Ruins of Autumn

17• It's Ending.

    Conscience gave Leonora another hit when she got up late that frigid Saturday morning, on November 12th, and found Albioni in the kitchen of their home, filling glasses of orange juice on the table. He had prepared breakfast.
 
    "I wanted to wake you up, thinking that maybe you didn't want to sleep that much, but since you hadn't told me about waking you, I let you rest. Did I do wrong?"
 
    "No," Leonora approached the table, unable to look at him because of the shame she still felt for spending the last night with him.
 
    She overcame her instinct to push her husband away when the latter walked up to her, and she kissed him back. Another awkward moment, which she wished had never happened again. Her whole being objected when she tried to think constantly about Albioni, the positive characteristics that he had, and tried to fall in love with him, but it was embedded in her subconscious that she had been forced to marry him; he had known Leonora's difficult situation and had joined her enemies to stab another knife in her back.
 
    How much more trauma did she have to carry on her back in order to say "Enough!"?
 
    That day, when she had been married, she had silently accepted the defeat of the war and to get used to the pain from the presence of the knives taken during the battle, since she had seen no way out, to be saved, but now that she had discovered the solution, she imagined how Blerimi could express his love to her and remove those knives, and she was seduced more and more by the delusions of the universes that she had created as she wished—universes without pain and tears, but only with love and dreams come true. 
 
    Every time she tried to look at Albioni as a positive character in her life, the opposite statement hit her like a hammer in her brain. He was the most negative of all those whom Leonora considered enemies. He pretended to love her, but in reality, he manipulated her by being nice to her, just to keep her under his command. He couldn't be separated from her because he was afraid that society would gossip about him, that she had cheated on him, and that sin had also happened because of his fault because he hadn't been able to control a woman.
 
    Even Leonora herself was surprised by him and how he managed to live with someone who didn't love him. Albioni was very handsome, kind, and extroverted. He would definitely be rewarded for such characteristics by someone who would deserve him. Thus, he was punishing both himself and her. She had tried again and again to love him, but no matter how hard they both tried, her heart had been stubborn in its decision.
 
    'No!' it had said categorically. 'Not him!'
 
    That decision had been unwavering against every kind gesture Albioni had made towards her. Her heart hadn't been enamoured by the way he had expressed his love.
 
    'No!' cried the latter whenever the owner, who felt herself enslaved, heard her. 'This isn't love, but manipulation. He has liked your physical appearance and the kind words spoken about you by society, and he has thought to please his family by marrying such a person. If he had loved you, he would have never hurt your soul more than it already was. Never him!"
 
    But the second she had met Blerimi's eyes, her heart was immediately lifted, and, like a caged bird that needs more space to spread its wings in a free flight, it had been beating madly on the left side of her chest, excited that the meeting, which had been waiting to happen since she had discovered the existence of her soulmate somewhere in the world, had finally happened.
 
    "Him!" Her heart had summoned all the strength it had left. "Definitely him!"
 
    If she had had the freedom to live as she wanted, she knew that she would have immediately accepted Blerimi's invitation to go out and get to know him, and most likely they would have been together after that date.
 
    Maybe that was the true reason why she had romantic feelings for him? Because they weren't expressed, and they were being gathered inside her? If she had been given the chance to know him, she would have realised that Blerimi wasn't for her, and she would have given up on him, but because she was imprisoned to live under someone else's orders, out of desperation, without a solution and the support of the right people, she had created the illusion that Blerimi could get her out of that prison, and maybe that's why she loved him—for interest. In another situation, she probably wouldn't have harboured romantic feelings for him.
 
    "What do you want to do today?" Albioni asked her, ready to agree with whatever she would say she wanted to do, before she even told her suggestion, as they were both eating breakfast facing each other.
 
    "I..." Leonora kept her head down and focused on examining the situation and where she was. 
 
    The toxic society where she was born and raised in Puka hadn't offered her the right conditions to live life like a human being deserved to live, and therefore she once felt that she had lived her whole life in the wrong way.
 
    She didn't know who she truly was. She didn't know what she really wanted. She had rarely seen movies because she hadn't been allowed by her family, with their argument that she could have forbidden ideas that would lead her down the wrong path; they would be ashamed because of her fault, and for that reason, she hadn't even read extracurricular books and was still not allowed to read by her husband. For everything she spent money on, she had to tell her husband, and she was afraid that if she took the risk to read books secretly, it would be discovered by him. Albioni would suspect, for nothing, that she was cheating on him, and he would hurt her.
 
