Italian Iss: Journey Into the Singularity of Love

Coming home late, after the endless litany of meetings, presentations, conferences topped off with the usual daily grind of number-crunching reports, and after a quick supper Katherine didn't spend much time before diving into bed.

She became thirty one years old a week ago, which date also marked her first three years in the position of marketing manager with one of the local majors in domestic appliance manufacturing, and marked her thirty years -- that's right, all her entire life! -- void of any relationship. It was all about time, or the lack thereof, to be more precise. All her life she had been anticipating love and never touched it. That was something she knew but avoided dwelling upon in her daily self-reflections. She didn't experience any ultimate bliss of love -- that bliss the vague contours and sweet innermost anticipation of which she, often unconsciously yet nonetheless acutely and constantly, felt in her childhood and teens every second of her life.

Katherine was proud of her career -- as proud as she was uneasy at increasingly feeling about herself as an adult woman rather than a girl -- the gradual change in self-reflection that Katherine neither welcomed nor invited on purpose. This magic unassailable armour of her inner child -- the source of the total freedom from fear, the boundless liberty of aspirations, curiosity about the world and never-ending anticipation of love -- started to show some cracks.

It had nothing to do with her excellent physical shape or deeply charming looks. Back in her early twenties she felt herself a young girl, not a woman, for she had been successful in keeping intact the sacred bridge with her childhood, her adolescence, her "inner kid" -- the unalienable gift of her sparkling girlishness -- and adulthood to her was nothing more than a larger playground for her childhood's dreams and expectations to fulfill; but a few years ago that bridge between her true self back in her youthful girlhood and herself now, she sensed, started to crumble for reasons equally unclear and alarming.

She turned off the bed-light and, despite her tiredness, for a while the kaleidoscope of the past day -- pictures, numbers and diagrams, faces and voices of so many people -- continued to spin in her drowsy mind before she slid into sleep. Suddenly all this mishmash of voices and faces evaporated and instead the dreamland condensed her reality first into a clear and none-too-fantastical picture..

It was rather late in the evening -- around eleven -- and Katherine, as if never going to sleep, was reclining in her chair in the living room with her notebook on her lap, trying to tweak and fine-tune a couple of slides for tomorrow's presentation on the new branch of their business in East Asia, when she was startled by a sudden ring at the door.

After the usual exchange of short questions and answers, a short slim bespectacled figure of Katherine's new neighbour's son -- a young Italian lad at the tender age of eighteen or so -- appeared on the doorstep, and looked rather dishevelled due to the exposure to rain apparently without any protection of an umbrella.

He was young and had an even younger appearance -- the one of a youth who had just emerged out of the prime of adolescence with every pore of his body and mind being shocked, smitten, bewildered and sweetly intoxicated by his newly acquired tender young masculinity.

His father, with who him lived, was an Italian immigrant who recently moved into the neighbourhood, renting a house next to Katherine's, and whom Katherine had occasionally met a couple times before.

The lad looked rather confused, almost childishly timid and embarrassed when explaining the rather banal trouble that had befallen him, self-confessedly, due to his unforgivable absent-mindedness: he lost the key from his house and, to boot, left his cellphone in the same place and now was in "vital need" of phoning the landlord to "save him from a homeless night in the street in the rain", as he put it.

His father presently was enjoying his usual August vacation trip to his family's homestead in Tuscany, where he spent time in the extensive company of other innumerable relatives and friends of his as befits a true Italian.

After a short give-and-take of usual polite niceties and a bit of convincing diplomacy on the part of Katherine the little Italian took off his coat and was ushered into the living room to get a hold of his landlord and take a rest while waiting for the latter to bring the key.

Here he was, sitting in front of her, the first male human being to be present in her house in many years, ever so different from her mental picture of a real "macho man" - timid, almost meek and apologetic in manners with a typical youth self-conscious shyness, yet with this strange inner emotional spring that made his speech, laden with this inimitably creamy Italian accent and slightly husky sonorous voice, so full of natural care and gentlemanly tenderness towards his hostess as though it was some "special Italian gene" that radiated this glow of warmth not only towards her but the whole female half of the humankind.

