He wants it all

by Marilena Barbagallo

  “Do I have to repeat it?”

  “Your woman?” she asks, as if it wasn’t so.

  “Botev is sick, Ambra, leave him alone, let's go back inside.”

  He takes her hand and I… shit, I go crazy.

  I grab Ambra’s other arm and put her behind me. She doesn’t resist and I have the opportunity to clear up things with Manuel.

  “I’ve warned you. I’ve smashed your face more than once. What else should I do to make you understand that you don’t have to stay near her?”

  “Krum, now that's enough, you're ridiculous.” I hear her protesting behind me and I tug her, obliging her to stay behind me.

  I don’t want to be compelled to tell her that Manuel is the same man who tried to rape her seven years ago. I’d only hurt her. The memories would reappear as punches to her stomach and I wouldn’t know how to console her, because I’d be the last person she would go to.

  “Ambra, please tell him,” Manuel's voice sounds crestfallen. “Tell him you don’t want to be with him.”

  Asshole!

  I gnash my teeth, I'm restraining myself too much, but I don’t want to trigger a brawl in front of Ambra. I don’t want to show her how I am when I lose my head. She's already afraid of my single gestures.

  Ambra manages to free herself and places herself between me and Manuel her look doesn’t hide how much she disapproves of my behavior.

  “Do you know something?” she puffs. “I don’t care about either of you. Keep me out of your discussions. If I'm here, it's not for fun. I have no pleasure in spending time in this place,” she points a finger at Manuel, “nor with you,” then points to me, “and especially with you!”

  Especially. Okay.

  “You said what you think, okay,” I say. “Now get out of my sight!”

  It’s the first thing that comes to my mind, the first sentence my lips say, the only stupid expression I am able to say.

  She opens her mouth in disbelief, steps back and returns to the room. When I see Manuel taking a step to follow her, I do the same and block his passage. I put my hand on his chest and push him.

  “If you don’t stop hanging around her, I tell her you're the piece of shit that, seven years ago, put his hands on her!”

  He becomes pale. He's gotten away with it so far. I’ve just done him a favor, being silent, but now I think I'll stop covering for him.

  “You can’t tell her.”

  “Of course I can and I will.”

  “She’ll hate you even more because you allowed me to touch her even with a finger.”

  “Kopele!”

  “Yeah, I'm a bastard,” he smiles an evil grin and advances safely toward me. “If you tell her the truth, she’ll get angry because you haven’t told her before and in any case, you have always been as guilty as me. I want you to remember you accepted the bet and that you sat on that chair ready to enjoy the show. What happened later, was just because you remembered the cocks that your father forced you to suck…”

  I punch him so hard that he falls to the ground.

  In a moment people rush over to us. I'm not going to stay here to break my knuckles on this butthead. Manuel spits blood on the porch floor, and I spit on him to increase the dosage. I won’t stay here a minute more.

  When I come back, I don’t care about the recall of the Father who shouts my name again and again. My only thought is to find Ambra. I don’t see her, and every damned time I lose sight of her, I feel empty inside so deep down that it causes a great, exasperating fear.

  I look for her among the women, among the groups chatting and not noticing my hand bleeding, I look for her everywhere, but she isn’t there. I leave the room and cross the entrance, straight to the stairs. Perhaps she has taken refuge in her room, perhaps she has decided to go away from everyone.

  She went away from you.

  I go up the stairs with long and quick strides. In a moment I am at her landing. I reach her room and try to open the door, but it's locked.

  “Get out of here!” she screams even before knowing that it’s me. It hurts me, but at the same time gives me a strange sense of relief to know that she was expecting me. She was thinking about me.

  “Ambra, open the door! Don’t make me repeat myself.”

  “I'm tired of you and all the rest. Go away, I can’t stand it anymore!” Her voice is tormented. I hope she isn’t crying. I don’t want her to cry, not about me. She’s cried too much over me and I’ve no intention to cause her tears anymore.

