Revelations of the Ruby Crystal

by Barbara Hand Clow

  Simon’s mouth dropped open, and as awareness dawned, pure joy transformed his features. “You’re pregnant, Sarah? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I got the doctor’s confirmation yesterday when you were at the Vatican, and I’ve been waiting for just the right moment to tell you. I knew I was the moment I conceived, and I just wanted to nest with it until I saw the doctor.” Tears of joy dampened her eyes. “And thank you for your belief in my work,” she said softly. “I’m going to need it.”

  36

  Claudia and Armando

  Claudia and Armando walked briskly past the obelisk in the Piazza del Popolo and aimed for the Via del Corso. Noting a directional sign to Florence, she said breathlessly, “Maybe someday we will go back to Florence. Do you remember what a weird time we had the last time we were there?” Without waiting for a response, she switched subjects in midstream. “You say you have some painful things to talk about?” She looked at him expectantly, her camel hair cape flapping in the biting February wind off the Tiber.

  Armando tightened his scarf and tucked the ends into his flannel-lined trench coat. “Can we go to your apartment to talk?” he asked.

  They got a cab, and soon she opened the door of her apartment. “I can’t believe you are here with me. I never thought that would ever happen again.” She turned in the foyer and stared into his eyes. Her expression was haughty and commanding; Armando’s was nervous and evasive. Regardless, he was determined. He looked around the hallway opening into the main rooms. “Claudia, this is beautiful! You have really transformed this lovely old flat. It’s so warm and welcoming, something I appreciate now.” Armando and Claudia had been in touch over the phone, but Armando hadn’t been in her apartment for ten years. “My mother would love what you have done. But please, pick a comfortable corner for us, hopefully with a fire, and let’s sit down together. I have to get this over with.”

  She took him into her small library filled with floor-to-ceiling bookcases and grabbed the remote to light the gas fireplace set in a French eighteenth-century white marble mantle. Wall space not covered by bookcases was papered in rich burgundy with lacy golden vines that glowed in the firelight. They sat down on two elegant tapestry chairs by a low oak table littered with magazines and small objects. “Huh,” he said, “these objects on the table remind me of Lorenzo’s collection. Will you be my shrink tonight?”

  “I don’t think so, Armando,” she said, lighting a cigarette and inhaling deeply. “I’m amazed to hear you still go to him after so long. What’s it been, more than ten years?” She relaxed back in her chair, wishing she could pour some brandy, but she sensed they should have nothing until he was finished.

  “Yes, over ten years. He’s patient and it paid off,” he said, looking her over intently. She is still as beautiful as when I first met her. How does she do it? Claudia was observing Armando just as closely because he seemed to be a different person. His nervous intensity always focused on “getting something” was gone, and he seemed tired. I wonder what motivates him these days?

  “Are you still painting, Armando? I hope so because you are very good.”

  He relaxed as the fire warmed his face and hands. He took note of Claudia’s tension, control, and guardedness. She looked as if she were ready to pounce. He flashed back momentarily to his first date with her, and he felt a painful stab. He hadn’t thought of that night until now, and he dreaded what he had to say. “Yes, I am painting, seems to be the only thing I’ve ever done well, and, for the past two months I’ve been painting seven days a week, intense mythological dramas of the dark and light. Lorenzo is thrilled with my work now. He always thought there was more in me than Tuscan landscapes, and the only break I take is for quick meals or to eat with my mother.

  Claudia’s face tightened at the mention of his mother; Armando noticed. “Claudia, may I begin by saying that Matilda sends you her heartfelt regards? When I shared some unpleasant things about myself, she told me she always liked you and was impressed by you. But she was afraid of what I would do to you.” He stopped to look at her face. It was so tight it looked like it was about to crack; however, the only movement in its marblelike surface was a fluttering right upper lip.

