Nightmarish Sacrifice (Cardew) (48 page)

             
Utterly grateful, I pressed my forehead tightly to his shoulder for a moment before raising it again to stare tenderly inside the boundless depths of his unique amazing eyes.

             
“Sharing is not a necessity for you,” I agreed quietly – not only so as not to hurt his pride, but also because I was indeed wondering if it really wasn’t – I had heard that time was able to help everything heal and to extinguish every thirst without quenching it – had it blunted his ability to get emotionally hurt, and together with it, also deprived him of his capacity of getting emotively affected at all... “But I believe that it can make you feel better – and besides, it will draw us closer together –”

             
To gain perfect command of his entangled complex emotions, Cardew noiselessly but ferociously bit his lips on the inside, but, to my utter relief, he didn’t fake anything aimed at deluding me.

             
“I am not used to admitting my problems,” he shook his head with a neutral smile which was only slightly hinting about the conflicting combination of faint embarrassment and intense rush of pride torturing his soul right then. “Maybe I’m a bit... touchy when it comes to strength of personality –”

             
“Cardew –” my voice caressed his name while pronouncing it, just like my fingers did through the silk of his dark-golden hair. “You are the strongest person I have ever known, and whatever you tell me about your inner tortures and fears won’t change my opinion. To me strength is not a lack of weaknesses – it’s a lack of display of weaknesses.”

             
Tuned in so as to feel him, I could intuitively perceive the tension gathered inside him, and my hands by instinct passed over his shoulders to apply soft but repeating pressure on them and to chase away his emotional exhaustion.

             
“Show me the scars your past has left you,” I whispered with melting tenderness and trustingly cuddled up to his chest, like a child – quietly, warmly, and even a bit submissively. “They will let me know what horrifying wounds you’ve suffered from, so I will understand and thus be able to prove to you that you are just too steeled – and not unfeeling and empty on the inside like you think –”

             
From the sharp and shallow way in which Cardew took a breath, I was sure that he was getting ready to start speaking, so I closed my eyes and simply waited for his words to pour out in the form of deep reflections and torturing touching fears and regrets...

             
A moment, two, several...

             
Minutes were passing slowly and continuously in Cardew’s silent struggle, as though their heavy wings were preventing them from hurrying with the light-hearted carelessness of youth, and, despite the boy’s determined strenuous attempts disregarding all briskly burning anguish, no sound was leaving his mouth – neither of a confession, nor even a single moan...

             
Such an avowal simply was something he was trying to do against himself, forcefully urging his own perceptions of invincibility and security to bow in front of his wish to share everything with me – and the force of habit was mightily pushing him into the opposite direction, blocking his emotions hidden by misleading him that this was the only way in which they would remain untouched and safe, and not letting him bare his secrets for fear of feeling confused and figuratively naked in front of me, repressed and subdued, weak, vulnerable, overpowered...

             
Helpless in my arms...

             
“I –” Cardew coughed to clear his voice, but I had managed to realize that he wouldn’t be able to make the confession even before he found this out himself; his eyes were deeply apologetic when he stopped them on mine again, and I could easily read inside them how furiously he was blaming himself for the display of weakness his strength was mercilessly driving him into – I immediately softened my expression even more, striving to relieve his guilt even before he pronounced quietly, “I can’t, my love –”

             
‘My love’?!...

             
Instantly, the whole of my being was filled with thrills at the sound of his voice addressing me with these words.

             
‘My love’...

             
It sounded like a whiff of perfect divine music coming from the darkest corners of his heart full of secrets even he was not totally aware of...

             
I was ready to die to hear the whole bewitching symphony it could sing me – every special unforgettable second, every touching tone which would caress me with its dangerously enchanting purity – but the life those two words were promising me was so much more precious that I was craving for it more than anything else.

             
‘My love’...

             
“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” Cardew reassured me, the tender way in which he was watching me warming up his seemingly passionlessly cold honesty. “Just that... I... I feel completely empty –”

             
‘I know what it is –’ I whispered with my caring stare only, and my hand strongly squeezed his, rising it to my face and gently pressing my cheek against it. ‘It’s fine, my love, I’m here –’

             
“I don’t understand myself –” he uttered silently, his words lingering in my hair, caressed by the warmth of his breath. “I can never feel pain, nor regret, nor fear –”

             
Letting go of his hand, I took him in my embrace again, wrapped my arms around him tightly but calmingly, and this time didn’t hide my face in his shoulder, but pressed his forehead to my neck instead; however steely strong I knew he was, in the current moment he had just opened up his heart for me – trustfully, absolutely – and I was seeing the young frail hurt boy inside him – a charming and sensitive creature, secretive and afraid but caring, infatuated with me...

             
And confused, so confused...

