He wants it all

by Marilena Barbagallo

  “It's correct. That's exactly what I think,” Leonardo whispers only to me. He looks at me as if my words are exciting him.

  I turn my eyes away from him who remains looking at me intrusively. My eyes rotate in space, but they are magnetized by Krum, who is staring at me with hatred in his eyes.

  It is hate, of course.

  What if it is jealousy?

  Krum jealous of me? Why should he be?

  The conversation is animated. It focuses on capitalism and new publishing technologies. The people at this table are clearly too "old" for my taste and I start listing the advantages of digital publishing.

  Between one entree and the other, Leonardo murmurs congratulations, while I, automatically, always look for Krum’s eyes at the other table, with his inflexible and irritating posture. Irritating because it’s like he is controlling me.

  “I am really happy you’re here, Ambra,” Leonardo says. “We speak the same language, which is the same as the Sect.” He adds the latter information in a really low voice, and I realize that the Sect theme must remain secret. After all, the Sect is secret.

  “I'm happy to know that somehow we understand each other,” I reply. “I hope this is the case for other issues as well.”

  I bring a morsel of pie to my mouth and Leonardo leads his thumb to my lips. I feel his fingers pressing removing a piece of whip cream. I shiver because I don’t like it.

  “You've become a really interesting woman,” he whispers, staring at my mouth. I feel uncomfortable and, once again, I automatically look for Krum as if I wanted to ask for his support; his intervention. God, I'm ashamed of myself.

  I see Krum pushing his chair back and he stands up. He leaves the table and I hope he comes to me, to get me out of this embarrassing situation, but I see him leaving the room and so leaving me. I bring my attention back to Leonardo.

  “When can we talk about…” I was going to say Sect, “the issue?”

  “I'm very busy, but if you want, I’ll find time. Maybe we can go to dinner alone, just me and you, or I can ask to prepare something here. Whatever you like.” He is trying to make me comfortable. He looks like a very youthful and reassuring guy, but something suggests that he is not at all. “Be sure, Ambra, you can have a normal life. I just want to be sure you don’t go blabbering out what your father and I have built with so much sacrifice.”

  It annoys me to hear him speak of my father and on behalf of my father. Daddy in the letter seemed sorry and regretful. He was warning me. he wanted me to keep my eyes open; for me to fake.

  “Sure. I'm not stupid. I understand perfectly. I hope to win your trust,” I say cunningly, pretending.

  I bring the glass of champagne to my lips and Leonardo's invading eyes are down my neckline.

  I want Krum. Where the hell is he?!

  “Dinner was really good,” I say. “Thank you,” I get up and say to the guests: “With your permission I'm going out for a breath of air.”

  Ladies greet me cordially, as well as men who give me a little too much consideration. When I leave the table and go away, I head to Oscar, who doesn’t see me coming, because he is sitting with his back facing me. I put my hands on his shoulders saying.

  “Hello,” he raises his head and gives me a smile.

  “Hello.”

  He stands up and leaves his guests, who don't do anything but whisper annoying phrases about my body.

  “Where is Krum?” I ask him.

  “I don’t know, he just got up,” he puts his hand on my side and gives a disapproving look to a guy commenting on my dress. “Let's go, otherwise they’ll never stop it.”

  We go out into the garden and Oscar lights a cigarette. He offers me one but I refuse.

  “Can I know what you did to Krum?” His question amazes me.

  “Why? Did he tell you something?”

  “No, but I know him well and I can figure out what goes through his head even before he does.”

  “Have you been friends for a long time?”

  “Since we were kids.” He sees I cover my arms with my hands. “Are you cold?” I smile. Why can’t Krum be as sweet as he is?

  “A little, but I’d like to go to rest. In a moment I'll go in…”

  “Wait!” He keeps the cigarette in his mouth and begins to take off his jacket. The smoke blows on his face; he winces, and mumbles: “Take it,” he gives it to me.

