The eye of the lion

The black girl walked into the room carrying the tray of food and the nutritional supplement pills for the day.

Marina, sitting on a comfy sofa near the window of the room, saw her arrive and smiled with sincere joy. She missed having someone around to chat to, to talk to about her feelings, and she liked the girl. She had been gaining her trust by her sincere, casual manner and she already considered her a friend.

Her name was Aeesha, she was the same age as her, and her parents were of African descent.

Marina invited her to sit by her side while the girl set the tray on the coffee table in the center of the room, and she put aside the paper-back she was reading: “Papillon” by Charrière. She had bought the book out of curiosity in Rome airport, before boarding her flight to London, and she had forgotten to read it until a couple of days ago when she found it again as she was reorganizing her suitcase.

Now she had been reading it for two days, and it had captivated her in such a way that it had made her forget her situation and her sadness for a moment, although in a way, it was an ironic reminder of her own imprisonment.

Aeesha sat down next to her and smiled at her with that beautiful smile of hers that was bewitching with her perfect large white pearly teeth. She looked curiously at the book Marina had put down.

“What’s your book about, honey?”

Marina showed her.

“Look, it’s really interesting...”

Her eyes shone with the same enthusiasm as when her father brought her magazines in her distant Tuscany.

“It’s about a man who’s unjustly imprisoned in a terrible place and how he survives that hell.”

Aeesha picked up the book and looked at it, but she was thinking about the words that the sweet girl had just said and she felt sorry for her.

She knew very well what the poor girl was going through, and she understood the dark sadness behind her eyes, as well as in her apparently untroubled words. She gave her a smile which she meant to be comforting, but which implied a sad empathy.

“It’s good for you to amuse yourself, sweetheart. It’s

good for you to think about other things. And good for him, too.”

Her hand caressed Marina’s developing belly tenderly. She reciprocated, stroking the black hand which gave her that sincere caress, with genuine gratitude.

“You’re so good to me, Aeesha. My child would like you to come and see us, as well as me. Can you stay and chat a while?”

She looked at her anxiously.

Aeesha looked at her watch and shot a side-ways glance at the omnipresent camera in a corner of the room’s ceiling. She smiled.

“Of course, a little while won’t hurt. It’s been days since we’ve talked, sweetheart. How are the other girls treating you?”

Marina shrugged her shoulders, her head to one side. It was clear that the black girl was the only one who said a word to her except for Waiss, whose appearances were rare, along with those of Dr. Farlan, her gynecologist. Apart from them, Aeesha was the only person in Netgen who talked to her.

They had only conversed on four occasions, but Marina awaited her visits impatiently because the black girl told her stories from the land of her ancestors, Sierra Leone, which Marina listened to, fascinated.

They were stories and legends of Mende origin, magical, fantastic tales whose origins had been lost in the night of ages.

“If anyone bothers you or gives you any trouble, you just tell Aeesha, honey, and I’ll sort them out,” affirmed Aeesha, smiling as she caressed her friend’s hand. She contemplated her for a few moments and then gave her a strange look. Marina noticed her expression and scrutinized her in turn, intrigued.

“What?” she asked.

Aeesha smiled.

“Has anyone ever told your fortune?”

Marina eyed her with curiosity, then looked at her hand.

“What, palm-reading, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“Yes, one time. Some gypsies who were passing through my town, in Tuscany.”

“Gypsies - pah!” mocked Aeesha. “They’re peasants. They wouldn’t be able to tell my future even if they read my diary.”

Marina looked at her with the shining eyes of a naughty little girl.

“And you, you could read the future in my palm?”

“But of course!” boasted Aeesha, rolling her eyes and feigning indignation.

“Any descendant of the great Momoh Cacie, holy man of the

Mende, is a hundred times better than those lying gypsies! Let’s see, give me that hand!”

Marina held out her hand, amused. Aeesha took it and inspected her palm with an air of wisdom.

“Mmmm! Let’s see.”

Aeesha was smiling inside. This would entertain the poor girl and at least give her a few minutes of fun. The naïve little thing. You only had to see how she smiled and how those sad eyes shone at the excitement of the game. And although Aeesha remembered very well that her mother and grand-mother had possessed a real gift of that kind, a gift that she had been afraid of as a girl because she didn’t understand it, for her it had always been just a game that she sometimes amused a friend with and that would now make that poor girl smile.