  “Ambra,” I call her gently, banging my damn head on the door.

  She surprises me and suddenly opens, showing her total splendor, contaminated with the sadness impressed in her eyes. Two tears slide down her face and I'm forced to hold my fingers in a fist to suppress the need to remove them from her skin.

  I could drink all her tears and absorb all her pain if she'd let me do it.

  “I thought we had come to a definite conclusion,” she says.

  “To get to the end there must be a beginning.”

  “You and I already have a beginning!”

  “Do you want the end?”

  “Yup!”

  “Can I come in?”

  “No!” She crosses her arms and seeing her so irremovable makes me desire to force her. I bring my hand to my head and brush my hair back. She notices blood on my knuckles, but says nothing. She already knows I'm a beast.

  “Don’t cry anymore,” I almost implore her to stop.

  “If you want me to stop crying, get out of my life.”

  If she had punched my stomach, it would have hurt less. I'm devastated inside. I feel useless and insignificant. I'm nobody, nobody and nobody.

  “What did I do this time?” my voice begins to lose the delicacy I’d set.

  “You treat me as an object, and don’t ever worry about how I feel.”

  “It's not true, I…” I bring a fist to my mouth and I bite my thumb. “I worry about you, a lot! You don’t know what… You don’t know what Manuel did!”

  She squints her eyes and stares at me with a smart look. If she is trying to extort a confession from me, she won’t succeed. That shit is right, she wouldn’t forgive me.

  She wouldn’t forgive you anyway.

  “Tell me what he did!”

  “Let me in!”

  “No,” she stops me when I step forward and I get really angry.

  “Stop doing that,” I yell

  “Doing what?” she screams louder than me.

  “You make me feel disgusting; you make me feel useless; a monster! I cannot get close to you. I cannot touch you, I can't do anything with you. Nothing.”

  “You mustn’t do anything!” she comes out of her territory and pushes me with a finger. She is so strong, so gorgeous in her fury that I can’t stop the impulse of caressing her.

  I touch her cheek and seeing her moving away is my final condemnation.

  “Ambra…”

  “Tell me what Manuel did!”

  We are on the landing, anyone could pass by. It’s certainly not the best place to give her such news, but thinking about the situation I realize she deserves to know. I owe her. At least this.

  “Manuel…” I swallow. She looks into my eyes. At least she takes me into consideration; at least she gives me permission to dive into her wretched world one last time. “Manuel… he is the other kidnapper, Ambra. He’s the other…”

  “What?” Imperceptible, her voice lost all its energy.

  “I didn’t want to trouble you,” I look down.

  Now it's too hard to look at her, read that pain, see desolation and humiliation again. Ambra has exactly the same eyes that convinced me to rescue her.

  I'd like to rescue her again, but she doesn’t give me the chance.

  She steps back, staring at the floor, enters the room, and before I can follow her, she has slammed the door in my face.

  I don’t want her to be alone; I don’t want her to blame herself for the trust given to Manuel; I don’t w
ant her to hate me because I kept the truth from her, I don’t want her to suffer again.

  I don’t want it.

  I put a hand on the door and even an ear, hoping not to hear her cry. I don’t hear anything. The silence is disturbing and is leading us to a definitive condemnation.

  I whisper her name, even though she can't hear me. I stay there for hours nailed to the floor. I wait for her to look for me and I hope she needs me as I need her. When I understand that she won’t reopen the door again, I get up and leave, accepting that I have been cut out of her life.

  24

  AMBRA

  Images that my mind had carefully thrown into the limbo of denial come back in flashes. Once my dad told me that my trauma had been expelled from that area of my brain that didn’t accept the memory. I had welcomed Krum, who, despite being an evil thought, had been able to obscure everything else, chaining me to less destructive recollections.

  I must recognize it: the man with a covered face that stopped the cruelty of the other kidnapper, saved me twice. He did it at that time and did it afterwards, protecting my mind from those images that are now destroying me, as if they were exploding in me for the first time and I was forced to relive them in a horrifying succession.

