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THE TOWER OF SILENCE (English translation,by the Author)
FIRST PART: CHAPTER I: PRELUDE
In the misty morning there was a slate-coloured sea, and the birds were away: it was a late autumn.
The letter shook once more in those white ivory hands, beneath the tapered ,slightly frayed fingers .
"About twenty minutes of drive from Saint Malo" ...
The car was rocking on a road not very accustomed to motor vehicle traffic, while the driver was humming a silly tune , drawn ,perhaps,from an old vaudeville long time forgotten.
It felt moisture seeped even his soul, leaving aside his bones ,that ached horribly.
In the harbour there was a small boat, old, faded, waiting for the few passersby who came to the place at that time of the year advanced.
The rains had flooded the passage he could have taken (and he would have been preferred) for to do a dry walk to the Grand Bé . The tiny island (almost an islet )looked like a metaphor of abandonment and solitude.
"He has not even presented himself in the hotel," he thought ... and then dismissed the idea of preparing a summary of the shameful episode starring Sartre ,involving that well known nasty urinary feat.
Involuntarily ,he smiled.
In minutes, the helpless island with those memorial stones came into view,surrounded by the cruel light of that sudden early winter morning..
Within minutes, he stood in that strangely alien soil, feeling himself almost absurd ...
The man was silent,backwards. An immeasurable sadness ,larger than silence, surrounded the figure, not too high but still slender, clad in a long dark coat.
He did not smile, nor held out his hand.
-Reid ...- he muttered –I knew you'd come ...
-Gideon- the other almost whispered ...-How have you been all this time?
- " La vie me sied mal; la mort m'ira peut-être mieux."…(The life I've done gave me wrong:perhaps death may treat me better). Gideon said, pointing to that undated and unnamed tomb.
And he continued:
-My mother's family, of French origins, had a small village in Combourg, a locality near Saint Malo.
When I retired from active duty, I decided to return the inheritance of my maternal grandmother. So,I ended up in that distant corner, not so far from the sea, not so far from the ports that have always been my obsession.
I've always been a loner, a solitary,and you know it very well. "
…..
(Ville d'Autrémont, Combourg :half an hour later.)
After a detailed enumeration of the complete works of Chateaubriand, and the usual allusion to Sartre's absurdly animalistic gesture urinating on his grave, after discussing whether the famous secret meeting between George Washington and the poet actually took place, or whether it was only a legend, after carefully analyzing the alleged cult to a Semitic deity called Yemo (apparently religious icon of the poet's family), Spencer Reid could see that the dark eyes in front of him had been lit.
The Combourg house, huge, ramshackle, was already retaining, however, the traces of its noble past.
Gideon seemed to be very happy with it, and with his household servants,, Monsieur and Madame Dutertre, who addressed him as if he were a feudal lord.
Reid never have suspected that Gideon's mother had belonged to the French nobility :provincial nobility,in this case rather poor and obscure, but still aristocratic, at any rate.
After the coffee and the lively conversation, it came the chess game, which reminded him of the old days.;
the fire in the fireplace, and, of course, the piano: Chopin, Schubert, Schumann, Grieg, Liszt (in his transcriptions of Wagner) and even (it did not seem strange at all this last election), La Cathédrale engloutie , of Debussy.
Gideon taught him some samples of historical records that he had bought on his arrival in France: disks of seventy-eight revolutions per minute (time for a mathematical analysis of this ), and huge vinyls, "thirty three revolutions, as the degrees of Freemasonry, "Gideon said, laughing.
Then, it was time for the main question:why did he make him come here?
Perchance…he was thinking of a possible return?-….
'-Never!'- Gideon said when Reid suggested the possibility, even remote-That world is dead to me.
Reid didn't insist.
Schubert (it was his impromptu in C minor) sounded over and over again, repeatedly, played by the hands of Edwin Fischer ... The "hiss" hiss "of old hard disk was stabbing the silence ,in the meanwhile their faces were lit by fire and by the clear caramel reflections ,dancing in the huge glasses of cognac.
