Star Woman in Love

by Piera Sarasini

  The picture of your sweet face melted fear away. I was moving. I ran to the sitting room where I found you lying on the sofa in the foetal position. You were squeezing a cushion to your chest. I sat next to you and ran my fingers gently through your tousled curls. You looked at me from the depths of terror, from elsewhere in space and in time. I placed my lips on your forehead, like a mother to a feverish child. You hugged me. Our lips reached out for each other and we started to kiss. No word was exchanged. Just slow, wet, desperate kisses trying to resuscitate you heart from the abyss into which it had descended.

  In a frenzy of hands and lips, we found ourselves naked on the carpet, entangled in the frantic rapture of intercourse. My rules of the previous night were forgotten. Our tongues were interlocked, and your penis inside me was pumping your heart back to life. I kept grabbing your buttocks to make you go deeper, to the centre of my soul where you could find sanctuary. In your tight hold, I understood the true meaning of desire. You were all that I wanted, all I was born to find, the only place where I wanted to be. Despite the fear that had pervaded the preamble to our first penetrative orgasm, we were now riding the wave of happiness again, to heights we’d never experienced before, or even imagined could exist.

  I felt your Life Force erupt in my body. You were coming inside me. It was the most exquisite, sexual, life-filled, life-giving sensation. You were my destiny and now it had all become crystal clear. It would be a difficult joint-journey back into the Light, given that your world was full of darkness and I was now part of it. But there was no way I could now retrace my steps to the safety of my past without you. The Plan had been set in motion.

  * * * *

  We projected our images to the room to raise the frequency of their lovemaking. Given the presence of Evil around them, we had to be present in thought to avoid the possibility that the two might conceive the offspring of those circumstances. Cassandra and Oscar were not meant to have a child. Star-children can only be born of two non-star parents. The Plan had something else in mind. Whilst Cassandra was remembering her Identity, Oscar would pick on her progress and evolve into a human angel himself. Such Beings, as rare as they are, are the product of the influence of a Light-angel on a human being. This is the meaning of the legend of the Virgin, and the Angel who announced she would give birth to the Messiah, despite the fact that she had known no man.

  We kept our eyes on Oscar’s heart, ready as he was to pour it on Cassandra’s eager ears. We didn’t know whether it would be good for her to discover the past of their connection yet. The past doesn’t exist, of course. There are no past lives: only parallel ones. There is only one big continuum, a never ending cascade of experiences. Time is the convention we use to travel across this continuum.

  Cassandra and Oscar had met ‘before’, from a temporal point of view. Indeed, their interaction was but the replication of many parallel encounters, explored from different perspectives, from different space-time junctions.

  * * * *

  Once upon a time, many years ago, a little boy was feeling very sad and very afraid. Somewhere not that near but in the same Continent, a little girl, who was even younger than the little boy, was sitting by her window, gazing at the stars...

  * * * *

  Dublin, 1 January 1994

  Living with you became a challenge as soon as we became lovers. The first two weeks I was too busy exploring our physical interaction to be really worried about some of your behaviours and their attendant darkness. Our time together was too erotic and sensual. We locked ourselves away from the rest of the world as often as we could. I was sure of your love for me and mine for you, and nothing else seemed to matter. Your silence and the wall you sometimes built between us didn’t bother me too much. Until one day when I realised the full magnitude of your wound and the depth of our bond.

  We had been making love in the afternoon and had fallen into a light slumber. The New Year had arrived that morning and we almost didn’t notice. We didn’t celebrate in any special way. But I made you take part in a ritual of my own making, to let the old out and welcome the new in. It was a healing ceremony.

  “Oscar, write the most hurtful memory which wears your chest out on a piece of paper. You don’t need to share it with me.”

