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  However, the nature of things is such that where you can stay cold and unavailable with others, the people close to you can rip open any most personal, old wounds which, through the prism of time, are overgrown with habits and reactions to your originally childish and crystal clear character. After yet another scandal and a series of humiliations from his brother, one solitary dark night, Martin, taking the last of his courage in both hands, went out of the house, dressed as he was, without a penny in his pocket and set off on foot from Ndola to the capital of Zambia, Lusaka, which lay two hundred and fifty kilometres to the north.

  Martin’s father’s second wife lived and worked in the capital; the widower married her a few years after the death of his first wife. The young man walked day and night, then another day and another night, hitchhiked, then walked again and hitchhiked again under the scorching African sun, wearing out old and shabby shoes until his feet bled. He was awfully hungry and thirsty even more. He stole, ate scraps of food and continued on his way. A few times, he perplexedly stopped in the middle of empty roads, looking back at the things he had left behind, but the thought of going back home never entered his mind. He knew there was no way back.

  Having reached Lusaka, dirty and dark, he found his stepmother working at the embassy as one of the clerks. Upon seeing his unexpected, shabby appearance, Rose Krisi threw her hands in the air and opened her mouth in confusion; tears pricked the compassionate woman’s eyes. Martin, weakened from exhaustion, allowed her to hold his hand and take him home.

  After some time, some necessary calls and a few proper signatures, Martin Krisi was on a plane to London, giving his honourable promise to study well and diligently in order to return to his homeland as an educated and enlightened man.

  Already on the plane, the young man finally realised that the plane had taken off, carrying him away from everything he once knew. The light breeze of freedom caressed his exhausted, half-neglected life with its thin fingers, crooning a sweet melody of a wonderful future in his ear, about prosperity and the fact that he would live as never before. A quivering and pleasant excitement dissolved on his tongue; he finally felt the flavour of freedom. To the sound of the plane’s turbines and intoxicated sub-consciousness whispering of the oncoming gifts of fate, the young man plunged into the most serene and deep sleep of his life. He dreamt that he studied excellently and became a talented architect. He did not have to deceive anyone ever again. Business offers and profitable deals rained down on him from all directions. He bought his own house and the latest black model BMW. He married a beautiful woman and they entered this fantastic life together, passionately embracing each other.

  Chapter 6

  At first, everything indeed was as he had envisioned it. From London, he was sent to a local college, placed on the outskirts of our little town, which hosted a multitude of international students. Martin excelled as a student and the professors loved him. This smiling dark-skinned young man with kind blazing eyes and gentle laughter left no one indifferent.

  “Some argue that people do not change and the others, in turn, dispute that theory. I am inclined, Monsieur Schwartz, to call spade a spade. Yes, a person can change their outward appearance, quit or start smoking, change certain habits or clothing, but the essence contained in them long before they are born will forever remain the same as it was ordained by fate. That with which nature endowed them internally will live in them forever as long as the external endowment remains alive. Thus, I am convinced that a person who betrayed someone once will betray again without fail. He who once killed intentionally will return to doing it again. But he who, for instance, saved someone's life will continue to save lives. That is the nature of humankind and the essence of things in the world. And the impetus to repeat the action reflecting your essence will lie in meeting the exact same circumstances. Don’t you agree, Monsieur Schwartz?”

  “Absolutely correct, Pierre. They say that a wolf separated from ‘is pack, if ‘e meets it again, will definitely want to re-join it.”

  “The exact same thing happened with our hero.”

  “Enough with the philosophy, Pierre. I want to know what ‘appened next!”

  “Patience, Monsieur Schwartz, we are very close to the fateful circumstance for every name that we had encountered thus far in the story.”

  So, Martin’s campus neighbours differed from him only in one thing; they did not decide for themselves to come to England for their studies but at the insistence of their parents. They did not have a goal to rise above the crowd, to overcome poverty or to cross the threshold of despair. None of them cared about these things; each of them, individually, never lacked anything. They were carefree adult children who regarded their residence here not as an opportunity but as an intoxicating freedom offering wings from home, parents and any constraints.

  Seeing how carefree they were disposed toward life, Krisi’s ambitious plans, based on the first urges of honesty and honour, gradually began to dissolve into all-engrossing sloth, given the absence of a good example of proper behaviour. He missed the days when he was able to deceive effortlessly, without scrimping on promises and actually receiving what he wanted. For him it was his favourite game, something like fishing. Now you see your prey, you process it for a while, you make it trust you and... Voila! It swallows the hook. What a thrill these initial heady stages carry! What an excitement and adrenaline tickle your belly with the tips of their sharp little tongues while you, with the anticipation of a lurking hunter, waiting for a fallow deer to pass by. Oh, he was a master of his work! He loved it and the most interesting thing was that it seemed the work loved him back! Not once had he been caught! Whereas the deceived investors or trapped customers could not even fathom the diabolically elaborated lies of the two blazing eyes of the young man looking at them with such honesty and amiability, whose speeches, in the meantime, elegantly and artistically pulled the wool over his victims’ eyes.