  It’s amazing how his beautiful face captivated me when I was young, Claudia thought while drawing on her cigarette and gazing evasively into the fire. She said ruefully, “Matilda had every reason to fear what you would do to me.” She noted his lost and confused eyes. That’s the expression of a four-year-old; never saw that years ago. “Anyway,” she said rather matter-of-factly, “what do you have to say to me? You wouldn’t be here unless it’s important.” She stared at him, noticing that his fine upper lip, still perfect and sensual as ever, was trembling. How could I have been so addicted to him?

  “I begin by apologizing for every hurtful thing I ever did to you,” he said, clasping and twisting his long perfect fingers. “It does not seem like enough and my apologies will not mean much to you unless you hear why I acted the way I did when I knew you. But I must begin with a sincere apology before going deeply into things so that you will not think I am just making excuses for my actions. Will you accept my apology provisionally? If you will, I can share my ugly story.”

  Claudia waited a long moment, then nodded coolly. “All right, Armando, I accept your apologies as long as you realize I feel nothing for you, nothing, but it would be good to understand why you treated me the way you did. Then, perhaps, I could feel something again and accept you. I don’t hate you; however, I feel such contempt for you that I feel nothing.” Her solar plexus ached from the deep wound in her heart, but her mind dominated her heart. She had him completely shut out.

  Her arched coldness was oppressive and made him feel small; this made him angry. He felt twinges in his shoulders where his skin was tender. Oh my god, I didn’t think about that. My lizard might come back! He looked over at her again and felt a rush as his eyes slithered over her exquisite long legs. She looked over at him, cold-eyed, like last night’s unwarmed coals. She barely heard him whisper, No you don’t, slimy one, be gone!

  “What? Armando, what did you say?” She glared across at him, thinking about her small loaded pistol in the drawer, the reason she’d brought him into this particular room.

  “Claudia, please, just listen as best you can,” he requested in a measured and sincere voice. When she nodded in assent, he began. “I did see Lorenzo twice a week for ten years, and then in December he threatened to terminate me because we were getting nowhere. Yet he said he wanted to try one more thing—to regress me. Do you know what that is?” She said yes and he continued. “I won’t go into the details because they are not what’s important. We had a very long and intense session because I stopped resisting under hypnosis. I wish he’d regressed me years ago, but he says I might have been overwhelmed by my shadow. Maybe I wasn’t ready before; perhaps knowing Sarah shifted me. Anyway, I got in touch with the repressed shadow stuff that made me unable to feel the pain of others, especially yours. During those ten years in analysis, you were the person I talked about because you were the only woman I loved. But that isn’t the point of tonight.

  “I got in touch with a vile, manipulative, and cruel part of myself, an evil reptilian being, the demon that took me over and gave me potency when I wanted sex. I don’t know if I have any sexual desire anymore and I don’t care. That part of me was killing me and would’ve killed one of my victims eventually.” He stopped for a moment to breathe because his throat was closing. He was afraid he might not be able to finish, but he had to. “That part of me is the beast, a monster within. Yet once I got in touch with it, something changed in me, profoundly changed.”

  Claudia was perched on her chair like a raptor coolly assessing the distance to its prey. She felt cold-hearted and cruel and was very uncomfortable with that feeling. So she turned on her psychic eye and was stunned by what she saw on the fuzzy screen behind his head—a panoramic movie of writhing reptiles on craggy rocks surrounded by flyi
ng winged demons! Armando was twitching as if beaks were pecking his face, which made her nervous. She said, “Armando, please relax. I’m listening to you; I am not going to bite.”

  Armando’s posture softened a tiny bit. “I left Lorenzo’s office knowing the only thing I could do was go to Orvieto, my sacred place. If you can believe it, that day was that crazy end-of-the-world day! I went to our favorite old hotel and restaurant, ate dinner, and thought only about you. Even though I went to Orvieto every year as a child, I have not gone back since that terrible day when we had our last fight. I knew I had to go there to figure out why you acted the way you did; I had to face it. It was bizarre because I didn’t yet understand what had happened with Lorenzo. All I knew was I had to get back to the place where you and I split.

