With outstretched fingers she took the lump of meat he was offering her and held it away from her, at the same time pretending to be very happy with the gift. She looked down at her hand and it took her a few seconds to realise that he was speaking the truth. She was holding half of a heart. A very large heart, much larger than the model they had looked at in her biology class and she hoped dearly that it was a cow’s organ.
“Treat it as if it were mine: press it close to your heart,” he said. “Heart next to heart.”
She looked at the axe, at the eyes above it and tried to smile when she held the thing next to her own heart.
“You’re happy, I can see that,” he said. “I’ll give you a friendly hand. I’ve still got that. As I told you, I’d lost a friend, but not all at once. I was walking through the woods, loosing my friend piece by piece, just as it always happens when you lose a friend. Bit by bit. I’m sad about that too.”
Too late, he was too late again!
The name collector was standing in front of the tank, the two old men walked back and stood next to him. The end.
Raf felt like crying again. He had fucked up earlier with Aco, destroyed the campsite and now he had allowed the rescuers to meet up with their death. There was just one person left to save and he was not going to make another mistake.
“You said that ten minutes ago, when you came to warn the rescuers!” said a cynical voice inside him.
No, there would not be another mistake. The girl from the ferry was on her way to the villa. He would catch up with her and save her. He slowly crept out of the reach of the tank lights and ran off as fast as he could.
Adriano was over the moon. They kept going on about how deaf he was and now he heard the boy’s quietly spoken question very clearly, without looking at his lips.
Ana was holding the friendly hand in her left hand, pressing the heart to her chest with her right hand and praying to God to save her and allow her to become unconscious. How much more could she take? She would never had thought that she would be able to endure talking to a butcher, a monster from the very centre of hell for such a long time.
“You must tell me,” said Alfonz, “what you feel for me. And don’t lie to me, I’ll know if you’re not telling the truth.”
Ana wanted to scream, cry, shout, but knew that talking was her only chance of survival.
“Do you feel anything at all for me?”
“Eeeehm? would I be here if I didn’t?”
He calmed down visibly.
“Indeed,” he said, “you did come of your own accord. You did. But which level are you at? Do you like me, are you fond of me or do you love me?”
“Eeeehm? I can’t? how shall I say it? you know?”
His voice was soft and gentle, a complete opposite to his eyes and the axe.
“I don’t know. You’ve got to tell me. I don’t know.”
“Why don’t we just say we’re friends?”
Even before she had finished the sentence she could see by the flexing of his fingers on the handle of the axe that she had made a mistake.
“NO! Friendship is something completely different! It’s not suitable for men and women. Friendship is a poor substitute when all three levels of love have failed. How can we be friends when I’m so fond of you and soon I’ll love you?”
Say something that will break the anger and the tension, echoed around her head.
“I’m not worthy of you,” she breathed. “You deserve someone better. I’m such a boring person, without any imagination or talents.”
He shook his head and the bare teeth cut a horizontal line through the moonlight.
“No. That’s not true. You mustn’t think about yourself like that!”
He reached for her knee with his hand, with his dark, sticky fingers.
“He’s going to touch me!” screamed Ana inside. I won’t be able to take it. I’ll throw up with disgust, right onto his hand and then he’ll cut me into pieces with his axe, just like he did with his friend.
She would manage. It was not all that bad. The thick material of her jeans protected her and he only touched her for a second with the tip of his finger.
“You’re beautiful!” he said.
“I’m not, I’m not, I hate seeing my image in the mirror!”
“I’ve never met a woman as critical about herself as you. I value that. In my eyes you appear different to what you see in the mirror. There’s nothing wrong with you.”
“I have ugly legs. My calves are too big. I have to wear trousers all the time.”
He started to shake his head.
“I have to tell you something, I’ve learned this with my friend and it’s true about love too: a person is more that just a sum of his or her parts. Believe me, I know!”
Raf ran without stopping. He did not look left or right so as not to waste energy unnecessarily. His heart was rebelling, his lungs felt as if they were full of razor blades, but he did not give up.
Ana heard fast steps above her head and thought:
“Help is on its way!”
The steps came and then went again. Was there really no way out of that hell? Was she really completely alone and nobody would come to help her? Did she still have any real hope or was she just fooling herself? She would have to deal with the monster herself.
The worst thing was that she knew what she would have to do if she wanted to get him completely on her side: she would have to touch him. But she could not make herself do it. She imagined how she would slowly raise her hand and stroke his cheek. The lumpy surface on which little streams of drying blood alternated with lumps of already dried blood. She could not do it.
Alfonz tried again. He touched the ends of her hair lying on her shoulders and it was much worse than the touch on the knee. Not because she could feel the touch more on her hair but because his bloody hand, covered in dirt and all sorts of unidentifiable bits, had to travel so near her face that she could smell the decaying flesh. The smell of death helped her go on.
“You’ve got to tell me what you feel for me,” he kept saying and Ana surprised herself when she sensed a desire to kill and started to imagine grabbing the axe, hitting her tormentor and screaming: “This is what I feel for you! THIS! THIS! THIS!”
A beautiful dream.
“I’ll tell you,” she said instead.
“Tell me.”
“It’s not that simple. You have to give me time to think.”
He nodded.
“Yes, you’re right. I don’t want to be a nuisance. It’s only because I’ve changed and I’m now smiling that I dare speak to you, I would’ve been too embarrassed before. They were right. A holiday on the seaside really does change you. I can just imagine the look on my mother’s face when I come home. Oh! And come home with you!”
He was reaching with his hand again. This time he touched her in the middle of her right cheek. A short and gentle touch. The first direct contact between the two bodies and Ana was at the very edge of fainting and vomiting at the same time.
He moved away and got up. A few more bits of his friend fell off him. He said:
“Think about what you feel towards me and when I come to ask you, tell me in clear sentences. You know, I’m not very familiar with a woman’s soul. Please, tell me soon and don’t torment me. Every second of uncertainty hurts right here,” he tapped the left side of his chest with the axe. “Now I don’t need a friend anymore, just you.