  Thus, Martin Krisi broke his promise of being a good student and the light of his elusive and distant dreams about a decent and honest job, big home and a BMW receded with the darkness of his true character, dragging him into small deceptions, tremendous lies and criminal stories. In a word, the young man, before he could achieve a decent life, began a downward spiral.

  Chapter 7

  “By the power vested in me by the University and adjoining territories of the student campus, I pronounce you husband and wife! Groom, you may take the cigarette out of your mouth and kiss the bride!”

  Jonathan was Martin’s only and most faithful friend, absolutely confident in their loyal friendship. They were born in the same country, but they met only after arriving to England. The young men were what they call, thick as thieves, always ready for carefree adventures, risky trips and infinite revelry. Both were keen on music and both were in love with Margaret, whose rating amongst the men in our town grew with each passing day, overwhelming with her indisputable beauty and impeccable elegance. Jonathan, being a loyal friend and a good comrade, never revealed his feelings about the young woman to either Martin or Margaret, vainly trying to make them wither on the vine. No one really understood what she, a woman from a different social group, attractive and intelligent, with a separate, though rented flat, not a bad job and formed as a person by her age, saw in such an erratic reveller and notorious bon vivant as Martin Krisi.

  But Margaret was in love: in love in that very way in which novels ecstatically describe a fierily flaming passion and jealously thirsty absorption in the object of adoration of a loving heart. As much as she was in love with Krisi, she peremptorily and to some extent recklessly believed him in everything and always.

  “Bride! As an expression of your consent you may extinguish the cigarette butt on the forehead of this rogue who at least could have tried not to smoke during the ceremony!”

  All three of them wiped their teary eyes with their sleeves, bending in half and hysterically laughing until they got cramps in their bellies. In one hand, Jonathan held a can
of beer and with the other he blessed the “newly-wedded,” removing an improvised Roman Catholic collar made out of a champagne label as if he were a real pastor.

  No one knew nor understood the genuine reasons for this contrasting union, including Krisi himself, for Margaret differed from him in not only skin colour but rather with her overall appearance, and not only against his background but also within the entire reality. The young woman wore elegant business clothes; her posture betrayed the stateliness of aristocratic Dames of the past centuries and her gait explicitly indicated a pace of a self-confident and accomplished woman.

  The surrounding girls were divided into two camps. Those who were a little ordinary but lovely enough envied her, condemning and saying there was nothing special about her attractiveness. The others who regarded themselves more fairly and honestly and were not too plain, respected and admired her, confidently claiming that Strasberg, with her struggling and strict character and special beauty, would achieve anything she wanted.

  In the meantime, everyone agreed on their opinion of Martin. Everyone saw him as a kind, sweet boy with a sparkle in his eyes, a shining smile and a soul open to the entire world. Strange as it may seem, although it is inherent for people to make mistakes, this time society completely misjudged both of them.

  And the lovers were mistaken about themselves. The truth was that at the moment when Margaret met Krisi, she had been living in our little town for about a year and, as I have already said, the girl was extremely bored. The wild energy languishing within her, ardent as the scalding cold, could not find an outlet in any of the suitors for her heart. It seemed to her that the whole world was painfully bland and dull, outrageously the same and indifferently tedious. She needed something completely different. Someone absolutely different. A person who would be able to free her from the cage of the dank drabness and repetitive, endless days. The accidental, unexpected meeting with Krisi painted the walls of her faded solitude the colours of chocolate, depicting them with tones of joy shimmering in the sun and motives of infinite merriment; with the smiles sparkling in the light of day and colours of passion burning in the moonlit streams. It seemed to Margaret that she finally truly breathed in this fresh air hovering over the Alps, having immersed herself into the atmosphere that was absolutely alien to her, unfamiliar and unnaturally unusual. It seemed to her that she was able to break any rules that she once had by just taking by the hand one of the most free-spirited man she had ever met.

  Having tasted this intoxicating riotousness of the student life, which did not know problems nor concerns, did not acknowledge rules nor prohibitions, did not have any guidelines nor goals, it appeared to Margaret that her whole life was literally lying in the palm of her hand and she courageously managed it, finally free of any stereotypes and commitments. Whereas she was immersing more and more into the world that she was trying so eagerly to share with her liberator, the young woman did not notice that from one cage she was dragged into another, naively assuming that Krisi was the man of her life and that he loved her madly as much as she loved him, carefully trying to create one life from two.

  As for Krisi, who was hiding his shrewd and cold-blooded mind under the disarming smile of a gentleman, he was not sure of the infinite feelings of his ardent and emotional beloved and sometimes feared that he would turn out to be only a short infatuation, which would eventually dull and bore her. Therefore, endowed with outrageously ambitious plans, he sometimes looked for someone who could replace Margaret should they break up. Thus, he had a “plan B.” The young man knew that no love bought with the words fitting a needy heart, no passion and no fire could and would become an obstacle to those same tempting and calculated plans of his whole life. By any means possible, he needed to gain a foothold in England and on no account return home.

