The Confessions Of A Concubine

This is a work of fantasy. Names, characters, places and events are imaginary or used in a fictitious key and any reference to people, living or dead, to facts or to truly existing places is purely random Original title of the work: Le confessioni di una concubina First edition

August 2020

IL PORTO

© 2020 La Caravella Editrice

Second edition in Spanish

Publicado por ©Tektime

December 2020

Third edition in English

Published por ©Tektime

December 2021

386 pages

Roberta Mezzabarba

The confessions

of a concubine

Novel

Translator: Barbara Maher

PART ONE

A subtle fear of freedom exists,

so everyone wants to be slaves.

Everyone talks about freedom, of course,

but no one has the courage to be truly free, because when you are truly free, you are alone.

And only if you dare to be alone can you be free.

OSHO

1.

The confessions of a concubine

The confessions of a concubine.

That is all I am.

Nothing but the concubine of my heartaches, my dissatisfactions, my frustrations, my needs which are duly disregarded, ignored, trampled, vilified, despised, burnt at the stake.

That is what I am, mocked, deprived of all dignity, kneeling at the altar of the wishes of others.

Constrained

Forced into cramped spaces that are ill-suited to my desire for freedom.

At the end of each day, all that remains is a piercing sensation of emptiness inside me, almost

as if they had stolen my viscera.

And hope to still have the desire to escape and not listen to anything any more, and forget this torment that never leaves me.

At night I daydream of being able to break free of the bonds that I have allowed to be knotted around me, and be able to do without them. Be able to do without what little I am shamefully able to get by pleading.

Mine is a one-way life, the dichotomy between giving and receiving, between the agonizing desire to live and the existence that saps away moment by moment, in the vain attempt to have my life back, the way I wanted it.

And no answer from the void full of people that surrounds me.

Thus I have learned at take refuge in the solitary universe of colorless days.

Every time I realized it too late and, trapped, became aware of the role I should have

impersonated in that moment of my life, in that situation, while at night thoughts mingled with dreams, and dreams with memories.

With time I have learned at leave the ME that I would have liked to be on a hanger in the closet, and my life went on inexorably, in the attempt never carried out to escape from the inadequacy which no-one had ever been able to allay.

2.

Memories

As a child I always had an almost reverential fear of being judged by my family, by my parents.

I went through my life with uncertain steps always keeping an eye focused on the reactions that my actions aroused.

Never once was it necessary for them to tell me what they would like me to do, what my choice should be, what decision to make.

A look.

That was enough to carry out, unwittingly, their every will.

Maybe I could have made different choices, but this feeling never emerged from the antechamber of my thoughts, so it didn't exist in my head.

I just wanted to please, accomplish, also because that was all I knew how to do.

In those days, without realizing it, the little concubine had taken shape and began to move her first steps.

I remember that I was crazy about the music lessons I took from an elderly conductor who had settled not far from my parents' house, after retiring.

I waited impatiently for Thursday afternoon, the day I went to the teacher's house: he welcomed me into the living room and gave me music lessons, letting me practice on his piano.

One day, when I got home from school, while we were all gathered around the table and my sister Silvia was making an incredible racket on the high chair with ladles and lids, my mother smiled at me and said: "Mysia, your father and I have decided that you won’t be going to music lessons any longer, but starting next week you will attend the

artistic gymnastics classes at the municipal gym.

It’s not normal that all your peers are attending those classes, while you, with your music, withdraw into yourself more and more!"

It was a bolt from the blue. Nothing had let me foresee that sudden change, but I accepted my family's decision, albeit with regret, without saying a word.

I was not good at physical activity, so much so that the teacher always left me for last, and sometimes neglected to have me do the exercises which he made everyone else perform.

I have never had the feeling of being forced to behave in a certain way, I think I did everything with extreme levity, guided by the trusted hand of those who had had brought me into the world.

If it is right to follow the social and behavioral dictates imposed by the family in which we grow up, it is equally as right to ask ourselves questions, to interrogate ourselves with all the "ifs" and all

the "buts" that buzz in our heads.

But I had none, so blind was the trust in the hands that led me.

Wise guide who takes without asking, who obtains without demanding, who appropriates without thanking.

