Our paper crowns, p.15
OUR PAPER CROWNS, page 15
When I least think about it, I focus again on the beauty of the place and the buildings along the route. Zilé continues holding me against his body and we are once again firm on that swaying surface of the river. Among all the undulations we remain beats, flesh and blood. And everything is calm again.
During that night I can’t stop myself from returning to that moment of panic. I try to leave it behind, but it returns to this unsafe shore inside my soul. I’ve embraced it as proof that it came back intact, but for a second there was the possibility that I might have lost it, and that killed me a little.
“Surely something can be rescued. When we arrive at the hotel we will put it under the dryer…”
“Yes, you are absolutely right. I will be able to salvage something at least by seeing the stains. I will remember. It’s all under control.”
He is comforted after hearing me calmer.
My music memory has come into challenge. I am also convinced that something can be done. And if not, I’ll focus on creating something better. A way to bury that bitter event. I’ve always done it that way.
At the hotel I take a light nap with the dryer playing in the background. Zilé will take me somewhere in a few hours. Because of the night time, I have a slight idea what it will be like.
“We’re going to have fun, remember that,” Zilé promises me.
Thanks to the nap I feel a little more composed. Also, I promise to give you all the fun possible after the bad experience I’ve put you through. Jumping into the Tiber was surely not in his plans.
It’s a casino. The first casino I have ever entered. I try to recap some important information about Italian casinos, but no important information comes to my mind, clouded by the neon lights of the machines and the smell of various liquors.
Zilé orders a few drinks to warm up while he slowly inspects some games. Some players invite him to join their game and he dismisses them with a polite wave of his hands.
“First, we must warm up. To dare to bet everything.”
I give him the most murderous look in my arsenal.
“Alright. Clearly not everything. It’s just an expression.”
“Is the term designated player used? Because it should be clear to you that I will not let you overdo it.”
“You stay calm, Rob. I will be able to control myself. We will return with loot. You will see. I am lucky in the game and also in love. You know.”
I can’t help but smile at him.
I can’t help but fall for its charms; I will never be able to get used to it completely.
Just as I can’t understand all those consoles and roulette wheels. The drinks are from another planet, but the mechanics of these games seem strange and impossible to understand to me. Zilé moves like a fish in water, but I don’t.
“This will be the good one,” he says, rolling some dice. He observes the faces when they fall with a certain concentration.
Time passes and I focus on other things: on the lights, on people’s postures, on their expressions of anger or satisfaction. I wonder if this feeling that Zilé has is the same that my father had for the game. The abyss that led him to ruin.
The fears return to me.
We should get out of here, but then I rewatch Zilé’s ecstasy when he wins and I just long to see him this happy.
“Well, you’ve already won what you wanted. We should play something less risky.”
“Are you kidding? The good stuff has barely begun. Just this turn, Rob. I promise.”
And so the night goes. A lost round. Another win. Another win. And one last loss.
“If you continue like this you will lose everything.”
“That’s it. It’s the last one, now.”
So he does it. My disgust—combined with my desperation—is so great that I don’t even want to see if he has won or lost. I will never understand this world. Tempting fate must be something for blindly fervent people. Or crazy enough.
We order a few more drinks while we watch the horizon upstairs.
“So? What is the balance?” I say half reprimanding him, half encouraging him.
“Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. Although I accept that it hasn’t gone entirely bad for me.”
“The good thing is that you had fun, right? I saw you ecstatic,” I comment sincerely. I was happy to see him that high, I accept it.
“Yes, I was excited.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“Something's wrong?”
Should I tell him? I don’t want to keep ruining the day. He had enough already.
“Memories of my father. Do you remember when I told you?”
“Oh, yeah. His relationship with the gambling addiction…”
“Yes, it has been difficult to relive it. But I don’t want you to feel guilty. It’s clear that you weren’t him. It was just for tonight, right?”
“I’m sorry for bringing back bad memories, but it was better that you came with me than that you found out from another source, right? I mean... I don’t even know what I’m saying anymore,” he accepts, defeated. I no longer want to continue with this topic because it is entangling us in a web of resentments for no reason.
“It wasn’t as bad as you imagine, like I told you,” I confess, sounding like But I hoped you’d at least notice that detail about my past and not have brought me here. Little can be done now. We will leave at any time and matter will be settled. Tomorrow will be another day. “We’re leaving now?”
“Just a moment on that machine over there, okay?”
“Alright. But only that one.”
I regret it when the minutes pass and he is still stuck in a loop. I have a feeling we’ll be trapped in this casino forever.
A bitter aftertaste runs through my body. After what we’ve been through, have I found that fatal flaw in him or is it just about tonight?
I try to convince myself that it is just a vacation episode, of occasional outbursts, that what happens in Rome stays in Rome. But the bad omen overcomes me. Would I still love him if he maintains this defect over time? It would be tragic if this appeared right now and disrupted us.
