A story about an intense love affair between two p
Yet, in the end her heart chose Victor in one unexpected outburst of emotions. I believe that good hearts always make a right choice. And since it has always been our leaning as humans to rationalize beauty rather than to feel it, I cannot do anything else but commit the same blunder. Emmanuelle loved Victor because his irresistible charm drew her to him as a magnet. She loved him for that unforgettable night at a dance club, the evening after they had met.
Victor had already abandoned his mistrust to "something too beautiful to be true," as he put it. And even though we went out as a group including a couple of Italians, Aussies, Germans, and a myriad of exotically attractive Colombian girls, Victor refused to chaperone anyone else. They stood together watching the dance floor, their bodies fused to the rhythm of Salsa. He leaned toward her in attempt to talk. Emmanuelle did not care too much for words. At one point she pulled him by the hand to the dance floor where they remained side by side to the end of the evening.
Emmanuelle loved him for his relaxed, unimposing being. He was like a warm, lovable companion, an ideal partner on the road, who completes the impression of the universe. Such she found him that late evening as they strolled back to the hotel. She discovered that silence was as much a medium of communication with Victor as any dialogue. The impression worked both ways. Victor was drawn to her for her fascinating body language. She needed only to open wide her eyes or to make a half turn to communicate her desires. They spoke French to each other. For Victor it was the first time experience but because he was still shy about his command of French, he developed a mystical skill of understanding Emmanuelle without words. Beyond this, to seek any other reasons for his submission to her charm would equal witchcraft. The concentration of energy between them reached the critical levels. Nothing could sustain it any longer.
The hours before the Universe began were like the calm before the storm. Emmanuelle spent the whole day on the beach with me. I had asked her to come along because nothing seemed more edifying to me like her company. Victor and Catel climbed the old walls of Cartagena from where they gazed in awe at the sun set. Four of us watched the same phenomenon from two different places in the city. Later afternoons in Cartagena resonated with electrifying silence.
Emmanuelle approached Victor on the balcony while he was reading a book. He intended to stay in the hotel that evening. Perhaps everything had already been planned for him regardless of his will. She appeared on the balcony wearing the same gentle and most genuine smile. Nobody ever turns up like this without a reason other than the desire to speak or listen. She was dressed in a short and classic jean skirt that underlined her extremely feminine hips and lovely legs. She wore a light blue tank top whose shoulder straps, mixed with the bra’s white straps right underneath, gave Emmanuelle an irresistible countenance.
She sat down beside Victor, fixing her gaze at his eyes. At first he responded to her look with inherent modesty and reservation, but as his shyness dissipated, Victor’s eyes began to feed on her charming image.
There were moments during their conversation when their voices ceased, allowing the silence fill up the air. This was when a shuddering surge of desire to touch Emmanuelle invaded Victor. His eyes would meet hers, giving off a subconscious message of his intentions. By then he wanted to lock her hand in his, to caress and kiss it in the gesture of reverence. He envisioned finding his way to her smiling, open lips where he would share in their sweetness. Victor daydreamed because he did not know in absolute terms whether their meeting on the balcony belonged to the realm of reality or fantasy.
When I thought over it a few days later, the fine line between the reality and dreams doesn’t really matter so much. What if Emmanuelle had been a construct of Victor’s imagination, a fantasy born in Cartagena? Wouldn’t then kissing her hand in Victor’s mind eventually equal a recollection of the real kiss? In the end, our sensations all become ideas, regardless of whether they have occurred in a dream-like world or reality. Traveling, as an activity, doesn’t lie in a well-defined zone. It is a borderland between our predispositions and that what we can become under the influence of aspirations, dreams, and secret desires.
If I take Victor’s romance with Emmanuelle as an example, it sounds almost too beautiful to be true. However, it didn’t really matter whether Emmanuelle came to him as a real person or nymph. In the end what mattered was that Victor finally dared to touch and kiss her hand. He took her in his arms, their bodies meeting in a close, strong embrace. Victor absorbed a surging crest of energy in Emmanuelle’s figure. She kissed him passionately, making him throw into oblivion the fact that they were so new to one another. Their physical contact became flawless, thoughtless, spontaneous, fulfilling…
Emmanuelle stayed for the night in his room. She left at dawn, almost inaudible but visible, her skin looking silver-gold in the early rays of the sun. "I will remember her face forever, and her drowsy melancholic eyes that expressed her voice so beautifully; her hair a la Edith Piaf, her chin leaning upon her left hand and a lit cigarette in the other. She always looked at me, smiled and listened," Victor reminisced weeks later when we casually met in the south of Colombia. He couldn’t stop talking about her.
They stayed together for five days after which Emmanuelle and Catel sailed away to Panama. The Universe was born out of nothing. For a short-lived universe of theirs it was remarkably complete and fulfilled. Except for my brief encounter with Victor a couple of weeks later, I didn’t meet them again. But if you ask me, their universe is real!
Final Note
Victor is not 007. Any resemblance to James Bond can be only coincidental.
Read all three parts of the adventure!
Part One
Part Two
Part Three