Blazing orange red light was edging into his dense body. He was exhausted, loosened his grip, and wanted to throw her on the floor like trash. “Bitch, who are you?” he snarled. He wanted to hit her; instead he clenched his fists.
She growled back in a firm voice, “Whatever happens, you are not going to be rough or violent with me, or do anything to me I don’t want. I’m not a bitch. Don’t call me one.” She put her hand against his chest pushing him off to create distance. After a moment she commanded, “Sit with me to recover yourself.” Like a guilty four-year-old boy, he sat down next to her.
Ten minutes passed while they sat. “That was close; you don’t know how close. You’re right; we need an agreement. You don’t want to know what was going on inside me, but if we have an agreement, I think I can control myself. You’re right; it’s the only hope for us. I will agree to not have sex until we decide to marry. When we commit, I will need to have you before marriage.”
The summer passed quickly with Armando sharing his art and family life with her intimately in Tuscany and Rome, taking a few trips to Paris where she worked. In the fall, things suddenly shifted when she said, “Now I trust you. I want you and I want your child. I know I can trust you to stay with me, I just know.” They were dining in an ancient booth at a very intimate restaurant on the bank of the Seine across from Notre Dame Cathedral. She gazed through wavy glass at the hulking yet graceful flying buttresses barely visible in thick mist. Lines of light sparkled on the dark river. He studied her animated eyes wondering why he couldn’t figure women out. Oh well, all I have to do is figure this one out. He hadn’t noticed that she’d never said she loved him.
“Why the sudden shift?” He thought of the emerald engagement ring in the inner pocket of his dinner jacket that he’d been carrying around since arriving in Paris two days ago. Has my time finally come?
“I’m sure I can love you and make you happy, that’s all. You’ll be a wonderful father and our life together in Italy will be exquisite. I’m ready. Have you thought about it enough?”
As if a familiar page had just turned in the middle of a story that he’d read many years before, yes it was time for marriage. Actually, it had been easier getting to know her without having sex right away. He did know her well enough now, so he took her hands. “Jennifer, will you marry me next spring? And, will you be my lover tonight?” He reached inside his jacket to pull out the little black velvet box after he asked the question. The old Notre Dame bells echoing over the river clanged eleven times in the distance. She gasped at the large emerald and diamond ring. Offering it to Sarah and getting a different reaction a few years ago crossed his mind as Jennifer’s eyes flashed with delight while she examined the exquisite family heirloom.
She hesitated. “Even if I take this ring, I will not be your lover tonight. You scared me last summer. Something was in you that I’ve never seen before in a man. I’m not afraid of you, but I can’t have sex with you yet. I will think about marrying you next spring, but being with you tonight is impossible. I wish I knew why.”
Armando slumped. What can I say, what do I say? Can I tell her? Should I tell her? He implored, “Without telling you about my past as you’ve requested, can I tell you something I’ve recently discovered during my therapy that has helped me see why I acted the way I did in the past. Can I just tell you that?” She nodded cautiously, dark eyes rapidly switching back and forth then penetrating his. They were on the edge of their seats. “I recalled being raped by a priest during my First Confession. Lorenzo helped me see that because I was so young, I was possessed by dark energy, subconscious demons. The vileness would jump out and make me abuse women, which almost happened to you when you said I couldn’t have sex with you. But honestly, Jennifer, I think your strength blocks this force. You stopped me that day in my studio, and I’ve been feeling the thing loosening its grip. If we can love each other in an entirely new way, real committed love, then perhaps the demons will leave me forever.”
Jennifer sat rigidly staring at the remains of her dinner in shock because she’d never heard of anything like that. She thought she’d seen and done everything with men, but had not encountered demonic forces. The fat on her last lamb chop was hardening, her spinach was limp, and when she took a sip of wine, it tasted sour. But I think I love him. “I have to talk to Sarah about this, since you asked for her hand first, but she married my brother. Can I go to see her when we get back to Rome? I think she can help me. You may be my husband soon, so we don’t want to start out with dark things that we don’t understand. Do you mind if I talk to Sarah? Meanwhile, I should not accept your ring.”