Finally, with a resigned air, he approaches me, takes my hand and we leave.
I don’t know if it’s the ravages of the night, but I swear I saw a flash in the distance.
“Did you see what I saw?” I ask him.
“I’m sorry. I was lost in my thoughts,” he says with a deep breath of alcohol.
“I see.”
“We arrived at the hotel without any major setbacks.”
I see him come out of the shower. When he arrived he confessed to me that he had a slight headache and that a simple bath would go away.
I bite my lip seeing him alone with his towel and appreciating the visible show of muscles. That skin that has been mine in unforgettable moments. However, I must retain my sanity if I want to successfully achieve my purpose.
A slight reprimand, nothing more.
A little reckoning.
“Come here, darling.”
My invitation catches him off guard.
His towel slips and then there is no turning back.
I draw him against me.
As strong as I’ve never been before.
My eager hands explore it insistently, as if they were new, unknown hands. My anger surprises him again and several moans escape through his half-open mouth. I lay him against the bed gently and then urgently. Having him like this, entirely at my disposal, threatens my pure concentration. I come back to me.
My lips have eagerly traveled over his pectorals, his biceps and his abs. The pressure of her hand at the base of my neck tells me of his urgency just as I am near his navel, clinging to his perky thighs.
I break free from his grip with cold vengeance.
“I would, but tonight let’s say you’ve behaved badly, Zilé.”
“Are you kidding?”
I lie down next to him. I let him know that I’m not joking at all. He will have to deal with disappointment.
“Good night, Zilé.”
“At least we can sleep in each other’s arms, right?”
“If that consoles you, yes.”
“Now how do I get back to normal?” he whispers in the darkness after the click of the lamps. A few seconds later I hear him snoring.
This is our last day in Rome. Our flight is late at night, so we have a beautifully sunny day at our disposal.
Zilé has planned a picnic in a kind of hot springs free of tourists.
“Are you still afraid of swimming?
“Yes,” I answer. “It’s good that you haven’t forgotten that detail.”
“Well, today I will make you face that deadly fear. It’s for your own good. You will remember that.”
Well, this sounded like a military instruction, but coming from him I know he means it well. I want to leave something of myself here in Rome. An old version of Rob Hilsen that involves a few fears left there, like a trunk thrown to the bottom of the sea. I want to get rid of the old knots. Go with lighter emotional baggage. Zilé is the perfect guide. I will never in my life meet a more courageous soul than him. Neither in this life nor in another.
So there I am in that body of water swallowing my fear, only wearing a swimsuit. Doing my best to coordinate my body as Zilé says, moving correctly and with ease. I make some progress that surprises him.
“Not bad at all for now,” he tells me with a broad smile.
“Do you remember anything from last night?”
“Honestly, I only have a slight feeling of remorse for something I don’t remember.”
“I suspected it.”
“Did I do something wrong?”
“No, never mind.”
I end the conversation right there because if he ever remembers how I left that halfway, I would surely lose.
I believe again that all this natural beauty automatically eroticizes my body.
There can be no other explanation.
After our breakfast we return to the water and there we once again have a frenetic encounter that I cannot pause.
The fire has left my hands, my skin, my lips.
We are in a small pit with rock walls surrounding us. Further in the background we can see an imperious lagoon bathed in morning light.
Not a single soul is seen in the distance, and it is as if the world itself created this secrecy for both of them. To love each other in broad daylight.
Zilé lets herself be guided by the language of my body.
We are inside a cave made of water and light.
Anything can happen.
When in life will I have this opportunity again?
When will I once again have all the feelings deposited in the being I love most, free and wild in the vastness of the world?
We can do whatever we want.
We can invent a new language if that is what we want.
This morning he taught me how to swim, but I have known how to swim against his body since I was naked in his arms. Like a language that was already in my veins, circulating unconsciously until he released it with his wild kisses and his own magic.
A magic for which there are no words.
I give his body the proper opening, the unbridled and free movement, the tremors and moans flying in droves to this iridescent sky.
I see the sun’s rays intertwining with our names, with these sounds scattering free; I see the water vapor mixing with our fever and the drops of water getting lost in the corners of our skin.
Zilé will never be fully aware of how he dances against my body, of how these elements—the water and the sun and the miracle of this morning—accumulate in my being and make me explode when he deposits them in me. He will never know. He will never know how all this sublimates me and doubles my soul. How it makes me vibrate and fly and succumb. It turns me into a kaleidoscope in this Roman sky.
When he hugs me with all his strength against his body I know he has been close to that same pleasure. The strength of the crook of his elbow against my neck tells me everything. No need to add anything more. My name shreds with pleasure in his throat and then evaporates. A blind tremor makes me hold myself against the rock. I compose myself breathing as if I wasn’t going to do it anymore and immediately turn to look at him. Because if I don’t do it now, I’d swear I’ve escaped like that vapor.
