Ruins of Autumn

58• The Three In Prison

    Just like Anila hesitated to speak when Visara asked to know if her sister was playing with Sidoreli, so did he hesitate to give her permission to enter when he heard the light knock on his office door. Through the footage of the cameras on the computer, he was watching Anila, waiting.
 
    Anila knocked again.
 
    "Come in." Sidoreli removed the camera footage from the screen and stood up.
 
    She opened the door and saw him, worried.
 
    "I thought you left since you didn't answer the first time when I knocked," she closed the door and walked towards him.
 
    "I wouldn't leave without telling you," he answered calmly and without any feeling of resentment towards her, whose loving look said that, if Anila had spoken a little while ago in the production room, she would have said that she wasn't playing with him, but even if she had replied that she was, he didn't blame her.
 
    The responsibility towards the family, especially of a woman in the jungle full of wolves disguised as lambs, where they lived, was too heavy to be lifted alone sometimes. Society expected flight from those whose wings were clipped, and instead of admitting the wrong done to them, it blamed them for not adapting to the situation and finding another way to fly.
 
    He was to blame for breaking Anila's wings. Sidoreli had separated her from her brother, Anila had fallen into depression because of him, Visara had risked her happiness, and both sisters had lived in fear that if they were attacked and needed help, no one would want to help them.
 
    He was trying in vain; it was about a murder. No matter how hard he tried to explain to her how the problem had been with Amarildo, she would never believe him. He saw himself marching into the future, whose storms created by the truth seemed ages away, and he couldn't do anything to change the course.
 
    "Does this room have a camera?" asked Anila.
 
    "No," he brought her close and they kissed. He wouldn't give up.
 
    He would win Anila's heart; he would avoid that end of the road as much as he could; and he wouldn't allow the sunflower to fall and break. He would support her so that she could stand upright and enjoy the sunshine. Anila deserved such a life, and Sidoreli would do anything to ensure it.
 
    "I like you very much," she took shelter in his arms. The security offered by them did not give the impression that they were hiding something.
 
    How she had been stuck when Visara asked to know if she was playing with Sidoreli and therefore hadn't been able to say the word "no" on the tip of her tongue, Anila didn't understand. She had just asked out of nowhere to talk about it at home.
 
    She had never thought of using him for marriage since she had feelings for him.
 
    Not romantic, but something had existed—an emotion that had weakened her, made her shy away from his gaze, and made her wish to stay as far as possible from the serious judgement of his eyes.
 
    She had wanted someone for whom she felt nothing, and now she didn't need him at all because of the inexplicable feeling of inferiority to Sidoreli, which she had tried to erase since she was in time and that feeling hadn't turned into love.
 
    But now love unfolded long and wide in her eyes just in that form, and Anila wondered if he understood it, if Sidoreli was feeling the ecstatic beating of her heart because of him.
 
    "Very much, or very, very much?" His fingers felt soft, as if they were running through layers of petals and not just her loose hair.
 
    "Very, very much? You want luxury, I see."
 
    That remark earned her a light laugh from him, and he swept Anila into a hug. He felt as if her arms weren't placed only around his waist but around his heart too; she was hugging him from the inside of his chest and holding his whole being in the warmth spread by her.
 
    Calmness in his relaxed mind made Sidoreli close his eyes, and he rested his right cheek against the top of her head. Anila was becoming one with the oxygen in his blood, and unless he gave up on it, he couldn't be separated from her. The feelings were no longer just a deep desire to be with her but had taken the form of love accompanied by the need to have her as a permanent resident in his life.
 
    "See you tomorrow?" He admired the sweet brown of her eyes.
 
    "Yes." Anila nodded knowingly, drunk with euphoria from Sidoreli's look.
 
    "I'm going now. I'm not holding you much longer."
 
    "Look how you pretend to be a good person. As if I don't know, what a manipulative mermaid with beautiful brown eyes you are."
 
    She parted her lips from one another and pulled away from him since she still had a little will left.
 
    "See you, tattooist." Anila gave him the classic playful look before leaving the office, and Sidoreli returned to work, confident that he had made the right decision regarding her.
 
    A feeling that wavered when they met the next day at Skanderbeg Square.
 