    Even if some miracle happened and she escaped from Albioni, Graniti would be waiting to kill her.
 
    To give another chance to the joint present with Albioni, to change direction? Maybe something special would happen that day, and her husband would be the one to take off the knives from her back with as little pain as possible during the removal.
 
    "I'd like to go to the sea," said Leonora. "Let's eat lunch outside and return in the evening to have dinner in Tirana, somewhere we haven't been."
 
    "OK. Where do you want us to go? Lezha, Durrës, Vlora? Let's spend the weekend there too, I say. I don't have work. I was already making plans to hang out with Blerimi, but I can cancel those."
 
    Leonora kept eating in silence, while her heart immediately increased its pounding as soon as she heard his name and understood who Albioni was talking about.
 
    "How well do you know this Blerimi?" she asked with as little curiosity in her voice as she could. "I don't want you to have any problems because of him."
 
    "Well enough to be friends with him," Albioni replied, and she was sad that he explained shortly, but she squinted suspiciously when she doubted that the reason Blerimi had been in prison for two years was because her husband had set that trap for him. She knew very well what illegal work Albioni did for a living, and she wouldn't be surprised if she found out that her suspicions were correct.
 
    Blerim Agolli had been stabbed in the back by his close friend. 
 
••••
    The sea had always been a dream in her heart to visit.
 
    She had never been to the west of Albania and the large expanse of water so close to Puka, but at the same time, billions of moments of happiness far away didn't leave her thoughts every time she looked at the sea in the brochures at the office where she worked.
 
    She desperately envied the people who lived next to the sea, those who had the opportunity to go there whenever they wanted, and she silently suffered the impossibility of being free enough to fulfil such a wish for herself.
 
    The fact that Albania had access to the sea kept her soul alive. She would have been suffocated if she had lived in a country surrounded only by land. If it were up to her, she would live on an island, to have both mountains and sea nearby.
 
    The latter greeted her in Vlora with a loud wave that wet her bare feet, and Leonora looked very happy, full of longing for the seawater after parting from it, even though the sea was in front of her eyes at those moments, but she couldn't extinguish the pain from overthinking about what was waiting for her after leaving the city of Vlora.
 
    She sat down a little further from the shore and stood in silence, her head resting on her left forearm.
 
    If only she were given the chance, one day she would come with Blerimi!
 
    "I brought you something to eat."
 
    She instantly turned her head, startled by Albioni standing next to her.
 
    "Sorry," he called. "I didn't notice that you were lost in thoughts so much."
 
    "It's OK," she took the offered crêpe and began to eat it slowly.
 
    They took a walk along the seafront to the hotel, and after eating dinner, they decided to call it a day for the night. The next day, they would walk around the city again.
 
    She quickly began to think about excuses not to sleep with her husband, but nothing that would not make Albioni suspect that she had another man in her life immediately came to her mind, and Leonora gave up, convincing herself that even sleeping with Albioni was part of their marriage and that could help them overcome the obstacles they faced. 
 
    She barely held back her tears from the feeling that she was not making love to her husband, but he was raping her, and Leonora had no strength left to endure such a crime on her body. She was all the time about to plead and beg him to stop, but she couldn't. He could stop being 'nice' to her and abuse her. Who would protect the innocent after that? She was scared that she would be judged for exaggerating. It was not said that a couple was to sleep together only when they wanted, but they also had to compromise for each other's sake. Leonora doubted that in such a case, only the woman had to obey that fictional rule.
 
    She had asked herself a lot of times before she got married, how could some people sleep with their full will with someone they didn't love, but only for material interest. How did they allow strangers, whose souls didn't know them, to touch their bodies, which required great care? Was it all really psychological, as many people claimed? If you convince yourself that an event won't be as traumatic as you think it will be, then it won't be? 
 
    She hadn't been able to adapt her life to that mindset, no matter how hard she had tried. Every night, after having to sleep with her husband, she either ended up crying silently, locked in the bathroom, or covered under a blanket with the injuries that weakened her fragile soul more and more. Now she was afraid that she didn't have enough strength left to survive.
 
    The end was starting to look dark on the horizon.