“It is simple, you would look into my eyes knowing I am yours,” Mariam answered without hesitation, and Victor’s heartbeat accelerated instantly in response to these words. “Please, kiss me!”
“Is it really what you want?” Victor whispered and immersed his fingers into her wet hair; he did not need an answer any more.
“I am so sick and tired of…”
Mariam did not manage to present her thought and then forgot about everything at all, having plunged into a web of intense feelings. One hour later, they were still there: Victor was lying on his back, with his arms splayed, and Mariam was beside him. The rain already stopped, and a heavy fog stood guard over the city.
“This fog,” Mariam said quietly, “I remember it so clear… This fog always brings the same thoughts to me. I used to fancy that I secretly got out from my room and went outside so that no one could know about it. I wanted to leave away, to become a part of this fog so that I could no longer see anything with my own eyes, and so that no one could see me, either.” she said, frighteningly calm, looking at the ocean behind the window. “But I have never really been able to summon up my courage.”
“I think now I understand why you do not want me to be overly serious sometimes,” meaning each word, Victor responded to her confession; he was not willing to think about anything at all right now, the fear of facing the consequences of his last decision was pulling his any attempt to start thinking in a thousand different directions.
“Are you afraid of death?” Mariam continued to indulge her intoxicant state of mind.
“I believe that even a person who has absolutely nothing to lose will not be able to face his death without hesitation.”
“No, I want to know if you were intimidated by death of somebody else,” Mariam specified suddenly without allowing him to finish.
Victor immediately felt uneasy at these words, knowing that now her life was broken in two as well, and he could not follow her beyond the borders of the half that was meant solely for him.
“Do not frighten me like this, Mariam, I fear to think what may happen,” he raised himself a little up and looked at her, seeking for any changes in her eyes, “and if it was your goal, I offer you congratulations on your success.”
“Tell me in all honesty, would you kill for me?” Mariam asked, paying no attention to his false conclusion concerning the sense of her question words and being completely emotionless.
“What did he do to you?” Victor quickly sat up straight and held her tight, “What did he do to you? Did he hit you again? I knew that you could not come here in the middle of night without a reason.”
“Stop it, please! He did nothing to me!” Mariam removed his hands from her shoulders and lied down again. “You are saying without a reason, and I wonder if there is still room for new reasons.”
“What is wrong then? Explain it to me. I want to understand.”
“And could you take me somewhere faraway from here where would be no cognizable faces at all? To know no one, to see no one… Just to live together, you and me, having the past eternally forgotten. I would bear you a child or maybe even two, how many children do you want?”
The longer she kept talking, the worse Victor felt. He clearly realized that she was not saying all this for no particular reason, no matter how unrealizable her questions were.
“And what sort of life awaits you with me?”
She was silent in response.
“I have some money on my bank account, it will be enough to escape and to find some place to live, but what comes next? It is not what I want for you, Mariam, being on the run is not the life I wish for you. And we will have to run all the time because he will never let us just go.”
“Fine, and what life do you wish for me then? The one I have now?” she got in a rage.
“Just give me some time, and I will surely devise a plan for us. I will find money that will be enough to our dying day.”
“I understand it now!” she quickly got up to feet and began to put her clothes on right in front of Victor, which made her feel shame.
“Please, do not do it, Mariam!” he stretched his arms out of despair, trying to stop her. “Where are you leaving in the middle of night? Stay with me at least until the morning.”
“Do not you dare to look at me!” she cried out desperately, and he even obeyed her command for a moment, having averted his face.
When Victor realized that everything went out of control, he tried to embrace her, but Mariam wrathfully pushed him away and shrank back. Somehow he managed to feel that her entire body was strained as an extremely strung string. Her lips were shivering, being the last defence line before a fit of hysteria that already reached its peak.
“Did not you hear what I just told you? Do not you ever dare to touch me! Turn away! I do not want to see you ever again!” she was crying at the top of her voice, slapping him in the face again and again.
When she slammed the door in the face of Victor, he understood that the biggest mistake in his life was made. He spent the morning alone, drawing her portrait, although it seemed too late for it now. First, he could not make up his mind to start it, being afraid of failure – something he could not afford again. As a result, he nevertheless was successful in pushing away all his doubts; then he found a clean sheet of paper, took a pencil with a fine point, and several minutes later crumpled it up malignly. This predictable failure was followed by another one, and then was turn for the third, but he did not recede until he finally finished it towards evening. In his own estimation, it was the best piece of work he ever produced. Only one thing was not accurate in this drawing, which captured this extraordinary beauty, for it was but a pathetic reminder of what Victor lost seemingly irretrievably.
He yearned to turn back the clock, to take the cell phone, to dial her number, to hear her cheerful voice, to make an appointment with her; he wanted everything to be as free and easy as it was before so badly. With a smile, hidden deep in his soul, and wrinkles on his face, harbouring shadows, he kept vainly imagining how he would give her this portrait without demanding, without even waiting anything for it, just as a proof of his utter devotion. Nevertheless, just as many before it, this last fantasy never ended happily no matter how desperately he tried.