••••
    While waiting for her near the National Bank, he saw Anila wearing a short white skirt with small black squares, a light vanilla high-neck sweater, light grey ankle boots, and a powder cream coat as she came towards him from Dibra Street.
 
    Sidoreli also noticed her inquisitive and indifferent look towards the glances of the people who passed by, studied her entire outfit, stared at the way her clothes fit her body movements, laughed teasingly to get her attention, and continued the effort, even when Anila kept walking without turning her head back or to the side.
 
    She was important to him, but was he important to Anila? His self-deception was no longer drinking water because the evidence was clearly against him. She would easily replace him with someone else once she found out about him and Amarildo, although in these moments it seemed as if she wouldn't do such a thing.
 
"Hi." The rays of the setting sun brightened the fiery brown of her eyes more when Anila smiled at him.
 
    "Hey," he pulled her into a hug and placed his hands possessively on her lower back.
 
    Anila understood that gesture and allowed Sidoreli to show his rivals that he had all her attention, so they shouldn't try at all, as they would lose before him.
 
    If he would use that attention for his selfishness afterward, it would be Anila's pleasure to tell him that he had lied to himself all that time; she had never been so interested in him as she had been playing the part.
 
    "How did the work go?" asked Anila as they walked along the square.
 
    "Great." The corners of his lips lifted considerably at the feeling of her arm around his, and defence mode made him want to throw his arm around her neck and hold her in a hug. "I am getting ready for the closing of the year."
 
    "Just at work, are you getting ready or in general?" She teased him. "Do you still have any unfulfilled wishes?"
 
    Amarildo's secret drew him to the depths of the water of the truth, and he felt drowned by the impossibility of telling her. He didn't want them to start the next year with obstacles between them.
 
    "No." He was forced to adapt to the lack of oxygen with that lie.
 
    "If you were given the opportunity, would you change an event in the past or look to the future?"
 
    "I would change an event in the past." He wanted to ask her too, but he didn't want to talk about a subject that would remind Anila of wounds, which she hid and wasn't ready yet to talk about, so he just stayed in readiness for her questions.
 
    "Would you rather people hate you or forget you?"
 
    This took him time to think. He chose her to come to his aid. If he were forced to choose, would he rather be hated by her or forgotten?
 
    "Forget me," he decided. "Hate takes a lot of energy. If I have gone so low in someone's eyes as to make them hate me, I don't deserve that feeling. They better forget me and be at peace with themselves."
 
    Anila squeezed his arm more, appreciative of his response, and looked at the road ahead.
 
    "Never being able to forgive, or never being able to ask for forgiveness?" she immediately asked the next question, without elaborating further, as they approached the entrance of the Youth Park.
 
    "This..." Sidoreli found himself in a dilemma. "I can't choose."
 
    "Always be forced to tell the truth or to lie?"
 
    He stopped and turned to Anila.
 
    "Do you understand the risk you're taking by asking these questions? There may come a situation in your life where you will have to choose between these alternatives."
 
    "Now that you created it as an opportunity with your doubt, for such an event to happen, of course it might come," she threw the blame on him, as an easier way to escape from responsibility, that maybe the incident would become a reality due to her carelessness.
 
    "OK, I'll ask you some questions so that we both take risks."
 
    Anila put her hands together excitedly to answer, but she was also afraid that she could be asked about the past with Blerimi. 
 
    "What is your favourite colour now?" Sidoreli began.
 
    "My favourite colour... I'll tell you when we go out next time. I will wear clothes only of that colour."
 
    "Okay," he liked that idea. "Next question. The level is getting harder," he warned. "Do you aim to create as many memories as possible in the future or to achieve some goals?"
 
    "Create memories," Anila answered immediately.
 
    "Would you sacrifice your happiness for someone you love?"
 
    She hesitated for a moment.
 
    "It depends on the situation," she answered. "I don't have an answer for this in general."
 
    "What about the opposite?" Sidoreli also implied Visara's request to her in the company. Would she have used Sidoreli for her family? "Would you sacrifice someone else's happiness for yours?" he insisted, believing that she truly loved him.
 
    She had done that. Leonora...
 
    "No," Anila said quickly, to put her out of her mind. "Next question?"
 
    "Would you choose to never be able to forgive, or to never be able to ask for forgiveness?"
 
    Anila laughed, put in a difficult dilemma.
 
