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martes, 8 de enero de 2013

THE TOWER OF SILENCE:SECOND PART:FROM CHAPTER VI TO THE EPILOGUE

THE TOWER OF SILENCE
(English translation,by the Author)
SECOND PART:
Chapter VI:

(Rachmaninov, Second  Concerto,first mouvement)
 (Ville d'Autrémont, nine o'clock)

 The winter garden  had a sort of secret charm in the morning.
 On the blanket of yellow silk, there was a solitary  purple tie, and the vision of orchids carefully aligned in a semicircle, receiving the autumn sun.
 Reid was busy in sorting them , reaching for his knowledge of botanics.Among them,he  discovered , loner, a colchicum or mountain saffron, with its curiously humble flowers with a sad liliaceous blue colour..
 The music came from the studio placed next door, whose gates  opened into the garden.
 The coffee was served on the table.
 He put aside pencil and paper., And sat next to the yellow silk, gently caressing it with the tip of his fingers.
. All of the preceding dayhe  had been in that chaise longue, in the arms of his strange guest.
Where would now Gideon be ? Sleeping? Would he have gone?
. Upon awakening, drunk with pleasure, happy, tired, with his  nerves as numbed by the considerable effort that presuppose eight spasms lengthy and without interruption, he did not find his master -mentor-lover at his side.
 Only the music indicated that ,perhaps, he  was in the house.
... Or maybe not ...
 He slowly sipped his coffee, sweetened with honey, and it was then, when the last drops of sweetness bathed his tongue, when he reminded of Aaron.
Aaron… What was he doing at that time?
 He looked at his watch.It was  nine in the morning in Britain.
. Midnight in Seattle ..
 He lit a cigarette, leaned back in the wicker chair, and left himself abandoned to memories.

 (Anchorage, Alaska, winter 2007)
-'I'm in a gelid land ,and I have  only your eyes -the kiss took up residence on the eyelids of Aaron as a balm - Your eyes, a crystal in perpetual mourning ...
Aaron grabbed the waist ,so exquisitely formed, and then dropped his hand to caress his almost lifeless lover’s narrow hips.
-          And your eyes are like bitter almonds . –said Aaron , still breathing with longing
A kiss, and another, and another, and another ....
 -How far back you want me? -asked Aaron.
 -Since I watched those eyes  of you for the first time .. and ... you?
Aaron somewhat parted from him and held his  gaze,firmly.
--I do not want you.. I do love you.

 Spencer raised his left leg, and wrapped Aaron’s hips.He felt his  muscles strong, wiry, like a sculpture .It was like bronze.,not  cold marble, but it bore the stamp of what is cast in the flesh . It was hot as a force in all its beauty.
- 'You're beautiful, Jewish .-said Spencer , his voice muffled by desire.
 -Young ,insolent  gohim with topaz eyes-the swarthy man replied, narrowing further embrace.

 He sought his mouth in his chest .It was a paroxism of  anxiety.He fell down,bursting back on the bed, with intertwining Spencer in his body, without mercy, without reservation.
The "bold gohim", the "little daring"! fiddled with his ​​mouth pinned to his throat, gently biting his ears,  looking for the point of no return….Skilled,expert…sadistically charming… ")

 Spencer remembered with eyes closed, clutching his cigarette and taking it to his mouth as if it was given to him ,already,to tast those kisses..

. One hand rested on his shoulder, and brought him back, when his  body,that  was still in  enervation , was beginning to reenter into a state of  erethism .

 -My orchids go mad with jealousy when they look at your drowsy beauty .
Spencer opened his eyes and smiled.
-Jason ...- he said clutching the hand that caressed him -Where were you?
-Around, -Gideon said, sitting beside him -The old ones(like I am) need some time alone.
-You are  not no old at all.An old man doesn’t drag  his lover to orgasm more than seven times.
. Jason laughed, shrugging.
-Pure-old trickery ...-he  ruffled his hair, and gave him a quick kiss on the mouth, -I just want you to know I'm like King Marke: I 'm not here to separate the lovers, but to bring them together.
-Bringing them together?-Spencer shivered, despite himself-.What  do you mean by that?
-What you hear, creature-he sighed-. I told you I'm dying..This one  is my latest adventure, the most beautiful, the most daring, the most perfect. I said that…, well, I heard about you and Aaron from the first time ... come on! Since before it happened!! Or perchance you thought about the mess in internal affairs,and you believed that?

