Sun Alley. Cecilia Ştefănescu
would bombastically call it. She lifted her knees to her chin and propped her yellow sandals on the pink silk. ‘What are you up to?’
Sal tried again to see if he could open the glass that separated him from the weapons.
‘Do you want me to tell you a story?’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘Uh-huh,’ she said, screwing up her face and huddling in the armchair.
‘It’s the story of two people, a man and a woman, who loved each other wondrously but, for reasons yet unknown, didn’t manage to stay together, and their story had a sad end…’
Emi winced, shivering all over. Sal propped his elbows against the cabinet’s window, took a deep breath and started.
‘First, I have to tell you about the boy. Ever since birth, Tristan – for that was his name – had an unfortunate destiny. He didn’t get to know his father, who had died on the battlefield, or his mother, who had died while giving birth to him. That’s where, I believe, his name came from: Tristan, from triste… The boy is adopted by his uncle, a powerful king, and raised at his court. But as you can foresee, Tristan is no ordinary child. He is brave and smart and has a magic lamp, but he also has a special capacity; that of seeing things that others don’t see. Moreover, he has warrior blood flowing through his veins. So, hearing that his Uncle Mark’s kingdom is haunted by a child-eating ogre, he sets out to challenge the monster and kills it. During the fight, however, Tristan is poisoned by an arrow. Resigned to the idea of death, he sets out to meet his end like a true hero: at sea.’
Emi sat flabbergasted in the armchair open-mouthed in wonder.
‘Well, and since love has its own way, Tristan was soon brought to the shore of the kingdom whose princess was called Isolde. And she is the one who saves him from death. But Tristan is so blind that he doesn’t notice the beautiful girl with black curly hair cascading down over her shoulders and goes back to battle instead. And he keeps fighting until, one day, he is summoned by his uncle and ordered to find the girl whose arms are snow-white and whose hair is black and curly, covering her shoulders, so that she can become his wife and his queen.’
‘Isolde,’ Emi whispered.
‘Tristan set out to search for the woman described by Uncle Mark, not realising that it was Isolde he was seeking. And, as love has its own way, once again Tristan reached the shore of the kingdom whose princess was called Isolde. And there he finds the royal stronghold besieged by the barefaced man whom he had been warned against. Sure enough, as any barefaced man is wont to do, this one tries to deceive him, but Tristan figures it out in time and manages to kill him. However, as he is hurt again in the battle, Isolde nurses him for the second time and saves him from death. Taking a better look at her, Tristan understands that she is the chosen one his uncle has ordered him to find, and so he sails away back home with her.’
‘What about her? What does she say?’
‘Well, I suppose she says nothing; she wants to be a queen.’
Emi seemed to brood for a while, making a disappointed face.
‘Wait. So on their way back, Isolde’s handmaid, a redoubtable witch, accidentally makes both of them drink a magic potion meant to make people fall in love for life. And the poor things drink it, and that’s when all the madness begins. Tristan falls in love with Isolde, and Isolde with Tristan. Love pushes them into each other’s arms, and all through their voyage they live as husband and wife, you know… but sometimes love is not enough. So at the end of the voyage, Isolde decides that she was destined to be queen. You might wonder how come love wasn’t enough… so did I, but I haven’t found an answer. The fact is that Isolde rushed into the uncle’s arms, secretly shedding a tear for Tristan. But rumour had already reached the king that his white queen, Isolde, had lost her innocence during her journey at sea with his nephew. And the anger caused by jealousy knows no limits. With extra -ordinary courage, perhaps even bordering on recklessness and pretence, Isolde volunteers to pass a test. She is ready to dip her hand in a molten tar cauldron under the oath that she had only been in the arms of two men, Mark and the monk who had helped her jump ashore from the boat. Isolde dunks her hand in the molten tar cauldron and, to the surprise of everyone present, she takes it out white as snow. But who do you think had been hiding under the robe of the monk who had helped her jump ashore?’
‘Tristan,’ Emi whispered, her face beaming with admiration and joy.
‘Yes. Do you realise? What a liar!’
‘Yes, Sal, she lied because she loved him. It doesn’t count.’
Sal, taken aback, was now gawping at Emi. How could she say something like that? A lie was a lie, and Isolde, aside from cheating on her husband, had also lied to him unblinkingly. And love – he pondered for a while – love can’t justify such things. Not to mention the fact that Isolde wasn’t really in love with Tristan; it was the potion that had poisoned their blood and was now talking through her mouth. He rattled off his theory to Emi, but she made a wry face and answered:
‘You say that because you have never been in love!’
The light had stopped shining, the wind had stopped blowing, the sounds had stopped vibrating and Sal’s heart had stopped beating. Everything had stopped dead. He didn’t dare ask her a thing, but unyieldingly carried on his story as if nothing had been said.
‘Then Isolde married King Mark and became what she had always wished to be: a queen.’
But the spell between them had been broken. Sal rooted for the brave knight, Emi for the deceitful adventuress. Emi could feel the grudge, the resentment and the misapprehension in Sal’s voice. The only thing that prevented her from leaving was the curiosity of seeing what would follow.
‘But the couple’s love affair on the ship had been witnessed by other people, who started to talk, and the talk eventually reached the king. Doubt-stricken, Mark chased Tristan away, hoping he would rid himself of his nephew. But Tristan, like a true hero, held his ground. His love for Isolde was stronger than any threat.’
Emi was fidgeting on her chair impatiently. ‘Well, I’d rather you told me how it ends. Do they stay together?’
‘Yes and no… Actually, they die in each other’s arms. So they stay together, but it kind of doesn’t matter anymore.’
Emi seemed to miss the point at first; then she jumped right up from the armchair. ‘You are mistaken. If they die together, as you say, then thereafter they are still together! Love has conquered all!’
Sal looked again at the locked weapon cabinet. ‘One evening, after they run away from King Mark’s court, Tristan and Isolde wander through a dark forest and becoming very tired, they lie down under a tree. In the morning, the king’s men find them sleeping side by side, with Tristan’s sword lying between them. They say it was a symbol of innocence, but I think it’s just a sign that their love was doomed.’
Sal took a break to behold the reflection of his pale face in the window, furrowed by the gleaming blade.
‘There is no hereafter; this world here is all there is. If I took this sword and ran it into my stomach, I would abide with you for a while: I would probably see you screaming and crying, and then, in my eyes, you would disappear and there would be nothing left. The only things that would exist after that would be the room, the weapon cabinet, the furniture, you and my gradually cooling and decomposing body.’
He remained gazing straight ahead for a few moments. Images of the story unrolled before his eyes like a slide show. He was trying to visualise the two lovers, but what he saw instead were a few familiar neighbourhood streets and himself stopping in front of a house that seemed very familiar: a house with a ground floor and a first floor. There, at the upper storey, the window was open and a piece of the white curtain was flapping outside like a flag of surrender.
They found him collapsed on the floor, his left hand full of blood, lying among the glass shards of the weapon cabinet from which pieces of glass were still hanging. Sal only came back to his senses when they reached the hospital, but even