Salt Skin

by Victoria Leyto

  As you remember, Monsieur Schwartz, I brought Margaret home a bit earlier after she was found innocent in court. And at eight o’clock, she was already sitting in her red Volvo and rushing to her grandfather’s house at full speed, unaware of the old Volkswagen which was pursuing her. A little later, we witnessed her heart-breaking cry coming from the open cellar trapdoor where the woman discovered the loss of her prisoner.

  Thus, around midnight, the red Volvo returned to the borders of our town. It distractedly wandered around the streets and appeared on the town’s main square, where, as we know, “The Grand Hotel International” and the courthouse were situated. Initially, the woman heard a very lively conversation. As she was getting closer, the sound of the voices increased, blending into a single hum. The picture that appeared before Margaret made her exit her car.

  Around two hundred people, like flies, swarmed the hotel building from all sides. Their heads were raised as one, directing the eyes of each to something on the roof.

  There, on the roof of the twenty-three storey building, on the very edge, swaying and staggering, stood a man with a child. He gesticulated desperately, shouting only one word in a breaking voice, “Margareeeeeeet!” Those who saw the Volvo pulling up to the hotel also saw its owner, pale as death, going out of the car. The bewildered woman made her way through the crowd of bystanders who surrounded the building and ran inside faster than a speeding bullet, spinning widely the luxurious glass doors. The confused clerk at the entrance, Mark, did not even have the time to say anything when he saw Margaret’s face distorted with mad agitation. He stopped in his tracks and allowed her to run to the elevator, full of fear and regret.

  Having frantically pressed all the buttons in the lobby, she started to bang on the elevator doors, shouting desperately for it to open. However, the elevator would not descend and the clock was ticking. Having abandoned this idea, she rushed to the stairs. Margaret ran, fell down and stumbled, not knowing what to think or what to do. Everything happened so fast, her instincts took control over her.

  Finally, when she climbed to the top floor, she approached the door leading to the roof and kicked it open. A strong bang on the wall, caused by this abrupt entry, stopped Krisi’s shouting. He was standing on the very edge, clutching the scarf wrapped around the scared little girl’s neck. She was crying in a hoarse tone. She was barely able to hold his jacket with her tiny fingers, constantly slipping over the edge with her small feet and almost falling.

  Margaret was not being herself and cried out at the top of her lungs, Eeeeeve!” She was bending from pain that pierced her body almost in half. Those who heard this violent inhuman cry will never forget it. Having broken out of the woman’s soul, blackened from long years of revenge, it burst through the wind, that was carrying words and slashed the ears of everyone standing below as if with a knife.

  As she started to run towards Krisi, he stopped her with a gesture, speaking slowly through his teeth, “If you come any closer, your daughter will die!” At that moment, behind wailing Margaret, Martin’s stepmother appeared but not daring to come closer, she stopped in the dark corridor before the door, which gave her a full view of what was happening.

  Trying to overcome the sobs, Margaret slowly started to approach Martin, who was reeling from wind and weakness. She showed him her palms, trying to calm him down. “No!” He roared in rage. “You will pay for everything you have done to me, bitch!”

  “Martin, please, I beg of you, let my daughter go! I will go to the police and I will confess everything, just don’t hurt the girl!” Having put her hands in a pleading gesture, Margaret shouted and her voice echoed disturbingly through the wind, as cold as ice.

  “Why?” He said barely audibly and a treacherous tear of pain and bitterness appeared on his face as a symbol of long years of undeserved torment. He wiped the tear away with one hand, clutching the girl’s scarf at her throat, nearly smothering her and not paying attention to the fact the she was continuously slipping.

  At some point, the girl’s face turned rosy red and instead of sobbing, a supressed wheezing became audible. Her eyes slowly began to roll and her small fingers gradually unclenched the frayed sleeve of her broken-hearted father.

  “She is your daughter!” Margaret cried. “She is yours! She is ours!” Having fallen on her knees and covered her face, the fainting woman spoke through tears.

  “Don’t lie!” The man shouted angrily. “You... You! You...”

  It seemed that his hunched figure swaying from weakness was about to fall off the roof. He could not speak clearly; a lump of resentment in his throat choked his words, interrupting them with incomprehensible sounds, which resembled the sobs of hysteria and groans of a dying animal. His appearance gave away a permanently ruined life of a miserable and wretched man.

  “She is ours! Can’t you hear me?! Her name is Eve Martina!” Margaret continued to beg him. “She is...” But before she was able to finish, she saw the man staring at the suffocating girl, who, by that moment, had already ceased to wheeze.