She ran a finger along Marina’s palm and said:

“Aha... Mmmm, yes. That’s very good, a long life. In this line, see?”

Marina looked, interested, but she only saw Aeesha’s finger on the lines of her palm.

“Good health, yes, that too. A long, very healthy life.”

Marina smiled. She liked that.

“I also see a man... Mmmm. It could be, yes, it’s an older man who’s coming alongside you to support you.”

“What’s he like?” asked Marina with evident curiosity in her voice.

“He looks... Yes, now I see. He’s an older man with white or silver hair. He’s not bad-looking, this man.”

Marina pouted with disillusion.

“Mmmm, no, my father has black hair. It’s not him.”

“Maybe a future boyfriend,” said Aeesha, with a cheeky glance.

Marina blushed and her contagious laugh rang out like crystal, which made Aeesha laugh out loud too.

“Hey! You never know... He could be the love of your life!”

“And is he good-looking?” asked Marina, playing along with her friend.

Aeesha scrutinized her hand.

“Very. And it looks like he’s very rich, too. No. A millionaire.”

Marina clapped her hand over her mouth, laughing and opening wide her beautiful eyes.

“You’ll live in a big, very old house...”

“No,” wailed Marina, pouting. “I don’t like old houses.”

“Wait...” corrected Aeesha. “Yes, you’re right. I saw wrong. That was the neighbors’ house. Yours...Mmmm, it’s a

nice new residence...”

Marina burst out laughing, shaking her head.

“Aeesha!”

The black girl smiled, showing her white teeth, and continued with her ‘predictions’.

“You will have a dog called Spanky.”

Marina opened her eyes even wider, still laughing so hard she was crying. Aeesha wanted to keep on talking, but she was overcome by laughter.

That was when, in another room near Marina’s, something strange happened.

The monitors that displayed the images captured by the cameras all over the factory, started to flicker. The guard observing them at the time, while his companion was on lunch-break, looked at them curiously.

One of them, which showed the interior of Marina’s room, started to flicker even more than the rest. The man went up to it and tried to modify the image, adjusting the controls.

Suddenly, the image of the two women disappeared and the screen went blank.

“What the hell!?” the guard murmured disconcertedly.

In Marina’s room, Aeesha had stopped laughing and was now quiet. She was looking silently at Marina’s palm. Marina

leaned over a little to look at her friend, still laughing. Something in her posture seemed strange, and she relaxed her smile. At that moment, Aeesha started to speak, but her voice sounded strangely distant, calm, almost as though she were talking in her sleep.

“The man... The older man with silver hair. His hand will guide you to the light in the midst of the darkness...”

“Aeesha?” asked Marina trying to smile at what she thought was her friend’s new game, but her smile froze on her lips at the ominous sensation that something strange was happening. She realized that a weird, oppressive silence had fallen on the world and that Aeesha’s hand, holding her own, seemed to radiate heat.

“He will be your refuge, your protector and your son’s, and he will guide you to founts of wisdom...”

Shocked, Marina tried to pull her hand away, but it seemed to be stuck to the black woman’s. She felt paralyzed, but she couldn’t take her eyes off her or stop listening. Her breathing became labored and broken. She couldn’t move a muscle. The world was moving away from them in all directions.

“...And your son. Your son, the One and Only, will be great like a sun among men, for in him will be incarnate the essence of the One and Only, of the Lion, of the warrior who will crush

the head of the serpent and redeem man with his mother... After the end, after the end of days...” murmured Aeesha.

After saying these words, the black girl was silent. Marina looked at her with a horrified expression, unable to move, tears running down her cheeks. Her hand was cooling down. The air in the room started to regain its substance. Her voice was trembling.

“Aeesha?”

Slowly, Aeesha seemed to emerge from a kind of lethargy. She raised her head and looked at Marina as though she didn’t know where she was.

She started to laugh, disconcerted.

“I’m sorry, were you saying something, honey? Boy, I’m feeling dizzy!”

Marina’s look of horror softened when she saw her friend become her old self again, but she was still eyeing her motionless and perplexed. Aeesha noticed her state and this increased her confusion.

“What’s the matter, sweetheart? What’s wrong? Why are you crying?”

But Marina could only look at her, in mute astonishment.