Our paper crowns, p.16
OUR PAPER CROWNS, page 16
“OK. Well, it turns out that another piece of news has come to light. Not so nice. About casino night.”
I see a photo of us in that place and some adjectives that make my stomach turn.
“Who gave them the right to talk about you like that? It was just a night at a casino, what’s wrong with that? Who do you think is behind this?”
“Don’t know. Right now I can’t think clearly.”
“Well, whoever dared to do this will remain silent when they see our show. I promise you.”
That someone has dared to talk about my boyfriend like that in a printed media has awakened an internal rage in me. It seems that they only wanted to damage Zilé’s reputation because my name does not appear. Who would have done it? That night was both of us. Zilé does not deserve to receive the darts alone. I wish that person would show up so I could shout what they deserve in their face.
Although I wouldn’t have the courage.
He would back down as soon as he saw me angry.
And not to mention Zilé.
I can almost see the steam rising from his hair.
“Calm down, love,” I try to encourage him. “It will pass. Nobody will believe in the fallacies of that cheap journalism. And even less when everything we will do in a few days comes to light. You will see.”
The next morning, I talk to my mother.
I describe in great detail everything I saw and what I experienced. I tell her about my first time with Zilé and she explodes with emotion.
“What a joy, son. How nice that you have lived that experience with someone you love so deeply and who makes you feel so safe. Send him many regards from us. We hope to see him soon.”
I ask her about what her married life is like. She describes situations to me that make my skin crawl. My mom deserved this happiness more than anyone. I’m excited that she’s finally living it, just like she’s excited about mine.
After rehearsals with Zilé in an auditorium in the city, I go to my piano academy—temporarily closed to the public. I meet with Szymon, who tells me precisely what he adapted. His work speaks for itself. I give him the agreed payment and try to address it.
“I don’t want you to call me crazy, but in Rome someone was following us and published a note in the newspaper about Zilé. A disastrous note…”
“Do you want to imply that it was me?”
“No. I’m just trying to find out who’s behind this.”
“Well, you have to be calm. I never attack low. Look.”
He places his palm against the wall and captures me with the weight of his body. Time freezes or speeds up. I couldn’t say precisely. Everything happens in a haze. His lips press against mine. He runs amok with them. As if he had been planning it all his life. I try to fight against the immobility of my body and push it away. I place my hands on his chest. I give him a push.
“You may have helped me build this place and been almost professional in the process, but there is only one man who made me feel entirely his. And that man is Zilé. Not you.”
My sentence, at least, chills him for a second, before he imposes his characteristic victory grimace. He walks away with a determined step. I hope I don’t see him again.
My confrontation with Szymon has worked. At least, I have no longer had any messages from him or any indication that he is hanging around us.
Lately my free moments have been scarce between logistics meetings, rehearsals and the occasional interview with the most important media in Denmark. However, with every second I am perfecting the melody solely and entirely for Zilé. Between each chord I bring up each sunset seen, the memory of its touch with mine, those days under the summer sun, the currents covering our bodies.
So the result is the most genuine and evocative melody that has ever been between my fingers.
It has been a beautiful birth. Something that could only be achieved with happiness and memory. With longing and desperate love.
It’s something that only the two of us could achieve.
And I think that’s where the art lies. Or, at least, what I have always longed to achieve: a genuine, authentic and initially private result. Something that only your soul knows and can recognize.
In a way, Zilé is my secondary composer.
I couldn’t have done this without him.
Without him everything would be silence. An empty auditorium. The loneliness of the seats.
With him everything is sea, summer and Rome on the lips.
I’m so lost in my thoughts that I don’t see him on the landing.
“Have you come since I started playing?”
“Yeah. I’ve heard it cover to cover. So you’ve been working on this wonder all this time, huh? How did you make me not know even the slightest thing?”
“Well, this composition is one of my star compositions. In fact, it will be named after you. I composed it and thought about it from the beginning for you.”
I swear tears will start to flow at any moment, but he manages to compose himself. My confession did take him by surprise.
“Fuck, you’re perfect, Rob Hilsen. You and everything you do. Now let me play you like you just played that piano or else I’ll go crazy.”
So, we make love before our little big tour begins.
Our trip to Amsterdam occurred without any major problems.
Our relentless summer in Italy prepared us for this.
In the theater of that city, my nerves plague me before the presentation, but Zilé is there to calm me down. Why don’t teas save me in situations like this? Damn.
“Calm down, love. I’m here to calm you down. Remember that everything will turn out just as we have rehearsed. Nothing went wrong in rehearsals, so nothing has to go wrong here, okay? I love you.”
