CHAPTER XXXIV: RECTIFICATION

  The twilight did not end bleeding as if wounded as I was briefly in the landfill. Dim light, low visibility, my wandering steps, I walked as a ghost unaware that night I would also bleed with some new wounds. If it wasn't because there was a time I had wanted to go there in search of clothes, and the previous days of rain I had not been able to do so, I would have turned back soon. I found a couple of blankets that could be useful and there I had to stop. I would return one other day to find clothes. Anyway, it is not easy to find any trousers or shoes in good condition in a landfill. Or maybe you can find a useful shoe, but you never find the other. Finally we have to buy these pieces of clothing at the Salvation Army shops. That’s why you see me come every day, Protch, wearing the same trousers. I tend to wear them for about six months until finally, one day I have been lucky on the street, I have to buy new ones in charity shops. But on October 20 I could finally give back to Luke the blankets he had lent me.



 

−I have to go, Protch, and I had better do it now. Tomorrow I will tell you all I can about those two days and the night from one to the other, of which I have to tell you so much...

−Go in peace. One of these nights I will soon go again to my cousin's house. Now they will be allowed to tell me about yourself in the years in which I lost you.

−If you see them, send my regards. And don't be hard with them for not having told you. Oh, and as for your uncle, remember that he won't know of whom you speak if you do not name me as Nicholas."

   Quickly I came to his house the following day February 21, Monday, wanting to shorten the time to refer to him at least the strangest night of my life. And without much prior conversation, assuring him that today I had a lot of stuff to tell him, and a lot of energy, because I longed to reach that unique night, he brought me breakfast to the room, we sat down and I started.


 

  It was an unusually cold twilight, and I am not able to remember any other equally cold in my four autumns in the street. On my way through the landfill, I noticed some voices were accompanying me, some young men who perhaps had stopped a while in Meander Bridge. It seemed that soon they left, but when I was jumping Menhir Bridge, one of them must have gone there because I witnessed a scene that I would not have wanted to see. An individual of some twenty years, well dressed and shaved, luxury clothes, he was surely a well-to-do boy, one of those people who hurt with their words wherever they go. In the surroundings of the bridge was my fellow mate Lucy. They wanted to light the bonfire, but she was looking for firewood, because she wasn't sure that the wood for that night would be enough. In addition the ground was still wet and the firewood was damp. It would not be easy to light it. And suddenly she met the insolent young man, who began to speak to her.

− "What are you doing here at this hour, you beautiful princess? You should already be back home –I almost bumped into that young man. At first I watched the scene not knowing if I should greet him. It was the first time I saw a stranger in our outskirt−. Let me see you. Even in a dim light, I would say that you are very pretty. And why are you so lonely? Don't you have a husband who will be with you at this time in the woods? You might need a man, you cute little thing. Here's one. You look scared. What is your name?"

− "Lucy. Please, I am in a hurry. Leave me alone. I must find a little firewood. The night has come."

− "Would you like me to help you find any firewood? You seem a little Red Riding Hood. Do not be afraid. I will help you to avoid the wolf. You need a man that can defend you."

   I was looking increasingly concerned. Lucy seemed scared and what that young man told her seemed frankly an insult. But in those moments, I was afraid that he was going to touch her or hit her. My fellow mate felt uncomfortable, but she didn't know how to get rid of that annoying "gentleman". Then I no longer could stand it:

− "Young man, please, leave her alone. Have you still not learned that you should not molest a lady?"

− "A lady? Are you her husband?"

− 'No, I am not. I am a friend. But she does have a husband. If you can’t treat a woman with respect, it is you still have to learn it all in life."

− "Well, well, I was only speaking affectionately with her –and addressing Lucy−. I see you have a man to save you from the big bad wolf. You will not need me, you beautiful princess. Too bad. You're so beautiful –and he must be seeing the anger in my eyes−. Okay, you friend of the princess, I'm leaving now."

    Lucy and I remained some time together hoping he moved away. We saw him leave in the direction of the Outcasts. But I don’t think that my neighbors had any problems with him. That was when she spoke to me:

− "Thank you Nike."

− "Do these things happen many times, Lucy?"

− "Fortunately to this outskirt very few people come. In Wrathfall Bridge it was very usual, but I was not going anywhere without my mother or my "grandmother". You've avoided me a problem tonight. Thank you, Nike. We are fellow mates. And each time we feel that word more intensely."

   She seemed, rather than grateful, really moved. Her eyes with so little light were not distinguishable but I saw that her gaze was wet, as if they would like to release information that I did not then know. And about myself, what could I say? There are wounds in which pain is so strong that it should suffice as a warning, but you're not able to notice until you do not see blood. I could have realized then, but I didn't see it. I only felt one puzzling increasing weight as I was walking to the fire which delayed to be lit, and which was only a flame, one other blood, one other wound, on that night of wounds.

   There was a free room, where I sat, between Luke, on my left, and Olivia, on my right. Her mistress was sitting beside her. Embraced to her husband was Lucy telling him the scene that had just happened. Luke looked at me grateful, but said nothing to me. His look was enough. Bruce was sitting left of Lucy. John was then in his tent, suffering from a slight headache. He had taken something to eat and chose to read a while. Perhaps in the middle of the night he dared to leave. Paul was in his grandmother’s arms, but lived a difficult night in which it was difficult for him to sleep. Shortly after sitting down, Olivia, who had heard what her daughter had told, handed me the little king.

