The Gypsy
The Gypsy
There was a winding road down a
Valley. The road was undermined by
patches of deep wounds left by the torrential rains so frequent in the valley
and by the stumps of dead trees rooted skyward like a prayer. There was also a Monastery suspended somewhere
between heaven and earth, protected by several mountains like true pyramids
guarding a fortress. Down the valley,
suddenly, a caravan of nomadic gypsies entered from one end of the road. Wagons with tarpaulin sheltered children and
elderly, while young Gypsy girls with bloom red skirts walked haughtily behind
the caravan. Amongst them, one gypsy woman would find a crying baby girl in
town and nurse her before disappearing in a fog of spells and doomed destinies.
*
Today as I sit here waiting for the police to arrive, I can finally
look beyond your Nôh facemask you wear in front of each man. I stare at your motionless body and
thoughtless face with the most pathetic expression in my eyes. Before, I could distinguish you from a
thousand women and just for that, alone I hated you.
But with all this, with all the hatred and dirt, I waited for
you every night in the same dark bar, in the same chair, at the same table with
the same wine in my glass until you eventually came back. When I saw you again, you were dancing with
another man. You proved to be the most
awful human, a body with no soul.
I wanted you to die. I
wanted to see your dead body and mourn you.
I clearly saw beyond the horizon, beyond the reddish autumn
sunset. I could see now my burned
thoughts left in total standby through the eyes of others gathered around your
lifeless body. Alcohol spoke for me in
the end.
You lied to me! You ended up being an illusion, an illusion I
used as a guiding light but landed as fine sand in the desert of my desires.
My dreams were hardly ever reached, hardly desirable, hardly inspiring
to you
People were talking sometimes and I had no doubt they were
talking about you. Your pagan being was
marked from the beginning. You were
doomed to lie and cheat and I should have known your Scarlet red lips were lying.
They say that when you were about three months old you cried
so hard it broke your mother’s heart. Nothing
soothed your suffering, not the lullabies, nor the gentle rocking. Until one day when a convoy of nomadic
gypsies stopped at the edge of the town.
In one of the tents was one woman named Orla. Her little baby girl had perished immediately
after birth and Orla’s tears never dried since.
One quiet night, while everybody was deep asleep, a baby’s cry reached
Orla’s ears. Is my little girl I hear crying? She asked herself. She started walking through the village until
she heard the baby cry in front of a house: This
is my child, she thought, and with quick steps she entered the home, opened
the door to a room stopping in front of the cradle where you were fiercely and
inconsolably crying.
“Lady, let me breastfeed the child!” the gypsy said to your perplexed
mother.
For three days, before sunrise, Orla, the gypsy, was in the
house and soon you stopped crying while nursing at the gypsy’s bosom. Her naked breast and face were turned towards
the rising sun whispering-words known only to her. Orla, the gypsy woman disappeared without a
trace one day but left behind her gypsy spell on you. You were to bring pain and desolation to
anybody bold enough to love you.
When I first saw you in the bar, you looked wild and
beautiful, lips painted with red lipstick, cheap defilement of any conceivable purity,
hair loose, left back framing your face like black smoke; with red nails,
unequal, with high heels, too high and uncomfortable. The white shirt with rough collar, the skirt
that jumped in my eyes the first time. Disgusting
skirt! But you liked it. You looked at me and put your glass down, got
up and came closer to me. You hit the
dance floor and danced as if no one else was around.
Tears run dry
now when I remember that night, as if it lasted a thousand years.
You were incredible. There was silence, a long silence, but I
heard your beating heart. I kissed you;
I undressed you with slow and feral moves.
You beautiful gypsy!
I felt your thin body, trembling body under my kisses. I can feel your body even now when I close my
eyes!
The next day I realized you were just a heap of body pleasures;
I realized how miserable you could be. Pathetic
and cold. You walked out and left behind
only the lipstick stained sheets, your cheap perfume, and pain.
I knew one day I would kill you ... Pulling the trigger was the easiest part. Once my mind became
the sheathed villain and once my conscience gave in to it, the plan was simple
really.
There’s
a criminal in each one of us. Why don’t
we release it? Surprisingly not because
of our conscience but because of fear.
Real criminals win over their fear, a monster bigger than conscience... Was
Hitler remorseful of his actions or he was concerned someone might
consider him a murderer. ?When the final colors , the ones defining
you as a frail human invade and take over your well guarded white
purity, you start crying every night
lying to yourself in the morning . You should be elsewhere. You look
around, who is the master of your life?
Who are you in your life?
After me pulling the trigger, you looked at me with surprised
eyes, lifted your shoulders in shock, shocked and quizzical at what was
happening .Your lips started moving looking for a questioning word but a quaint
smile froze on your upper lip instead, trembling and dry.
There are hundreds of ways to die.
You can die while your heart still beats and the world continues to spin
around you like I died. But you never thought that in the end things would happen this way.
A smiling mask with which you used to hide the anger and betrayal
will be the last thing I see. The old clock on the wall stopped for a moment,
the whole world froze for a second. Then time began to run again and the wall
mirror flew in thousands of glittering pieces, each bearing frozen looks, reflections
of me passing through decomposed, crossing the line bordering the absurd as the
sirens sounded closer and closer.
*
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