To calm my nerves, he brings my two hands to his bare chest. I feel the soft beat of his heart and that heat that drives me so crazy and at the same time calms me. Everything will be fine.
“Better now? Or do you need to explore other parts?”
I smile maliciously at him.
“I can pretend I’m not better off taking your offer, but I doubt we’ll have time,” I tell him. I give him a kiss and confirm to the theater coordinator that we are ready.
Seconds before going on stage I decide to believe in the first times. The first times playing in a crowded theater, the first time seeing my name in a newspaper, the first time I go with an artist to her own concert... So many wonderful first times and not the final ones. Those are not as valid as we think. They don’t have as much power to fully validate us. They validate more accurately our openness to new beginnings, to new experiences, to what we always dream of doing. The first few times they reinvigorate us and make us believe we are invincible. And there are people who take you by the hand.
“Come on, Rob. Another glorious first time awaits us.”
CHAPTER 18 | ZILÉ THORN
Zilé found the harasser who photographed them in Rome.
At that time he and Rob were having dinner in a restaurant in Amsterdam after the success of their first show. It was a restaurant between sophistication and enjoying the outdoors, from where you could see the garlands and gondolas strolling along the canal and numerous citizens riding their bikes. The poetry of the night, of the food and of those lights twinkling like stars overwhelmed everything. But then that unfortunate individual appeared to disturb the peace.
Zilé ran to catch up with him through the crowded streets. At one point he thought he wouldn’t find it. Until the individual collided with one of the bicycles and trapped him.
“I have seen you. You work for my father.”
The subject could barely speak due to shock.
Rob Hilsen was looking for Zilé in the crowd, very far away, approaching cautiously.
Zilé tried to remain calm. He didn’t want to be reckless. Not in this country. Nor draw attention and ruin that magical night. He didn’t want to appear on another disastrous newspaper again, although what will his family invent now? That he beat the hell out of his private investigator? That would be the last straw!
“Tell me the whole truth. What were you hired for?”
“Your family wants to separate you and wants you to return to them. They insist, young man, that two artists are incapable of creating a prosperous future together. That egos will separate you and that your life will be better with someone else. They are so insistent that they even sent me to Italy to observe you and with your private doctor, but that man did not spill the beans. They want to know everything about you.”
The detail about his investigations with the doctor surprised him. If even the slightest detail about his situation came to light, it would be the end of everything.
“The next time you see them, tell them that I am better than ever, and that I have spared your life. Don’t mess with us again.”
Zilé undid his grip on the investigator’s wrinkled shirt—on the verge of tearing it because he was so angry. He let the researcher go and met up with Rob again, to whom he smiled, telling him that everything was fine. Then he explained the situation in great detail. “No one will bother us again,” he said confidently. And the peace of the night resumed.
In Madrid, their show attracts several important headlines. Tess is surprised by what is said about both young people. In fact, for both of them this second time was splendid: they were like fish in water. Without the nerve, but with the energy to everything he gave. They surprised more than one professional critic and were already in negotiations for a couple of sponsorships.
“If this continues like this, guys, in the second leg you are going to take on the world.”
Little did they—the three of them—know that there would no longer be a second round.
Little did they know that all stories end and that the concert—no matter how strident it may be—always reaches one last song.
In Madrid they had more time to visit its attractions.
They visited the Retiro Park, the Prado Museum, the Royal Palace of Madrid and the Plaza Mayor. They even saw a group of flamenco dancers—bailaores—. Rob and Zilé’s senses were clouded by so much beauty. They felt the energy of the city in every pore of their bodies.
Rob thought that at any of those places their relationship would escalate to commitment. That their paper crowns would transform into something more, linking them forever. But it didn’t happen. Should he take the initiative? Who dictated when the indicated time was? He wanted to know. He wanted to know everything so as not to ruin it and make it an unforgettable moment for both of them.
Zilé was torn between the light of those moments and the shadows of his secret. He would come to light and then hide, fearing that he would disintegrate in the process. Although he knew the exact moment when that would happen. He knew it very well.
In Vienna, the last stop on his tour, the prelude to the decisive catastrophe occurs.
“Rob, honey, I came to your academy to see it with my own eyes and... I’m afraid to tell you that they have closed it for no reason. It has some closing bars and a lawyer told me that it has all the earmarks of being legal. Honey, don’t worry about anything, because here you have a mother who will defend you tooth and nail. I hope that when you come back I have everything resolved. Trust your mother.”
Rob hung up the phone, heartbroken.
Should he tell Zilé that crucial detail? Should he distress him or move on as if nothing had happened? Silence decided. He thought that he would also have his worries memorizing so many choreographies and that his body and mind would be tired. He didn’t want to burden him more. Besides, his mother would take care of it. When had she failed him in something? Besides, surely that closure would have a solution. He hadn’t done anything illegal. Everything was in order. A clarification would be enough, surely.