  In his black eyes fate wore a cloak of darkness that was coming toward me with stealth until, as if it were a ruffian, it began to stab me. But I was looking at Paul, who was awake and looked at me, and I heard Luke’s voice saying:

− "Logically he still cannot speak, but in his eyes sometimes it seems that words are forming.  Lucy and I are looking forward to listening to him calling us mom or dad."

   I looked again at the well of his black eyes in search of words. Globes were his eyes, with a burning flame, the brush of some star. The others did not speak, without John, of stars, and I do not remember what murmurs made me lose the thread of their talk, while Paul and me, looking at each other, might be talking together.

   He was sufficiently warm. He was almost the only one of us who was not shivering. Actually that fire of October 19 I don’t remember for the heat but for how it shone. Flashing in the eyes of Regulus, crystal almonds, black twilight, tenderness mirrors, stopped clocks, universe in movement. A slight cold tremor made me tell him in my thoughts: If the wind hurts you, the six elders who here accompany you will become a labyrinth, so among many corridors it cannot find your door; if tonight you are hungry, we will heat in the bonfire the appetite of all and you will have a delicacy in your baby’s bottle. If you see that you take long to sleep, my heart will be the prologue to a story that rocks the universe in the cradle of your eyes. You little star that smiling at me is watching me, sleep. We are your guardian angels and we care for you.

   And then it happened. Paul seemed to understand something of this litany of the heart that I was dripping him. He smiled tenderly at me, not willing to fall asleep, wanting to continue talking with me. Fate wanted him to have a rattle for me. Three letters that changed everything. How was it possible, if he was unable to speak yet? Perhaps it was a sentimental babbling, without the meaning that I wanted to give it. But he said it. Staring at me, he uttered the syllable that could be clearly heard in the silence of all:

− "Dad."

   My world broke into pieces then. Luke repeated over and over again: "He has said it". Yes, he has said it. But he has said it to me! How is it possible, Paul? What am I doing so badly that you haven’t addressed it yet to your real father and, however, as a knife for him, you say it to me?

   I could not stop crying. The son of the man I loved had called me dad. Really for this family I could not be but a stain. I collapsed. Frightened, I handed the little king to his real father and I shed tears which soon became convulsion. I didn't hide my anguish. Maybe I thought I heard a murmur from Mistress Oakes:

− "Infinite are the rectifications of the universe for you."

   Terrified, I realized that Luke and Lucy looked at me fondly. But still I had a part of my blood to spill. With the desire to calm me, spoke his mother then:

− "Look at me, Nike. If the voice of my son terrifies you, think that perhaps he cannot talk and he is not aware of what he has babbled. But maybe through his tongue the universe has spoken tonight, because our little king wants to make you see that you've deserved it. We cannot know fate, but its yarns are not moved by chance. They are looking for us..."

   Fate fell like twilight on her reddish hair, the color of a wound. Her eyes, like lakes of shadows, pierced me.

− "Anyway, Nike, both of you need some rest. Let him lay his head on your shoulders or on Luke’s, where he is now, and you lay your thoughts in a rocking chair of calm. You only need to reflect and you will finally see that nothing happens by chance, that life is a poem that is already written and we can already hear the rhapsodist who recites it."

   The wind has swings that rock us on unforeseen airs. Her words were wise and would have maybe calmed me if it wasn't because at last I saw the last blood of my two wounds from that fire and with that blood I was aware of the pain. It had prevented me to see it to have made a mistake when in July I accepted that my heart had moved toward Luke. And for a sacred ephebus, I believed that my spirit rejected in my rivers its naiads. But a nymph with her hair the color of a flame was also entering my Olympus. I was aware by the tenderness of her gaze and the mellifluous cadence of her speech that I had fallen in love again. No, it was not that night. I was doubly in love, but the second arrow I was unaware when it had hit me. I looked at my mate. Not for this second bite I would take out the first. For him I would feel eternal love. And now also for his wife? The putrid cloud which because of my unconsciousness overflew the sacred icon of his relations had already gone to all the family. I loved both of them and their son referred to me incorrectly. The eighth mate had an insurgent heart whose veins were opened in filthy flowers that fired aromas of maculae.

   I had stayed with them fifteen days in which I had learned almost everything, but not the fundamental lesson: to tame my heart, which was still forking into new rivers. How many meanders did my blood yet have to swim? Before I could end up falling in love with the other five, I should leave them forever.

   Merciless fate was becoming a black angel, a frozen vortex, a single fragile color meadow: despair. I didn't know how to cry, how to disguise what my face must be betraying. I didn't know what to do. Intuition only helped me to recognize the pain that I should go away, but not from them, I should go away from myself. A penultimate light in the useless lighthouse of my lucidity made me at last stand up. I should get away to shed some tears or to kill myself. Leaving the bonfire I said to all of them:

− "I will go for a walk."

   The other figures also moved. Lucy told her husband to enter a while in their tent. Luke handed the little king to his grandmother. At the time in which the sacred couple, by me dishonoured, began to stand up, John was coming out of his tent, just to find me opposite him. My face must have been a portrait where some hectic ravens danced a macabre pantomime of tears and death. He was aware that I was inhabited by the cruelest of the riders and on his black horse, my mind in darkness, was the ghost of despair.