Return to Your Skin
Page 40
“Aren’t you coming with me?”
Corso shook his head. “I can’t see her like that.”
“Like what? Was she stiff? Cold? Did you touch her?”
“I didn’t have to. I know the look of death.”
Neli turned to him.
“Come with me, Corso.” She put her hand on his arm. “Do it for Brianda.”
Corso frowned, confused, but something in Neli’s gaze made him agree.
The front door was open. They went in and Neli called Isolina, who came running.
“What is wrong with this house?” the woman moaned. “First Colau and now her—” She burst out crying. “And no sign of the doctor. What am I going to tell my sister?”
“Take me to her room,” Neli asked her. “For the moment, don’t call anyone or say anything.”
Isolina led them up the stairs and down the hall to Brianda’s bedroom door.
Neli felt tears coming to her eyes when she saw Brianda on the bed. She was dressed in a long-sleeved white cotton nightdress. Her face was as pale and gaunt as an old wax candle, and her lips had a bluish tinge. A faint light entered through the window, and a strange quiet dominated the room, as if the crashing rain had no right to invade that place. It looked as if life had abandoned her friend’s body.
She took a chair and went over to the bed. She stretched out her hand to touch Brianda’s chest to check for breathing but withdrew it. She did not want any abrupt movement to upset Brianda, if that was still possible. She looked at Corso and Isolina and signaled them to remain silent and still.
“Brianda, listen to me,” she began to say. “I don’t know exactly where you are, but I want you to come back with me. I am going to count from ten to zero and then you will wake up.”
Neli spoke the words very slowly and then counted, but nothing happened. She repeated the words and again counted, but Brianda did not move. Frustrated and confused, Neli rubbed her temples.
Corso approached.
“I told you, Neli,” he said in a deep voice, resting a hand on her shoulder. “She’s gone. The doctor will know what has to be done.”
Isolina nodded. “That’s enough, Neli,” she said, letting a sob escape.
Neli frowned. She stood up and signaled to Corso to take her place. Then she leaned over Brianda.
“There is someone here who is waiting for you, Brianda,” she said. “He will count from ten to zero and then you will wake up.”
Corso looked at her skeptically, but Neli insisted.
“Take her hand in yours,” she pleaded with him in a low voice. “Please! Speak to her!”
“Ten, nine, eight, seven, six—” he began to count, with conviction.
“Very slowly,” Neli insisted.
“Six, five, four,” he continued, “three, two, one, zero—”
At that moment, an explosive thunderclap shook the house, rattling the windowpanes. The weak light from outside became even weaker and the room sank into darkness.
“Corso …”
The three of them held their breath as a pinkish shade began to steal over Brianda’s cheeks and she parted her lips.
Astonished, Corso leaned over her. “Brianda?”
Brianda heard the deep, penetrating, familiar voice interrupting her thoughts. She slowly began to become aware of her surroundings. Her body was resting on something soft. She had feeling in her toes and fingers, in her legs and in her arms, in her torso and her head. And she could hear Corso. Her neck did not hurt. She was not afraid. She was not dead.
She blinked slightly. Then, she opened her eyes, looked at him, and smiled.
“I promised you I would return,” she whispered, squeezing his hand. “Separated for so long, Corso, and now it seems as if it was a dream—fleeting because it is over, but unbearably long while it lasted.”
Stunned, Corso looked at Neli. She whispered some words in his ear, asking him to repeat them out loud.
“It’s over, Brianda,” he said in a hoarse voice. “You have returned.”
Brianda’s smile widened. She stretched and yawned, as if waking up from a pleasant nap.
“You are in your room in Anels House,” Neli added. “Your aunt Isolina, Corso, and I, Neli, are with you.”
Brianda gave her a puzzled look, as if something inside her rejected that information. She closed her eyes and, for an instant, Neli was afraid that she would return to the shadows from which she had come.
“It’s raining a lot, Brianda,” she said, hoping to orient her bit by bit in her new reality. “It’s been drizzling all week, but today it’s pouring. How about you get up, we’ll have some tea and chat for a bit?”
Brianda hesitated before answering. She slid her gaze around the room and her eyes began to show some slight understanding and recognition. She closed her eyes, meditated for a moment, and opened them again.
“Neli! If you only knew what I have lived!”
“I understand.” Neli patted her on the hand. “You don’t know how much I want to hear about it. But promise me that you will never make another regression on your own.”
“How can I explain it to you?” said Brianda, sitting up, now very excited. “It happened without me realizing it. I was rereading the diary, and I must have fallen asleep—” Her face tensed up. “Poor Brianda! It was terrible!”
“Could you please tell me what you’re talking about?” interrupted Isolina. “Are you saying this isn’t the first time this has happened? You scared the life out of me!”
“I don’t understand,” Corso murmured, getting to his feet. “I could have sworn that—”
Brianda realized what she’d said. Blushing with confusion, she bowed her head. Neli came to her rescue.
“She just went into a little hypnotic trance. That’s all.”
“That’s all?” repeated Corso, confused.
Just then, his cell phone rang.
