Anamnesis by Zorina Alliata (ebook reader ink txt) 📕

all felt when such a common miracle was finally about to happen to them. Or maybe they just forgot to check the numbers that morning; maybe, when my mom started to feel the pain, old numbers shifted in a natural regression and new numbers took their place around the hills; maybe, as the birds started to squeak in the old tree, Nature had already felt another life about to enter its realm and hurried to receive it in its palm.

I came out in my usual fast and organized manner, head first, serious and self-conscious, preoccupied not to cause pain or embarrass anyone. My dad, with tears of joy on his cheeks, took me in his arms. “Profira!” he called, “it’s a girl!” But there was no answer and when my dad turned around, he recognized the hideous face of his mistake written in bold new numbers around the window. My aunt was knocked out in the backyard, her heart stopped; the eyelid had opened with inquisitorial power; and in just a few moments, the biggest flood that the village has ever seen started from the suddenly anger waters of the Prut river.

“I gather you all got out all right”, Lou commented.

“Yeah”, I said. “My dad had a backup plan. He always does. There was another good path through the cornfield, and he carried my mom and me out. My aunt had died though – just before I was born.”

“And so, my first memory is the gray water of Prut flowing into the house, up my dad’s knees. Not a good greeting when you first arrive in the world.” I continued.

“Not that I believe any of this… ”, said Lou, “But you’re still alive. If Nature was after you, how come you managed to live 33 years?”

“I found my ways.” I said. “It’s not that bad once you blend into the asphalt civilization; you’re hard to track in the crowds. Besides, Nature has other problems except me and my pathetic life.”

“So, in a way, you won?” asked Lou.

I laughed hard, sarcastically. You’d think that he would have known by now. You’d think that he saw all those medical books in my bedroom, stashes after stashes of female anatomy pictures and charts of symptoms and temperatures. You’d think he would have understand by now, after two years of living and breathing together, that Nature had won all the important battles so far, and that I had given up on my destiny a long time ago.

“Just hold me”, I said, turning off the lights. He put his arms around me, warm, breezy, another misunderstood and loving ghost wandering the earth in disillusion and blind faith. Through the bedroom window, the moon looked upon me with pity.

*_*_*

Dante looked with emotion at his childhood home. Arlington was a much richer community nowadays, with all the dot-commers and AOL millionaires on a buying spree in Northern Virginia. His mom had kept the small house intact, almost as she purchased it 35 years ago from a Sears catalog.

Dante picked up the Saturday mail from the red rose-painted mailbox, smiling. His mother had a thing for roses. His childhood’s plates and cups were painted with roses in different stages of beauty; the dining room and the kitchen had rose-print curtains, bows and tablecloths. It was all a pinky-reddish flower boom.

His mother was in the small garden behind the house, planting seeds around the white fence. She was chatting with the next-door neighbor. A squirrel looked at Dante from the big tall tree in the backyard, and then ran out of view.

“Hi, Lucia!” Dante yelled, carefully stepping around the sprinkle.

They called each other by their first name; it was a deal they made 30 years ago, one of the several secret deals that they forged out while trying to survive poverty and adversity and had nobody else but each other to hold.

“Dante!” his mother exclaimed. “Oh, my darling, what a surprise!”

“Hello, Mr. Saccas!” Dante said, waiving to the neighbor. “How are you today?”

“Oh, just fine, just fine”, the neighbor answered; he was a skinny old man who looked just the same ever since Dante could remember. “Ah”, he added, “You look bellissimo, what a pleasure to see you. Your mamma was just talking about you, what a good job you have. Bravo, bravo, it’s a pleasure to see you.”

“Just stopped by to see my mom, sir”, Dante answered. “I just had a craving for those chocolate cookies she makes.”

Lucia looked at him, smiling.

“Let’s go inside, honey”, she said, “I’ll make you some tea.”

An hour later, while Dante finished his sixth cup of tea, he finally got the courage to start the questions.

“Lucia”, he said, “I need to talk to you about Dad.”

She lost her smile; “Dad” was not a subject of conversation in her house, and her son knew it well.

“I know”, Dante answered the silent accusation, “but something happened. I found Dad’s name on a list of speakers for my Company.”

“A list of what?” asked Lucia, suddenly cold and rational.

“Some speakers for some meeting”, Dante said. “Why? Who would do that? Why would he be on a list? It is driving me crazy, mom. What do you make of this?”

“What meeting?” she asked again in the same tone of voice.

“The stupid shareholder meeting next Monday”, Dante answered impatiently. “Does it matter?”

