Four Doors and Other Stories (8 page)

“I would never, ever, betray my people, do you hear?” Margaret screamed to his face. “Go away with you, turn into one of these pale, dead creatures, abide by some false rules we despise. Be cut off from the trees, the water, and the animals! Never!” He could never have imagined such a fierce look in her eyes and stayed there, defeated. This was it. Almost a curse of being half-living, whenever they were together, half-dead, as soon as he played the part of the respectable husband and engineer.

“They would find us and kill us both, anyways, if we eloped,” she added in a soothing voice. “Unless you decide to join us. I bet they would accept you. As tanned as you are now, you look a little bit like a gypsy!” she giggled.

“Margaret, you know I love you but I couldn’t possibly...”

“It’s all right my love, no worries. We’re good. At least, until my father decides to marry me.”

For the first time, he understood why men and women committed passion crimes. He would have been up for it as well if such horror happened. He took her into his arms, into a passionate embrace, and laid her down into the rich clover under the willow.

As deepened into his thoughts as he was, he still noticed there was something wrong as soon as he returned home. Mary had puffy eyes and a swollen face. She, who always smiled and started talking about everything the moment her husband set foot in, was now silent. Her lips, tightly pressed one another, turned into a thin line of indefinite color.

“Good evening,” he said, wearily thinking she was upset because he was too late, later than usual. “I’m sorry, I’ve got caught up in a million of things at the office. Piles of paper to sort out, this kind of stuff…”

“Stop!” she replied in a dry voice. “I know!” she added heading for the living room and sitting on the couch. The man followed her, puzzled. What on earth could she know?

“You were seen today. I mean, you two were seen. Now, I understand why you have been hiding this from me,” she added by pulling out of a pocket a rumpled piece of paper. “You turned it down, right?”

His head was spinning. It was perfectly true. A major company in the capital had offered him his dream job, yet, he did not take it. However, he had thrown this paper into the garbage bin a long time ago. Besides, nobody ever passed by that place, at the seaside.

“Who is she? Is she someone at work? Do I know her?”

“She is a gypsy…”

The words went out of his mouth by themselves, lightening up his heart. He was sorry for Mary, yet, he was relieved with telling the truth. For a second, the curse seemed to fade away. But to his astonishment, the woman’s face lit up.

“It’s a spell. She must have put a spell on you!” she said throwing her arms around him. “Today, when that kid’s mother told me about it, I knew that you were unable to act like this out of your own will. Now, I have the confirmation. We must go to church.”

“Mary, you don’t understand. I’m in love with her!”

“Of course, my darling you are. Because she made you believe so. She made you see her as a goddess while she may be as ugly as a toad. I shall talk to Father Thomas tomorrow morning, see what we must do.”

Her cheeks were red with excitement and she was determined to save him.

“Have it your way,” he answered, sure that no priest could change his heart and happy to see her cheering up.

The problem was solved for now, but what about the curse? Well, the curse continued working its magic. The next day, somebody, somehow heard the conversation between Mary and Father Thomas. It was a matter of days before the news crawled through the town, like a snake, reaching the respectable society members’ ears. They were watching him, willing to see repent and regret. Yet, he carried on, as before, with his life refusing to seek help from God. The only love potion Margaret had given him was her lips. He told Mary he should move out but she begged him to stay.

“This would be the supreme shame,” she argued. “I still believe you are under a spell and I feel like I haven’t done all that I can to cast it way. Think how it would make me look, being ditched for a gypsy. I could never get out of the house.”

A month passed by. People started avoiding him and eventually, he lost his job. Now, he had all the time in the world for Margaret. He let his hair and beard grow and started wearing colorful shirts. Eventually, Margaret gave birth to a baby boy. That day, he went to his apartment, while Mary was away, took a few things that he held dear and wrote a short note, asking her to forgive him.

“I must have been a gypsy all my life, only now I realize it. I wish you always stay true to who you are and I thank you for all your love and caring.”

