The Confessions Of A Concubine

The pursuit of a life 29

The pursuit of a life

Work, home, home, work.

Here is the life of a thirty-year-old woman.

My existence.

When I was a child, I was not allowed to enjoy my life so much, since it was not a good thing to go out alone or even in the company of my boyfriend.

And now my husband would rather sleep on his couch in the living room than live.

Of course, it has not always been this way.

We wanted a baby. God only knows how much I wanted him.

Before I got married, it seemed like I almost eluded the idea of such great commitment. Then, as months passed, a space formed between us. I dare say it was a void, and I used to think that a child would fill it.

Philip did not seem to have such needs. All he wanted was his position of security guard.

My husband was a good man, and he would make sure that I lacked for nothing, but his poor sensitivity and his coldness left me stunned.

At the end of each month, I inexorably got my menstrual cycle that destroyed my dreams, which were fed by the fact that it was three or four days late.

Twice, thrice, four times.

That was too much.

Too many disenchanted hopes…

I thought that something was wrong with him, and he thought that something was wrong with me. It might have been something like a mechanism that did not work properly or a spark that did not go out at the right time.

On one occasion my menstrual cycle was ten days late. I did not use to talk about this, as if this fact could make my dream infrangible. But my dream was nothing but a beautiful, iridescent soap bubble carried on the wings of the wind but destined to vanish with a plop.

Silently, I let the minutes pass, and days and weeks became months.

I spent nearly two months cherishing the idea that I would have a child, a grain of life that could give meaning to mine and light up the dark of my existence.

Much time passed after that night with no more tears to cry.

I was awoken from my sleep by some twinges in my lower abdomen. It seemed like they wanted to rip my viscera open.

I managed to drag myself to the bathroom without making any noise. Once I turned on the light, a horrifying discovery awaited me.

My nightgown was blood-soaked at groin level.

I remember myself letting out a yell.

And then nothing else.

Nothing else but a vague recollection of my husband trying to make me recover consciousness, wrapping me in a blanket and carrying me to his car, and then the doctors, the nurses working hard – the way bees do – around me, the strong lights over the bed, lighting my nakedness.

My child.

My child.

Give my child back to me.

Give him back to me.

Where did you put him?

Where?

Where?

Where did you hide him?

Where did you take him?

He was too beautiful.

I know that. He was too beautiful.

I seemed gone mad.

Nothing made sense any more. Nothing seemed to be still quite relevant to live to me.

Philip was almost always sitting next to my bed, but he did not look at me, he did not talk to me.

In those sorrowful days his presence was no consolation to me, partly because I thought he was staying there just because the situation was forcing him to do so, partly because I felt obliged to tolerate his presence.

It seemed to me that he blamed me for being unable to preserve our son’s life without possibility of parole the few times he turned his eyes upon me, fixing his black eyes on me.

I woke up one morning. Philip was already there.

“Do you realize that you could not even keep my son? What kind of woman are you? How disgusting you are! You cannot even give birth to a child!”

He gave me a withering glance, so much so that I could not hold his gaze, and I lowered my eyes.

“You do not even have the courage to look at me, do you?”

He went out, slamming the door, and the noise was so loud that I started.

Dumb tears began to stream down my face, and I missed my grandmother in a painful way.

I closed my eyes, which were wet with tears, and I imagined his ancient hands caressing the nape of my neck and my cheeks. I felt like I was smelling him and feeling the softness of the chest where I wished I had laid my head, even just for a moment.

At that moment, my mother came in.

I did not conceive to call her, but maybe Philip did.

“In working you’ve surely overstrained yourself, so here you are!”

My grandmother’s sweetness was not handed down, even in the smallest degree, from her to her daughter, namely my mother. It is unexplainable how such a kind person could give birth to a woman that is so different from her.

Who knows what my son would be like?

“Do you have everything you need? Are you treated well here?”

My mother was practical and trustworthy, a perfect and faultless life planner, but as for feelings, she was completely cold.

I just smiled at her tiredly, uttering no word in reply.

“Anyway, my darling, you’re neither the first nor the last to have had an abortion. Cheer up! Pulling a long face is no use!”

I opened my eyes and looked at her to see if maybe I had been dreaming. But she was there. She was in front of me with her hands put on her hips.

Who knows whether my son would have taken after her or me?

***

Doctors kept on saying that the fetus never existed and mine was an ectopic pregnancy and I did not lose my baby, since he had never existed, and I was so young that I would still have many years ahead of me to give birth to a child and that blah blah.

An old doctor saw how I was doing and he tried to explain what had happened. He talked to me by using some technical terms that reminded me of certain science classes.

“My dear girl,” the doctor concluded, putting his warm hand on mine, “you could not do anything to make things take a different course.”

Receiving the medical explanations on what had happened did not help me get relief from grief over the loss of my child or be deaf to Philip’s accusatory words about my inability to give birth to a child and my being a halfway woman.

I was still shocked when I went back home.

I decided to come back to work a few days later. Being constantly busy would encourage me to give up being tortured by guilt. My guilty feeling used to overwhelm me and make my breath shorter.

I was patronized in my workplace, which hurt me, since I felt there was something that was really wrong with me.

That niche that I had arranged for my baby seemed to have become stone now, and a wall that was like an unsurmountable rock seemed to come out of nowhere, putting itself between Philip and me and hindering even the least contact between us.

***

We tried lazily to have s****l intercourse for a couple of years, without any hope of being able to procreate.

Philip used to scowl at me, and he would talk to me just when he had to, speaking in monosyllables.

On the basis of the tests that we took, none of us was tested infertile, but probably we were not able to give birth to a new life.

The distance between us grew bigger.

On one occasion I had the wretched idea of suggesting a solution to my husband which had been buzzing around in my head for some time.

“Philip, I thought that we could adopt a child. However, if we cannot give birth to a child, there is a lot of children waiting for a family. I talked to a colleague at the office, and she told me that it takes a few months to make it possible to -” I said.

“We could… What?” he asked me.

“Adopt a child,” I said again.

“Are you kidding? Bringing up nobody’s child, breaking my back for a brat that is not even one of my own blood? You are really crazy!”

After hearing such words, the vase, which was previously cracked, smithereened.

He is sitting on his couch in the living room. He is dozing. He is wearing a vest.

I’m dreaming that I’m running away.

How can I do that?

My parents would die if I ran away. They have taught me that certain things must not be done or they would neither be guested in their parish nor could they any longer go to the baker’s shop and buy bread and milk.

An engagement remains an engagement and as such must be kept even if this involves some sacrifices or a certain amount of unhappiness.

In my own case, I could have said, without doubt, “even if this involves the sacrifice of life”.

So, I kept on vegetating.

The years passed.

And winters followed autumns.

Everything was in order.

Everything but my existence, which did not even one little bit look like the things I did not dream any more now, not even at night.