             
“I feel absolutely nothing –” Cardew sighed silently and his proud forehead finally rested on my shoulder, and so I did my best not to overpower him in even the slightest way; there was a touch of suppressed but perceptible grief in his voice when he went on, “I’m not even sure that my love for you is strong enough to be worthy of yours –”

             
“But you trust me,” my overjoyed smile soaked in my intonation, and I buried my fingers in his coppery-red hair and left a comforting kiss among its warm rich waves. “And I understand you – this is enough for now. In time, while trying to explain to me what exactly you feel, you will finally find the truth about yourself, too –”

             
He didn’t utter a thing – not a mournful groan, not a self-pitying sigh, a loving plea, or any word – but the silent fervent way in which he was excitedly pressing me to himself with his trembling arms meant far more for me – far more than a verbal declaration could express.

             
Cardew had finally given it all to me: not only emotional love, not only admiration, but as well real mutual trust and support – and he was finally mine, in the same way in which I had already become his – in defiance to all concepts of possessing and being possessed which we had formerly shared; we finally belonged to each other...

             
A slight movement of Cardew’s made me raise my chin from his head where it was resting lightly and let his stare gently caress my features; the genuine affectionate love in his eyes was so mighty and at the same time so utterly pure that in a moment I sensed inside myself the irrational desire to burst into grateful tears.

             
“I will never forget this night –” he whispered earnestly, his mesmeric mysteriously gray eyes not keeping his soul invisible for me anymore but opening it up and radiating strong and thankful attachment to mine, “And I promise I will repay –”

             
His solemn tone steeped in sincere gratitude made me absolutely sure that I would never be alone and in need of support anymore, no matter how impossibly hard it would be for him to help me – he would do literally anything for me, as he had already accepted the role of my partner in life, of my true protector, and would star in it in the most memorable way possible.

             
In life.

             
And for life.

             
But I would play a part in his life, too – in life and for life – the part he had never given to anyone else before: the one of the tender guardian of his mind’s obscure disturbing secrets which were indeed far more innocent than he himself was considering them; the one of the caretaker of his strong but so fragile on the inside heart, who would defend his soul from its own inner abysses...

             
The one of his beloved.

             
And – I was sure that if something happened to me and I couldn’t play anymore – if I made a fatal mistake or just ran out of my earthly days before he had – then my role would forever be without an actress...

             
And it would always remain cold in his heart...

             
But until that moment, I would be there to forgive him – even the sins he couldn’t forgive himself.

             
He would be my guardian – I would be his angel.

             
In the warm darkened dusk under the canopy of the large bed, it wasn’t clear who of us was consoling the other one, who was the helpless victim and who – the mighty protector; the two roles were so merged into one another, that, despite being the victim indeed, Cardew was the mighty one, and I was being stifled by my own fragility and helplessness although I was the defender... It was as if he was giving me the force I needed to support him, his inner strength being enough to give life to both of us, as though we were connected in a never-ending cycle in which he was the power and I was the tenderness, and the wheel was spinning on and on and on and on...

             
Both of us were feeling totally relaxed in each other’s embraces, and needed that regenerating harmony equally badly, so neither did anything to interrupt the circle – the shape of perfection.

             
My voice didn’t break the silence – it gently evaporated inside it and resonated in the depths of his soul where no mundane sounds could ever reach, “Promise that you will love me –”

             
Raising his head to meet my eyes with a continued gaze, Cardew gave me such a sincere celestial smile that inside me two tears started burning their way to pour themselves out into all the grief and melancholy the outer world had gathered in itself...

             
But it was all so far from me – all sorrows, anguish, even the world itself – all was so far away from me in this blessed moment...

             
“I will,” the young man vowed without taking his eyes off mine, the beautiful majestic gray skies in his stare taking my breath away, and his lips found mine so naturally, as if we were the two sides of a magnet.

             
However, this was not a kiss of passion – the sacred atmosphere was turning the tender contact of our lips into a seal of his oath, the signature of the drama the two of us had written and played together, the last tones of our symphony, the epilogue we would tell our children one day...

             
And the beginning of our life.

             
The dawn of the new phase for both of us.

             
When Cardew and I pulled a bit back in the same moment, there hadn’t left anything else to say – we exchanged deeply penetrating but caressing stares, and I gently pushed him to lie back down, resting beside him and dragging him higher towards me so his head would rest on the pillow, while mine was on the level of his heart – in that moment neither of us would feel comfortable if I was domineering over him.

             
It was true that he was always willing to indulge me, but this wasn’t turning our relationship into a matriarchal one – we had reached our harmony out of the frames of usual dogmas, and were not just a leader and a follower bound to each other by their common needs: a union of two dominant characters, we both needed to rule in a certain aspect without letting either of us be higher than the other in the hierarchy.

             
Actors by vocation, Cardew and I had turned our whole life into a psychological game – an ever-lasting theatrical play in which we were swapping parts and slipping into different roles so as to please one another, and then receive the same in return. Each was too proud to accept the other’s superiority, but far too much in love so as to subdue the other one, humiliate, or take him or her for granted – it was respect for respect, admiration for admiration in return.

             
And our roles were amazingly versatile – my ruler was my slave, Cardew’s suzerain was his feudatory as well – each of us was the lord of one’s own master, and the bondman to the person one had subdued – and everything combined in the faces of only two people...