  The most profitable solution for him was a marriage to an Englishwoman. Lazy people do not like long and independent paths, but they are no less capable than the people with actively developed skills. Thus, for instance, the advantage of a lazy person is that in order to achieve their goal, they will find the shortest and most efficient way.

  The truth was, Margaret’s beauty undeniably stabbed the man to the very core of his devious young heart, igniting thousands of fires of passion in him, described in the most vaudevillian novels of our fervently beloved France. But exactly as the young man wandered to Lusaka from his town a few years back, absently turning around and thinking about going back, he now doubted that he would arrive there where the world was once governed by sincere feelings and all-forgiving love. And, standing as he once was in the middle of dusty roads, Martin understood there was no way back.

  “We will be talking not about love. Oh no, Monsieur Schwartz, that was not love. It was wild unbridled passion mixed with agony and jealousy, betrayal and deception, life and death.”

  Chapter 8

  Lawless heart! The passion enveloping it can either breathe a new life into your day imbued with the cold of boredom, or fiercely swirl you within such a storm destroying everything in its path that, rising you on the current of the wind to the very top, will mercilessly, with a new force, smash you against the ground. And I, as a true Frenchman, understand this better than others.

  The lovers understood that as well, especially Krisi. Margaret’s enigmatic energy and enchantments gradually exerted their influences and started to pervade him so much that the existence of the young woman, at some point, became more important than his own, which utterly ran contrary to our hero’s plans. Compared to successful and confident Margaret, Martin looked pathetic and childishly narcissistic.

  He felt jealous every time she received a work call or an accidental passer-by cast their eyes on her. The greed of possessing Margaret blinded the young man, shackling his hands with the chains of powerlessness, lashing his body with the whips of grievance from the woman's seeming indifference and torturing his inflamed chaotic character. The man was suffering and enduring agony, unconsciously depicting Margaret's face in the smallest details during the night, worshiping it in the morning and hating it diurnally. Jealousy grew inside of him to such an extreme degree that, eventually Margaret, as a human being, ceased to exist for him, dissolving into an object, the owner of which could be only one, and it, by all means, had to be him.

  But Krisi did not cherish his treasure, like some lucky thief would have done if he had stolen an enormous sixty-seven karat diamond from the queen’s chamber, or a collector does after finally getting hold of some valuable antique item, carefully keeping it in a separate room, allowing commoners to behold this exceptional masterpiece from a distance, blowing specks of dust off of it and lovingly wiping it in the morning with a lacy sleeve before having breakfast.

  Krisi continuously made scenes to Margaret, causing scandals right in the middle of the street, cursing her for this and that; he himself did not know for what. What he also did not know was that he cursed her for the wild and unbridled passion, which he was feeling and for the mistrustfulness, which chained his mind in the confidence that, one day, Margaret would leave him.

  This is the nature of things, Monsieur Schwartz, the human nature. Hardly does a dream arise on the horizon and beckon with the first success, when we give in body and soul, deeming ourselves great conquerors. But no sooner does the fair wind change the direction and knock the helm from our trembling hands than we become absurdly dubious and insanely jealous. Every rustle appearing somewhere on the other side of the world seems to us an infringement on our dream.

  And Martin did devour his dream with such a jealous passion, with such a mad and unbridled wave of his possessiveness, which was absorbing the sand wet from her tears of their mutual frenzy, that one day he started hating the woman for not being able to leave her. The thought of someone else touching her fair velvety skin, lay on his heart with unbearable suffering, on his heart exhausted from quarrels and tossing between vanity and passion, invoking fits of nausea and trembling of his hands. He hated her for how passionately he
wanted her and how feeble he seemed while doing so. He cursed her for not being able to control himself when she was near, each time making her feel emotions more and more incompatible with the life of love. In the fits of hatred and resentment, she continuously repeated that she would never marry him and laughed bitterly through the streams of burning tears, throwing the first things that she saw at him, cursing and insulting him.

  Many times, the man tried to break the strong attachment to Margaret by deliberately provoking conflicts, but after each passing second without her, after loud door slamming and leaving, he would run repentant after her receding silhouette, sharply turn her around and fall on his knees.

  Driving Margaret's psyche mad, unstable enough by virtue of her imagination, with his hysteria, and luring her into the whirlpool of negativity and jealousy with the quarrels, Martin tried, by all means, to get rid of the demon of feelings devouring him, raging on the inside and swaying on the waves of the gentle erotic curves of the young woman, causing a tingling sensation in his belly.

  After wild quarrels, equally mad reconciliations with ardent and passionate embraces, oaths of love and tears would ensue. Two colliding natures of always-troubled waters and all-devouring fire cemented this union by a seal of despair of an impending tragedy.

  They passionately wanted each other and equally suffered because of it, yet wanted to change nothing. They were forever devoured by scandals, mutual reproaching, infinite jealousy, love and hate for each other.

  Chapter 9

  The situation, which was already beyond the realm of proper and normal, was overshadowed by another circumstance resulting in the definitive breakdown of this unhealthy relationship.