Chapter ten: the mixture of the colours
Yoh regains the inn slowly. He fears to go back there. He doesn't know how he would react if she was there. He does not know how he has to react by seeing her, if he is going to say her that he knows, or if he has to keep silence. And would he just be able?
-The syndrome of Stockholm... Why that falls on him above?
He approaches the large gate and opens it. The light of the kitchen cuts out the frail body of the girl in Chinese shade on the shutters of bamboo.
-Anna. Why... Are you...
He lets his sentence outstanding and joins the small stone basin which is in the heart of the garden. He is dropped in grass and lets his hand hangs in the basin. The small multicoloured fish of the pond dance around his hand, reflecting the Moon glares as a star dust would be walked by the movements of water.
-What do I have to make?
The hair in the face, he closes the eyes to sigh lengthily. A ball is formed in his throat, and of new tears sigh to cut through a path in his eyes. He poses his arm on those and shakes the head.
-Not yet! It is enough! It is not my fault!
He opens the eyes and poses them on the incipient Moon. A pearl. One would have said a pearl, hang in a black and inaccessible vastness. Just like Her. She is his Pearl, the small jewel which shines continuously in the black of the all-day-life. The only one which gives him the force to continue to be raised, still and still, to fight against all the obstacles, against all that wanted to block him in his way. She is like...
-A lantern...
A diffuse gleam illuminates the boy. Anna appears, carrying a small candle in the heart of a metal prison.
-Yoh...What are you making there?
The boy raises and rubs the eyes.
-If you want to sleep, it is not the best place, he says her while smiling.
A mask is so easy to cover. It is enough one moment, of thousandths of second to recompose a face. Whereas our heart spends years to be forgotten and to erase the wounds.
-I know it already...
She poses the lamp on a table close to the pond, and sits down close to him.
-You know Yoh...
She stops, and raises the eyes towards the Moon in her turn. The boy feels the ball in his throat to be reformed. Is she going to speak to him about the fact that she feels. Is she going to acknowledge to him that she is turned over to observe Hao? Is she going to recognize that she does not like him any more? -I must speak to you about something... The boy swallows.
-I listen to you. Go ahead.
The Itako young person observes the Moon and plays with her chain of pearls.
-Are you nervous?
She smiles. A truth smile. To tend. Clearly. Pure.
-Just a little... what I have to say to you wont be really pleasant, neither for you nor for me...
The boy agrees.
-Let us do our better so that it is not more difficult than that is it already...
Anna looks at the basin by lowering the eyes. Yoh bits the lip. He wants to be struck. What a idiotic! Why doesn't he find the words, now that he needs them? Where has the insurance passed, the pretence of self-control which he has had in front of Hao? What has become all the beautiful speeches which he has invented and repeated? All that it does manage to say now, it is that? "Make so that that is the least painful possible!" Why not to say to her directly that he knows too?
-Anna, I...
He scans the girl's face, and a moonbeam clings to the white skin of this one. Yoh passes his finger on the tear and catches the chin of beautiful Itako. She turns her face towards his, but she keeps the lowered eyes.
-Can't it be so serious like that, isn't it?
She gets clear and rights in the eyes looked at him. Her black eyes are bathed tears. She sweeps them with anger gesture.
-Don't you even understand when you must stop joking?
Yoh moves back a little, astonished by this rage in the voice of frail girl who cries gently right front.
-But...
She sweeps his beginning of argument of an epic of the hand, as she would have driven out a fly.
-Keep silent yourself! You must not understand? You see it well, that it is not easy for me?
The boy agrees.
-You see these tears well not? You see them hanging the light of the Moon and this candle? You see them running along my cheeks?
Again, he agrees, without anything to say.
-You do not understand that I cannot speak as I would like it? You do not include when you must stop joking? You do not see when I require...Need that you would be serious?
This time, Yoh stops her.
-Wait a second Anna.
But the girl has not finished pouring her anger. She hatred against him which does not understand. Her execration for the other, well with the shelter with his friends, far from these questions. Her dislike towards herself, her anger to have yielded so easily. Her feeling of impotence not to be able to choose freely.
-I am not...I cannot...
She falls to knees and starts to cry more and more extremely. Yoh has risen in his place, the tight fists.
-Have you finished?
The girl snorts and cries again more.
-Then I can perhaps place one sentence too. You also you must understand certain things, Anna. This kind of request goes in the two directions. If you await something of me, me, I should await something of your share in return.
He turns the back to her, and tightens the fists, like never before. A pearl of blood runs along his phalanges and crushes in grass.
-You say that I do not understand. You support that I do not make any effort. That I am only one funny, that an idiot who does not know when to joke and when he should not do it. It is true, in a direction.
He faces her again, and kneels close to her.
-But you are not in me, Anna. You do not know as I have badly, me too.
The girl raises her pupils of ebonies towards that of the shaman. She sees that he bleeds, and that he has a hand posed on the heart.
-You do not know as I have the impression that I am crushed. You cannot know, quite simply, because that never arrived to you. And I does not wish it for nothing in the world...
He poses his hands on tender grass of the garden and supports his face against that of the girl.
-You do not know, and I hope that you will never know it. Because this day, that will want to say that I definitively lost you. Look in my eyes, Anna. Do I seem to joke?
Anna swallows and snorts once more.
-N...No.
-Because it is not the case. And that was not it a few moments ago either. I... I know already that about which you were going to speak to me. You turn over to see him. You hide in the lane. He says it to me, when he came to find me this evening.
-He comes to see you?
Yoh agrees in silence.
-I know everything...I cannot know what occurs in your head, where in your heart, even if I would give all for the knowledge...the unknown draws up myself again in front of me. And this unknown there frightens me more that all the remainder.
The boy sits down slowly in grass and crosses the legs. Anna, her, remains posed on her calves. She does not cry any more.
-I do not know any more what I must do...recognizes her.
Yoh smiles and poses his fresh hand on the cheek of the girl. She closes the eyes. It is alleviating. -You must make like you feel it... She reopens the eyes and sees the sorrow which these words has caused him.
-I know that...It should not much help you like answer. I am not good with tall thing in these cases...It is enough that I fall in front of a true problem, and I lose my means. More intelligent sentences, more certainty, if it is not that which I do not want any more to see you crying... And that also that I very badly have with the belly by saying that!
She smiles, and he answers him by a small choked laughter.
-I do not want to be made feel sorry for. I do not want that you think of me. I want that you choose what you want. I want...I would like that you remain with me. But is not with me to decide some. You are free. All that I wish you, it is to be in peace with yourself, even if that musthurt me...
Anna smiles. She pushes back a straggling lock of hair of the boy, and closes the eyes. Their lips are sought gently. When they were finally, Anna cries gently. No the sorrow. Of joy. She knows now. She is in peace with herself. She would be it still as long as these lips would not leave those of the young shaman.