  “Thanks.” I wrap myself in Oscar’s jacket and then I see he totally changes expression.

  Something tells me he's here.

  I don’t need to see him because I feel him take off the jacket. I turn around and look badly at him, very badly.

  “She doesn’t need your jacket,” Krum bursts, throwing it at Oscar.

  “It's cold, leave it to her,” Oscar insists, throwing the jacket back.

  “She doesn’t need it because she's going back to her room.” Then he stares at me and says: “Right, princess?”

  “It was what I was going to do, but now that you demand it, I’m not tired anymore and I want to stay here. Go away!”

  He clutches his fists, looks at me as if he was searching his mind for the most insulting phrase perfect for a bitch like me. But he doesn’t answer.

  “Say bye to Oscar,” he orders. “We are leaving.”

  “We are leaving?” The plural disturbs me.

  “Yes, we are. Me and you. Do you have something to complain about?”

  My throat burns, and that burning slides down to my stomach, causing my guts to turnover. Me and you.

  How strange it sounds on his lips.

  “Leonardo said that…”

  “Pritikhvam!”

  “Stop speaking Bulgarian. I don’t understand you!”

  “He said shut up,” Oscar translates.

  “Mind your own business,” Krum attacks him.

  “You could also give her some room to breathe,” continues Oscar, putting a hand on my side.

  “Take that hand off,” Krum says gritting his teeth. I'm shocked. He's so strange, so crazy and unreasonable.

  “Hey!” I snort pushing him away. “I don’t belong to you. You can't tell me what I can and what I can't do and you can't say it even to others. Oscar is kind to me. You can’t treat him like shit either.”

  “Do I treat you like shit?” he asks confused. I understand why he behaves this way. He drank, I smell whiskey on his breath.

  “Certainly you can’t say that you treat her well,” Oscar intervenes. I feel strong because I have his support.

  “I've had enough of you, Oscar,” Krum points his finger at him, then turns to me and offers me his hand with the wounded knuckles. “Let’s go!”

  I cross my arms and step back. My pout should be enough, but maybe it's better to pronounce my thoughts aloud.

  “I'm not coming with you.”

  “I just want to take you to your room,” he says calmly.

  He continues to stretch out his hand toward me. I look at Oscar and with a nod of his head he suggests I follow him. Maybe I shouldn’t go against him, maybe it's better to do as he says. Leonardo promised me that I’d have lived a normal life, I should just be patient.

  “Okay,” I puff. I greet Oscar with an imperceptible good night that he exchanges, and follow Krum, whose hand slips along his side defeated. I don’t let him take my hand again.

  We pass the first hallway in a dead silence. Some guests are making noise in the big entrance. We pass through it, faking smiles. I see Krum snorting when a man approaches me and greets me kissing my cheeks. He was one of the gentlemen with whom I had conversation all evening and I thought it was polite to return a warm greeting. I don’t know who these people are and maybe it has nothing to do with Leonardo's plans, so I act like I’d do in any other context.

  “It was a pleasure to meet you, Ambra,” says the man. “I had great esteem for your father. He was a very modern person…”

  “See you, Mr. Bianchi,” Krum snarls. Intimating the man to stop talking. What a r
ude guy! He clings to my side and I try to move away, but he keeps me close when we take the stairs.

  “Was it necessary to be so rude? That guy was just greeting me.”

  “He was drooling, you want to say.”

  “What’s your problem?” I snap, perhaps too loud, stopping on the stairs.

  “You have problems, you don’t realize how they look at you!”

  “So? What do you care about it?”

  “I cannot always be there, I cannot protect you at all times.”

  I am wordless. His rudeness and arrogance are aimed at protecting me? From what?

  “Why should you protect me?” I ask abruptly, walking again.

  “Because I'm your guardian. It's my job.”

  “That man was just greeting me,” I repeat. “You're ridiculous if you think of protecting me even from a malicious look.”

