EPISODE XII
“Only he who has been condemned is entitled to make a judgement”.
Dismissal of a case: Ceased and desisted lawsuit. Renouncement to any purpose or intent. Suspension of the summary trial until further notice.
Nugaró, Colombia, January 21th 2018
After a month staying out of the city, Valentina got back to her apartment in Cali. As soon as she walked in, she found a package on the floor, delivered on January third, with the label “Advanced Holy King´s present”. Another gift from Balou, which added to the one received in Nugaró, duly confiscated by her parents. Involved by restlessness she unpacked it, went to the living-room, and there she read the Poem “Perhaps” seated on the floor in the lotus of thousand petals posture. Startled would be the word that suitably describes her sensation while reading. Her cheeks reddened as the pocket-mirror frightened her to death with the statement: “Dear, hazy times will come up to grip your nature”. Now, her fears were confirmed as to whether Balou had driven nuts. “These are the type of presents girlfriends and boyfriends usually exchange during long-term relationships” –she freaked out in loud voice. Not even a friendship was yet built up with Balou and now she had to face an embarrassing situation. Horrified, she turned off the cell phone after the reading of the second Poem “I saw you Laugh”. And thereby she resolved not to text him WhatsApp messages back any longer. Nevertheless, the unique visible effect of it was painful: She thought of him more than ever.
Valentina had no interest in Balou`s emotional life, she focussed on herself, she shut herself away within the range of her concerns. To her, the difference between enigma and mystery is that the first raises the interest of the scientific community, it would eventually mark a milestone once unfolded; on the contrary, whatsoever effort made to address the root cause of a mystery is doomed to failure, mysteries affect heart and soul equally, for interest in them is awakened only in sensitive persons. That`s to say, Valentina thought that mysteries are likely to be explored when a non-scientific interest arises. Therefore, she classified it as an enigma her encounter with Balou at the airport hence, a free exercise for the men of science. “No one knows, maybe Balou suffered a physic trauma or something alike” –she speculated. Valentina would share this speculation with her mother in passing, like an affair that doesn`t touch her.
The present that Gloria had delivered to her parents –Valentina feared- must have been, metaphorically speaking, a sort of barbarism. Even worse than the Holy King`s, otherwise Alba and René would have let her see it. The woeful state of affairs (by this expression her university professors refer as to a situation currently underway, a topic in the course of being tackled) brought remorse of conscience to Valentina, for she had broken the promise of opening the present herself. There was no place for deceit: an obvious common cause worsened her allergy and migraine altogether. “I must go confess with Father Philip, for breaking a promise makes me a sinner”.
So far, none of Valentina´s close girl-friends knew about her new-born relationship (better said, about the emerging bond) with Balou. Not that she had too many close friends, but a small group of them that managed to outride disbandment after High School. At the University Valentina socialized the least possible: only with classroom mates, forced to team-working, not much more than that. Afterward she always hurried home with haste, to study the subjects alone.
The apartment of Valentina has two chambers, one of them for her mother when she paid her a visit, a bathroom, a spacious living room, and a minimalist-style kitchen, ideal for delivery-food enthusiasts. Teedy bears abound throughout her bedroom, strategically placed to welcome visitors. Dropped in a wicker basket a team of Barbie dolls fought the result of aging showing their ever-lasting slender bodies. Between the bedside table and her desk (ample furniture of avant-garde design) cartoons, mirrors and pictures of the family were distributed. There were also posters of world-wide known models hung on the walls, among which Giselle Bundchen, Valeria Mazza and Adriana Lima, the top stars that Valentina liked most. The bathroom, provided with a large bathtub in its back, had shelves where she stored hair conditioner creams, shampoos, personal hygiene items, sunscreens and sun blocks, make-up bases, an assortment of powders, eye liners and mascaras, eyebrows tweezers, etc. in fact, what can never be missing in the necessaire of a model. A contrast was evident just as you enter the living-room, which offers a clean space, full of monastic emptiness, interrupted by a sofa bed and a coffee table (the latter used for breakfast, lunch and dinner purposes). With no signs of being played in the last decade, a grand black Schimmel piano laid against a wall that yearned for paintings to help cover its nakedness.
Valentina could easily imagine the lives of those famous models, well accustomed to be seduced by gentlemen well accustomed to please them upon simple request, gentlemaness diverted into slavery on behalf of the ladies they blindly decided to court. “Someday I`ll be treated like them” –Valentina expected.