 Spencer smiled..Perhaps in another circumstances he would have flushed.Now,it  was impossible, since this singular man, strange, unknown, unclassifiable, had become his lover.
-'There's something I want ask to you..Really,thy are  two things: when that happens, I want to be cremated and my ashes scattered in the Grand Bé.-Spencer nodded gravely-The other is more difficult, -Gideon continued.- You know I suffer from liver cirrhosis,that is irreversible.Well.Death from cirrhosis  is quite unpleasant:bloating, vomiting nauseating substances, excremental liquids.. .... naked exposure of the human misery.
He went to  another table that was in the garden, and opened a box t.
-I want to ask you for to  do this for me.
 That said,  he showed him a singularly beautiful antique pistol.
 -I .. I ... Reid stammered, `I do not know ... I can .. never ...
 - ... You've never killed anyone in cold blood, right? But think, golden creature, that this will be only an act of immense mercy.I ask you to make me listen to the third movement of the concerto in C minor by Rachmaninov, while meet one of my two last wishes.
- I wish -he added, and his voice was almost broken-if it is not too much to ask, if you can close my eyes ,if they are still open, and you can  do the same with my mouth .... if possible .. with a kiss ...
 He sighed deeply.
-Do you like it ?- he wielded the pistol-It  is a .38 special Eibar, Spanish, has ivory ornaments ...There are only two exactly equal..This is  the  original…Can you see? It has  my initials:JMG
 Spencer asked, examining it with curiosity:
- 'And the other?
 Gideon smiled  with an almost mocking expression.
-          'Soon you will know.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
(On the road Paris-Saint Malo)

 The images followed one after another.Field, trees, buildings, charming  visions; however,everything had  lost its relevance, its significance,  its dimension of reality.

-This seems a nightmare-. Morgan said, leaning back in the back seat of the Alfa Romeo-.We travel by the  French roads to a command operation,like to a military mission,, with bulletproof vests, and no one stops us , nor does not even make a hint of wonder .. .
 -Don't worry about-. Rossi said -Yes, it's a nightmare,or a surrealistic sketch,maybe.See   who is the most ruthless unsub that we have ever faced!!!!..and…
-He has  a name, not an unknown subject-third Aaron, already  recovered from his unfortunate first appearance on stage-We  know your name .. but, as has deceived us yet , that probably is not  the true one ......
-No.He hasn’t deceived  us in that .It is his real name.
 Derek felt curious about something:
- Tell me, Rossi .... You knew him from long ago?
-I said that about thirty-five years, at least.
 -Do you know something of his life …reliably? Because we never found anything.
 Rossi laughed..In the meanwhile, the MP3 in the car let out the joyful notes of The Barber of Sevilla.Derek admired again Rossi absolute coldness,his  lack of empathy, his definitely iced  nature,his petrified  mettle.He  liked to be called” a disciplined sociopath”. ..
Rossi began so:
-Gideon was born in a miserable hovel,. in Bronx. His  father was a bastard that captured girls in Europe to bring them to America to pursue prostitution. The post-war hunger was the framework for their mischievous adventures.Abraham Gideon was the name of this  ruffian .. One of these girls, Antoinette d'Autrémont, daughter of a good family from Britain, impoverished by the war, was left captivated by his promises ... and .... what more pleasure for a Jew ,than the degradation of a  gohim?-Rossi looked significantly to Hotchner, over his shoulder, adjusting the rearview mirror in order,and continued:
-          They had two children, while the poor woman contracted syphilis through his office, a disease that went straight to your former conspicuous general supervisor.
He did a pause;then,he continued:
-          Abraham Gideon had lots of fun  abusing of his own son.He used to burn him  with cigarettes when he returned from his travels ,sickening with kvas and cehapvodka .He used the boy for to  make money ... you'll want to know that Jason Gideon was a very cute boy? This seems incredible, isn’t so? -Rossi laughed harder-Until one day he escaped and went to jail after a shoplifting in a grocery.As a  result, he was confined in a kind of asylum or reformatory, while the sister was carried to a convent of nuns. In the  asylum, among other things, Gideon showed what would be the final characteristics of his personality: an almost genetic bad character, a desperate need to defend who he considered the weakest, a belligerent atrocious temper ; his  love for  music, chess, books ... and, of course, his homosexuality ,that was conscious, confessed and expressed.
As ihe  turned out to be a genius, he was awarded a scholarship, and gained access to school and the university.When he had left the institution, he went to seek his sister, and, working in meanest trades (dishwasher, shoe shiner, errand boy, janitor, etc.) took over her until she married a clerk.As  this employee(his  brother-in law) proved to be a paragon of debauchery, he took care of his two nephews.And he also  took her back to the city to take a walk around the hospital where Abraham Gideon was languishing because of cirrhosis (Antoinette had died some time ago,syphilis) and spat his face.
 Jason  was without a penny, in miserable condition, working night and day as a slave, giving all to the family of his sister Sophie, but he still retained the scholarship.
Both at school and at the university ,he was revealed as the genius that he was.That he is!-Rossi said,stressed, raising a finger ... -That should not be forgotten,even if he is completely deranged .