“Sei giá qui? Non ti aspettavo prima di venerdì. Adesso arrivo.”
His wife, who he wasn’t expecting until Friday, had arrived early and was looking for him.
He went toward the door, where he stopped and looked first at Brianda and then at Neli. He muttered something and left.
“Corso!” Brianda called, jumping out of bed and intending to run after him.
“Let him go, Brianda,” said Neli, holding on to her arm. “You will find the moment.”
“But did you see his face, Neli? He looked at me with pity, like I was crazy.”
Neli shook her head, though she’d also noticed Corso’s dismay. Anyone would have been thrown by the scene.
“I don’t think so,” she said calmly.
Isolina sat on the chair beside the bed and stared at Brianda. Then, she began to cry. Brianda hugged her.
“I don’t know what I have done to you, Aunt Isolina, but I’m very sorry.”
Isolina let out a nervous giggle. “A trance? I came to wake you up and you were gone. I was so convinced that now it’s like you came back from the dead!”
“Then stop crying, because I’m back.” She dried the tears that ran down her aunt’s cheeks and added happily, “How about you go make some coffee to help me wake up? Neli will stay with me while I take a shower and get dressed.”
Isolina agreed and left them alone. Brianda began to tell Neli everything she had lived in her regression. Neli listened attentively, eager to fill in the gaps in the incomplete historical documents.
“So, what do I do now?” asked Brianda. “I know I have found him.” She brought her hand to her chest. “I feel it in my heart.” She touched her forehead. “My mind accepts it as true.” She brought both hands to her cheeks. “Every cell in my body and nerve in my skin recognizes him from all those years ago—” She looked at her friend in desperation. “But Corso doesn’t recognize me. He should have taken me in his arms. He should have told me he had been waiting centuries for me. But he ran away!” She burst out crying. “He must think I’m one of those crazies who gets obsessive after having se
x once. If only I hadn’t come to Tiles, Neli. I suffered when I didn’t know my real soul, but to know it and lose him again would make me wish for eternal damnation—”
“Don’t say that,” Neli cried. “Give him time. You needed a lot of time to understand what was happening to you, right?”
Brianda went to the window and opened it, letting the rain splash on her face as she looked across the valley. The last time she had left this room to go to the old church of Tiles, now in ruins beside the graveyard, she had not returned for centuries. The experience was so fresh in her mind, in her heart. She needed to reconcile herself with this land that she felt more attached to every day. She turned her gaze toward the east, where the undergrowth hid the ruins of Cuyls House, and wondered if she would dare go there one day, now that she knew what atrocities had taken place behind its walls. She looked to the west and let her thoughts wander to her beloved Lubich.
What would need to happen for its current owner to once again look at her with love in his eyes?
And what if that never happened?
42.
It stopped raining two days later, but a persistent dampness continued to soak the stones and the bones.
Sitting in front of the computer in Colau’s office with Luzer at her feet and a blanket on her lap, Brianda rapidly typed the last paragraphs of a document. She had decided to record everything she had learned through Brianda’s diary and her regression, which remained vivid in her mind. She did not want to forget a single detail.
As if she ever could.
Now that she knew the reasons for her nightmares, her headaches, and her anxiety, she felt she would never be the same again. She was no longer the woman who had come to Tiles in October looking to calm her fragile spirits but another, much more ambitious one. The future was unthinkable without Corso. An anxiety attack was nothing in comparison to her despair at thinking that she had found him in a time when they could not be together. Her most burning desire was no longer to find peace and calm but to get used to living without them.
Her cell phone vibrated on the desk. It was Esteban. It had been several days since she had spoken to him and the previous conversations could not have been more superficial, as if any intimacy they had once shared had now completely disappeared.
She answered.
“I missed your voice,” said Esteban. “How are you?”
“Fine,” she answered. “You?”
“You know. Busy during the week, but Friday comes and the house seems too empty. It’s been almost a month since you left. I’m taking a couple of days off to come up and see you.”
“No—”
“No? No because you’re coming back soon, or no because you don’t want to see me?”
Brianda was quiet for too long.
“What’s wrong?” Esteban asked, alarmed.
She swallowed. She knew she had to tell him the truth. Her future was clear: either Corso or nobody. It was unfair to deceive Esteban any longer.
“I’ve been thinking, Esteban, I just can’t be with you any longer. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Brianda imagined Esteban’s face at the other end of the line. The long silence was charged with shock, disbelief, rejection, and fury.
“Why?” he finally asked.
If she told Esteban the real reasons, she thought, he would think she really wasn’t right in the head.
“I don’t love you the way I should,” she answered.
“And you’ve come to this conclusion thanks to the solitude of the mountains or because you met someone else?” Esteban’s tone was biting. “Let me guess. That devil on horseback. I could tell you were attracted to him, but I thought it was nothing. I trusted you …”
“He’s married,” said Brianda, without thinking.
“So now you just have to get him to leave his wife.” In seconds, Esteban went from surprise to bitter reproach. “And you love him the way you should? That fast?”
“Yes,” she answered firmly. She could not explain that she had loved Corso for centuries.