Faced to the unpeaceful loneliness of her apartment, overcome by the circumstances, cracked in a broad sense, Valentina came to evoke her years at Elementary School, where she went unperceived except for earning the highest grades of the classroom, out of which she fostered a certain celebrity. A soft simile drew across her visage when she remembered enjoying the breaks with Daniela, her best friend. How dear to her heart these youthful souvenirs were! She had not seen Daniela for such a long a time, given that she studied Anthropology in Bogotá. Daily life duties, commitments and assignments dragged people away from the common places of childhood, Valentina regretted helplessly. She missed Daniela a lot because it was easy to wash her shyness away before so close a friend, to express her fears freely and unconditioned. Daniela never stood a judgment on her. Instead, she listened as a tender Justice of Peace would to a shepherd wrongly accused of crimes against humanity. Against humanity, against humanity! –those words crossed Valentina´s thoughts again and again. Was Balou hell-bent on systematically attacking her and her family? Should he be punished? Has he been acting with aforethought malice? According to her law-attached mindset, in no way should; her father thought otherwise.
The reason why she had escaped from Nugaró was pitch black coloured nuisance, a nuisance incited by René, as he put the blame on her for having shared phone number and address with a complete stranger, without taking into account the consequences. She was tired of her father nagging at her uninterruptedly. And so, it was that Valentina became aware –through the way of sorrow- of her utter naivety. Why had she shown so trustful toward Balou, it is something she ignored. But she was lying to herself indeed; she had trusted him from the beginning because she felt sure he was unable to do her any harm. Truth be said, the Holy King`s present was not a bad thing in itself, provided that we were inside the realm of unreality. Valentina thought that the present should not have been addressed to her but to a feminine angel, a nymph, for she occasionally succumbed to shyness, like in this very case.
Oblivious to the passing of time, she cleared out her daydreaming and shifted the focus to Criminal Law´s mid-term exam coming soon. She loved very much this subject, but in order to pass the exam further study was required. Anyway, it was useless: the ghost of Balou overflew her desk treacherously, allowing her no room for concentration, making her mind drift away to no where’s land. She started to lose control over herself, to feel exhausted and devastated at the same time. As unfair as it may seem, to successfully detach from Balou had gained more importance as a goal to her than to pass the mid-term exam.
She remembered not so long ago a professor of the University quoting Pierre François Lacenaire, famous French killer and less famous poet aspirant, who in his posthumous collection of poems asserted: “Only he who has been condemned is entitled to make a judgement”. This declaration affected Valentina profoundly when she first heard it and it kept stalking her mind since she took the bus from Nugaró to Cali onwards. She, always being tipped too far toward justice, proved herself incapable to stand an impartial judgement on Balou, as she –a priori- was both the claimant and the injured party. “Has he done something that deserve a prosecution? Has he violated my rights or my civil liberties? Has he in some way harassed me? –she questioned herself, sailing across the tide on a swirling sea of doubts. She would have ordinarily considered Balou a hopeless romantic, an unredeemable lyrical poet to some extent; but casting aside exaggeration, the Poem “Perhaps” might be regarded as a genuine invitation to approach each other amusingly, loftily. Caught between the need for sound reasoning and reflections, Valentina asked to the deceased Larcenarie: May I start a prosecution on Balou or not? On what grounds should I lay it? Which would the procedure be to impart justice with regards to him?
Pleaded guilty of two crimes and executed at the guillotine in 1836, boasting of his oncoming death to symbolize –in his own words- an act of protest against social injustice as well as a report on the unforgivable outrage perpetrated by the Criminal Justice System against his right to live, Lacenaire, whose university was the prison, from his tomb replied back to Valentina: “I can judge only because I have been previously condemned; your case, Lady, is different, as this guy loves you from head to toes, on grounds of extreme love he is thus excepted from condemnation. Much less to be judged. As far as real love is concerned, we should not speak of injustice or fighting, love is like a river overflowing, the utmost asymmetry available in the marketplace of feelings toing and froing. From the highest-level corner of contemplation, Love is a self-defensible discrepancy. He who loves, she who is loved, they both are free of judgement, they are sheltered by the presumption of innocence. You know, Valentina, that this man is not weighing his power against yours, he is loving you and that´s all; he wants to reach the topmost heights, the summit of love. To break even, you may not proceed to trial him. Even if you don´t love him, be sure you shall not be judged by him”. Valentina was given a posthumous lesson by Lacenaire The Wise, kind of short esoteric lecture on love from a Criminal Law acquiescent standpoint. “Wouldn`t I actually be studying for the exam after all? -Valentina shrugged, foraging in the forest of uncertainties.
Driven by a sudden impulse she stood up quickly, unthoughtfully fetched her cell phone and called Daniela up.
- Hi sweety, how have you been? It´s me, Valentina speaking. I was wondering whether you have plans to visit Cali in the near future. By near I mean in the next few days. I need to see you urgently.
