Laura (English Version)

I went into that room engulfed in a mysterious gloom, yearning to possess the precious treasure it guarded. A beam of moonlight illuminated the center of the room, after which Laura was waiting patiently, leaning on her back. Despite the poor visual capacity the room offered, I could guess the curve of her waist, the softness of her body. I walked slowly to the sensuous silhouette in the shadows, stopping a few inches before her.

"I've missed you," I ventured. There was no answer. Silence tore my soul. After so long... the memory of her sweet voice, her melodious singing whose notes were capable of shedding the tears of the fiercest being echoed in my mind like a seductive mermaid song.

Impatience competed inside of me against my will to gloat over that moment, a man reunited with his beloved, with half of his soul, my very identity in a different body... without her I am not complete. Her expression of reproach, as perhaps she had imagined I abandoned her, afraid of the inexorable oblivion, was replaced by a sense of relief and joy for seeing me again. Under her compassionate look my nervous fingers unzipped her sober dress, unsheathing a sculpted body that seemed carved by Michelangelo himself. I remembered that, ironically, his father was a famous Italian luthier  at the time, creator of the most distinguished works of art, including the birth of my beautiful Laura.

The emotion hit me without warning, and I could not hold the tears that welled in my eyes uncontrollably, like birds flying free at last after being prisoners from a terrible fate for too many years.

The hardship and pain had taken over my being, guilt and remorse had corroded my inside as woodworm devours neglected books, leaving them empty, destroying the beautiful stories that once were, amorphous behind the veil of putrefaction. In my temples the sound of a thousand bullets fired at close range rattled as hammers. I only had to blink to glimpse the terrified eyes of my first victim, my first tear of consciousness, my first murder. I was crying all day because I never imagined the impact it could cause to simply shoot a gun. I was not aware of what this entailed, what it meant taking the life of a human being by a dubious cause previously defended regardlessly. Since then, his memory and that of countless spirits torment me every moment, occupying my mind and my starring bloodiest nightmares. The desolation that war caused in that remote country was but a reflection of what I was now, I had been reduced to rubble. My previous memories to the battlefield fancied me as an idyllic dream, perhaps nonexistent. Maybe just ash. But the memory of Laura kept me hoping to return home to relive those magical moments that both yearned under the protection of passion and security it provided me and how far I was from them in those moments.

However, she was right in front of me impatiently now. I pinched her affectionately and she let out a low moan, atrophied from disuse of her voice. Stroking her hair, we went slowly regaining the harmony that once united us, remembering those moments of uncertainty and excitement that took place before the start of every concert, when nerves were almost tangible. Delicately, my fingers were touring every corner of her body, drawing her sinuous figure. My lips were in her womb, that mysterious place where the most wonderful sounds imaginable resonated. What injustice to humanity it was that Laura had remained silent for so long! After a long sigh, trying to empty my mind of all the war imagery and disturbing thoughts, I took my bow and tried to remember the moves that cost me so much effort to internalize and, somewhere in the subconscious, had been recorded with a hot iron. Then, almost without realizing it, I started playing that Bach cello suite I had had the honor to perform in public and in private repeatedly, invoking his spirit to help me interprete it, without thinking of anything but her beauty, her character, flowing music that filled my head to the tips of my extremities, isolating myself from everything foreign to Laura and me, melting like lovers: as a musician and his instrument constituting one body, wrapped in the mantle of a piece, speaking a secret language able to touch the world.