“No, no, I don’t mind at all,” he said as he closed the lid and put the box back in his pocket. “Sarah is the kindest and most compassionate woman I have ever known. She’ll help you; she’ll help us. She really cares about both of us.”
Jennifer visited Simon and Sarah in Rome early that September in the afternoon while Teresa napped. She thought she’d just talk to Sarah, but Simon asked to be included. When she told them she wanted to know exactly what they thought about Armando, they both said he’d faced his dark side and seemed to be transforming his abusive tendencies. They’d both thought all was well with the new couple during the summer. Simon said carefully, “Well, we thought you were having sex and everything was going well, but now that you say you haven’t been and are concerned about him, well, maybe you should be. I think he’s changed and Lorenzo will help if needed, but you should still be careful and trust your instincts. He’s a deeply wounded and exceedingly complex and wonderful man. You’re strong. Nobody ever said it’s easy to live with an artist, you know all about it. If anybody can help him get beyond this, it’s you. If you really love him, I think it’s worth the risk to go on. But take your time.”
“Spoken like a big brother. Thanks. I am uneasy; I think I should be. He told me about the priest that raped him and said you two know about it. I wonder if people ever get beyond that kind of trauma?” She detected an alarmed, disturbed expression in Simon’s eyes.
Sarah was remembering when Armando tried to rape her a few years ago. She shivered at the thought of how terrified she had been when she saw a horrible, voracious, and angry dark force in him. Once she escaped, she thought she’d never go near him again, but finally years of therapy had helped him. By remembering his own rape, he could feel the pain he’d been inflicting on women. He had apologized to them, even to Claudia, and now was processing his demonic aspects through art with astonishing results. Also, Sarah believed a great shift had occurred in many people when the Mayan Calendar ended on December 21, 2012—the very day of Armando’s breakthrough session with Lorenzo Giannini. His recovery could be permanent. He’s a tortured soul, very much like the great Renaissance artists who grappled with dark forces. Jennifer may be the right woman because she understands artists. And, she’s older and more experienced than I was.
“I think you may want a chaste engagement. Before sexual liberation many people, especially Christians, waited before having sex because they believed marriage protects against demonic possession. Religions have complex rules about sex and marriage because they think demons have easy access to humans during sex. These days the rules have been thrown out, but now that I’m married, I think they were right in some ways because in the modern world many people act like they’re possessed by dark energy. And, considering Armando’s wonderful parents, he’ll master himself in marriage. He needs a wife and children to be able to process dark energy in his art. Jennifer, do you love him, really love him?”
“I agree with you. Even though I was once a modern liberated woman, I’ve changed. I think people are way too cavalier about sex, certainly I was. People act like they’re no more than walking genitals with closed minds and hearts when they have sex. Don’t laugh at me, Simon. I mean it.” Simon gave her a good-natured push as she continued. “Any sex I have from now on will be heart centered. But I can’t imagine marrying him without knowing whether I like hav
ing sex with him. Know what I mean?” Sarah smiled and took Simon’s hand while Jennifer went on. “Maybe we can find a way to be engaged and still deal with that need. I’ll think about your ideas.”
There was a long pause and then Sarah said, “You haven’t answered my question; do you love Armando?”
There was an even longer pause while Jennifer scanned her mind and heart. Maybe I can’t feel love for him because the dark energy repels me. Maybe I am too allured by the aristocratic lifestyle. What can I say to her? They watched her quizzically. She murmured, “I think so . . .”
“Jennifer,” Simon demanded, “Do you love Armando?”
“Oh, of course I do. I didn’t know how to answer because the question makes me feel like I’m saying I’ve fallen in love with the devil. This is going fast, but, yes, I love Armando, I do.” Still, Sarah wondered about the emptiness she detected in Jennifer’s heart.