“Then there’s nothing that can be done … ,” Esteban said in a tone halfway between a statement and a question. He remained quiet for a few moments, waiting for something from Brianda that never came, and hung up.
Brianda sat with the phone in her hand for a long while. On the one hand, it hurt terribly to see how quickly she had been able to end a relationship that had lasted years. On the other, the feeling of freedom and of having done the right thing brought her enormous relief.
Isolina peeked around the door. When she saw Brianda, she came into the study.
“I’m back,” she informed her in a cheerful voice. Isolina, who bit by bit was recovering her old decisive attitude, had been down in Aiscle with Petra. She came over to the desk, but didn’t sit. She didn’t like to stay in the office for long, she said, as she could see her husband in every corner of that room. “What are you doing?”
“Just typing up some of Colau’s notes.”
“Are you OK?”
Brianda nodded. She knew Isolina’s yoga experience had helped her accept Neli’s explanations about the meditative state she had entered, but since that episode Isolina had kept a more vigilant eye on Brianda.
“How did the shopping go?”
“Good. We saw Corso, who was with his wife—very pretty, by the way—and he asked after you.” She shook her head. “I don’t know how that relationship works, coming and going from so far—”
Brianda said nothing.
Isolina added, “Ah, and tomorrow there’s a village meeting in the bar. From what Petra has told me, they’re going ahead with that witch tourism business. They’d like to have something ready for this summer. I don’t know whether to tell Neli—”
“I’ll talk to her,” Brianda offered.
Isolina left and Brianda sighed, her head in her hands. Corso had not recognized her. Corso was still with his wife.
She did not know what to do. What was the use of having discovered everything if she could only share it with Neli?
She focused her attention on the screen and set about revising what she had written.
Then an idea came to her.
The following night, after dinner, Brianda drove to the bar in Tiles. She hadn’t been there since November. Back then, she had been worried about running into Neli again, just after finding out she was a modern-day witch. That same night, she had seen Corso for the first time. She remembered how his face and his gaze had already seemed familiar, and how his name had risen in her mind as if it had always been there.
On this occasion, her excitement had to do with the contents of the folder she was carrying. She scanned the bar for Neli. She had called and told her about her plans, and Neli had promised she would be beside her.
Nobody was playing cards or the poker machines, and the television was switched off. Three square tables had been placed in front of rows of chairs for the meeting. Standing beside the tables, Brianda recognized the gray-haired mayor, Martin, young Zacarias, and Alberto, the owner of the bar. A couple dozen people had already taken their seats, drinks in hand. Neli was sitting in the second-to-last row with Jonas and Mihaela. Brianda thought Neli looked very pretty. She had left her reddish hair down and was wearing a long dress adorned with several necklaces with colorful stones. Brianda laughed to herself when she noticed they’d both decided to wear something special, almost hippieish, for the occasion. She herself was wearing a thick sweater and a long skirt, with a pink shawl over her shoulders. The edelweiss pendant hung over her sweater. She wondered if Corso regretted having given it to her.
She sat beside Neli while Isolina sat in the row in front of her, beside Petra and Bernardo.
“I don’t know how they’ll take it,” Brianda whispered.
“If you need me to step in at any point,” Neli said with an excited smile, “just let me know.”
The mayor and the other two men sat facing the crowd.
“It’s nice to see such a gr
eat turnout,” Martin began. “It seems there is great interest in the subject of witches. Well, as we’ve talked about the matter on other occasions, I’ll get to the point. I have received suggestions from many of you. The simplest idea is to mark out a path in the woods later this spring with general information points on witchcraft and publicize it throughout the county. The torture museum is the most complicated proposal because we would need funds to prepare a room in the town hall, and making replicas for the exhibit would take time. Lastly, putting on a play would depend on the level of interest and the time people have to rehearse. Of course, first someone has to write the script! Petra, as president of the Cultural Association, has offered to take charge of coordinating it. Volunteers?”
A few laughs and comments were heard, but nobody seemed to want to raise their hand. Then, Brianda stood up.
“I’d like to say something …” The crowd turned to look at her, and she felt her cheeks redden. “May I come up?”
“Of course,” Martin agreed, signaling her to do so.
Brianda pressed the folder against her chest and walked to the front. She reminded herself how good she used to be at public speaking. Her skin crawled, however, with memories of the hateful interrogation of the witch trial she had relived not long ago.
“You have a proposal, Brianda?” Martin asked her.
She nodded.
“You all know that my uncle, Colau, was passionate about history,” she began. “When Neli found those papers in the sacristy about the witchcraft executions here, he began to research it immediately but could not finish the task before he died. So I did.” She opened the folder and took out a stack of stapled batches of paper. “With all the information compiled, I have written the story of one of those women hanged as a witch.”
“See, Petra?” the mayor joked. “We have part of the work done already!”
“Yes and no,” said Brianda. “I ask that you read this before you go any further with plans to dramatize irrational accusations, illegal detentions, indiscriminate torture, and savage murder.”
Alberto sat up in his chair.
“One minute. Are you saying you’re with Neli? You want to stop us from doing anything?”