  I feel every feeling again. I see it all again in black and white. I hear their footsteps and the voice of that man. I see Krum's eyes looking at me from the holes of the ski mask; the scent of danger so strong and burning; the smell of perversion and the poisonous taste on my lips.

  I fall to the ground, kneeling on the cold marble. I hold my head tight, pressing with the hope of repressing those images. But I see everything again. If I open my eyes I see him. If I close my eyes I see him. I feel him. I am again victim and executioner, guilty of not being able to manage my brain.

  Crying make things worse. The taste of tears becomes element of that scene; memory of my weeping. Kneeling on the floor, as I was then, I risk falling into madness when I see Manuel appear. He’s without a ski mask and I am alone. Krum is not there. He’s not there.

  I get up and run to the bathroom; I'm running away from nothing; I run away from a memory. There is no one in the room. There is only my troubled mind that is drawing my trauma in space.

  I'm confused. My head spins. The furniture floats and rises from the floor The tears blur my sight. My heart is turning into a palpitating mousse. I’m trembling and I realize how much I need to find the courage again that has kept me tied to reality for all these years.

  Him.

  Krum.

  The memory of him loosened that rope that tied me to trauma; got in the middle and pulled the strings of that connection. He pulled me away from Manuel and tried to do it even now, worrying about me; supporting and protecting me.

  When I feel that I have totally lost my lucidity, I jump on my bed and fall into an unconscious sleep. Nightmares and images shoot through my head as destructive arrows. I cannot stand it, I cannot be with myself. I don’t have the strength to face the situation. I need certainty; I need to be cling to that pillar that - without being present in my life - managed to keep it clean, to disinfect it from that evil.

  Barefoot and still wearing the black dress, I go to the door. The terror of meeting Manuel becomes real. If I think of how he has touched me, every single time I let him come near me and all Krum's attempts to keep me away from him, I feel ungrateful and stupid.

  I turn the handle with caution, praying not to meet him in the corridor. I go out and close the door behind me. Some wall lights slightly light up the corridors. The silence of the night has never been so noisy. I hold my head; It is bursting. I walk through the corridor close to the wall, as if it is holding me up . I go upstairs and get to the first floor, terrified at the idea of coming across Manuel. Step by step I feel my body calm down. It’s as if knowing I’m reaching Krum, I’m getting to my shelter, the safe corner.

  I arrive at his door and look at it more than once before deciding whether to knock or not. I hate myself for the way I treated him. I feel bad if I just think of all the times that I've approached Manuel just to make him mad. I knock on the door and soon after it opens.

  My eyes remain low, fixed on the black silk trousers he’s wearing, wander upward and stop at the height of the bare lower abdomen. Two marked lines highlight his tanned skin. His belly button is surrounded by the lines of the perfect abs. Then his chest and those sculpted pectorals take my breath away. The contracted neck; the prominent veins; the serrated jaw and the stubby beard; dark, but soft to touch. His lips ajar; his nostrils widening angrily and finally his eyes.

  Those eyes.

  My eyes.

  The most scary eyes I’ve ever seen, but now they are the most reassuring ones that exist.

  “Can I come in?” My trembling voice doesn’t make him bat an eye. He looks at my bare feet and I shift weight from one side to the other. If he refuses, I wouldn’t blame him. “I… I…”

  I don’t know what to say, but he opens the door more and silently makes room for me, letting me come in.

  I'm in his room and I've never been so calm in my whole life. The tears suddenly stop and I feel comfortable, as if I had reached land after a long swim.

  He remains behind me and I can see the beautiful old-fashioned bedroom. Everything is in wood and there are shades of red in the quilt on the bed and in the curtains. I sigh and turn around, hoping he says something.

  He is clenching his fists along his hips; his knuckles are blacker than usual. Knowing that every wound comes from every time he protected me, warms my heart.

  “Do you want something to drink?”