  I too jotted down some of my own harsh reminiscences. Then we went to the garden and made a bonfire. We burned these pieces of paper and put their mixed ashes on each other’s forehead. You marked me and I marked you. The sky was clear and the stars looked down. We fell to our knees there, in the garden, as the snow began to fall. We held each other tightly, determined to mark that night as a new beginning for our life together.

  The following afternoon, as we were dozing in bed, we heard something rattling in the garden. We went to the window to see what was making the noise. In the site of the bonfire from the night before now sat a small hospital bed, with leather straps attached on each side, which jangled in the wind like the chimes of doom. When you saw it, you turned white and fainted, falling, banging your head on the floor.

  You came round after a few moments with no recollection of what had happened. You had forgotten everything about the occurrence that had made you swoon. I turned to the window to see if the bed was still there: it had vanished. As you were still shaken and weak, I insisted that you should go to bed, reassuring you, telling you that it must have been something to do with the amount of wine you’d been drinking on an empty stomach over the previous twelve hours, and the hashish we’d smoked. That wasn’t true, I had partaken as much as you had with no particularly ominous consequences.

  I was very worried. And so were you. Silence fell between us, once again. A dark shadow crept around the house, touching everything with its withered fingers. I sat in bed, next to you and your imploring eyes. I tried to calm you with my affection, to take your mind away from the thing that hurt you like hell. Then you spoke in a trance.

  “Look at the little girl at the window. She’s younger than me. She looks at me, I look at her. She smiles and I feel better. I am lost and scared. I’m in a dungeon... this is a place of torture. The girl wants to play but I’m too tired... So she sings for me and I’m better, and I fall asleep...”

  Tears rolled down my cheeks. That little girl had never abandoned you throughout the most difficult times in your life. She had come back to take care of you once more, and was sitting next to you in bed.

  “Would you like me to sing you a song?”

  Our relationship had shifted to the depths of healing only soul mates can experience. I was touching your wound like only true lovers can.

  “Please...”

  I sang the song I used to sing to you then. My dulcet tones brought you back to the centre of your soul, to the seat of your present life-time. Your eyes were wide open now, and the lines on your forehead had eased.

  “I’ve always known you, Cassie, haven’t I? I’ve always looked for you. You were the little girl at the window: I recognise your face now, and those eyes... Your melody has taken me back to days of old, days of forever...”

  I didn’t say anything. I kept caressing your head, your face. Until we kissed. Our heartbeats synchronised. The Earth stood still. Our bodies changed their frequencies and their cells started vibrating at the speed of Light. Melting into eternity. You felt it too. Our hearts in unison would then take us back to a time we should remember, I should remember, and then forget for good.

  Chapter 7

  OSCAR’S SECRET

  ______________

  Dublin, winter 1971

  Oscar watched Sister Nora’s creeping gown move away in the distance, taking the fat nun with it. Her dark silhouette swept past the rows of beds where the boys had been tied up for their bedtime. Sixteen beds in each room, the sound of weeping and heaving sobs mixed together. The big clock above the main door tick-tocked its sad rhythm. Terror reigned supreme. Now it was sleep or else. Soon the medicine would take effect and kick-into into his bloodstream like a tsunami. And then all would be
calm and mellow. A big stillness would finally expand into his heart and mind. Thoughts would be eased out and wiped away. Tomorrow would be another day. But for now, for a few hours, Oscar might hope to be comforted by the nothingness of sleep. Emptiness. Peace. Silence.

  Perhaps the voices in his head would subside. Perhaps they would give him some respite. Of course, he was a bad, bad, bad boy who deserved to have ended up in that horrid place, and to have been given that unspeakable punishment by the bogeyman in the Infirmary. His family couldn’t handle him. Nobody really wanted him. He had to be cured. Perhaps the other boys there were like him, and they wanted the darkness to spread through their minds and their lives like a relentless ink-stain. Perhaps the horror in their souls was also too much. Just like him, even when they confessed their sins, perhaps the darkness would still stretch from their hearts to their minds, and paint their lives the colour of the night. They were doomed. They were all possessed.

