’’ he whispers to me hesitantly.
Why does he inform me every time?
I smile at him and release the hands that were tied under my chest. I approach my phenomenally calm husband to read the content of the pages.
‘‘Apostolos Maniatis. Thirty-two years old lawyer, with an office in Zografou, married with two children, ages twelve and two years old. His wife is unemployed, and they were both born on the island of Zakynthos. Clean criminal record.’’
Before I see the pages, the information comes as recorded from Antonella’s mouth, who enters the office dragging her feet. Our new colleague belongs to the category: I say a lot, I do a little.
‘‘So?’’ says Peter raising indifferently his left eyebrow, as he brings the pages close to his face. He seems ready to throw them ostentatiously behind his head.
She sips a generous dose of coffee from her plastic, as if she needs to get energy to speak. ‘‘This morning he was found dead in his office by the woman who was cleaning. The medical examiner concluded that it is a suicide that came fro
m a bullet on his head. Investigations are still going on, but to forestall you, no signs of space violation were found, nor traces of a struggle, so the case will be closed,’’ she states and colors her voice with a reservation, exciting Peter’s interest.
He returns the pages on the desk. He files them with obvious nervousness. The remnants of the debate with the commander. ‘‘And now we await you to tell us the ‘‘but’’ of the case…’’ he smiles at her exploratory.
‘‘But I spoke with someone, who although is considered an unreliable source, told me that last night he saw Aris Nomikos, Orpheus Nomikos’s son, to be knocking insistently on the door of the block of flats, where Maniatis’s office was and calling his name. Of course, the time he mentions was at least two hours after the time of the lawyer’s death, so…’’
‘‘Unreliable source on a level of illumination or of simple misunderstanding?’’ he interrupts her.
‘‘For the rest, his opinion doesn’t count, Peter…’’ she whirls around her eyes as a sign of lack of understanding the indifference of our colleagues, while in essence she is the first to despise any second thought on a case.
I sigh. ‘‘So that each of us doesn’t imagine whatever they want, can you tell us exactly what he told you and who?’’
Am I the only logical person in this Department?
She finishes her coffee and throws the plastic in the bin under her desk. I think that even this movement she does seems exhausting. ‘‘It is about a man around sixty to sixty-five, who runs the mini-market that is placed opposite the specific block of flats. It wasn’t easy for me to speak to him. His breath smelled of alcohol so intensively that it was impossible for me to approach him.’’
‘‘Is this the reason that nobody believes him? Because he was drunk?’’ I pass in the tone of my voice my explicit objection.
‘‘Not only this, Magda… If you see him… He really seems to have no contact with the environment.’’
The Last Symphony Page 1