Anamnesis by Zorina Alliata (ebook reader ink txt) 📕

putting up with him.”

“These guys will not give you anything, Amelie,” Mr. Saccas pleaded. “They are simply using you because you hate Christian. Don’t sacrifice your own son for some money. You have enough. Christian sends you money every month so you don’t have to worry about it.”

“Yeah, all he gives is money,” she answered. “How much is he paying you to keep an eye on Dante and me? Now he’s paying Dante. He wasn’t there when he grew up, no, that was beneath him. But he gives us all money, and we should all be happy and love him for it. Christian doesn’t know what good is and how to do good to his own family.”

It was then when Dante stood up, incapable of keeping silent anymore. Both Saccas and Lucia turned to him in surprise. Saccas was the first to gain back control of the situation.

“Good, you’re up,” he said to Dante. “Get your stuff and let’s get out of here. Thank God I have her phone tapped.”

“You piece of shit,” Lucia hissed. “Thirty years I’ve waited for a chance to get back at him. And you, his paid servant, will not let me have it. After you claimed to be my friend.”

“Not using his son, no,” Saccas said. “Dante has no fault in this. And, if you ask me, neither does Christian, except that he made the mistake of marrying you.”

“I loved him,” she screamed, trying to hit Saccas. He fought her back easily.

“You are incapable of love,” he said, taking Dante by the arm and directing him towards the back exit. “Good luck with your French buddies.”

A shocked Dante followed Saccas out on the back porch and into a car parked on a street beyond the garden. He was holding his papers tight inside of his jacket. The rain had stopped temporarily, but the clouds were still hanging low and heavy.


CANTO IX


I woke up in the middle of a bad dream, sweating, breathing hard. My love for Feliks had grown chaotically all over my fingers and toes; it was poking at my skin from the inside, burning me, making me toss and turn at night. It brought back all my demons, my denials, my anger at the world; it made me think of suicide, kidnapping and murder; it made my despair appear of cosmic proportions, and it made me abandon all hope.

I needed to know more, I decided. I would simply approach this like a project at work, have a plan, and stick with it. I just needed more information so I could make a good plan, I convinced myself. There had to be other people like me who lived before; there had to be other women with this rare deformity, and maybe one of them had found a cure. I had looked for answers many times before in the anamnesis, but this time, I convinced myself, I was more mature and I knew more. I could maybe see a clue, a detail that had escaped me.

I never needed props to start the journey; the abyss was right there in front of my eyes, calling with millions of pained voices. It wanted me, and I wanted it. I belonged there, and it felt warm and safe to me, like a womb; but I also knew its embrace could steal and keep my mind prisoner forever, unable to function, frozen in madness.

I thought of Feliks and his handsome silhouette that morning in the computer lab, his broad shoulders under the brown jacket. I concentrated until I could remember every detail of his face, and I painted it in light strokes, to guide me, protect me and to get me back. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and let my mind wander where the sun was silent.

The voices started immediately, loud and demanding of my full attention; flashes of light and shadows surrounded me, but I just kept my mind’s eyes on Feliks’ face and did not look left or right. Because I already knew what was there; lost souls who could not find their way back into Nature; angry, lonely, feeling let down by whatever gods they had believed in; the losers, the cowards, the traitors were repeating their story over and over, trying to convince me of their good intentions – as if I had any powers to help them.

Past the angry, loud mob, there were others; some had been a little bad, some had been a little good. No one was innocent. No person had lived a perfect life. Everyone I have ever heard or felt in the anamnesis had something to apologize for. People had been gross and stupid forever, and I was happy I was not like them; I was superior in so many ways and if only I could create my own descendants, my own race, we would genetically dominate the planet in four generations. We would never complain and beg for help, trapped in limbo; we would contain Nature for good and live the healthy, sanitary existence in which our minds could expand the most.

I followed Feliks’ smiling face all the way down the nine circles; lost souls offered to sell me their knowledge, all of it, and it would just be available to my conscious mind if only I bargained with them – but I had nothing to bargain with, and neither did they. I already had their knowledge since I was there, and they were open books to me; they were part of my soul and my mind already.

There was nothing new I could find; I desperately wished for all people to be dead, so I could see all that they knew at once, so that I could see the big picture, understand all angles, and be able to devise a plan for my family’s salvation. My guide hovered over the frozen lake, then turned left and listened carefully. I followed its eyes, and it led me to two souls which had recently arrived.