  Oscar was aware that he was cursed: how could he ever forget? He was only six and a half but he knew full well that the devil was directing his actions, pulling the strings of his limbs. He was a dreadful sinner. He asked questions about things which could not be discussed. He was restless, he was bold; a naughty boy. His mum had tried to protect him from himself, but the voices had always come back, telling him to do things that would embarrass him, or get him punished, or both.

  He hated being six and a half. There had been better times. Things had not been that awful when he was still four. He could see the little people others couldn’t see. Mum had told him they didn’t exist: they were the fruit of his imagination. But then they started talking to him. Especially when dad was drunk and would come home stinking of alcohol, with stains on his shirt and violence in his heart and hands. His father wasn’t bad when he didn’t drink. He had taught Oscar how to draw only a year previously. He spent a lot of time with him and his brother that year when he was working from home and planning the building of their new estate in Wicklow. But drinking was the problem that plagued his dad’s generation. When he drank things would change quickly. Mum would cry, dad would shake her up and shout because she cried, and Oscar would jump into his baby brother’s bed and put his hands on Conor’s ears. At least his brother wouldn’t have to hear what was going on in the background.

  One night after dad had come back from the local pub and the usual racket had started, Oscar heard the voices in his head telling him not to be afraid. They spoke clearly. They sounded like so many crystal cymbals.

  “Hush, Oscar. Don’t be afraid. We are here to help you. We’ll keep you company and tell you stories till the night has gone.”

  He was still four then, and he turned five shortly after the voices started talking to him. There were good voices and scary voices too. The frightening ones were very creepy and sounded like the roar of a dragon or the waves crashing on the rocks during a storm. They told him he was a bad boy who should do as he was told. Otherwise they would haunt him, saying they would kill his mum and then only his dad would be left, and they would steal away his little brother. Oscar didn’t want to upset them. But he didn’t want to offend his mum and dad either. And what was he supposed to do when those voices told him to go to the kitchen, tell mum not to cry and start punching his dad? He was six by the time he finally took the good voices’ advice, and did just that. With a grave look on his pale little face, he stepped into the room where his parents were arguing. He kicked his father’s legs and hit him in the stomach.

  “Let her go, let her go...,” he demanded.

  Oscar’s actions shocked his father into stopping the beating. He shook himself and looked ashamed, then slumped on his knees and hugged his little boy.

  “Oscar, I’m so so so sorry... I didn’t mean to hurt her. I don’t want to hurt anyone, you, your mother, anyone... I am weak, I am a weak man... I lose control, I lose the run of myself and my actions. I won’t do this again, I will never do this again. Forgive me, little man.”

  Oscar’s eyes grew serious as tears streamed down his cheeks.

  “Okay, dad,” he said.

  But he knew he would never forgive his father for the trauma he had inflicted on him.

  “Well done, Oscar, you brought peace back in your family,” the good voices said. “But you shouldn’t have used violence...”

  This was clearly no time for celebrations. There was blood coming out from his mother’s nose as she was lying on the floor, shaking and sobbing louder than ever.

  “Oscar, come here, don’t be afraid, mo chroí. Mummy’s okay, I banged my head on the cupboard and your dad just got mad at me for getting hurt. You know how clumsy I am. That’s all it was, it was all my fault.”

  But Oscar knew that she was lying.

  “It’s your fault,” the bad voices said.

  “No, it’s not,” the good ones told him.

  He felt like his head was sliced in two.

  Six months later, Oscar was sent to St. Anthony’s Children’s Institution. It was an old hospital that housed kids with varying mental pathologies: from those feared to have behavioural problems to the truly possessed, like Oscar. His stay was meant to cure him of his seizures, which had started shortly after he had witnessed his dad beat up his mum up in the kitchen on that fateful night.

