Chapter 47
***
- It's not going to happen, so stop doubting yourself and hold on tight.
Reaching out with a trembling hand, I clasped the nape of his neck.
No matter how much he assured me, I wasn’t relaxed.
The spiral staircase was tight and worn, and it looked like it might collapse under the weight of the two of us.
One step, two steps. Clinging desperately to him, my body swayed like a swing with his movements.
With each calm step up the tower, a nameless feeling blossomed in my heart.
With each step, there was me, and with each successive step, there was him.
Two lives, perhaps, overlapping into one.
Like an endless, no, finite, meaningful life, there must be some meaning at the end of this road.
In the here and now, where even the wind that whispers past my ears has meaning.
The stairs of this tower, climbing with him, were bound to have a special meaning for me.
For a long time, we walked up the spiral staircase, and at the end of it was a panoramic observation deck.
We were greeted by the stars in the night sky.
An elderly woman waved to us, wondering how we had gotten up here.
She leaned crookedly against the clock tower as if her legs were uncomfortable.
-Take the lucky coin and go.
The old woman pressed the golden coin into my hand, which was still clasped in hers.
The fountain that looked straight down to the base of the tower was huge.
The clock tower was anything but low.
Nevertheless, the view from the observation deck was not a panoramic view of the city. The fountain took up more than half of the view.
The water gushed into the air, defying all reason, and was colored scarlet by the streetlights.
I could see a giant statue of an angel and a jar with its mouth open, ready to receive and swallow something.
The jar was half full of golden coins.
The jar wasn't small, but it was far away and didn't look like it would be easy to get into.
Standing close to the railing, he whispered.
- Try throwing it.
-I….
- Yes. Legend has it that a woman should throw it. I'd throw it for you, but my arms are shaking right now.
I had to brush him off with something that didn't sound like a slap.
- Was I heavy?
- Yes, I suppose you were not as light as you say.
When I twitched my lips, he quickly added.
- Just kidding.
- Not a single syllable sounded like a joke.
He merely smiled at my raspy whisper.
He turned his head as if he thought I was at a disadvantage.
- Go ahead, throw it.
-.....
I pursed my lips, but kept my eyes on the jar beyond the gazebo.
I swung my arm, wondering what it all meant, but calmly, considering its distance and size.
The golden coin flew and fell quickly through the night air.
Soon, with a loud clang, the golden coin deposited itself neatly into the jar with its mouth wide open. Even I couldn't believe what I was seeing, and I muttered in disbelief.
-..................It went in?
- I knew you'd make it.
His voice was as calm as a wave, as if it was a given.
He gently picked me up and held me. His forehead was sweaty, and the dark hair that clung to it swayed in the night breeze.
- Now and forever, we will never be separated.
He spoke of eternity, contradictorily, knowing the end was drawing nearer every day.
Then, in a low voice, he recited a verse from a famous love letter to his lover.
- My beautiful lover. May we be reborn in love without aging.
The wind whistled in my ears, and my emotions soared.
The lover who had whispered such dadidan love, later separated from the poet and married another man.
This unfulfilled promise, this meaningless vow, was lodged in my heart like a shard of glass, shattered and shining.
Unable to control my melting heart, I weep again in his arms.
My eternity in your memory, no, my eternity to live and breathe in your eternity, why did we have to share the same moment.
My universe, my world, why would it soon collapse.
What's all this superstition and prophecy?
What's the difference between living and dying?
If that coin had fallen into a big fountain, if it had landed in the wrong place, I wouldn't be thinking about this.
Why did you tell us that there is no eternal parting, when we must part forever.
Unlike me, whose tears began to fall from my eyes in a torrent of sorrow, he still spoke in a warm voice.
- Why are you crying, do you hate the promise of being together forever?
- Your Highness, you know.............
- It's me now, honey.
The blunt point was made, but my raging heart could not control my emotions.
I clutched at the hem of his robe.
My hands trembled sweetly at the white, wrinkled edges.
He looked down at my tear-stained face.
It was a mirror of my own ugliness, but I couldn't turn my head away from it.
All the darkness that existed within me consumed me in a single moment.
The thorny brambles of the inescapable space wrapped around my ankles and bound me.
Falling, falling, falling, I plummeted further and further into the endless void.
-...............hate.
- What?
- Me too, I hate it.
I've been acting like I'm fine, like I'm okay. The heart that I've been tiptoeing around and pressing down, this despicable desire, why did it burst out just then?
I couldn't figure it out.
The crumbling world, with its ugly end, was filled with things that could not be understood through the realm of reason.
- You.
- I don't want to die, I don't.................
The words blossomed on my lips, stronger than ever.
No matter how calm I pretended to be, no matter how much I blurted it out, that was the most honest part of me.
Largo, no matter what I've said to you, no matter what I've tried to make sense of things. No matter how many things I've let go of.
The truth was, I was cowering in my chest, alone, unable to take a single step forward. In this hellhole.
- It's only been two months and a few days................. God has given me only seventy-one nights left.
At the more precise date he seemed to swallow a small groan.
If only I had been sick somewhere, so I could feel the reality that I was slowly dying, even if it wasn't a prophecy.
Would the despair I feel now be any different in magnitude and color?
I was like a prisoner waiting for the appointed day of execution.
In that I had to prepare for my inevitable death, and in that it was not arbitrary, but determined by others.
But the main difference between me and the prisoner was that I had done nothing wrong.
-I am afraid to know my last day; I am afraid that I shall never again face the crisp morning sun, or walk in the cool air of this night.
- Calm down.
-I don't want to leave your side, at least not yet.................. I don't want to face the day when I'll never hold your hand again.
The moon seemed to shine like a fly in my grasp as I swept through the air.
I pressed my hand to his cheek through the night air, which felt too cold for me.
His warm cheeks intensified the wistfulness I felt.
-I think I understand the meaning of living, I think I understand the meaning of life, I think I've never been happier than I am today, in all my life, in all my days, in all my years, in all my life, .................yet.
The dike inside me that I had built up so firmly has crumbled.
The flooded heart has made it impossible for me to be myself.
I looked to you, the innocent, for answers that would never come.
- Why do you choose arbitrarily, why do you discard arbitrarily?
I ranted like a madwoman.
-Why, at such a time, why must I die?
***
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