That time for example I could have told my family that I wanted to continue with music lessons, but I was not used to thinking things independently.

It all seemed so normal to me, when I think back, that if I had to make a decision with no relatives within sight I would put the world on pause and seek advice.

Advice, the stupidest and most presumptious thing you can ask and presume to give.

My grandmother used to say: "It’s one thing to die and another to speak of death. "

Perhaps only she never had the pretense to maneuver me, to shape me to her desires, dissect

me into parts and then keep the ones she liked and discard the disagreeable ones.

Perhaps only with her, without realizing it, the real "I" came out and moved dancing freely with her eyes closed.

I remember that we laughed out loud at the silliest things or that we were moved by watching the romantic movies, on television, that she liked so much.

She stroked my hair and made me feel unique in the world.

Unique... a beautiful feeling.

My adolescence was born and blossomed in the shadow of strict rules.

I never went out in the evening nor did I ever ask to be able to do so.

I took refuge in music and reading, which allowed me to escape from what I did not see as a prison, but which was that.

***

I have no unpleasant memories to erase, more a series of colorless days, spent dreaming of living a life like a tv show.

I studied out of passion and also to please my family though they never seemed to be satisfied, perhaps believing that in that way it would spur me to do better.

So I got used to believing that I was nothing special.

I rarely looked at myself in the mirror, I believed I was even a little ugly, simply because life had taught me not to trust in myself, in my potential.

Retracing my days backwards, I realize only now that the best was always expected of me, but once I attained it, it was not worth even a mention, a compliment, and the goal had always moved a few steps further ahead.

I graduated with honors, and even that seemed

like a given.

The teachers pushed everyone so that I could continue to study but my family did not sponsor this initiative, and it was taken for granted that I should look for a job.

So, from the bright future that I imagined in the evening while reading my books, I found myself accepting a position as a stock clerk in a supermarket in my city, and dating a guy that I wasn’t even sure I liked or not.

Filippo came into my life at a time when all my peers had been engaged for a long time, and my mother was continually asking questions about why I still didn't have a boyfriend.

I had not chosen him, in fact I had never even considered him before, and I had no comparisons to make.

One day at the public garden where we met on summer afternoons, with the cicadas singing their chant, Filippo proposed to me and I accepted.

I ran home, and out of breath, dragged my grandmother into her little bedroom: I told her what had happened to me and her soft cheeks went red and she gave me the sweetest smile.

"Mysia, be careful, the world is not good, but you are so dear that you deserve all the good of this world and what sparkling eyes you have!"

So I asked her, "How do you figure out who is the right person? And above all, where to find him and how?"

Then she patiently told me how she had met my grandfather, that I barely remembered.

"We didn't know each other, and I must say, my little one, that I was very lucky to meet him. But I was also good at bowing my head when the situation required it and teaching him to do the same. There is not the right person, Mysia. Two people must become right for one another, together."

A few days later, my grandmother had a stroke

that deprived her of speech, and of a good part of her body. My father's friends brought her home with her knees grazed and her glasses broken. She had collapsed and fallen down in the square in front of the parish church.

She looked at me with huge eyes, as if trying to tell me something. When we were alone, I put a hand between the bars of her cot and she squeezed it tight. From that moment I began to understand what it meant to feel helpless and alone.

I had a thousand questions in my head and no courage to ask anyone, so I never got answers.

My grandmother passed away one autumn

morning, silently, and her Argentinian laughter no longer resonated within the walls of the house, leaving an immense void inside me.

Life had snatched an important piece from me, the only person who had ever believed in me, who loved me completely, just as I was.

"You are imperfect and beautiful" my

grandmother used to tell me.

From the day she died I only felt imperfect.

3.

And feel that I am transparent

There are days when I feel beautiful, shining.

I look in the mirror and see my face reflected, turquoise eyes, small slightly full lips, freckles that sully the skin around my nose just a little.

I run my hands through my red, silky hair, dissolving thoughts with my fingers.

In those days, to see my husband ignoring me, hurts me so much I could die: he seems to give no importance to what belongs to him by right, by contract, and like a short-sighted person does not perceive what is close to him.