Lucia stood up slowly and went back to the kitchen. She washed the cups, then washed her hands carefully, again and again.

“Mom?” asked Dante, following her. “Does this mean he is alive? It has to mean at least that, right? Right?”

“I don’t know”, said Lucia. “I don’t know more about you father than Mr. Saccas next door does. I swear this is the truth.”

There was nothing he could hang on to. Not a small glimpse of hope, a clue. “You have to tell me about him, mom”, he said, frustrated. “All you’ve ever told me was his name. I need to know what he was like, where he worked, what he liked, why he left.”

Lucia sat down again, hands shaking. “It is very painful for me to talk about him, Dante”, she said. “Don’t you see how much pain that man has caused me? Why do you want to put me through this?”

Dante felt bad instantly; he had only thought about himself and had forgotten about her own feelings.

“I’m sorry”, he said mildly, holding her hand. “I don’t know why I came here to ask you about it. I mean, it’s a Company memo, it’s not like you can possibly know anything about it.”

“That’s right”, she answered. “I don’t know where he is or what has become of him, Dante. Maybe he is a speaker. Maybe he lives down the street. I don’t know and I don’t care to know. Do you understand me?”

He did not, but he pretended he did. He felt he had no right to bring back painful memories for her.

When he left, his mom waved him good bye from the front door and went back inside. Dante turned his head and, through the window, saw his mom on the phone. He smiled at her.

“You’re leaving already?” asked Mr. Saccas, still cutting weeds in the garden.

“Yes, I have to go”, answered Dante. “Nice weather today, huh?”

“Yes, indeed”, said Mr. Saccas. “You come back soon, okay?”

“Sure thing”, said Dante.

As he was getting into the car, Mr. Saccas hurried inside to answer the ringing phone.

*-*-*

My first distinct memory, which I have never disclosed to Dante, was one of a truck out of control heading toward me. I was 3 years old and I was standing at the foot of the hill on Main Street, in my hometown. I was there shopping with my grandmother; while she was busy buying the bread, I saw the friendly man from the donuts shop waving at me. I waved back; he smiled at me and secretly made an inviting gesture – there were fresh donuts baking and I was offered the first bite.

I did not read the numbers; at that age, the smell of fried donuts was very tempting to me; besides, I had figured out my hometown by then and it was safe almost all over. A small, industrial city in the north of the Carpathians Mountains, it was an oasis of steel and asphalt that had kept Nature at bay. The numbers were flat and boring; there was nothing new being born or changed; there was a big 4 hanging in front of the Police station that has not moved an inch since I can remember.

In a happy enthusiasm, which I lost a long time ago, I sprang in the directions of the donuts; as I was crossing the street, I saw the truck. My grandmother screamed first, followed by the bread storeowner and then by the other people in the market. The donuts man did not scream; he looked at me and it was then that I saw the evil pattern clearly mirroring in his eyes.

The truck was out of control; later, people told me the brakes did not hold and the driver was terrified. But I have seen the driver’s face – in those precious moments, all the numbers aligned and confessed to me; he was not scared. He was cold and determined, and he was no ordinary man; his lips were counting; his truck’s trajectory seemed random but I have actually seen it carefully following an 8-star path which ended at the donuts shop’s door. There was no mistake in my mind – I knew that I was the target.

I have played that scene in my mind many times. It awoke my extreme precision in navigating danger with nothing but instinct; to calculate trajectories and multiply ten-digit numbers in nanoseconds; always correctly, always consistently. It was that day when my whole power came out from inside my childish body and took over my life, never again to leave.

Because I just saw the solution with no effort; I saw the narrow gate I could escape through. As the truck wheezed past me, all I did was to move my foot one seventh of an inch and lose my equilibrium onto the 8-star pattern; it held me for a few moments, and it was all that I needed. My grandmother says that she saw me bending around the truck like a vine, tunneling it, filling out the gaps in the space that were available for my body to occupy without touching it.

But one more thing happened in that moment; I had been tested and I had now proven what I could do. I was a tumor on the normal, dying cycle of life; I was threatening the balance; I was to be destroyed. When the natural law acts, it is all-powerful; it has not only a second plan but a third plan and a fourth plan; it does not play mind-games and tricks; it is direct and true, as the keeper of life has to be. Nature saw that I was not easy to kill and saw that it might have to take its time to do so; but it also saw the opportunity to stop from repeating the same mistake it made when it let me be born into life.

As I regained my balance, one number changed slightly. I noticed it immediately and tried to move away from unstable, alive, unknown support.