  “The moment I walked into the nave, I was terrified because I knew I was going to get the truth, every ugly shred. I went into the Chapel of the Madonna of San Brizio and studied Signorelli’s paintings. Because of my analytic breakthrough, I saw what you meant about the battle for souls. I realized I was damned to hell unless I changed, but not in the way the Church says we can avoid hell. I stood in the center of the chapel and fully realized the rest of my life was going to be a living hell unless I changed; I really got that. But I knew it wasn’t enough. I sensed I had to know how I got to be the way I was, what happened to me.”

  Claudia was totally absorbed in him and losing her boundaries. For a split second, it was as if their relationship was an ongoing continuum, and he’d scaled the wall between them. Then she jostled herself into the present, remembering she’d never let him hurt her again. She said in a distant and blasé voice as she sucked on her cigarette, “So, you finally got the point?”

  Armando wouldn’t let her deter him even though the bile in her voice churned his gut. I wish she’d lash me with straps, beat me the way I used to beat her. But he took a deep breath when he felt the lizard stir, which terrified him—he never wanted it out again. “Claudia, please just be patient for a little bit more. I’m seeking a way to tell you something that will free you, not to ask for your pity. You have to hear me! I don’t want anything from you; I just want you to hear my honesty. I think if you can, others can, and then maybe that is what I will be—an honest person.”

  I’ll believe that when I see it, she thought to herself. But she sat back in her chair and said, “Okay, Armando, try being honest.”

  “Back at the hotel, I stayed in our old room. The white marble sunken tub that you loved is still there, so I had a purification bath. Then I crawled under the sheets feeling like a child because I did something I have not done since I was very small: I asked God for a dream that would help me remember when and how I became one of the damned.” He looked across to her and almost stopped when he saw her eyes. The depth of the pain they held made him shudder. She did not pull away her fixed gaze. “Go on, Armando; you are safe here.”

  “I had a dream of being seven and walking to the chapel in our woods with the parish priest holding my hand. My First Communion was coming up, so he took me there for my first Confession. When I woke up, I couldn’t remember anything about the rest of the dream as hard as I tried. But I thought my mother might know something, so I went home to ask her what she knew about that time in my life and that priest. I could see this question upset her, but I had to know. She told me of the time I crushed my puppy, which saddened her. As we sat there together, I could see that she knew something had happened to me with that priest because I changed utterly after that day. She couldn’t comprehend what he did to me, but while I was talking with her, I saw hideous flashes like in a movie in a black room. That priest raped me, Claudia, raped me when I was only seven.” He stopped, exhausted, and turned his eyes to the gas flames.

  A force ripped through Claudia’s chest. She started to shake inside, almost dropping her cigarette, then leaned forward to put it out in the ashtray, struggling for composure. Emotionally she was being pulled back into the horrific chain of sexual abuse, the priest raping her through Armando. She did not feel any compassion because she was swooning in the sick vacancy of her dying cells. Abruptly she got up to get brandy and glasses. “How awful for Matilda, how awful for you. I hate the Church even more than I hate myself.”

  Armando froze, feeling as small and helpless as if he were seven again. “Why would you hate yourself?” he asked as she slammed down the brandy decanter. “You, Armando! Whether it was your fault or not, you dumped this goddamned bile in me! You shredded me to bits. You flayed me with your lust and beat me with your pain; you robbed me of my innocence only because yours was taken from you. That is not a good enough reason for what you did to me.”

  “Claudia,” he said in a voice so quiet she strained to hear. “I am not here to ask you to help me. I am here because I hope that if you can see the path that led me to be the way I was, maybe you can find yourself again. What I did to you gives me greater pain, a thousand times greater, than what that sick priest did to me. If you can forgive me for what I did to you, then I will know I didn’t kill you. We may be able to break the cycle. But I think this is too much, I think you need some time to think about this, and I am drained. I’m going now. I hope what I’ve shared will take some of your pain away. Please forgive me someday.”

