The Silent Observation
1092 Words
He came in to programme how she should live her days from that moment if she was going to remain with him. She remained speechless at the echoes of his voice in her ears. Elena found out that silence was a weapon in itself.
It was a living mansion twenty four hours a day, but being noisy was not the same as living. Shouts were in Italian. Telephones rang with low-spoken commands. Outside the gates engines growled. But there was a rhythm Elena had begun to study.
Dante Marino must have been mistaken in thinking that she would shrink into the category of a frightened possession. She had one job now, to watch, to learn and to remember.
And she did it in silence.
She observed how the guards were turning in shift. The longest patrols by the east garden occurred at midnight. The men used to smoke there when they felt no one was around and their laughter would faintly creep into her room.
She noticed the visitors. A fat man in too tight suits, flashing his gold rings, kissed Dante on each cheek. Another younger with fidgety fingers always in a hurry. And then the big one with the blue eyes who walked beside Dante rather than behind him—the one man she had ever known who had been treated as an equal.
She noticed Dante himself.
He had arose at dawn, before the house had awakened. His breakfast was minimal- oatmeal, black fruit, a piece of bread which he never ate. Most mornings he vanished into his office. When he came out, hours later, he did not tell in his face what the conferences within had been, whether of blood or of money.
He was always at the head of the long dinner-table, although alone he occasionally dined. Night after night on which the men were with him they never interrupted him. Their words hung on his approval, their laughter fell in to his slightest nod.
Power was his movement, his breathing, and yet… the scar.
It had left a mark on the jaw, slight though obvious stretching down just under the ear to the end of his mouth. Sometimes the light caught it. Now and then he ducked his head in the shadows.
She was staring more than she would like to acknowledge. Not being fascinated by his looks, but since scars always told a story, she had to learn his.
What betrayal left that mark? What flaw brought this upon him?
Dante noticed her, too.
Sitting in the gardens with books Alessia brought. Walking the polished halls with calculating look which did not fit the rest who had preceded her?
Most women trembled. They tried to please him. Bending was their attempt to survive. Elena was different. Very different.
The manner in which her voice, when she did talk, she wasn’t waiting for rescue. She was planning something.
By reading people, by dismantling them before they could reach him, Dante had created an empire. And yet this woman sat in his house, and spoke like one, who was drawing her own map out in a quiet way.
It unsettled him.
And unsettled things were to be monitored.
One afternoon he was spotted looking at her.
She sat in the library faking to flip through a leather-bound volume of Italian poetry. And yet she was concentrating on the reflection in the glass cabinet by her side. Dante was in the doorway and still with closed arms. His face was difficult to understand, but his eyes were wandering over her as though he had known beforehand that she was playing.
Elena flipped the page with her gaze and her lashes had to drop to hide the spark.
Finally, his voice cut the air.
“Do you read or do you feign?”
She raised her eyes and looked him in the face. “Depends on whether you want to know the truth or the one that will put you at ease?”
The corner of his mouth twitched—not quite a smile. More of a curiosity aroused and beaten into place.
He entered the room, with every step. “The truth.”
“Okay then,” said she, “I am not interested in poetry tonight. I’m interested in people.”
“People?” His tone sharpened.
“Yes,” she said, standing slowly. “What they do when they believe that no one is looking. What they leave unsaid. It is more sincere than page words.”
Dante watched her, and his eyes enough to tell her he was not accustomed to be answered in this manner.
He left without another word but silence enough to tell her he was watching her, too.
Alessia observed, but never referred to it. One night she was brushing the hair of Elena, and then whispered, “You know, you should be careful, signorina. The master doesn’t like puzzles.”
Elena looked into the mirror. “And what if he discovers one?
Alessia blushed, and turned her head. “He solves it. Or he destroys it.”
The words remained long after Alessia had gone.
Elena sometimes stayed awake at night looking at the ceiling. She still hated Dante. Her hate became obvious even in the events, and every day life. Yet with the hate there was something dangerous. Curiosity.
Her shouts of revenge became less and less audible and were substituted by silent desires. She would not only survive. She would learn him. Every habit, every weakness and every scar. And then she would use it.
In his study, Dante quietly sat, a glass of strong drink beside him, but not drunk. The scar on his jaw was reflected in the fire, and shadows covered his face. He imagined the girl on the stair. How calm she was.
Most women feared him. But Elena? She was examining him as she already determined that he bled like anybody. She left quietly but he knew she was there.
Towards the end of the night Elena managed to move to her window, and she saw the guards changing shift in the gardens down below. She put her hand against the glass, lips in a silent vow.
But as she turned round her breath stopped—because Dante was in the door of her room, with eyes which could not be read, and a voice so deep and slow as it were, that you could have sworn they were not of a man:
“Elena, tell me what you are planning. What?!”
- Writer