I have never made myself beautiful for others, but to be ignored in this way, to be transparent, irrelevant, less than an annoying fly, is

demoralizing, and you never get used to it.

Angrily I grab the usual clasp, discolored from all the times I have used it, and imprison my hair, and with the bite of those plastic teeth I wound my heart, my soul, my pride, my self-love.

And he doesn't even understand my angry gesture.

He gives me a quick glance, as if he can’t really bring the whole situation into focus, and as always I drown in this incomprehension, and suffocate tears that want to be freed, swallowing the bitterness and that lump in my throat that does not want to go down.

Tomorrow it will change, or rather, I hope that I will change tomorrow.

***

"This haircut really suits you, Mysia!"

Pietro’s voice spoke those words, boiling oil to my

ears.

I felt my cheeks and neck flush and instinctively lowered my gaze, not knowing exactly how to reply.

I wasn't used to receiving compliments, it had been so long that... I had wanted to hear those words from my husband's mouth, I had longed for this to happen in too many dreams, and instead here is that man who did not belong to me making my skin ripple with a shiver, making the longing for pleasure that hides inside every human being come true.

Pietro was a colleague who worked in

administration at the supermarket, always smiling, with slightly long dark hair, expertly disheveled.

To tell the truth I hadn't noticed him until his gaze had begun to lock onto mine, insistently. He had started saying hello to me, looking for opportunities to start a conversation with me. And

that’s where the first comments, the first veiled compliments began to arrive.

I listened, unaware, eager, pitifully in need of appreciation.

Strange, I must say, because my upbringing always prevented me from enjoying the unfamiliar feeling of being appreciated.

In my family compliments were a rare

commodity, then marrying Filippo had not changed the situation: he was such closed man that I often had the feeling that he didn’t even notice me.

But I had married him.

And now there was nothing to do, other than accept what the meal in front of me contains, without dreaming of other dishes.

Paying attention to Pietro's words was playing with disaster, I am aware of that, but as I listen to his words, every shadow inside my heart disappears in a flash.

But it doesn't last long: as the echo of those words fades away, as Pietro disappears from my sight, my heart freezes.

4.

The search for a life

Work, home, home, work.

That’s the life of a thirty-year-old.

My life.

As a girl I could never allow myself much entertainment, because it was not right to go out alone, much less in the company of my boyfriend.

Now because my husband prefers to doze in the armchair in the living room, instead of living.

Of course, this has not always been the case.

We wanted a child, only God knows how much I desired it.

Before the wedding it was almost as if I were fleeing from the idea of such a huge commitment, then as the months passed a space had formed

between us, a void I’d dare to say, that I thought I could fill with a child.

Filippo did not seem to have the same needs as I did, his job as a security guard was enough for him.

My husband was a good man, he made sure I had everything I wanted, but I was dismaye by his lack of sensitivity and his aloofness.

The menstrual cycle arrived inexorably at the end of each month to destroy my dreams, fostered in those three, four days it was late.

Two, three, four times.

It was too much.

Too many hopes shattered...

We each thought that there was probably something wrong with the other, a mechanism that did not work properly, a spark that did not fire at the right time.

Then once I was ten days late: I did not talk about it, as if this could make my dream

unbreakable, but it was nothing more than a soap bubble, beautiful, iridescent, carried on the wings of the wind, but destined to vanish in a plof.

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

For almost two months I cradled the idea of a baby in my thoughts, a grain of life that could give meaning to mine, that illuminated the darkness of my existence.

For quite some time, after that night, I had no more tears to cry.

I was awakened from sleep by pangs in my lower abdomen that seemed to want to tear my bowels apart.

In silence, dragging myself, I managed to reach the bathroom where a horrendous discovery awaited me when I turned on the light.

My nightgown was soaked in blood at the level of the groin.

I remember screaming just once.

Then nothing.

Then only the vague memory of my husband trying to bring me back to my senses, taking me in the car wrapped in a blanket, then the doctors, the nurses like working bees around me, the bright lights on the bed illuminating my nudity.

My baby.

My baby.

Give me back my baby.

Give him back to me.

Where did you put him?

Where?

Where?

Where did you hide him?

Where did you take him?

It was too beautiful.

I know it was too good.

I felt as if I had gone crazy.