Our last visit of the trip is the Pantheon of Agrippa—the best preserved Roman building in the world. Michelangelo even described it as a building with an “angelic and non-human design.” We can see very well why. Its dome alone leaves you breathless (it is the largest mass concrete dome in history). A tourist guide informs us that when it rains, water enters through the hole in the dome, but the amount of water is less because the air creates an upward current and the drops dissipate. I also learn that some people have managed to get married within this facility. That this place is our last visit, therefore, portends something beautiful.
I guess from Zilé’s smile that he is thinking about the same thing.
On the plane we finished watching a movie that was left half-finished at the hotel in Rome. This is The White Crow. The film addresses part of the life of the dancer Rudolf Nureyev and his climactic act when trying to escape from the KGB, since he was one of the propaganda stars of the USSR in the middle of the Cold War. How did he do it? Neither more nor less than asking for help from the diplomatic authorities at Le Bourget airport.
“Do you prefer this movie or The Black Swan? And, now that I think about it, why did the world compare you dancers with those animals?” I ask Zilé.
“Of course I’ll stick with The Black Swan. Natalie Portman’s performance always makes my hair stand on end. And escaping from my parents had more than enough, why continue watching someone try to escape from old Russia?”
“Oh, I see. It stirred up old grudges in you.”
“Yes, so to speak. And I suppose that film, my favorite, set a precedent for the dark metamorphosis of the protagonist. Looking on the Internet, it turns out that ‘white crow’ is like a common epithet in Russia to define both an exceptional person and a stranger who never fits in. Now you know.”
“I think the white crow would look better on you, because you’re a legend,” I assert.
“Wouldn’t the black swan thing seem more correct to you because of this?” he says and, immediately afterwards, he makes a separation between his index fingers referring to that.
I blush. I blush so much that it should be considered a danger to the plane. I give him a little push with my shoulder.
“Now that I think about it,” he says later, “if we hadn’t had the freedom we have now, if I were still under the yoke of my parents, I would apply that same Nureyev strategy; I would ask the consular agents in Rome for help and, somehow, we would start a new life there.”
“Wow, you always have an ace up your sleeve,” I declare. “And do you think it would work in our times?”
“Of course it would work; the world is increasingly prepared to assist two desperate artists. The good thing is that our destiny is in our own hands now, Rob. Nothing and no one can take them out of our control.”
The lighting on the plane makes the angles of his face a beautiful sight. I can trace each of his lines in my imagination.
“And, besides, I need to be in our home to compose the melody that I owe you,” I’m dying to tell him. But it will be a surprise. A surprise even for me, because I have thought about this matter. I have written and rewritten it and I can swear that with each passing hour it takes on a different aspect. Now, after the experiences of this wonderful trip and all our first times, I am sure of what to compose. How to encapsulate its essence in just a few minutes and tell it through my music with the greatest possible fidelity.
The plane lands.
Gosh, how strange this city where I was born and have grown up since then seems to me now.
It’s as if I returned from a years-long trip.
The buildings in the distance seem strange, new to me.
It is the same city as always and at the same time it is not.
It is not because the man I love has claimed me during this time as his in his arms. Because I have experienced a thousand changes of heart within infinite moments. Because now my dreams have escalated to beautiful realities. And, as Zilé said, the future is bright in our hands. We return to our home with a new vision.
We arrive at our home.
He looks calm as always.
And with a lot of dust to clean.
A copy of the newspaper arrives.
Zilé leafs through it with curiosity. One moment he smiles like a little child and the next his face darkens.
“What's up? Everything okay?”
“Do you want the good news first or the bad news?”
“Come on, the bad one first.”
“No, first the good one.”
“You are evil. Alright.”
“The good thing is that you have appeared in the newspaper! Look!”
I see the printed news, incredulous. Is it really me? I appear radiant, imposing on that Regina Spektor piano. The news says in angular letters that I have had the opportunity to play for that great singer among more than a thousand attendees, and it also talks about the upcoming dates of our shows in Amsterdam, Madrid and Vienna.
I pinched myself a couple of times.
I remain in this reality, stunned and smiling like a fool at the paper.
I will frame this news and hang it in the study, without a doubt.
The Calamitous, that newspaper expert in my imaginary fatalities, can rest in its grave. This may be goodbye forever. It won’t appear in my mind again. Never.
“Well, this is great. I never imagined appearing on a page like this.”
“Are you kidding?” Zilé says. “This is just the beginning of a long trail of appearances. So that you get used to it. We will take making history very seriously.”
“And the ugly part? What is the bad news that has soured you so suddenly?”
“Are you sure you want to know?”
“Very sure. No secrets between us. Come on, Zilé. I’ve already told you that you don’t have to deal with your sorrows alone. I am also for you. You have to always remember that.”