"Seniora, you are so charming and you are so tired" - rolled off his tongue her guest with this characterizing Italian "r" purring and reverberating across the air of the room. "If only you would kindly allow me to help your inner maiden return home into your heart -- you need to recover" - continued he.

As is often the way with dreams, it came with no surprise to Katherine that the youth -- almost a stranger -- somehow knew some innermost chords of the strings of her soul, but rather she felt a bit ashamed that she herself had rarely dared to think about how badly she needed to recover that "inner maiden" - her youthful soul, her veritable freedom, her true home -- the home of love.

There was a pause, and in a bit of confusion and being at a loss as to what to answer to her Italian guest she just kept gazing at him, somewhat petrified, somewhat puzzled, somewhat paralyzed by the lack of her ability to answer.

Her gaze was riveted, almost against her will, to his naturally disorderly pitch-black curls of hair, like little frisky tongues of flame randomly playing in a fire -- so deeply black that they glinted in the light as a raven's feather -- and the two equally glittering-black charcoals of his eyes sparkling in unison with his hair, fixed intently on her, radiating some strange mixture of the shades of warm compassionate sadness, suggested hope, tones of question and request all in one.

His face was either slightly suntanned or naturally tanned as is often the way with those who have roots in southern parts of Italy; he had a straight roman nose under the end of which there was a hint of tender, almost adolescent, fuzz that youths sometimes leave on purpose as a self-reflected sign of their manliness; his lips looked somewhat plump and soft, which imparted to them a certain delicate touch of sensuality which the lad probably didn't even realize.

"This is true.." - started Katherine and stopped halfway, again lost for words, her gaze still fixed almost hypnotically on the countenance of her unexpected Italian visitor. It seemed as if an invisible cord of some mystical streaming energy emanated from these two bottomless lakes of his black eyes and entered and permeated her from top to toe, sending, strangely, some waves of soothing warmth and intimate reassurance.

For a moment these soothing waves threw her mind a decade back to some rare, inexplicably surreal moments (she called them "X-files").

Some of those moments had happened when, still only nineteen years old, she would have that uncannily pleasant and enigmatic sensation while just sitting alone, staring at a large classic painting on the wall in the drawing room of her family house -- an imposing gorgeous portrait of young Lord Byron, equal only to Apollo in the flower of his youthful masculine beauty -- and experiencing his intent mesmerizing gaze, laden with some mysteriously transfixing power of intimate unity, love and harmony, penetrating not just her mind but all her body, reaching to the very endings of her nerves and sending a kind of waves of ticklish pleasant sensation all along her arms and hands, throughout her tummy and thighs down to her little feet and toes, and echoing with a soft sweet throbbing at the back of her head.

Another flashback that momentarily got invoked in her mind from the dim and distant remembrances of her early youth -- one of those "X-files" -- was that unearthly bizarre lecture class at her college when a guest teacher from a local university visited their school to share some knowledge on environmental science or something of that sort: he was around forty, a tall bespectacled man, somewhat awkward in his bearing and gait, but it wasn't his appearance but the unworldly timber and tonality of his low thick voice that in a manner of minutes paralyzed her whole body and mind. She was twenty at that time and had never experienced or heard of anything of this sort before.

The sound waves of the teacher's low yet so deep and sonorous voice suddenly started a cascade of slightly pulsating and dizzying sensations of a sort at the back of her head, slowly trickled down her neck, percolated like fuzzy sweet ripples of pure warmth through her chest, down her belly, flowing like a tender magic brook between her thighs, branching into two creeks streaming down her legs to her toes -- as though the river of his voice filled every vein and capillary of her body with a warm syrup while every cell of her body miraculously acquired the ability of a little tongue to taste all this warm sweetness.

Totally immobilized in this trance, as she remembered, at one point she had caught a heavenly fine scent she had hardly ever smelt before, the smell of her own womanly self -- the fragrance of her life-and-love-giving womanhood; this was the first time in her life Katherine got to breathe in her own aroma -- the heavenly scent of her own womanhood, of life itself, of love itself ready to create a new life -- and breathing in this aroma suddenly tripled her ability to sense the sweet warmth of the sound with every cell of her body.