-P lus la saison est triste, plus elle est en rapport avec moi
(The more sad is the season,it becomes the most related to me). –Gideon whispered.
No, definitely ,he did not have the slightest idea of what he had come to do there.
Surprisingly, Gideon asked:
-And ... how they've been?
Reid took a breath, bit her lower lip to muster the needed value for to tell the truth (he was not fond of lying, incidentally), and began his story, which sought to make brief, relying on a possible digression of his inveterate rhetoric,and attempting to do not let it to betray the same thread of the discourse::
-Well. Aaron got his divorce, finally, and he is now holding his young son, with such bad luck that the former wife died of myeloid leukemia just six months later, perhaps as a result of the brutal attack of a serial murderer, who undertook a time when we all had our guard too low .. Aaron hasn't married again...Our new general supervisor(you probably already knew him), Davide Rossi, is an Italian gentleman with stoic temperament and a recalcitrant epicureistic taste:he seems to be obsessive, ordered,very ordered,but , sometimes explosive, simulates he is always taking the control :but it is evident to me that he does all of this for to be convinced himself.. Jennifer gave birth to a beautiful child, and returned some time with her husband. Then ,she returned to work in the office. Emily seems more petrified than ever. Pleasantly Morgan continues as cheesy as ever, and his eternal love, Penelope, it is not so "eternal", because she is engaged to a young spectacled colleague, whom is more the type of the informatic psychopath .His name is Kevin,and he works two floors up.
That's all. I think I was short enough,and also very concise –Spencer smiled, and concluded, with a graceful gesture of his white hand, like drawing pictures in the air.
-All the concise you can be , my dear Reid.
Gideon kept the silence. Suddenly ,he fired the question:
-And ... what about you?
Reid swallowed. He feared the question, because he already knew that it was addressed to his well established (and never hidden) passion for opiates and morphine.
-I am always working,-he said,-and ,when it allows me, visiting my mother.
-Do you live alone, yet?
-Yes, of course I have not married .. -
("Not what I intended, or ever think". He had wanted to add this, but he stopped).
-Not that's what I meant ...
Those terrible,digging soul black eyes, so vigorously passionate, were fixed on his.
Gideon lit a cigar, after giving one to his young guest, who refused closely with an almost contemptuous gesture , while seeking for his American cigarettes ,that ( he remembered) he had removed from the backpack when he was out of the car ,in the island, without actually light any .
-Chessmate -said the voice,that dry, colourless voice , pushing gently with his calloused finger the ivory white king.
Reid sighed. ("It has been and will be always the same!",he thought)
After midnight it began to Dutertre accompanied him to his room, that was severely obscure,but furnished, however, with good taste: there were many books (mainly in French), a fireplace with fire in full, a huge window looking to the chateau, which could clearly distinguish the famous Tour du Chat, Cat Tower, where Chateaubriand used to sleep during the days of his childhood and early youth, perhaps interacting with the supposed specter of the dead animal,a legend that lasted for centuries.
He smiled, showing to himself his own atmosphere seemed taken from a tale written by Edgar Allan Poe.
His mind flew in search of the accounting records of paranormal phenomena observed in places like this.
("Of a total of 358 cases observed and recorded during the years 2007.2008 ... etc. .. until 2012, the 87.88 percent of them turned out to be susceptible of a logical explanation and / or natural." ,he rambled about his favourite subject,statistics)
Those moisture stains on the wall ...
He lay on his back with his arms folded behind his didn't unclothe.. It felt cold, despite the fire burning,. relentless, implacable, in the huge fireplace.
It smelled of sandalwood and laudanum, roses and oblivion, old books and solitude.
("Why I have done to come up here? He still has not talked about it ...")
Sleepless and restless, his thoughts flew to Hanckel, reaching the murky tank in which he was tortured, tormented, stigmatized with his own demons made flesh in his flesh.