  His parents initially didn’t want to send him to the Institution. First they flew him over to Japan to stay with his maternal grandmother. He could be treated properly there, and undergo psychological tests and art therapy for children. Those were probably the best months of his young, tragic life. Grandma Yoshiko lived in Tokyo. She was still acting when he was a child. She had always lived alone as she and Grandpa were not married. Oscar had never met his grandfather, the great poet, who had died during the war, shortly after the birth of his mother.

  Oscar’s mother, Elaine Aki, was raised in Japan by Grandma alone. She had always felt more Irish than Japanese, and had always known she would marry young. Growing up without a father meant she needed a strong man in her life as soon as possible, she thought. She had moved to Dublin when she was eighteen to study English literature and drama, pretty much in her father’s footsteps. In her first year at college, she and Oscar’s father met at a ball. It was a classic case of opposites attracting each other. Brian O’Leary was a young architect from a wealthy Kerry family. He lived in Dublin where he had his own business. He was tall, boisterous and jovial. She was petite, reserved and demure.

  They married quickly, with Yoshiko’s blessing. Oscar was born within the first year of their marriage, followed by Conor two years later. Brian’s drinking got out of hand after the birth of their second son. Oscar didn’t know what had happened but was quite certain that there must have been a specific reason for it. His parents started fighting a lot.

  By the time he was five, Oscar had become very afraid of his father and very sorry for his mother. He thought that life was hard and burdensome. All he wanted to do was to sleep or daydream, and protect his brother from the unhappiness of their household. His baby brother was an angel who didn’t need to be exposed to all that hurt.

  The little people appeared for the first time one afternoon while he was playing in the playground of their family estate. Mum was pregnant with Conor and was sitting on a bench, writing a letter. Salvador, the gardener, was watering the rose bushes and whistling a tune. Mum stopped writing and smiled at him. Salvador nodded back. Oscar walked away from the baby swing, entranced by the blueness of the sky above him. Then something sparkled in his sight. He thought it was an ingot of gold, or a magical ring, or a secret treasure chest hidden among the oak trees at the back of the playground. He followed the shimmering till he was out of the grown-ups’ visual range.

  That’s when he saw them, sitting on a rock, sunbathing: two little elves, one male and one female, dressed in the leaves and flowers of the summer. He wasn’t too surprised. He had always suspected that there was more to life than met the eye. The two little persons were staring at him too, motionless.
All of a sudden, they stood up and ran towards him, sprinkling fairy dust around his feet. Before he could say a word, they had disappeared. No way could he tell anyone of this magical encounter! This would be a secret for as long as he could keep it. And he had only just learned to say a couple of words by then anyway: he was only two and a half after all. These new friends would keep him company in months to come, when life in his family would take a very unhappy turn.

  These elves had also followed Oscar to Tokyo three and a half years later, at the height of his sadness. Grandma couldn’t see them but she didn’t doubt that they existed. She would do anything to make his grandchild feel accepted, and she always showered him with love and her full attention. During the first six months of his stay, his health improved although he missed his family. But Grandma would teach him many things. She would read him beautiful stories and let him have all the treats he wanted. Peace seemed to have come to stay, until one dreadful night when the Lord of the Darkness himself came to Oscar’s bed and sat at his side. He told him that he was his own child, and Brian wasn’t really his dad. Oscar screamed: “I don’t believe you!”

  Grandma switched the lights on only to find her grandson had wet his bed and was shrieking like a lunatic, beating his head and fists on the wall to the point of bleeding. It took her all of her strength and the help of the night servants to calm him down. Oscar’s seizure ended after twenty minutes of madness. The boy collapsed in bed, as white as a sheet and covered in sweat. His temperature was sky high and he was foaming at the mouth. The following day he was sent to the best neurologist in Tokyo who gave him some medication to calm his nerves. Two days later, he and Grandma were on a plane back to Dublin. The following week, he found himself at St. Anthony’s Institution in Bray. He was to spend the next three weeks there. His life was about to change forever.