They did not manage to discuss his intention to come back home for several days and to try to bring order to his relationship with the family, and now this conversation seemed to him pointless at all along with his coming back to this city, which he was going to leave behind. Of course, all these thoughts were just one big, consecutive self-delusion, an attempt to forget and to be forgotten, but the only thing he really wanted now was seeing her again. Somewhere deep down in his heart he still hoped that she would call him eventually and tell she was waiting him in the café or maybe behind the door. Nevertheless, hours elapsed one by one, taking away the last chances that his dreams would ever come true. In the end, he slowly began to understand that along with these hours his very life was slipping away, too. So his thoughts lied down overleaf…
Soon he returned to his former, habitual state, being delirious the rest of the day. He tried to smoke several times, but it did not bring any relief, maybe even on the contrary, every other cigarette made him aggressive, and in the absence of what he could use to vent his anger, he repeatedly started blaming himself for everything what happened. As a result, towards the evening his head was already empty, only one name of one woman left there. The apartment was cleaned and glossed, looking the same way it was when he had visited it for the first time. For some reason now this unpretentious apartment, consisting of a small kitchen, a sitting room, and a bedroom, seemed to him cozy, and his former indifference to this place was gone once and for all.
The evening was drawing in and Victor just kept sitting on the sofa, exhausted, listening to every sound that reached his ears. Nevertheless, everything around was boring and tiresome, apart from one faint sound – someone knocked at the door, quietly and maybe even he
sitatingly. This sound brought a sad smile upon Victor’s face because what he heard was not just knocking at the door; it was their inevitable reunion resounding through his mind. He helped himself to stand up with one powerful move and instantly dropped all the passing thoughts that he had, running towards the door to open it as quickly as possible and to save her from waiting even one superfluous second. He was ready to do whatever had to be done in order to prevent her from regretting her decision to return. Having his hand on the door handle, he still kept desperately sorting out admissible words and actions, but when he saw this woman on the threshold, everything turned out futile, for there was no chance that he could foresee this collision.
“Hello, Victor,” Anna slowly raised her eyes to greet him; this time she was dressed more decently: in a close-fitting white, summer dress and shoes of the same colour, a handbag with no personal ambitions hanging on her right shoulder.
“What do you want here?” Victor asked her stiffly and vainly looked out of the door in search of any companions of his unexpected guest.
She came alone and she did it with a purpose, which was no easy to identify. The vicious charm of this woman somehow erased from Victor’s memory almost everything that could distract or prevent her from achieving whatever objectives she might have. Though he still remembered a fairly large number of those qualities that he had personally described, there was no longer that former deep-rooted aversion to her, as if they met for the first time, having one nearly blank sheet to fill.
“For a start, a gentleman would allow me to enter,” Anna peered over Victor’s shoulder and seductively bit her lower lip.
“What a pity there is none of those here.”
“You are not alone?”
“Absolutely alone!” Victor answered without thinking twice and shook his head regretfully, reaping the doubtful benefit of being superfluously sincere.
“Then what exactly prevents such a handsome man from spending a part of this evening in the company of a wonderful lady? Do you remember how you called me so once?” Anna reminded his former demonstration of courtesy.
“I have asked you once already, but I can do it again for such a wonderful lady. What do you want here?” Victor repeated his question, still irresolute whether to let her in or not.
“Well, fine, fine, it concerns Mariam!” Anna drawled, having discontentedly rolled up her eyes. “Now, of course, I am allowed to come in? Thank you very much!” she passed close by Victor who relaxed his vigilance just for a moment, which proved to be enough, so he latched the door and quickly returned to the apartment.
“Halt!” he cried out all of a sudden and sharply grasped her hand slightly below the shoulder, turning her around, which literally entranced Anna: her eyes were now half-closed and her entire body suddenly enervated to such an extent that the white handbag nearly fell on the floor.
“What do you want me to do?” she whispered, inseparably mixing up words and heavy breathing and looking into Victor’s eyes with unquestioning obedience.
“Your shoes, please!” he pointed down to small, but frequent muddy footprints on floor, then released her hand and passed to the sitting-room.
“Rather unpretentious flat,” she followed right behind him just as if nothing had happened, now barefooted, “I hope you do not mind me turning up uninvited. Either way, we are all alone here now, so nobody will learn, nobody will blame.”
“Just tell me what you want here,” Victor remained laconic, “I am in no humour for playing your games.”
“Is that Mari? Wow!” Anna saw the modest black-and-white portrait of medium size and then looked at its author with a sunny smile. “You are obsessed with her, aren’t you? I wonder what you all find in her…”
“Obviously it is something you do not have,” Victor reacted to the provocation, whereupon Anna put the portrait aside, quickly went through the small room, and sat down right next to her offender, who now found himself in immediate proximity to Anna.