  We get to the corridor of the floor where my room is, he comes up from behind. I prefer it. It makes me feel searched for. He takes a stride and stands in front of me.

  “Is it normal for you that they look at you that way?”

  “What do you want? What do you care about it?” I try to pass him, but he blocks me.

  “You’re bothering me, damn it,” he snarls and then he closes his mouth as if he has realized he said nonsense. And he did.

  “W-why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Has it now become your favorite answer? There are other ways to avoid the truth.”

  “It's the truth,” he replies annoyed as he looks in his pocket for the key to my room. “I don’t really know. It makes me mad and that’s all.” He turns and I, I... oh my god! I feel a strange force pushing me to touch him. But I refrain, because it’s not sweet bewilderment what his gestures and thoughts emanate, it's just the twisted mind of a sadist who can’t wait to strike.

  He opens the door of my room and pulls me in, locking it behind him. I turn to him and with pretentious admiration, I say: “You can go now. You brought me to my room, your work is done!”

  He takes off his jacket and tosses it onto a chair at the end of the room. I open my eyes. I feel my legs give in and I feel weak. I am weak.

  “What are you doing?” I mumble.

  “I’m staying here to sleep.”

  17

  KRUM

  Seven years before.

  I inhale the coke strip Manuel has prepared on a silver tray. I unroll the 100euro banknote and throw it in his face.

  “Put it where the sun doesn't shine!” I have dry lips and dampen them with a bit of whiskey.

  “It's not my fault if you always lose bets,” he replies satisfied.

  “I didn’t think the girl was so strong.”

  “I didn’t believe so either, but as I know you always lose, so I wanted to bet the opposite. It's convenient for me.”

  He presses his nostril with his index finger, bends over the table and sniffs the coke strip.

  I had bet that sooner or later the girl would cry, instead, after the first time, she didn’t shed a tear anymore. I have to admit she is very brave, I was sure that – after she had seen Manuel, too – she would have panicked, but that was not the case, and she held strong despite the lack of food we didn't feed her in order to test her resistance.

  We're really two pieces of shit.

  Ambra, the girl's name is Ambra. I like this name.

  The little room next to the garage where we are, is heated, but I get a shiver of cold down my spine thinking that she is huddled on the floor, on that pile of blankets, freezing, terrified. Even if she doesn’t cry as she should, I'm sure she’s never been so scared in her whole life and she will never be again.

  The thought that I am causing her so much terror makes me excited in a sick way.

  “I propose a new bet,” Manuel snorts with his furry tongue.

  “Let's see.” My balls are full of his bets, but we have to pass the time somehow.

  “Let's bet that I fuck her and that she'll enjoy it?” His eyes seem to really believe in the bullshit he has just said.

  “We can’t touch her.”

  “If you could, would you do it?”

  “She's sixteen. She’s a child.”

  “Yeah, sure. Did you see how she looks at you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She wants you, Krum. It’s obvious.”

  “Don’t say bullshit!”

  He must be stoned to imagine such a thing.

  “Let’s bet.”

  “No.”

  “Do you want to do the opposite? Do you want to fuck her?”

  “I won’t fuck a sixteen-year-old girl against her will,” I burst.

  “Well, I want to do it. If you don’t have the balls to watch, you can stay here.”

  He stands up with the serious intention of going through the garage door to reach her. I put the chair behind me and block his arm.

  “Do not even try, Manuel!”

  “Why?” He stares at me with those glacial blue eyes, sometimes I think he out does me in cruelty. “Is it you that wants her?”

  “I want nobody. Sit down!”

  “Five hundred euro she enjoys it like a whore,” he says.

  I sigh exasperated by his stupidity. He is so confident in himself that he believes he can satisfy a kid, kidnapped by two men with a covered face.

  The effect of cocaine, along with that of alcohol, begins to fog my sight, but creates a strange energy in my body at the same time.

  Adrenaline.

  I’d like to see him defeated and rejected. Maybe I could really win such a bet, since it's true that I always lose with him.

