by Viola Victor
9 - The Game
After a few trips – enough to move sufficient clothing, equipment and furnishings – Martina came to the tower with the firm intention of staying there.
So I had to face the obvious: this was not a joke. But a game, yes, it was. That I had understood at once. The fact is that Martina takes games very seriously.
Despite everything, I had something to argue. First, she hadn’t even brought a cake. Nothing.
"Tomorrow morning I’m going to cook the most delicious cake you've ever eaten!" she promised.
All right, I believe her.
Also, my house was full of her belongings. If they come here – and they will – they will discover the deception immediately. I'll go to prison: I certainly kidnapped Martina. Why else should she come to live with me otherwise?
She looked at me sceptically, laying on the cushions scattered on the carpet as if she was exhausted.
"You really think I’m so naive? You haven’t yet figured what stuff I’m made of? I thought of everything, don’t worry. Now I'm tired, I don’t want details. However, know that someone saw me last night on the last coach leaving for the city. And once there they’ll lose track of me. Of course it wasn’t me! I paid a little girl, a little ragamuffin to say the truth, to impersonate me. I had to clean her up and put my clothes on her. I paid her well, of course. Tomorrow morning, when they start looking for me, they’ll discover that I left and won’t find me anymore. Who would think that I am still here, right under their noses?"
She thought it was extremely smart and fun. I found it very dangerous. For me, that is. She would just get a couple of spanks and be sent to bed without dinner.
Without dinner.
"Are you sure you don’t have anything? Not even a tiny weenie sweet?"
"Ugh, you are a big nuisance! You only think about eating! But since I owe you something for your hospitality, let’s see how we can fix that."
She returned from the kitchen with a bowl in which she had broken an egg that she was beating with a whip, brought by her, of course. She must have added something, because it smelled sweet.
"Sugar and cocoa."
That's better.
"Besides," she added as she beat the egg cream "even if they came here looking for me, they wouldn’t find me. You said it yourself: no one can get up here without you noticing. And there are several places where I could hide. It just takes putting my clothes in a place that is not visible. At the bottom of the cabinet, for example. Nobody would go rummaging inside it. Be reasonable: why should I be here? Moreover, everyone saw me run off to the city. Don’t worry, everything will be fine. But I need a safe place to keep money for a while, until I leave. Do you have a secret trapdoor or something?"
I hoped that, in addition to the money, she had a reliable enough map to reach the sea. Not like her escape plan. What good would make her a scribbled drawing with a flying line going south?
"Of course I have a map. I'm not as naive as you. My uncle sent me, there are all the directions. Remember I told you I was invited to reach him?"
"Where did you get all that money?"
I had never seen so much, I swear. She took it out in handfuls, so many banknotes that they slipped from her small hands.
She smiled a satisfied smile. "I’ve always known where my sisters hid money, and my brother and my mother too. But I always pretended I didn’t. It will be a nice surprise! Little Martina wasn’t the worse fool of the family, eh? What’s that face? My father is rich. What I took is nothing. And if he had had to pay my dowry he would have spent much more. This I why I took the jewellery too. When I am away I’ll resell it. There's enough to live comfortably for the rest of my days. You didn’t think that I would leave with nothing, did you? What would I do then? Ah, so naive! Of course, I'll give you something for your trouble."
No, I do not want money from Martina. Only her sweets. Those make me happy. Her money would ruin everything. Moreover, I have everything I need here. What would I do with it?
"That's it. Try it. It is very good." A little hand, on which a blue ring stands out, gives me the bowl.
"It's my ring..."
"No. Now it’s mine. Remember? How do we do to sleep?" she asked.
I shrugged. The dessert was good, why think about anything else right now? But she insisted. And I knew that when she insisted I had to humour her, or she would go on forever.
So I went to lie down on the couch, to show that my legs dangled out from the knee down. It was impossible for me to sleep there. She, however, fit perfectly. Indeed, her little feet, so white even without moonlight, didn’t even reach the arm. She shook them to show how much more I would have been appreciated if I had been shorter and could sleep on the couch, and I saw her ankles again. Nice as the first time she had climbed to the roof of the tower. I wanted to touch them, but of course I didn’t.