Nothing made sense anymore, nothing seemed important enough to me to live.

Filippo was almost always sitting by the side of my bed, but he didn't look at me, he didn't talk to me.

In those days of pain, his presence was of no comfort to me, partly because I believed that he was there only because the situation forced him to be, partly because I felt I was obliged to endure his presence.

It seemed to me that the few times he turned his gaze to me, pointing his black eyes at me, he blamed me without the possibility of appeal for not having been able to guard the life of our son.

One morning I woke up and Filippo was already there.

"So do you realize that you weren't even able to keep my son. What kind of woman are you, but what kind of filth are you, that you can’t even bring a child into the world!"

His eyes flashed at me, and I could not hold his gaze and lowered mine.

"You don't even have the courage to look at me, do you?"

He walked out, slamming the door, making such a loud noise that it made me jump.

Silent tears began to slide down my cheeks, and I missed my grandmother in a painful way.

I closed my eyes, wet with the tears and imagined her ancient hands caressing my neck and cheeks. It was as if I could smell her perfume and the feel softness of her breast where I wished I could lay my head even for an instant.

At that moment my mother came in.

I hadn't thought of calling her, but maybe Filippo had.

"You must have overdone it with that work you have and here you are!"

My grandmother's sweetness had not passed to her daughter, my mother, even the slightest bit.

Inexplicable how such a kind person could bring a woman so different from her into the world.

Who knows what my son would have been like?

"Do you have everything you need? Are they treating you well in here?"

My mother was practical and reliable, a perfect life planner, impeccable, but in terms of feelings she was completely arid.

I answered her with a tired smile, without a word.

"But, my star, you are neither the first nor the last to have had a miscarriage, cheer up, sulking won’t help!"

I opened my eyes again and looked at her, to see if maybe I was dreaming everything, instead she was there in front of me, with her hands on her hips.

I wonder if my son would have looked like her or me?

***

The doctors kept saying that there had never been a fetus, that it had been an ectopic pregnancy, that I had not lost the life of a child because it had never existed, that I was so young that I still had many years to have a child, that, that, that.

Seeing the condition I was in, an elderly doctor tried to explain to me what had happened. He spoke to me in technical terms that reminded me of some science class.

"Dear girl," the doctor concluded, resting his warm hand on mine, "there was nothing you could do to make things different."

Having received the medical explanations of what had happened did not relieve the pain for the loss of my son, nor did it take Filippo’s accusations of not being able to bear a child, of being half a woman, from my ears.

I came home still in shock.

And just a few days later I wanted to go back to

work: being constantly busy helped me to stop tormenting myself, albeit for only a few seconds, with feelings of guilt that overpowered me and made me short of breath.

At

work

everyone

treated

me

with

condescension, and this hurt me because it gave me the impression that in fact there really was something wrong with me.

That niche, which I had prepared for my son, seemed to petrify, and a wall, an insurmountable rock, seemed to rise up from nothing between me and Filippo, that prevented us from having even the slightest contact.

***

For a couple of years we sluggishly tried to have intercourse, no longer with the hope of being able to procreate.

Filippo snarled at me, and spoke to me only 41

when forced to, in monosyllables.

From the tests we had done it appeared that neither of us was sterile, but only that we probably could not generate a new life together.

The miles of distance between us increased.

One day I had the misguided idea to propose a solution to my husband that had been buzzing around in my head for some time:

"Filippo, I thought we could adopt a child, and besides if we really can't have one ourselves...

there are many children waiting for a family. You know, I talked to a colleague at the office and she told me that in a few months we could be able to...

"Could what?"

"Adopt a child..."

"Are you kidding? Raising whoknowswho’s child, break my back for a brat who doesn't even have my blood? You're really crazy!"

The vase, which was cracked, had broken into a thousand pieces with those words.

He dozes on the armchair in the living room, in a singlet.

I dream of running away.

But how can I do that?

My parents would die, they taught me that you don’t do certain things, they would no longer be accepted in the parish, they couldn’t even go to the baker any more to buy bread and milk.

A commitment is a commitment, and it must be kept even if it involves sacrifices, even if it involves a little unhappiness.

In my case I could have said without any doubt: even if it involves giving up living.