  I gulp down my whiskey, turn over my glass, and put it on the table dusted with white powder.

  “Okay,” I say. “I bet five hundred euros she is going to scream, weep and scratch you.”

  “And I bet that after the first protests she will move under me, imploring me not to stop. Maybe she’ll also want you, too.”

  I don’t think I'm totally lucid, because in other circumstances I’d never allow something like that. But I don’t care, I want to see Manuel humiliated.

  We both wear a ski mask and the usual black leather gloves.

  I bend to open the shutter and I lose my balance. I'm stoned and the thought of what's going to happen starts to excite me. When the noise of the shutter stops, we see the girl curled up in the usual corner with her knees tight to her chest. We walk silently toward her like two dangerous predators. She knows, she knows how brutal we can be. It is shown by the various locks of hair scattered here and there.

  Manuel heads to the other corner of the garage and takes a chair, places it not far from her and invites me to sit down. I do so and I light a cigarette. I had to cut the hood for smoking, but my lips are visible. She stares at both of us waiting.

  We don’t say anything to her. We just look at her, as Manuel stands at a short distance from her and stares at her from above.

  The girl's eyes are on me, Manuel doesn’t seem to exist. Maybe Manuel is right.

  But what the fuck, you're stoned!

  I inhale a long drag from the Marlboro and I drop the ashes on the floor, I put my elbows on my knees and fix her. I straighten my ski mask, which is bothering me more than usual today, until she breaks the silence.

  “When can I drink?” Her voice is tired, weak. “I'm thirsty, I haven’t drank for too long.” My eyes fall on her cracked, dry lips. Maybe I should give her some water.

  “We're here to quench your thirst,” Manuel says, bending over her. “I'll give you something to drink.”

  What a bastard!

  He stretches his hand out to her face and she moves her head, horrified.

  I feel a pin sticking in my chest.

  She keeps looking for me, I do the same and I smoke my cigarette.

  “Please,” she whispers. “I'm thirsty, give me something to drink.”

  “Sure, baby,” Manuel whispers, slowly rising and leading his hands to the fly
of his jeans.

  I feel another pin penetrating my chest.

  I swallow, I have a dry throat. My breathing becomes difficult, begins to follow the rhythm of the girl's.

  Her golden eyes recall the same gold of her hair.

  She is staring at Manuel's hands unbuttoning the fly.

  She leaps up.

  Looks at me.

  Looks for me.

  And I feel a new pin sticking into my chest.

  “I'm going to give you a prize for your good behavior these days,” Manuel says His voice reminds me of the past, something I've decided to forget and that, fuck, is now reappearing as if I got my memory back.

  “Open your mouth," he says. She is petrified. She cannot move. The only part of her that hasn’t lost mobility are her eyes, that keep looking for me.

  She is begging me to stop him. She is silently asking for help.

  Suddenly I'm in my ugly old house. My dad left. He left me.

  “Open your mouth,” says the man. I say no with my head. “Come on, Krum, open it. You'll like it.”

  “I don’t want to!” My eyes burn. I don’t want to touch this man, I don’t want him to touch me and I don’t want to take his cock in my mouth. “Look how beautiful it is, it's big and hard. Touch it!”

  I stare at his elastic skin stretching and showing the wet tip. I look down to see if it happens to me as when I see nude women.

  No.

  It doesn’t happen.

  I don't like it.

  “I said I don't want to.”

  I feel his hand pulling my head and pushing it down there.

  I feel like I am choking.

  “I don't want to,” the girl shouts. She's crying, trying to struggle under Manuel's grip of her hair.

  “You are going to like it, look how big it is. It's hard only for you, baby.”

  I'm petrified.

  There are no more pins, but blades, blades that are stabbing ,not only my chest, but every fragment of my body burning out of horror.

  I can’t move. Nausea blocks my throat. My eyes are wide open and my eyelids are pulsing.