Since that day, neither him nor Margaret were ever seen again. Even the gypsies packed their shawls, kettles, their hats and their mustaches, put the horses to the carts and moved out. They were the talk of the town for months. Some women stood by him: it must have been the curse. Give up a good life, to become a bum. Or maybe die, after all. Some people said the girl’s father must have killed him. Others swore that they had seen him in one of the carts, together with a very young woman who was feeding a baby at her breast. Others blamed him and his kindred: men go crazy whenever they see a skirt lifting up.

As for Mary, she packed her bags and moved back to the big city, for fear that the curse might harm her as well. She remarried an older, almost bald man of substance, and turned into a big lady.

The little boy was looking at his father with dry, wide-open eyes. He still sensed the touch of the thin, brown leather belt. So much pain just for spilling the soup! The bowl had fallen on the rug with a stifled noise, then rolled and smashed against the wall, into two big equal pieces. It had been just a moment of absentmindedness, and his mum knew it. The woman had left the table murmuring, “It’s all right, it’s all right,” and went to fetch a brush to clean up the carpet before it stained. The child had stood stock-still while his parents glared at him. He was still hungry and wanted another helping of soup but he was afraid to ask.

The man grabbed his arm and dragged him to his boyish room. Taking off his belt, he started hitting him in smoldering anger.

“I do not care for a molly-coddle in my house. I need a man. My son will be a real man no matter how many belts I shall wear out on his butt!” His voice grew louder and louder until it turned into a scream.

“How will you handle life? How will you be able to master other people while you cannot master a spoon?”

He was on the verge of hitting him again, when the mother came in and grabbed his hand.

“That’s enough! I think he got it! You’ll pay more attention to it next time, won’t you, honey?” she told the boy, holding him with infinite tenderness.

“Great, now you spoil him! It is you who will later take the consequences, not me!” He spoke in a heavy, angry voice but the worst was over.

“We get back to it now, finish our lunch, right? And everybody behaves!” said the woman, taking her husband’s arm and pulling the little one along with her spare hand.

The boy fought a little before allowing himself into the dining room. He was afraid. He was hungry. He needed to cuddle against his mother. She always made him feel secure. This tiny woman, with big, green eyes and long chestnut hair, with her light, flowered dress looked like a teenager next to her husband who was already turning grey. He was no more than five years older but since he had been appointed school headmaster, he had become a different person. He was paying more attention to his looks, especially his garments. He wore a tie, shirt, and suit trousers with a perfectly ironed crease during his spare time, too. He smiled less and walked with his hands behind his back, feeling important. He had a mission now and great responsibility weighted his shoulders, he would say, that of building strong characters. He was a role model who was not allowed any flaws.

A year after his appointment, a scandal related to a wealthy family’s student broke into the school. He had been caught fooling around with a junior female student. They were being very intimate when someone spotted them and sounded the alarm. The principal intended to expel him. Both families were pressuring. Eventually, the wealthy ones had prevailed. The headmaster developed a sort of pain, a sense of failure and his authority diminished for good. He started graying despite being in his early thirties and became more demanding.

Right after lunch, the man retired in the master bedroom, for a midday nap. The little boy helped his mother clean the table and joined her in the kitchen. She did the dishes, humming Frank Sinatra songs, and he wiped them up. She had put her hair into a loop, looking even younger.

“I’m so happy to have you, my dear,” she told him, embracing the boy when everything fell into place. “Would you like to watch TV together?” He nodded affirmatively. The little boy would have kept this embrace for eternity. He nestled against her on the couch, inhaling her rose perfume greedily, the same he knew since he was a baby. It melted all his sorrows away. Soon, the woman fell asleep.

The little boy got up and turned off the TV set. Going to his room, he passed the master bedroom. Through the ajar door, he saw his father’s trousers and brown belt lying on the back of a chair. The child stopped, listening to his father’s steady breath. He must have been sound asleep. The kid made up his mind at once. He carefully pushed the door open, tiptoed to the chair, grabbed the belt and left as silent as a cat. He went to his room, his heart pounding. He took out of his desk the penknife his father had given him as a birthday present and started cutting the brown leather belt into teeny-tiny pieces.