  I nod.

  I imagined a sweeter and more prompt Krum. But what can I expect from him? You never know what beats in his chest, a heart or a "led" cube that breaks with my every insult.

  He heads to a living room, where there is a Greek-Roman style sofa and a coffee table. I realize that I am in his world and I’m very comfortable. He pours something in a glass and I suppose it's strong, but I don’t protest, it could be good for me, it would mitigate some tension.

  “Sit down.” I do and take the drink, bringing it to my lips. “Slow, drink slowly.”

  He sits beside me, at a distance. I turn my head toward him and when I sink my eyes into those two brown puddles, I feel desperate.

  The tears wet my face again and my body resumes that never-ending trembling that I cannot placate.

  Krum takes my glass from my hands. He assumes a new version of himself that I don’t think belongs to him; he becomes extraordinarily sweet.

  “It's all right,” he encourages me. He rests a hand on my shoulder, but with an unconscious reflex I shone away and he retracts it embittered. “Calm down, Ambra, you're with me. You're safe with me.”

  “I know, but…” I feel ridiculous, I weep like a child.

  “You are with me,” he repeats, holding one hand on my knee.

  I get up, avoiding his touch again. I'm not afraid of him, I'm not afraid he may hurt me, but at this moment my body refuses any kind of contact. It's like suddenly everything tangible around me has become Manuel.

  I turn away and cover my face, drying my tears with my fingers. His naked feet appear in my sight, I raise my eyes and his are shiny with anguish.

  “Are you angry with me?”

  “No, I'm not angry with you. You protected me.”

  Anguish vanishes and astonishment appears. His dark irises shine with relief. Krum sighs reassured and I understand his fear that I might scream out all my anger to him.

  “I was afraid you were angry because I didn’t tell you the truth. I didn’t want to distress you. I didn’t want you to relive those memories.”

  “I know, I understand.”

  He wets his lips with his tongue. He has a tender expression; looks embarrassed, as if he didn’t know what to do. It’s clear that Krum, in his life, has never had to give affection and support. I understand he isn’t able to because he doesn’t know the way in which those feeli
ngs are to be transferred. No one has taught him to caress; no one has brought him into his world as I am doing or maybe he’s never wanted to go beyond, choosing to protect himself from the repercussions of a simple caress.

  We look at each other in the shade of his room, standing, barefoot, with my head up because of his height and with his eyes waiting for me to help him help me.

  “Make me feel good, Krum. I want to feel good. With you.”

  He swallows as if I have asked him something he cannot do. I answer him before his mind convinces him that he is incapable of doing it.

  “You can do it, Krum. You can make me feel good.”

  I'm moved to have made such a request to him. I’ve always thought he was my infirmity, instead I have never been so sure he is the only one who may erase that memory.

  “I'm not capable, Ambra. I cannot make you feel good,” his voice sounds hoarse and insecure, as if he didn’t believe in his own words.

  “Try.”

  “I don’t know how to. I don’t wanna touch you. You… you don’t want me to touch you.”

  “Krum, you can do it,” I try to encourage him.

  I know he can make me feel good. I don’t need to be held in his arms. I don’t need ordinary caresses. He can erase everything just being simply himself.

  “Okay,” he sighs and blinks his eyes, getting courage from the back of his mind. He steps toward me reducing the space between us and stealing a sigh from me. The wait is already producing the desire I’m looking for; that feeling of abandon; that need to turn everything off, to bring a new light inside me.

  “I won’t touch you, I won’t use my hands.”

  I nod, trying to imagine how he intends to make me feel good without touching me. Slowly he rotates around me, but gets nearer and nearer. I want him to go further and I move my hair, telling him that he can take off my dress. I don’t know how he’ll do it without touching me, but I'm curious to see it. I put my hair to one side and turn my head. Seeing him bend with his lips toward the zipper of my dress. I burn and sigh when I feel that he catches the zipper with his teeth and slides it along my back with his mouth to the end.