He went back to bed and that night they made love like never before.
Zilé hugged him and attacked him with a totally new and searing passion that took his breath away with every second and at the same time gave it back to him.
Was something happening? Why so much intensity?
Rob thought it was a way to release the tension of the last few days. And he found it surprising and charming that his body awakened that devotion in him. He let himself be carried away, guiding him with an equal urgency.
Zilé knew very well what was happening and what would happen from that last meeting. Hence the unbridled fluidity of all his instincts. It was his future longing taking over his body and speaking in each of his movements and drawn sighs.
How much he loved him.
How crazy he drove him.
How much he was going to miss this.
His seconds were numbered, so the farewell was in his hands. He had to make it as epic as possible, as memorable as possible. A way to last in his body, in his memory and in his heart, giving every last bit of his energy.
Rob must have remembered an important lesson from one of his college professors. That lesson was about not getting carried away by blinding passions when playing. And he completely forgot it.
The recent worry blinded him.
The thought that this dream was cut short by the closure led him to despair and the deepest resentment, so that before appearing and playing he swore from the inside that, once the show was over, the whole world would know their names and from that point on, no one would ever intervene between them again. He swore that they would win the world and they—two emerging artists—would have no worries and could live with guaranteed calm for the rest of their lives.
He would play in such a masterful way that it would make everyone forget that horrible headline accusing Zilé of being a gambling addict and a hopeless alcoholic. He would make sure to clear his name and, in the process, they would both have a place among the stars.
New headlines would come after that night in Vienna.
However, what he did not expect was that that old voice in his head would return, and this time with a fatal reality. A reality that not even a thousand nightmares would have been able to create.
In his blind possession, Rob Hilsen got carried away. He let himself be carried away by a swift and unknown passion. He allowed himself to be blinded by ambition and, in one of the melodies, he broke his own tempo, which would inevitably upset his partner Zilé.
Like an outdated thought he could almost glimpse what would happen next.
“Too late. Too late,” Rob would say later with a horrifying recrimination.
Zilé took a wrong step, a victim of confusion, and the world was swallowed by a dark mist.
He descended like a wounded crow and, seconds later, it was just a speck on the stage, converted into an impossible geometry. Devastated, unconscious, immersed in shadows.
The paramedics arrived and took him away in an ambulance. Rob was with him the whole time. He spoke to him, pronouncing his name with regret and raw surprise. He would never be able to conceive what had happened, what he—with his blinding ambition—had caused. “Forgive me, love, I was just thinking about myself. I regret it so much,” he told Zilé on the way to the hospital, holding onto his hand. He doesn’t remember saying anything else to him. That whole day, up to the present, is a haze through which he cannot navigate. It is the darkest day of his life. There is no light that can clarify that episode. It’s total darkness. He only remembers flashes. Painful all of them.
And then we come to the final note of this melody.
Zilé, bandaged on one leg, with a fatal expression in a hospital bed. The white of the room predicting a heartbreaking ending.
“Rob, go away. I never want to see you again.”
To Rob, heartbroken. Knowing from all sides that he has completely ruined it. Knowing that the love of his life will never step on stage again after that accident nor will he return to his life. Knowing that his paper crowns have succumbed to the fire of a tragedy and that they will never be reborn nor will he be able to touch them again in his hands. Recognizing that distance, right now, is the most appropriate for both of them (that this is the only possible way to visualize each other from now on). Embracing the reality that assuming the consequences means letting go because seeing someone who has destroyed your life every day is not the most optimal in this type of situation. And treasuring what they once were. If there is a remedy for what he suffers, that is the only one that comes to mind: treasure everything that they were able to create in the past, even if it has been broken later. He will have to be shipwrecked in the waters of the past because that was the brightest sea in which he once swam, and its currents are all that is left to embrace him. To tell him what happened one day between them. “I will have to resort to silence from now on, Zilé. To the silence that didn’t hurt before because there were songs keeping it at bay. I will return to my rooms and the silence of my piano. I will sit for hours like a statue in front of its keys, unable to move, frozen in time, because the truth is that my world had a sound when you were in it. Thinking, always thinking, what will be left to save. And wondering if what I rescued will be enough to save me and for how long. It will be like breathing underwater. I will have to see with the storm of my eyes, from that moment—where I learned the terrible truth of my non-return to you—what I found when I lost you.
* * *
[1] Mulled wine with spices typical of northern European regions.
FABIÁN TAPIA QUINTERO, OUR PAPER CROWNS