Incubi infamous ...
No, no one else was there that night ... and no one else was in the corridors of the silent mansion Gideon had chosen as a refuge.
(Hanckel whipped the soles of his feet a hundred, a thousand times in every wet spot on the wall that had before his eyes .. Meanwhile, the rain was raging against the black window.
He lit another cigarette, and searched ,in his backpack , for the Pravaz syringe, and the last bottle of morphine.
He pointed to his vein, squinting, was sweating profusely, despite the was trembling, wet, against the flames that were fiddling with their shadows on the skin of his face. Pale, haggard., with the black circles around his hazelnuts half dead eyes looking like two open gates to nowhere.
(Voice of First Ghost);
(-Ethan, please, enough ... enough ... enough!
-No, we are not finished, Spencer ... Undress ... do not be timid ... I want to see the tracks that so much death and crime have left in your body-...
-For pity!'We are no longer in high school ... It's not a game ... I suffer!)
(The Voice of the second Ghost)
"Hanckel brandished his hate, the wind was silent, eyes turned toward the orbits ...
! "
"((The Third Phantom's voice):
Morphine ….Damned morphine ! " )
(the fourth ghost whispers in the rain):
('I'm a drug addict, I'm gay, I'm a genius, as it could say Truman Capote. )
... ...
Two or three hours later, the wind ceased its plaintive ditty, and,all silent, water stains became almost dimensional, and the smell of the roses wrestled with laudanum, annihilating everything at once.
... ...
II
Andante with Variations
TOPIC: THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD (somewhere in Appalachia, and is not spring)
VARIATION I:
-If you do not stop cheating, I'll bite your fact that you're a god of chocolate and cinnamon doesn't excuse you to cheat on us!- ... Penelope said, gesturing ,comically sulking.
-I don't cheat, wow!
There was only one simple shack in Appalachia, surrounded by woods, the smell of warm bread and the contesting card game for three.
At one point, when Kevin entered triumphantly carrying a large tray adorned with homemade bread, freshly baked, Morgan glanced to his cell phone, dumb, blind and deaf (these were the rules for the holiday week) lay at side, on a stool ...
_-And the next time you give a sneak peek at the damn phone, you will lose your nose, I promise!
Morgan laughed, but the dark feeling that he kept was still there, annoying, poking the peaceful rest, turning off the simple clarity of the friendly camaraderie of three.
VARIATION II:
(Where the North Pacific becomes an enemy)
(Fragments of a Secret Diary ,by Aaron Hotchner)
("Your hand is a morbid sleep that pushed my flesh tonight..Your eyes are that night I wanted to avoid.
You are me ,and I am you ... ... As Tristan, and who knows what kind of spell has inextricably linked your life to the mine.
What kind of filter did you give to me?
What kind of dark magic pays us for each other, facing the ridicule, the scorn, the contempt, and all that the world has been set as "politically incorrect"?)
-Aaron ...
-Say it , my angel
-This is like drinking from a glass that is bottomless ...
-Then ,let's die together -
( didn't want to die)
-No, Aaron! No ... let's live ... let's flee ... wherever ... but ... Let us live together, Aaron ...
….
(On the outskirts of Seattle, Washington State,
gardens of the Hotchner-Kohen's residence homestead )
-Dad ... dad! See what we have found with Uncle!
Aaron looked up, idly watching a blade of grass, and smiled at his son, against the wave of shame that rose to her face and tinged it with felt vividly as if the whole world knew his secret.
Mrs. Rebecca Hotchner-Kohen approached , smiling, with a tray in her hands
-Bravo ..! Now, lemonade for two!
_Thank you,, Mother .
-Hey, bove (grandmother)! Let no strudel with many nuts today?
The simple family life in his father's house, fishing in the lake next to the quiet shore, where the children played and laughed and chatted casually over ... almost a little paradise, which, however, he already could not enjoy.
(The phone is silent)
The black eyes soaked by sadness stroked the blond child's face .