She had felt as if the waves of this sonorous male voice, streaming throughout her body, condensed into a kind of sweet warm nectar somewhere below her belly deep inside the valley her thighs, like the morning dew on the petals of a flower, emanating this strangely exquisite fragrance that she could only think of it as the smell of life itself, the pure scent of her womanly self, her youth, her love.

Presently this pause continued for another minute, she sitting on a sumptuous Persian sofa opposite his chair, the invisible cord of mysterious energy tying her eyes with the two black onyxes of her guest's. Suddenly this pause resolved itself into something that is possible and imaginable only in dreams, yet leaves a most profound imprint on one's mind and life in the waking reality ever after:

The Italian guest slowly and gracefully drew himself up from the chair stately walked up to her, without taking his eyes off hers for a moment, then slowly lowered himself on his knees right at her feet, his head of black curls level with her knees partly covered by the dressing gown that she often wore in the evenings after a shower. "Senora, the time has come for you to return your inner maiden and love. Please, close your eyes" -- he said and after a momentary pause took her hands in his, slowly bowed his head and gently placed Katherine's hands on his inclined head, his cheeks slightly touching her knees and his palms still covering the back of her hands.

Katherine closed her eyes -- without realizing it as if the power of a mere word of her Italian visitor had closed them by some magic spell -- and continued to keep her hands on his head as though she was a kind of priestess in the act of ordaining or blessing one of her parishioners. Presently she only felt the silky curls of his hair on her palms, the gentle touch of his hands on the back of hers and the warmth of his cheeks slightly pressing against her knees.

That sensation from the touch of his boyishly delicate hands resting on hers and his cheeks against her knees started sending the same surreal waves of warmth all down her legs from toes to thighs, down her belly and in her breast, echoing with that light sweet throbbing at the back of her head, as with her "X-file" experience in college, triggering the same old memories; only this time it was not the sound of voice but the warmth of the touch.

This ongoing touch went on for another minute, inducing in Katherine a strange combination of two opposite things: a comforting placid serenity and at the same time increasing heart beat and anticipation of hope, her knees sensing the radiation of the youth's breath.

Next she felt him place his boyish hands on her knees and delicately parting them, then suddenly she felt her heart freeze and at the same instant her entire body, from her knees to her breast, was transfixed by a lightening bolt of some mysterious undiscovered energy as the warmth of the two little plump cushions of the lad's lips softly touched her inner thigh and stayed unmoved.

It wasn't even possible to call it a "kiss" -- rather his lips just hugged or wrapped in their magic duvet a little island of her body -- of her own self. She was almost entirely paralyzed by the same sensations that she had had during that surreal college experience, only this time this cascade of pulsating and dizzying waves of sweetness streamed directly from the lad's lips, and it was so much more powerful and immobilizing in its insuperably warm sweetness.

This sweetness flooded through her like a mighty web of river arms originating in that one spot and deluging all the rest of her, streaming though the valley of her thighs, rising inside her belly, flowing through her chest and breast and echoing with these peculiar tender throbs of stroking caress at the back of her head -- the same tender throbs, as was still dimly imprinted in the memory, she would experience in her early childhood when her father, holding her in his lap, would tenderly stroke her head with his hands when reading to her some of Andersen's fairy tales.

Just as Katherine had begun to feel that this flood of warm paralyzing sweetness couldn't either build up any further or be accommodated within the limits of her body and mind any more, she felt the Italian boy delicately take off his lips and start to gently mop her inner thighs with long resting kisses tracing from her knees upwards closer to her tummy -- kisses that, just like the previous one, were rather not real kisses but tender pausing embraces with his lips and little strokes with the velvety blanket of his tongue.

At the same time she begun to feel the warm silk of his boyish palms and finger tips softly pressing against her thighs -- almost randomly and accidentally -- not unlike a piano player taking some very quiet and ultimately intimate cords of one of Chopin's nocturnes where his fingers only touch-kiss the piano keys with bated breath, as if trying to probe for, ask for, implore for and discover the very reality of them for the first time.