A few weeks later, Jennifer joyfully accepted Armando’s engagement ring while dining at the Hassler Hotel above the Spanish Steps. He took her up to a suite with a stunning view of the Trinita dei Monti Towers. With the lights sparkling in all directions, farther in the distance the snaking, black Tiber flowed around deep bends, which caught occasional light reflections in the waves. Beyond the ancient river, stars twinkled in the dark sky surrounding the Vatican dome. After gazing at the view, he moved behind her, both now in front of the wide window. He slipped her blouse off her right shoulder causing the bra strap to slip down to a trembling elbow as he cupped a perfectly shaped small breast. “From now on I will be more honest with you than I ever have been with anyone. Wisdom flowing into my mind feels like the spirit that guides me when I paint, telling me where to stroke and add color. This will be our only night together before our wedding. We will continue to be chaste as we have been, except for tonight. We will find ourselves as lovers or we will not, but I have no fear. Our hearts touch and . . . ”
She turned around to gaze at his face while saying in a determined voice, “You touch me. Your masculine face, softened by your sensitive mouth and wise caring eyes, fills me with joy. Remember, Armando, I have a photographer’s eye, you a painter’s eye. I see true beauty in your face. I hope to gaze at you forever, like having a perfect sculpture by Bernini in my home. We will find each other tonight, maybe tomorrow morning. We will get to know each other for many years.” It was time.
They were both extremely experienced lovers, experts at heightening desire with fine technique. The first time together was a long night joining their bodies to prepare for the transformation—marriage. Like the flight paths of paired swans that fly thousands of miles following the magnetic lines of Earth and the constellations, they touched and felt a merging on many subtle levels. They were a perfectly matched pair.
At breakfast while sharing prosciutto, melon, and sourdough toast, they fell silent to contain their thoroughly unexpected discovery—they were the same animal having an instinctual joining that surpassed all previous loves. Later over espresso, he said, “I fall silent with you, something I’d always hoped for in a partner. Silence will be our source, our eternal pool of love. I think it is going to be very hard to abstain until we are married, at least it will be for me.”
“Funny thing is, I think we just had our honeymoon!” she replied, smiling blissfully. I think I do love him.
He retorted quickly in a very happy voice, “Oh no, you don’t know what’s in store for you! We will enjoy our honeymoon in Majorca where our family has a small villa on a slope above the sea with a path down to a private cove where I used to go when I was a child. Our whole family shares it. We’ll watch the sun go down below the sea every night. We’ll be there for a few weeks after our wedding since the climate is exquisite in May and June. Our honeymoon will be when we will draw down our child from the stars.”
3
Lorenzo’s Apartment
After the Tuscan wedding, Lorenzo returned to his old building on the busy Via Nicola Fabrizi in Rome, a short distance from his office in the Trastevere. His large apartment, surrounded by walled gardens, occupied the first story, and he rented out the two upper floors. He turned the old key in a large iron lock, opened the door, and went into the dark foyer. He turned on a light, paused a moment to sniff the stale air, and passed into the library through an arched door to the right. He went quickly to his favorite chair just as the last pale light was dimming, countless books fading into gloom. The library was stuffy, so he opened a bay window that protruded into the garden. The low traffic hum reminded him he was not alone.
The third volume of his dead wife’s journals was there on the table by his reading chair. He switched on an alabaster table lamp and opened the embossed leather journal to a random page. Whichever page opens will have meaning . . . The spine cracked, reminding him to be careful.
October 10, 1985: Being home all day with two small children is a free ticket to the insane asylum! He’s gone all day listening to fascinating tales spun by important people; I’m home—the zookeeper. While Antonio has a temper tantrum because I can’t understand what he’s trying to say to me, the baby wails because she wants to be fed or have her diaper changed. Today on my walk I felt like letting the baby carriage fly down the hill into the Tiber. What kind of mother am I? If I told Lorenzo I’m tempted to murder the baby, he’d tell me all about Freud’s death wish, but I’d still want to get rid of the baby. I can’t get pregnant again; if I do, I will die. What if I was Catholic like everybody else around here? I’d have to! Oh God!