_Go to play, Jakob ... Go now .. Play with your cousins ...
Rebeca Hotchner sat on the floor next to his eldest son.
-You are sad,-she said to him-Hayley's remembrances?
Aaron Hotchner sighed.
-'It's nothing, mother ... It will pass ... Is that our child has their very eyes, do you know? Blue and sad.
-Yes ,I know,my son... But you also look at the phone all the time, as if you were at the office.., You are in a vacation,now,, please ,scheinele (darling), remember it!Your little son, your brothers and nephews, and I ,I myself,too,…we need you, my son!.Al least for a little while !...
-Okay, mother.I promise!
…..
(Another fragment of the Aaron's unfinished diary)
("How I can promise something that I know I will not comply? Where were my sense of honour and my proverbial pride?")
("They were at your feet, like sad gifts to your were obscured by the night, were undone by the first touch of your hand")
... ...
... ...
THIRD VARIATION:
(Opera of Rome, Italy)
The Roman autumn night, slightly moist, fragrant (he could distinguish the smell of coffee, mixed with the wine of Castelli,and the violets) offered to his view a full moon, that,as a crowned empress, watched over the crowded streets.
There were couples , lovers, friends ... and also lonely ones passing by,showing a landscape of careless sensuality.
-Tomorrow morning, I will have the report .I already have requested it- Giulio Dall'Abaco was a secretary of the Roman quaestorship and also an amateur criminologist .He lit a cigarette, his hand pointing to the badge announcing the Verdi's Ernani at the gates of the Opera di Roma, and asked:
-Did you like the performance?
- "Ernani" is not among my favourite operas, but I agreed to come because you had invited me.
Giulio winced.
Both men were smoking silently for a while , until the secretary of the quaestorship finally proposed:
-Dai! Andiamo a cena in un Ristorante del Trastevere ... (Hey, let's go to dinner at a restaurant in Trastevere!) .. E poi, se vuoi ,andiamo a casa mia ... Ho un piccolo appartmento in Campo dei Fiori ... So che ti piacerá ... Ne vuoi, carissimo? (And then, if you want, come to my house ... I have a small apartment in Campo dei Fiori.I know you will like it! Do you want it, dear?)
David the same thing! What Mr. Secretary of the Roman quaestorship and amateur criminologist Giulio dall '
Abaco wanted was to make him recite, representing them, the Thirty-three Lustful sonnets of Aretino.
He looked at his pocket watch, and then drew his cell was,however, banned,since he was in his vacation..
("But ... who the hell would think to take vacations in autumn?")
-I need that report as soon as possible, and I cannot entrust the Bureau, is confidential, almost personal ... When you get it, please, send it to France, urgently ... To inspector Robert L'Heureux at the Sureté, in Paris.
-D'accordo!
Giulio Dall'Abaco adjusted his white silk scarf, and clung to his arm.
-Adesso ... andiamo .. Yes?
(Three hours later…)
...
The old book,open in the famous sonnet number five was still on the bed had insisted on hearing David's voice , waving in the climax, while reciting the prohibited verses from the Renaissance heritage.
David sat on the bed, pushing aside the green silk cushions on which he leaned his naked body, and lit a cigarette, inhaling ,snuffing the Turkish smoke with a delight almost erotic.
He reached out and took the notebook from the pocket of his coat.
Giulio had fallen asleep, exhausted by the violence of their almost brutal intercourse.
David reread, in silence,a letter that had turned yellow with timebut, still smelling of stale snuff, violets ...
He squinted.
In only wenty-four hours he would know, finally, the truth.
Those distant black almond eyes,sad,unfathomable, poked his clung to them.
He stood in silence, dressed, and left that luxurious apartment in Campo dei Fiori.
Finally, with those same eyes almond-shaped black sadly clutching his heart, allowed himself to be swallowed by the darkness that was preceding the dawn. ... ...
(TO BE CONTINUED)