“And what is it? What? Tell me everything you know about this secret,” she began to whisper, two of her fingers became a little man who was walking towards Victor on the sofa back, “is she more beautiful than I am? I do not think so. Or maybe it is about her family status? Is she so desired by reason of being married? Do not desire the wife of the neighbour? You are not as saint as you strive to look, as I can see. Well, as always…”
“So it is how you do it, right?” Victor sat down a little nearer, speaking slowly.
“How I do it, Victor?” Anna squinted and when Victor roughly grabbed her hair, she closed her eyes completely, anticipating a kiss.
“You awaken the animal inside a man to do to the lower creation anything what may come to your mind,” Victor pressed his cheek to hers, whispering, and then suddenly got up from his place. “Unfortunately, to your deepest disappointment, in the first place I am a human being and only then the animal. So sorry, but you need something more than your standard set if you really want to hold sway over me.”
Now, when she heard these revealing words, she changed countenance beyond recognition. She was offended, excited, and shocked at the same point of time; to put this another way, she felt everything what Victor had to feel in a minute, had he fallen under her influence.
“And now, when we played your favourite game, I think the time is ripe for you to tell about the second purpose of your visit and if such never existed, then I will satisfyingly push you out without hesitation, even if it demands using crude force.”
“Oh, what a majestic man we have here, threatening a lady with his physical strength!” Anna grinned, tidying her hair and wounded pride. “One out of a million – not a big loss.”
“I am waiting!”
“Tell me honestly, you are really who you claimed to be, when you came to my house? Have you watched her, have not you?” Anna asked in all seriousness.
“I have no idea what you are talking here about,” Victor shrugged at her question, leaning against a wall and trying to show toward what he heard as much indifference as was possible, “Is this all what you wanted to know?”
“Stop it! Do you think that the sole fact that I overly care about my appearance allows you to regard me as a silly woman? For the record, I just believe that most people simply do not deserve to see and know me real!” on the one hand, she sounded properly offended or maybe even insulted, but one the other hand, this all might be nothing more than just another role she was performing.
“Fine, I will tell you what you are so eager to know,” Victor folded his arms, emotionless, “you are right and wrong at the same time. Yes, I did watch her, I also watched you as well as this fiancé of yours whose name I can never retain… However, I am not who I claimed to be, when I came to your house, for shadowing is not exactly my field of specialization. Usually I do not blindly follow any women, it is they who follow me, and just as a matter of fact, your being here clearly proves it. Therefore, I would advise you not to take hard your today’s failure. I have witnessed a plethora of endeavours to entice me away, but it has always been of no importance how sophisticated, in estimation of all those women, they were, for me it is just a card game where I always hold all the aces. If there is at least one field wherein I am proficient, it must be reading and understanding women.”
“His name is Dan,” Anna said very quietly, having refused to respond directly to his boasting, her arrogance seemed to have miraculously vanished.
“Ah, right, right, Dan. How could I possibly forget such a prominent name… So what of it? All this already became a thing of the past and counts for nothing.”
“But not for me! Did you see them together?” the girl asked, trying to distinguish Victor’s first reaction to the question.
“How can you know that?” he frowned, “I told nobody about it except Mariam. Did she tell you?”
“Oh, I knew it was true,” Anna instantly grew saddened after receiving the confirmation of her guess. “Well done Mari, well done our dear, meek Mari.�
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“I would ask you to make your assumptions elsewhere. It is your problem that you cannot stop seeing betrayal behind every corner!” Victor stood up for Mariam’s honour; every minute of this conversation made him more spontaneous.
“What exactly did you see? Did he kiss her? Did he touch her? What did you see? Answer me immediately you…!”
“Nothing! I saw nothing! Is it clear enough? I saw nothing at all!” Victor shouted out in response to her piercing shouts. “I did not see anything. I saw him come a couple of times to the music school where she worked; he spent there about several hours and then left. That is it! When I caught them there together, Mariam explained everything to me very clear. She told that he came just to take lessons to play for you at your wedding, you silly woman! It was his story that I had told you there…”
After hearing these words, Anna changed into a statue, sitting motionlessly, without uttering a word; she was at loss for words, shrunk as if having an episode of headache.
“I cannot believe my ears… What an idiot you are!” she gradually began to become straight, increasing volume and force of the insults. “Cretin, you are a complete nonentity! How can anyone believe in this nonsense anyway? Just look at yourself, you make me sick!”
“You were not there!” Victor kept trying, still without any results, to make Anna change her mind, although his own confidence already cracked again. “I can understand when someone lies to me, not to mention that I caught them unawares; none of them could see me coming there. She would have made a mistake inevitably one way or another, for it is impossible to keep cool in such situation, not to mention that she would never lie to me.”
“You are stone-blind, as a mole that has spent his life burrowed in the ground. You can see nothing at all! I cannot understand why all men get stupid and blind when you just see her…” Anna methodically drove herself to tears, darting her baleful look from side to side.
The Superfluous Man Page 16