    "I know a very good place that makes crepes. Shall we go?" She deflected the choice, and Sidoreli tilted his head back, laughing at her avoidance.
 
    "OK. Since I didn't answer either, we are skipping this question," he replied and agreed to go to the address suggested by her.
 
••••
    "Don't touch me!" Anila looked only at his hands and then at his desperately remorseful face.
 
    "Please! Let's talk!" Blerimi pleaded.
 
    "No!" she pushed back and kept running with tired knees through the dark corridor with a door with iron bars behind him.
 
    Leonora, whose face was very pale, was behind the door and was trying to open the lock in it with a key, but to no avail.
 
    She was only realising that she was in prison, but not whether that corridor had or didn't have an end. She couldn't even turn her head forward to discover it, for fear that Blerimi would seize her and she wouldn't be able to escape from him.
 
    "Don't look at me!" she shouted with all her strength.
 
    "Anila," Blerimi, dressed in black, as she remembered him, extended his left hand towards her. "Forg..."
 
    "Never!" was the answer from Anila. "You don't deserve forgiveness!" She threw all her unspoken hatred towards him until those moments, but froze in shock when Blerimi disappeared, and in his place appeared a large mirror with black frames and, on it was her reflection, looking at her judgingly.
 
    "True," the reflection dressed in a classic pink suit said arrogantly, as if she were completely right. "I don't deserve forgiveness."
 
    "No! You deserve!" Anila wasn't feeling the tears on her face, nor could she hear her sobs, but she just knew that she was crying.
 
    She didn't realise how it happened so quickly that Blerimi appeared again instead of the mirror. Anila fell and pushed herself back with her palms planted on the icy floor.
 
    "Anila," he wanted to offer her help to get up.
 
    "Don't touch me!"
 
    She looked forward from the dark end of the corridor and closed her eyes to compose herself, but remembered too late that she had done wrong when she felt as if she had just passed out and Blerimi could have already caught her.
 
    "Don't touch me!"
 
    She felt only her lips move first to form that sentence.
 
    "Don't touch me! Don't touch me! Don't touch me!"
 
    The voice broke the silence in her room, and Anila woke up with her face wet with tears.
 
    She kept saying, "Don't touch me!" unconsciously until she could completely get out of the paralysis that had taken over her body. She stopped talking and remembered the whole dream she had just seen: Blerimi, herself in the mirror, his plea to apologise, and Leonora at the prison door behind him.
 
    That question, which had been asked by Sidoreli regarding forgiving and asking for forgiveness, none of them had answered, which alternative they would choose if they were forced; that must have remained unconscious since the previous afternoon, and she had seen that dream because of it, not because she was being reminded that she was responsible, why her life had flowed in that way, and the reason why Leonora Vitori was not with the man she had loved, was because Anila had been too selfish; instead of admitting that he hadn't had true feelings for her and had to let him go, she had tried to win his heart at every cost.
 
    She had never asked Blerimi if he had any problems that he wanted to share with her. She had only tried to cheer him up with her jokes when she had looked at him, not in the mood, and had waited for him to speak for himself if there was something that was bothering him.
 
    If she had persisted more, he would have confessed everything to her long before that night over six years ago, and they would have parted on very different terms.
 
    How much suffering he would have felt because of her presence, knowing that her brother, Amarildo, had taken Xhuliana from him.
 
    How had she not noticed that she had had a half-dead person in front of her eyes all that time, to ease his pain a little with her absence?
 
    Leonora's tears, which reminded her of their meeting in front of the company's building, came to Anila as well, and her glassy eyes from salty tears began to heat up.
 
    What was their story? Had Blerimi been for Leonora, as Sidoreli was now for Anila? Leonora would have had all those problems, while Anila had been dating Blerimi, and if she had gilded the truth that Brunilda had tried to make her believe, they would have both been saved in time.
 
    The past, like golden autumn leaves that never return to the tree from which they fall, held her captive again by making her imagine different versions of it that could have happened if she had chosen the right path, and, when it released her, it let her into the arms of the bitter present.
 
    Blerimi was dead, and he no longer had any opportunity to choose, not to be tempted by evil and become such; Leonora was probably still in trouble and had no support at all, whereas Anila was too traumatised to face her and clarify the rest of the shared chapter of their stories, with many truths covered up by the dust of avoidance during that time.