They let their stories be known to me immediately, with relief. They were from my small hometown in Romania, and I stopped for a second to find my Mom and Dad’s faces in their memories, to see how they looked now. Both men had been shepherds up on the Rarau Mountain; they were out with their sheep when a powerful storm had unexpectedly started. They tried to herd their sheep back to the shack but some were so scared they ran down the ravines, crazed. One of the dogs chased them and disappeared into the woods as well. The sky went dark and the wind picked up. The shepherds hid inside their small cabin and propped the door closed. One of them lit a gas lamp and put it on the table; in the flickering light, the Empress’ Rock appeared larger than usual, casting a sharp shadow over the valley. It came as a great shock to them when a lightning bolt loudly hit the old rock, splitting it in two halves as easily as if it were butter. One piece fell over the shepherds’ cabin, smashing the walls in and killing both of them.

The memory was intriguing and I studied each detail they remembered. Because the Empress’ Rock had been my Dad’s secret hiding place; his favorite spot for gathering spells and small miracles, and keep them locked for when needed. That’s where he once had found a wounded winged creature and nursed it back to life. That’s where the rare Corner Flowers were growing for the well-being of our whole family.

And suddenly I saw it clearly, a vision taking shape out of small or unspoken details. Nature had destroyed the Empress’ Rock because its defense had gotten weak lately; as my family was getting smaller, our collective powers were getting smaller as well. My Dad lost spells and equations in the storm; if I looked carefully, I could see the numbers disintegrating into rain drops and breaking into a thousand pieces when hitting the ground. I could feel my Mom and Dad getting weaker by the minute; around me, lost souls enacted my vision on the Cocytus lake, in a desperate dance, and I knew, I knew with certainty that my parents would die the next day and their bodies would float lifelessly in the Prut River before the sun even reached midday.

*-*-*

I called my mom after midnight, when the day was just starting in Romania.

“Did you see it?” I asked abruptly as soon as she picked up the phone.

“I did,” she answered calmly. “I’m sorry, puiule. We will be gone soon and we’ll leave you all alone in the world.”

“I’ll have you in my mind, you know that,” I said. “I have Grandma and uncle and aunt. They all told me how I came to be like this. It’s okay, though. You did what you had to do.”

“What about the 2-2-9?” my mom asked. “Any chance of finding it? Any chance of having your babies and saving our genes?”

There was no more time for lies or vague answers.

“Remember that truck that barely missed me when I was 3?” I said. “It didn’t kill me, but it crippled me. I can’t have any children, in any way. I tried, I went to doctors here. There’s nothing they can do.”

“Oh, my God,” my mom said. “Why didn’t you ever say anything? How could you have hidden this so well?”

“I couldn’t take away your hope,” I said. “I kept trying to find a way.”

“Find the 2-2-9,” she said. “They say it can make any wish come true.”

“I wish I were with you right now,” I said. “I wish we could take Dad and all go visit the stupid park in the delta, without fear of roots coming out of the dirt to pull us in. I wish we would have a picnic without being surrounded by protective spells.”

“We will, iubire,” my mom said. “We’ll all meet again and we’ll have that picnic. We will wait for you by the Delta, and Dad will make grilled mici, and your grandfather will boil the corn. We’ll be there waiting for you. You just come whenever you want, iubire. If you want to give up this fight, I want you to know that it’s alright with us. We love you.”

“I know,” I said, choking back tears. “Let me say hi to Dad.”

“Hi,” my Dad said. He sounded tired and old.

“Hi, Dad,” I said. “Did you have the vision, too?”

“Yes,” he said. “Both of us did. It’s going to happen tomorrow.” He sounded resigned.

“Is there any way to fight it?” I asked, but I knew the answer to that.

“No,” he said. “We don’t think we should. We think it’s enough.”

“Okay,” I said.

“I prayed for you today,” he said. “I went to a church, like your grandma always bugged me to. It’s nice. It’s quiet and there’s no danger. There aren’t any numbers except the ones people bring in. I lit two candles for you. I hope you will make the right decisions.”

“Grandma told me to think of God, too,” I said. “I never paid much attention to it, what with all the surviving I had to do on a daily basis.” I sounded angry, I realized. “He could have helped me a little if He really existed.”

“We now believe that He does,” Dad said. “He is the one keeping the balance between our humanity and our animal nature. But