  He’s getting up to go! My god, I never thought I’d ever see Armando care more for someone else than himself. That is incredible! She grabbed his forearm as he was getting up and made him fall back into the chair. “Wait, stay and have brandy. The armor I’ve built to protect myself from you makes it hard for me to comprehend what happened to you. Do not go, Armando. I do not want to be a woman who cannot forgive. Without feeling compassion, I cannot live.”

  She poured the brandy and brought over some almond cookies with sugar on top. She looked at Armando as she set things down. There is something really different about him, what is it? He was gazing at the fire and seemed unaware of her presence. I see sweetness in his hands and in the aura around his body. My god, I see Armando Pierleoni’s innocence, of all people. Better be careful; he may be fooling me. “Here, have a cookie with your brandy to take you back before you were seven.”

  “Claudia, please don’t be sarcastic. This isn’t something to joke about. A priest doing that to a little boy is as ugly as what I did to you. I can’t forgive myself; you are the only one who can free me from my living hell. I am not expecting it of you, but please don’t insult me with such a callous innuendo.”

  Few people ever successfully upbraided Claudia Tagliatti. If someone did, such as a rich bitch in her boutique, she always got him or her back; she was the master of acid cruelty. But Armando was right, absolutely right. “Armando, please give me your hand. I can’t take all this in without touching you again.”

  He gave her his hand, and as she held it and put her other hand inside his, he felt cool fire in his spine, a shivering long wave all the way up and through his head. He raised his eyes to look into her eyes, and her bronze catlike eyes reached into his mind. I will never again be able to lie to her, hurt her, or know her. I ruined the most beautiful thing I ever had, but all I care about now is forgiveness. If she can forgive me, she will be able to reclaim herself. “I never thought you’d hold my hand again. You are like pure water, a light song, a deep canyon. It is an honor to feel your touch.”

  Unbridled warmth passed through her whole body and released a flood of stifled pain from her acidic cells. She sat there in suspended animation, holding his hand and occasionally looking into his eyes seeking the universe, and she found it. She could not deny it: there he was now—steady, respectful, and simple, a man who needed nothing more from her than compassion. Tears began to flow as she finally relaxed her facial muscles. He wanted to speak, but she said in a low voice, “No, let me do it; let me see and feel what happened to you.” She stopped looking into his eyes, closed hers, and she saw the horror movie—Armando’s Confession. Even though he himself couldn’t remember what happened, she could see everything by ho
lding his hand. She allowed herself to see it, and it was vile and unspeakable. Claudia allowed herself to behold man’s inhumanity to man to find the source of her own inhumane treatment.

  Armando just sat there with her until she opened her eyes and looked at him with love and respect. Then he knew she was going to be all right. She was going to be able to reclaim the young woman she had lost when she was nineteen. Warmth flowed back in, her mind cleared, her body relaxed, and then her spirit spoke. “Armando, I have seen it all and I will not talk to you about it. I forgive you for anything you have ever done or said to me. We will never be lovers again after all that has passed, but we will be friends, very, very dear friends. I survived because I figured out how to find deeper knowledge from the way you treated me, and when you became so bitter ten years ago that we could no longer learn from each other, I ended it. You also must ask Sarah for her forgiveness.”

  He settled back into the chair and closed his eyes in deep relief.

  “Thank you, Claudia,” he whispered. “I had no right to expect your forgiveness; you will never understand what it means to me. Of course I will also ask Sarah for her forgiveness, but I had to see you first. The Church teaches us that we have to go to a priest for Confession, but if I’d done that it would have circumvented the bonds and love that we’ve shared tonight. Confession encourages people to go on and on doing terrible things to each other and the world. It isolates people.”

  “Well, if anybody has the right to say that, you do!” Claudia said. “Can you take that comment without thinking it’s a joke?”

  “I know what you’re probing for, since I still know you well. You wonder if I’m over it? I am, I think. I don’t really remember the incident, and I think it is better if I do not. If I have to do that, I’ll dump it on Lorenzo. Finally I might use him for what he’s great at. I suppose he was right to take so much time with me. What matters to me now is the harm I’ve caused others, especially you. Do you think you can move past what I did to you, Claudia?”