For a split second all this threw her mind back to her younger X-file experiences: it was one particular dream the emotional imprint of which she has never forgotten.

In this "dream-in-a-dream" she had been lying in bed without any fetters of clothes or pyjamas (as was the way with her -- she never liked the imprisoning sensation of any fabric on her body when in bed) on her right side in the dark, trying to go to sleep, when suddenly she felt as if some invisible dainty fingers haphazardly, ever-so softly touched or stroked or probed or kissed -- it was almost impossible to describe or find a proper word in the human language for these tactile little flashes -- her back, her head and her neck.

This came with such spontaneous naturalness as if the very notion of reason or motive had no place for this phenomenon, and as if producing these touches were just as natural a part of life itself for this apparition or angel -- the invisible owner of these fingers -- as breathing. These little magic drops of touches landed with the same innocence, angelic lightness and freedom from any necessity of reason as those of a butterfly accidentally landing on one's shoulder on a warm May day.

After a while the magic phantom and his fingers vanished, yet every inch of her body that had been blessed by these magic fingers would continue to beam this sweet sensation throughout her body like a drop of honey on one's tongue that leaves a "glowing trail" of sweetness staying long after the honey itself is gone. The dizzying unearthly pleasure of this surreal experience in one of her dreams, also placed by Katherine in her "X-files", was so profound that it had been etched for good in her memory.

Now, the warm tenderness, childlike innocence and awe-inspiring care -- all in one inseparably -- with which the Italian angel continued to land his lips and tongue in small little hugs, strokes and reassuring touches of love on her inner thighs could not be described or conveyed by the limited powers of any human language. The petals of his boyish lips, though hugging only a little area of her body at a time, embraced her entire self with the same supernatural tenderness and treasuring care as the ones of a mother caressing her baby, with every touch testing and protecting the homey well-being of every inch of her body, of her soul, of what was unalienable part of herself.

Every new landing of his lips fired a cascade of waves and pulses of warm paralyzing sweetness that added up and joined in an increasing tide flooding, as it felt, through every vessel and capillary of her body, up towards her belly, into the magic cradle of life and love in the sanctum of womanhood, permeating every cell of her, echoing in those strange ticklish throbs at the back of her head and a bit of bizarre intoxicating dizziness.

Yet it was such a strange, almost unthinkable combination where the increasing power of this river of sweetness, filling her like a heavenly inspiration, was at the same time so full of calmness and ultimate trust, coziness and tranquility, reassuring peace, as if the coziness itself somehow condensed into some kind of magic syrup that dissolved every worry, enveloped and lulled away any fear or even thought, leaving Kathrine only with the lucid perception of how "the transcendent ether of love" was filling her second by second, inch by inch, calmly displacing everything else that didn't belong to its supercelestial realm.

This tide of Italian tenderness continued to build up inside her, fill every fibre of her body and, at the same time, gather into a lake of pure condensed love slightly beneath her tummy at the top of her inner thighs as the lad's lips in steps of long hugging kisses with motherly care and tenderness moved upwards. Now, with a flashback to that "X-file" of her weird experience in college, she suddenly caught in the air the same unearthly fine scent -- the exquisite heavenly fragrance of life itself and love itself all in one, both being parts of one ultimate reality of love-life coming from the same magic source in which life begets love and love begets life in a timeless circle.

She smelt the dizzying heavenly aroma of her own womanhood, the scent of the ultimate source of the life-love, with her being the master and the servant of this source all at the same time, radiating and experiencing her own womanly self, as was eternally confirmed and reflected by this fragrance.

Years after all that happened this evening Kathrine would herself why art, the main task of which is to reflect and describe love and life, always seemed to lack something elusive that prevented it from accomplishing its mission"? Was that "something" actually this very magic fragrance of the womanhood -- of the life-love itself -- that no art had ever been able or even dared to describe but without which all the paintings, sculptures and books about love are no closer to the true description of it than a plastic doll to the true description of a human being?