- Hi back, Valen. I´m fine. Long-time no see you. The answer is yes. In fact, I´ve just landed in Cali. I am at the airport. Mom got ill, so I turned up for a couple of days to look after her.
- Is everything okey? –asked Daniela worriedly. I sensed a slight tone variation in your voice which tells me not. Go ahead, tell me all about what is troubling you. You can trust in me.
Daniela held the secret of how to make Valentina smile even in the toughest times.
- Part of your beauty, Dani, -Valentina began to adulate her friend- lies on the fact that you stand up for me anytime I need. How to say it? I don´t know where to begin with. Firstly, you have to do me a favour, a huge one. It was my fault to have gotten into trouble, I need you to keep something that belongs to me, so to save it from the talons of my father. It´s important for me, it´s key to keep it safe and conserve it. If the stuff remains home, sooner or later Father will find it and make it disappear in the twinkling of an eye. I know him pretty much.
- You mean René? But he is ever a sun –Daniela seemed to come to the defence of Valentina´s father.
- You like my father, don´t you? –Valentina started to laugh a real laugh. Come on, say it to me in loud voice –she playfully pushed her to confess.
Daniela held a second secret: there had been a love affair between her and René which ought not to ever come to light, they solemnly swore each other to take their clandestine love story to the tomb. Daniela has just gone off the rails, she had spoken more than recommended, so she redirected the dialogue to a corridor where disclosure of secrets is not permitted.
- Valen, stop kidding. I´m at your disposal. If our meeting cannot be postponed just tell me and I head out straight for your apartment. I go, we talk, I pick that famous stuff up, then I keep it safe in my apartment of Bogotá. On the condition that it fits in a taxi. I can hail a taxi to drive me up to your home all at once. Say “just do it, Daniela”, and it´s a deal. I still remember the way to your chamber, my queen.
- Oh, my friend! –Valentina said in a greeting mode-. If you could come now it will be great. I will be grateful to you for the rest of my life.
During the fifty minutes-length´s journey from Cali airport to Valentina´s house, Daniela clutched to her cell phone listening to Balou´s freaky story around his obsession with Valentina. The latter told Daniela everything that happened from November 29th 2017 till present, leaving no details unspoken, yet she strove to avoid judgements over Balou. Respecting the chronology, she recounted the whole happening, drawing a painstaking picture of the events at the same time as sticking to impartiality: deliveries of presents, books dedications, the visit to Nugaró, mystical-driven promises and pronouncements, even a recapitulation of the text messages they had exchanged. Valentina made no comments, though, on the conversations held between her and her parents, since that would have implied the introduction of her family´s point of view on the behaviour of the Argentinian writer. Thus, she obeyed the rule of Lacenaire: do not trial him. When the story-telling came to an end, while she bounced up and down in excitement from the taxi seat, Daniela cried out:
- What so divine a man he is, as cute as a button! Your daddy certainly wants to kill him –Daniela said, laughing to death.
- You got it. My daddy has him between the eyes. I don´t want anything bad to happen to Balou –that´s how my suitor wants to be called by the way. I want him to pull away from me at the soonest –Valentina started panicking.
- Could you please recite the Poem Perhaps again for me? –Daniela prayed, one kilometre before getting to destination.
Valentina did her best but in the middle of the declamation she couldn´t help never-ending tears to shed over her reddened cheeks, splashing down onto the sheet of paper.
- Either this guy moves you more than your pride is ready to admit, or he disturbs you like hell. Still, I tend to think you like him. Why don´t you show me your position clearly?
- My friend –Valentina retorted calmly, after drying the tears off her face-, Socrates used to say that it is better to be afraid of a woman in love more than of the hatred of a man. However, I believe it´s the opposite: we should be more afraid of wild men in love rather than of the hatred of women.
- By saying that –Daniela affirmed- you are acknowledging that you are fearful of this unrequited love so far, worse still, there is a hidden fear in you that the same love that was born in Balou be born in you, just you, the most emotionally stable classmate in High School. Have you gone astray, my love? Let´s make a film, and by passing we raise some funds.
- Stop, Daniela, don´t make fun of me. Be serious. Okey, I was interested in him at the beginning, it cannot be denied. But you can´t imagine to what extent his madness sickens me now. A single life would be too short a time to get to tell you the number of strange things he has texted me, not to mention long emails on the side.
- Will you let me read those “strange things” now that we meet? If not, forget about my cooperation …
- You win –Valentina capitulated frowning, raising her eyebrows.
The taxi parked across the condominium and dropped Daniela on the sidewalk opposite to the reception hall. She paid the fare, swiftly signed up the guest-logbook and then walked in: she did not accept the offer of the guards to be guided to the apartment: she knew how to get there by heart.
