Claudia Fernández-Nespral Huerta

                                                                                                                October 2022

 

 

 

                                                           PEARLS

 

Winter evenings had never been her cup of tea. When rain started to patter outside the window, she would play that vinyl, huge-sized and old-fashioned, containing those slow jazz melodies that got on my nerves. In fact, that was undoubtedly the main reason why she enjoyed them that much.

I accurately recall how she used to look. Pale-skinned, thin, not taller than me and with blond hair that sparkled under the sunlight. She used to rest on her brown leather armchair at the back of our living-room, clenching a random magazine while softly singing the melody that was being played. She did not read them for real, the magazines. They were only props for her, just like the annoying soap operas broadcasted on TV or her empowered and challenging look were only indexes that allowed me to embrace her in my strong arms, to dance in front of her wide opened bright eyes, and to make her levitate over the floor, with no regards for the weather outside or the neighbours’ complaints.

Certainly, that day was different. It was evening, and it was winter, a cold winter evening as the past ones, but “the eye of the sky,” as she used to say, did not pour rain but weapons. I remember her face, attached to the glass of the window, even paler, enlightened by the chandelier of our hall, while the TV set was showing men in military uniforms. The rest of the rooms were covered in darkness. I remember that day, one of the last ones. She prayed on her knees, facing the Christian cross over our bed, waiting with anxiety for my arrival. Indeed, I knocked on the door, and I embraced her as I had done every single day. I kissed her on her lips as well, and I made her a possible last gift; a necklace made of pearls that were not brighter than her wet charming eyes. “Let our essence be kept within it,” I whispered to her. But instead of letting the anguish flourish she cut the thread of the pearl necklace, took one of the pearls and dropped it into the pocket of my overcoat.

Indeed, duty ended up calling me. War was claiming every single man in the nation to fight on the front. After the call of the draft office, the scarce drops my eyes let go in loneliness, and her blessings, I got far away from home. In the following months I felt exhausted, starved up and a wretch, but never felt lonely because I had the pearl. Her smile remained immortalized in that sparkling tiny sphere.

Almost a year after, when a timid sun arose among the white clouds, I was allowed to return to my wife. As my path was being enlightened, I commenced to clench the pearl with the strength that I still had reserved for her. But instead of my flat, what I found was a demolished structure, fallen but still warm.

Suddenly, an old man who seemed familiar to me approached and hugged me after saying: “May she rest in peace. A missile collided against the building some weeks ago.” I immediately gazed at that pearly sphere and believed I saw her reflection on it. Since that moment I have not separated from the pearl, although it helps me dive into her turquoise eyes over and over again.

I am a Slavic man, now a foreigner that carries no suitcase. I am a man who has only a pearl in his pocket. I am a man who once imagined his death and left a necklace in his memory. I tried to seek her happiness, I strived to satiate her greed, but I did not realize that something as bright as a pearl can only resemble her eyes.