"Why are you turning? Look at me! See, this is the right height. I can sleep anywhere. But of course I have no intention of spending the night on this old couch." She got up and walked around me, looking me up and down. "You do what you want. I sleep in the bed. "
And she went upstairs, leaving me with my doubts. Then she came back, leaning on the stairs: "Aren’t you sleepy? Won’t you come to sleep?" she addressed me.
Of course I was sleepy. Did she mean...
After all, what harm was there? She understood it too, I knew that it was a game. So be it.
When I got to the room she was already in bed, sitting with a pillow leaning against the backrest. She was staring at me and smiling strangely. She was wearing only her nightgown, the one she always had under her clothes. She only had to pull out the dress, I imagined, and she was ready to sleep. She was in the left side of the bed, near the window. But that was on the top floor of a tower. She could not put her dress on and get away from there.
I undressed and slipped under the blankets beside her. She sighed: "So I was right. Where you come from there are no rules. You think it’s right to get undressed like that in front of a girl? And you sleep like that? With just that thing on? My father and my brother sleep with nightdresses..."
"I sleep like this. And I kept it on only because you’re here. However, there’s the couch downstairs..."
Sorry, she slipped under the covers. It was the first time she didn’t insist on being right. It seemed strange to me.
"Good night."
I blew out the candle. I felt her move for a while. She could not sleep.
Then I got up and went down to the kitchen. I rummaged in her sack, not yet unpacked, finding what I was looking for. I had no doubt it was what was needed. I went back to bed and lay down beside her. Between us I laid her stuffed bear. She hugged it gratefully, instantly falling asleep. She must be tired, poor child.
The next day, at half day, I was in the kitchen eating lunch. I wanted to prepare something for her too, but I didn’t know when she would wake up. When I saw her coming down the stairs – with her teddy bear dangling from one hand, the other rubbing her eyes – I got up to cook some food for her. A simple soup and some vegetables. Maybe she was accustomed to something else, I don’t know. In fact she asked for milk and was annoyed to learn that she would not have either cake or biscuits.
"You always have breakfast like this?"
"But this is lunch."
"I slept so much? What time do you get up? "
"It depends. Sometimes at dawn. There are many things to do here. I have a small garden to care for. And a cow, for milk. There are chickens and I even have a horse. These are all things that must be maintained, it takes time and effort. This morning I picked the fruit from the trees, cut some firewood to store for winter, and attended to some errands. In winter there is less to do, on the other hand. You can stay in the tower almost all day. However, in town they are all in turmoil. It seems that they are seeking a fugitive..."
Her eyes widened. "And how do you know? Where have you been?"
"Don’t worry, I only made a few pu
rchases. I went at the baker’s, bought a bun for lunch. Sometimes I go there, it’s not unusual. Then I bought another from the wife of the farmer of the adjoining field. Two portions, today. It seems they believed the story of the escape to the city. They went there and they’re looking for you. But eat now. You slept long and you must be hungry. If you don’t like the soup take my bun. I told you that I can’t cook very well."
"When can I see the animals? I absolutely love horses. At home I had one of my own. I called him Martin."
"Nobody ever comes here. I think it’s fairly safe if you go out the back door, but don’t go outside the boundaries of the field or you will be discovered. Today I’ll show you the animals and vegetables if you want."
"It would be great! And tomorrow, I'll start thinking about the house."
"Which house?"
"This one, silly! Look at its state! It’s dusty, dilapidated. We must clean it and fix it. Not to mention your clothes... Ah, you have to try on the ones I brought. Look! I just have to adjust their length a bit. I've stolen them from my brother. Isn’t this hat a dream?"
It was the most elegant top hat I had ever seen.
The game was beginning to take shape. Just that the house was not the dollhouse, and I was the right size to play with her. Hadn’t I given her the ring so the game could begin?
Martina began taking care of the house with unsurpassed dedication. She cleaned, cooked, mended my worn clothes, and in return she only wanted me to tell her some stories in the evening.
