The Sapphire Express Read Online Free PDF Page A

reigned over filth and lunacy, where exposure to any evil or jealousy didn’t exist, where the competitive nature of people couldn’t ruin that unspoiled canvas of a child that was so generously, so recklessly, given to us corrupted.
    I watched that purity in total awe and fascination, and its fragility and lack of protection concerned me greatly. I became terrifyingly worried, and I cried when I held my daughter in my inexperienced arms. Her skin was so soft, so exposed, and I missed her even when she was right there with me. I missed her when she was asleep in her pink room, and I missed her when she was eating her morning cereal. I looked at her innocent face, and I was terrified to the core because I could feel that little cut in my heart and smell the dark blood that was slowly dripping from the wound. I was inadequate, and I didn’t understand why I had been given something so precious and so incredibly beautiful even if I was not perfect. A treasure of that magnitude belonged somewhere else, away from the wickedness of man, away from all of us, away from me.

2
     
    Inferno
     
     
    I saw that Ford Bronco approaching fast—tinted windows, a shadow inside. It was the devil himself who drove that car, and I hunted him for four years with murder and torture burning in my bleeding eyes. I roamed the black freeways like in a cruel dream and searched every bar and every liquor store, but the devil was gone forever. The coward had slipped back to hell and closed the smoldering gates behind him.
    I carried the tiny casket from the church in my trembling arms, and I cried, and I died, and I crawled, and I goddamn screamed in my madness like a poisoned spring lamb. My tears joined the black October rain as I watched my only true love disappear into the abyss of her eternal grave. I tried to reach for her when they put her in that lightless world where no child belongs, where the innocent should never be welcome, but she was already too deep, too far away.
    In that lonely autumn darkness, a part of me went into the grave with Annalise, the good part, I suppose. I cursed the skies, and I hated everyone at the funeral—the minister and my wife included. “Say something, a word of consolation to the congregation,” someone requested, but I said nothing because I knew that they would never understand. I just stood there, staring at the little grave under a crying sycamore tree, water dripping from my graying hair, millions of little knives stabbing my organs, billions of dark thoughts eating my sanity alive. I closed my eyes and whispered to myself like in an endless dream, “When the bell tolls, my love is buried, and my dreams die. All the colors fade, and the beauty of a sunrise goes away. When the bell tolls, I have my sight, but I don’t see. I have my hearing, but I don’t hear. When the bell tolls, I touch, but I don’t feel. When the bell tolls, I apologize to you, summer sky and the misty forest and the wildest of spring rivers, because I no longer notice you, I no longer want you, and I no longer need you. I apologize to you, waterfalls and lonely glaciers, because I don’t like you anymore. I apologize to you, the moon, and the stars and the galaxies and the eternity, because you mean nothing to me now. I apologize to you, hope, forgiveness, ambition, happiness and purpose, because I have no use for you. I apologize to you, death, because I no longer fear you, and I apologize to you, life, because you don’t excite me anymore. When the bell tolls, a man is lost, and only darkness reigns in the emptiness of his moribund soul. When the bell tolls, it is the end, and the lonely man starts waiting, waiting for departure—his only chance to see his precious love again. When the bell tolls, you can tell me that I am wrong, but you can never be me.”
     
    The police told me that the case had gone cold, and I was soon alone in my quiet house with Eden, a pile of unpaid bills and a grotesque, all-pervading pain that