LIVIA
by Alin Dărângă
THE
OBSIDIAN SUN SOCIETY
My dark childhood memories begin
with the image of the house that I inhabit, a building as old and sad as a
monastery, with its cold walls through which mice roam. Butterfly nymphs sleep
in the crevices that cross these walls, waiting for the metamorphosis. Rust has
bitten deep into the pale flesh of the old railing, decorated with wrought iron
arabesques, that descends to the hideous darkness of the basement.
I recall my often
walks on the corridor, through the dreadful light that was dripping through the
windows, listening to the terrifying groaning winds that wove their wet voices
in a rough and doleful litany.
My grandmother disapproved the odious pleasures that I was
engaged in, and each morning I had to swallow a rancid oily liquid that emitted
a foul stink of rotten fish. She was hoping that this remedy will enhance my
appetite and straighten my morbid compulsions, abnormal for a child of my age.
Except for the persistent nausea that I was experiencing, its only effect was
the attraction that I was casting upon homeless cats, the only beings that I
have ever felt sympathy for.
I remember a melancholic summer afternoon, when silence
reigned above the empty squares which I walked through during my solitary walk.
Above dry fountains, wrinkled statues elongated thirsty shadows on the streets
paved with cubic stone.
The silhouette of a girl was disquieting
shriveled building walls, rolling a circle that seemed to expand and contract
under the slanting rays of the sun. I was trying to draw something on the
sidewalk with a piece of chalk, but my eyes stopped on that circle, which seemed to wrap around it
the facades and to elongate them to the horizon. Then I have seen the black
arms of the cranes, looming on the sky, trying to rebuild the city from the
ruins that the war had left behind.
A giant statue of
Apollo was rising from the leaf decorated marble columns that laid defeated
under the rubble, and when the clock tower bells announced the end of an hour,
the white body of the god seemed to startle easily, troubled by the chaos and
the irrationality of the world that he had been thrown in.
Later that day, my
grandmother and I left to the cemetery. On our way we stopped in front of a
sweetshop. Dusty chalk looking cakes were displayed in the window, covered with
a pink icing and inside, on the counter, stood a scale, wrapped in grey paper,
surrounded by jars full of sweets.
We bought a few candies
and passed by the hairdresser, where always a whiff of cologne perfume
and talcum powder seemed to stand motionless in the air, heading towards the
sinister cemetery gates. Bathed in that mysterious sunlight, the faces of the
dead, as portrayed on the brown photos displayed on the tombs seemed crushed by
regrets….
Learning how to read at that time, I tried to spell the
names chiseled on the tombstones, but my favorite activity was robbing the
trees that were growing on the graves. My grandmother forbade me to eat those
fruits and warned me that they bared the fluids from the dead. Eating them
would have lead to plague, but I could not help myself and sneak behind her, eating
their juicy flesh.
Near the tomb of my grandfather there stood a smaller one, covered by
withered flowers, seared by the sun. A sad rustle sang among them and above, an
old cherry tree bent expectantly over the boulders dried by drought. From its
bark raisin was dripping amber tears…
I picked the few remaining cherries, raisined on the
branches, and swallowed them all, with the stone.
They had a harsh, bloodlike taste and, for a second, I
remembered what grandmother had told me. The cross stone was broken, covered by
a layer of coarse moss, and my fingers managed to decipher the name Livia but the other letters were too worn so that I
could understand. The thick glass over the photo was cracked, scratching the
oval of a pale face, framed by curls, blue eyes, shadowed by grief. So strange
was the beauty of those eyes, that I dreamed about them that night. Their
unnatural light seemed to give too much life to the one that should have slept
forever in the shadow of that old cross.
After twelve days I
started to feel sick. The walls of the
narrow and poorly furnished room in which I lived seemed to fall upon me and my
whole body was shaking uncontrollably because
of chills. The doctor who came to see me spoke softly with my grandmother, then
scribbled a prescription and left. He supposed I got sick of smallpox and I had
to be shut in the house for two weeks. Two weeks that had turned me into the
monster I am now…
My skin was covered with pustules that irritated me to
exasperation and nights were haunted by a fever that scorched my dreams with
horrible fantasies. Most often, the face that I have seen in the cemetery
appeared in my delirium and its eyes caused me a fascination mixed with horror.
But the worst thing was the smile imprinted on the lips that turned to dust
long ago, lips that kept whispering something, too dreadful for my childish
mind…
After a few days my face was covered with purulent peel, a
hideous mask too little reminiscent of the one I have been some time before.
When I tried to speak or eat my skin cracked imperceptibly, bleeding and
bringing me often on the verge of faint.
A fetid sweat accompanied by chills and apathy wrapped me in
a shroud of painful weakness, I had become a living corpse , a decaying thing
that only my merciful grandmother dared to approach. I remember her hands,
small and wrinkled, the only hands that touched me ever since.
Those hands have anointed my skin with the cursed, greasy
pomade brought from the African drugstore. On the box, strange, unknown words,
in a language that I did not know were entwining ……
*
Although I was born a man, I am often confused with a woman,
mostly because of the hair that I grew
long, covering the horrible scars that furrow my face. I remember the terror
that I have felt when I peeled down the crust that surrounded my forehead and
cheeks, in front of the mirror. Under the stained bandage strips, I clearly saw
rising Livia, her monstrous gentle smile,
the same full lips, the color of
rotten cherries…………
I rarely leave my street because I meet disgusted smiles on
the faces of people. Only cats that have sheltered around my house look at me
without frowning. In their eyes I see beyond
the understanding of my peers. On
moonless nights I drag myself in the gloom of the cemetery and there, in front
of the tomb of the young woman that I used to be I mourn the misery of
the wrecked man. Neighbors nicknamed me The Crazy Cat Lady but you can say simply, Livia………