All summer, on top of the tower, under the stars. I sat on the step and she lied, her head resting on my legs. More than once I put her to bed, already asleep. She seemed tiny in my giant arms.
And when summer was over, among the leaves and the yellow, red, bare fields, autumn brought us premonitions of snow. It doesn’t always arrive, around here. Winters are mild, we never suffer too much cold. But there are some evenings, by the fireplace, when it almost seems to be a Northern winter.
Autumn had slipped away as fast as running water, gushing full of leaves from a fountain. And then winter had driven into the sleeping ground with a certain arrogance, as it rarely happens. So I wasn’t wrong: a snowy winter. Days full of fog and mist, fast rain, fireplace lit with darkness all around.
In the evenings, in front of the fire, Martina squatted on the couch and asked me a story. But I don’t know any.
"Make an effort! You’d know at least one. And if you don’t, make it up. Assuming you have a modicum of imagination, which I doubt..."
"Once upon a time..."
"Not a fairy tale, fool! A story. A beautiful story. I know, a legend or something like that."
"Why, a legend cannot start with once upon a time?"
"No it cannot. Otherwise, it automatically becomes a fairy tale. Nobody ever told you?"
"Okay, whatever. So..."
I wasn’t bad. I could make up a different story every night. Something I improvised, but something I had learned at the circus. Stories of wanderers, acrobats, foundlings. Only when I tried to tell the story of a trapeze artist hovering in the air like an angel she did not want me to.
"I don’t like this story."
"But you haven’t heard it..."
"It's about a trapeze artist, right?"
"Yes."
"Then I don’t want to hear it."
"All right. Then I will tell you of the time the elephant fled. In fact, it disappeared. One morning, the trainer gets up, goes to feed his animals and an elephant is missing. He counts them twice, for safety. He really misses one!"
"Better already. As long as the trapeze artist doesn’t come in later. I don’t want to hear about her."
"No, no trapeze artist. Just elephants and tamers. And the inhabitants of the country, of course."
"Alright then."
Then, at some point, she fell asleep. So I only had to make half effort. I never knew how any of the stories I told her ended.
Sometimes I was afraid I was boring, but she said no, when I asked.
"I’ve never been better."
It did not seem very believable to me. I could believe it in summer. But a whole winter with me, the scarecrow, the few animals to take care of and stories that always ended halfway before she fell asleep didn’t seem so exciting. Who knows what she used to do when she was at her house.
"I was bored. The only thing that didn’t bore me was playing the piano. Too bad you don’t have one."
Then even the winter is over. Our winter full of snow, which we watched falling from the top of the tower.
"Here it arrives before than everywhere else!"
Martina, proud of our tower height. It reached me even before her. That’s why she forced me to sit and climbed on a step to be taller.
Something had happened to her height too: I was under the impression that she had grown a bit. And then there was a certain dress that was now so tight she couldn’t put it on anymore.
"Will you have to eat less sweets?"
"No, silly! I'm getting older. This is why some clothes don’t fit anymore."
"You always look the same to me."
"It's because you see me every day. If you didn’t see me for a while you’d see the difference."
When I asked her where exactly the dress was tight, she blushed and ordered me not to ask such questions.
Height aside, however, she seemed just the same to me. Until spring. Until a given day when I was working in the field and, wiping my sweat, I looked up from the ground, to the thin wheat. They cast shadow on my face, and out of the shadow the yellow sun shone on Martina, who advanced among the ears singing a nursery rhyme, making her way smiling. Then she seemed different. I did not recognize her immediately. Perhaps because her nearness had given me a little, small Martina, sheltered in my tower. Now I saw a distant Martina, resolved to continue her escape towards the sea.
Then I let go of the image of the almost big Martina going away. How could I stop her? Thus, the clear sun passing through things took her away, and I was free to see again the little Martina, who was like the snow. It comes suddenly then goes away. Who can feel nostalgia for it? It's just a beautiful memory, which can influence you for a little while, as you're sitting on top of a tower and writing poems for it, who always faithfully returns: the moon, that would not abandon me.