I would turn myself into a small, tiny person, seal myself into an envelope, and send it to an unknown address. I would certainly not mention names of streets or cities. However, I would write down a few coordinates: clear sky, tall, green grass caressing the thighs, birds singing. Shady trees. One hill, two hills. Warm. Happy face.

Out of the dark red mailbox, I would get into a sack made of strong cloth. In a pell-mell with other letters. Some of them would smell like ink or ballpoint pen. Some of them would be merry, others, on the verge of a breakdown. A few of them, a bit wet. You know those letters that cannot wait to be opened so that they flood you. The sack is full of noises. Deep voices, with moustaches. Young voices, with caps. Wheels squeak on rails. Huuhuuhuuu in smoke. Engine contact. Here comes the maiiilllll!

I would take a pair of sunglasses out of my right pocket of my jeans overalls. I would wear them to avoid going blind because of the sun that is heating me up through the white paper envelope. She would open the envelope in surprise.

“Are you sure that is for me?” she would ask the postman.

“Of course,” he would answer. “Clear sky, tall green grass caressing the thighs, birds singing, shady trees, two hills. Hot.” While saying “happy face” he would blush, he would lose his head because he is the old-fashioned kind, for whom a woman is an unearthly creature. Moreover, he was still waiting to receive the manual of good behavior with unearthly creatures he had ordered in the county town.

“It will take three months,” he was told. “And you have to pay a search fee. It has been so long since somebody ordered this manual. We have to look for it. We have forgotten where we put it.”

She would tear open the envelope impatiently, while the postman would become even more confused, astonished by her perfectly oval, pinkish nails. She would find me and she would put her hand to her mouth in wonder. The envelope would slowly flow down and an obliging breath of wind would carry it straight into the garbage bin.

The girl would boldly kiss the postman on the cheek. Because she fancies him. And because she thinks that I was his idea. Then she would start examining me, on both sides: front and back. She would feel me.

“Put my sunglasses back on, put my sunglasses back on,” I would shout and she would act as if she was able to hear me. Then, I would burst into laughter. Because she is tickling me.

“Cling, cling, cling,” she would laugh merrily back at me. Everybody knows that toys, no matter how small, can laugh.

“I have to go,” would pout the postal worker’s voice because the girl was preferring a little man to a big man. “If only I got the manual faster,” he would tell to himself. “So that I learn how to become a little man.” She would frown at him, reprovingly. That is how women are, they see everything, and they know everything. The big man would shrug his shoulders: “It wasn’t me, it was my voice. My voice has a strong personality. It chooses its tone and I have no control. So I’d better shut up and be on my way.”

“Let’s forgive him,” I scream from the palm of her hand. “Otherwise, he will deliver only the weeping letters today. This beautiful valley will be flooded. And who knows where we shall end up…”

“Thank you,” the girl would say and she would kiss him on the other cheek. “And pay attention to the road.” She would say this because the earthen road turns to the right and to the left whenever it feels like. It goes up and it goes down. That is nothing compared to the fact that this is a very funny road. Somebody may feel like walking on a cloud when the road plays a prank and puts a hole right in front of him. Not big enough for a man to go down but large enough to make his cap fall off his head.

The girl promised to herself that when she grows up, she would map it. So that the postman who, by then would be her husband, would not lose a cap each day. However, this will happen a long time in the future. Until then, he has ten thousand seven hundred and twenty-three letters to deliver. Riding his black bike that has big wheels with silver spokes. And a brown leather saddle, like a triangle. A saddle with springs—two nickelled, splendid springs. “Creak, crack, creak, crack,” they sing whenever the bicycle passes by a house because they know that they have to replace the old horn hanging by the handlebars for decoration.