Lorenzo thought about her primal urges. In those days when he came home, he thought the children were adorable while he dallied with them and she made dinner. They shared a chaotic meal, he did the dishes while she read to them and put them to bed, and then he went to be in his library. Life seemed normal, but now he could see how stifled she was. He got up and placed the third journal on a side table to exchange it for the sixth one. In the sixth journal, the children were older, in school all day while she kept house.
April 9, 1996: I went to the Vatican Museum today and sat in the Sistine Chapel for a long time to study the art. Layers of heavy time overwhelmed me. These are not my stories because I’m Jewish, yet the themes are from the Old Testament. Why are Christians so obsessed with our stories?
He tried to remember whether she’d ever told him she’d gone to the Sistine Chapel. Why didn’t she? We could have gone there as a family. The emptiness of time gone by that could never be brought back made him tired after driving up to Tuscany and back in one day. His head nodded, yet he sat back up trying to visualize her walking home from the Vatican. But he couldn’t picture her face. He picked up his favorite photo of her to bring her back, but her image faded into the past as he gazed at it. She once was alluring. He jumped up suddenly because he heard something fall off a bookcase—thunk!—glass shattered. He rushed to the sound and looked down at the floor. A Fabergé egg with a small beveled window that had once displayed a tiny colorful merry-go-round made of spun glass lay smashed on the marble floor as if someone had pushed it off the shelf! The grandfather clock chimed twelve times in the foyer. He yelled, “Eleanora, did you knock that off? What do you want?”
He picked up the pieces and threw them into the wastebasket screaming, “I always hated that ugly egg that you thought was worth so much money.” Drops of blood on his index finger smeared as he screamed, “So, just like Claudia said, you do want me to read these journals, don’t you? Well, I have, and you want to know what? They bore me, you bored me for years!” He stopped for a moment to calm down. “What can I do about that now? You are the one who never talked and then just died. You could’ve done more with your life, but you just wanted to diddle all day. Even when the kids left, you didn’t want to do anything. You want to know what, Eleanora? To hell with your journals!”
Now wide awake, he shuffled to the back to make tea. After returning, he piled the journals on the hearth and made a low fire. Then he took them, one by one, stripped out a few pages, and
burned them thoughtfully. He dumped the gilded and embossed leather covers. The next morning he was up early to open all the windows. When the housekeeper came, he instructed her to clean out his wife’s dresser. Then he went to his office and called Claudia. “Hello Claudia, this is Lorenzo. I would like to take you out to dinner tonight. Will you join me?”
Claudia was home relaxing and was very surprised he’d called so soon. “Well yes, I’d love to; however, can you come to my home first? I live at 14 Via degli Scipioni, a block away from the Ponte Nenni, so can you walk here? I want you to see my home.” She visualized his clear sparkling eyes as she spoke. “Oh, avoid the Lungotevere Michelangelo because of the traffic.”
“Yes, I’d love to visit your home. I’ll make a reservation nearby, since I know your district. I got back here and my apartment made me lonely. Why should I be lonely?”
“Well, darling, I must admit I agree with you. Everything is a choice, isn’t it? Ciao, see you around five o’clock?” She put the receiver down slowly noticing how happy she was he’d called so soon.
Lorenzo opened the window over the noisy square as he waited for his first client. Since his wife’s death, work had been his salvation. At night he dreaded going back to the apartment, so taking Claudia to dinner would be wonderful. In the late afternoon, he started out on the long walk over the Ponte Sisto to the Via Giulia, then back over the Tiber on the Ponte Sant’Angelo. He bought some flowers from a vendor behind the Castel Sant’Angelo and then walked on small back-streets to the Via A. Farnese. He hadn’t taken a long walk for a while, so it was invigorating and made him feel young. He came to the Via degli Scipioni and admired Claudia’s impressive front entrance sporting classic stone pillars. She opened the door and smiled warmly when he handed her bright yellow irises.
She led him into a small, intimate study. “This is my favorite room. Sit down here, and I will bring you some port after I get a vase for these lovely blossoms. Feel free to peruse my books.”
Revelations of the Aquarian Age Page 3