  It is unknown what frightened the mad man so much. A striking resemblance, which he noticed just then, overcoming the abyss of desperation and pain, or the girl’s reddened face and her eyes rolling up towards the sky. But for a moment, his pupils abruptly widened to an incredible size. Suddenly, he recoiled from the edge as if he were holding a flame, which burnt his hands.

  Apparently, his broken psyche was desperately trying to replay some thoughts but naturally, he was unable to think straight. A lightning bolt of realisation flashed in his eyes at one moment and he, driven only by emotions, losing all sense of reality, stunned and crippled, withdrew a step from the edge still looking at the gasping girl. Having opened his mouth from horror and astonishment, he raised both of his hands to it and unconsciously released the girl. Downward she spiralled. No one will ever know whether it was intentional or accidental. After all, a man who lived in chains for eight years, alone in a dark basement, loses not only communication with the outside world, but with himself as well. His psyche was seriously damaged, if there was anything left of it after all these years of colliding with Margaret’s fierce revenge.

  In a thousandth of a second, the woman only saw the girl’s hat vanishing from sight over the edge of the cornice, in the night. Margaret’s face contorted in wild indescribable pain. Having gotten up from her knees, she threw herself at Krisi, who was in utter shock, looking down with his hands still at his mouth. The woman charged at him, grasping the collar of his jacket with both of her hands. Do you know how long the seconds are when it is a matter of living or dying?

  They say that at that exact moment, when, broken with grief, she ran up to him, clutching his collar in her fists, he suddenly looked straight into her eyes and something flashed in his eyes, which was impossible to convey with words. It was as if he recognized her, the same old Margaret and the times when their lives were not intertwined with such diabolical webs. It was as if he felt himself go back to those times. Fear combined with hatred, forming in his eyes, dissipated and a flash of realisation illuminated them with their boyish lustre, which did not fade throughout his whole life.

  Swooping on him, dishevelled and crazy, she roared through gritted teeth, “Nooooooo!” Covering him with a tidal wave of hatred emanating from her, she fell off the roof alongside him, never taking her black eyes, burning with anger, off him. There was nothing left of their honey-brown lustre. He only managed to grab her thin elbows with both hands, trying either to stop her or to hold on. Both of them, twisted by the force of collision, vengeance, anger and hatred fell off the precipice, after their little girl. The wreath at the entrance of the hotel was meant for her. Today, the girl would have been twenty-years-old.

  By that moment, the frightened clerk and the rest of the hotel staff alongside the police gathered on the roof as they followed Margaret. They say that the two were flying, clinging to each other. He held her elbows firmly while she clutched his clothes with her thin delicate fingers.


  They fell near the place where their girl crashed a few seconds before, having never breathed in happiness and family serenity. All three of them.

  On the pavement near the main entrance of the “Grand Hotel International,” streams of blood framed the man and the woman, who never let go of each other. They lay dead, face to face, holding each other out of love, which lead to hatred, similar in strength. Their eyes remained lifelessly opened, strictly looking at their reflections. Honey brown tone returned to the dead woman’s eyes, struggling uncomprehendingly for that which ruined many lives. Her eyes tightly embraced the boyish lustre of the man’s eyes who lay next to her.

  The lustre, which finally died in the tragic whirlpool of death blackening from sorrow on the ruins of hatred, which was once love.

  Epilogue

  The day after the court, I found this piece of paper, folded in four and thinned from time. Maybe on purpose, maybe accidentally, she dropped it when she was leaving the car in confusion. I have never showed it to anyone but I still carry that message, which had not reached its recipient, in the pocket of my work jacket,

  “Remember my dear, when suddenly, close to each other, under the wince of formidable May skies, which were shaking everything around with the rolling thunder, our lips merged in the first, most sensual kiss? It could only occur between two people, who yearned and wanted each other passionately and tenderly, but restrained their passion for too long and too hard.

  We are so young and madly in love with each other. Your lips were already the softest and most delicious to me and my hands seemed to you to be the gentlest and so very familiar, despite the fact that, before that moment, you had never felt their trembling touch on your velvety skin, the colour of strong coffee. On that evening, not only our bodies intertwined, but our hearts as well. The two in the thick of the forest were kissing in the pouring rain, under formidable gusts of wind and fearsome thunder, hiding under your jacket, sitting on the sodden log of a fallen oak. They had loved each other for a long time. Those two. Us. But, we were unable to admit that to one another or to ourselves.

  I will never forget that day and the taste of your skin smelling of sea salt and the hot sun.

  Your salt skin...

  M.

  Dedicated to Martin

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  [1] A woman of diabolical beauty.

  [2] A slang name for British surrealism.

  [3] My love.

  [4] Stupid.