- And you knew in college? -Derek asked, lighting a cigarette.
-Not precisely.I was in college in Philadelphia, the city where my family and I moved after to have left New York.In those days,there was a sort of political  meeting in the Nevada desert,and I travelled there,without any hesitation.: they were years of exuberant student union ....
Rossi continued,with a nostalgic shade crossing upon his features:

 -I was drinking a beer in one of the many bars located along the route between Reno and Las Vegas, when a guy came  up to me .He was   tall, with long curled hair, dark brown, dressed carelessly, and even boasting of his sloppiness.He looked at me with a strange intensity.Suddenly,he said: :
 -Let’s go  to f…ck the ass of  the bourgeoisie.
 I looked at him,  holding  the brightness of his dark eyes, perverse, provocative, smelling the grass from his cigarette like a mast raised ,so insolent, so petulant,…and I could  not help but smile, and accept his  tempting invitation.
We left, after acquiring a few beer cans ,certainly very economic,that  I had to pay out of pocket, and that's when he introduced me to his ad latere, a  very tall, blond, thin and infamous face which he called "Frank Van Houten ".
 Hotchner violently interrupted him:
-FrankVan Houten??????? 
- -This is not the one that???????? The one he just……he just….??- Derek stammered.
-The same,' said Rossi,always imperturbable—The same one of  that  confrontation in the cafeteria of the Desert
 which does not surprise me at all to be the same one  where we met, thirty-five years ago.
 (To be continued ..)

TOWER OF SILENCE


CHAPTER VII:
 Rossi continued, while Aaron threw hand from his flask of bourbon:
-That night I was invited to spend the night in their  trailer. I witnessed everything imaginable and unimaginable, too.I was attempting to sleep  in a bunk located above the occupied  by Jason, and I could heard the groans, roars, laments,  that his fellow,  fellow, Frank Van Houten, (whose back could see if I poked a little) tore from him..
I decided to abandon him (I couldn’t bear that “scenario”!!),even if I was sure Jason never would forgive me for that.
Said and done: he never forgave me not having added to his private orgy of three, and I think that attitude decided him  to hate me for the rest of his life.
 A few days later, however, he came to the bog where  I was staying, and, near tears, told me the story of his life.He  hugged me, discovering his chest for  to make me  see his wounds.He  showed me marks of  bites, gashes, burns ... in his back and buttocks .. Then…He kissed me  passionately, and he said he would do anything for me, that I could consider him as  only mine .. He  reached into my  groin, stroking, rubbing vehemently.I  never had  been the subject of a sexual attack of this nature before( I confess), and I was stunned, motionless, paralyzed, not knowing what to say or do.He  begged me  to take him with me; he  told me that  he wanted us to do great things together..He gave me    this gun,an  Eibar 38 special, identical to the one he wore, and he had had engraved with my initials: RAP (my middle name is Anthony: Anthony, as he named  after the son that his wife had, God knows with  who).
 Many years later, when you, Aaron,called me,phoned  me, as a a result of developments in the case of Yates, passing upon cavalierly over his authority,  he came to my house (how the hell he  had learned where I lived, damned if I know!), angry, insulting me point blank, shouting from the rooftops that you and the rest of the team had chosen to contact me when I was sleeping with a bitch  (it’ss true), and not with him, while he was working hardly on the case ,stealing hours to his sleeping..And he  left my house yelling,impetuously::
-You’re  wasting your time with cheap bitches,  while Yates is stabbing and killing half the world! You're pitiful, pathetic, and, as if that were not enough,  you have a bad taste that can  be qualified  as atrocious!
 I must place on record the following: what Gideon has never forgiven in your life is a slip of a heterosexual nature.
-That's absurd.He,himself, was married! And  he says he has  a child, '-said Morgan.
 Rossi almost choked on his own laughter:
 -Derek, innocent boy! We  have wives to procreate children, and ephebuses to have solace! Plato dixit !
 Then, calming down somewhat, he continued:
 -I met Eleanor, his wife, several times.She was a poor woman who was terrified, and who he did not  make love NEVERMORE..Because of that. everyone knows that Anthony is not his son  
-'You .. you comforted her , David? -Hotchner then asked, tired.
-A couple of times.But Anthony is  not my son. I  almost would to infer that  this was some  Frank Van Houten’s  prank.
Hotchner wanted to finish everything as soon as possible, to talk openly with Spencer, face the reality of a relationship that no longer they could hide, and escape from the world..
 Derek was seriously considering resigning from the  BAU.
Rossi amused (it was obvious) , and the weak  pretext of "saving institutions"  now seemed a sort of cover for personal revenge.
-If this is revenge, I'm out, -said Morgan-Even more : I'm out of the BAU, and  I  will ask that  for  the resignation to  be officially accepted..
 -That what I decide, Derek.-pointed  Aaron, seriously-Who  I want  out, and immediately, it's you, David.Once we  have finished with  this case, consider yourself lost in retirement availability.
 Aaron thought delegate command again in Derek Morgan ,and  get away with Spencer (as far as possible) of all that moral insanity that had contributed to the collapse of his life, his person, his physical and mental integrity.
-And Frank Van Houten? –asked  Derek –I remember Gideon asking  me to leave the cafeteria, because he  could and wanted to defend  himself alone.
- It was easy-Rossi took a curve at high speed, noting that L'Heureux and his people came behind them-When Frank made ​​the mistake of hijacking the bus with the children, finally sealed his destiny.Gideon (after killing a woman  named Ilse Flohs , which he previously sent a bouquet of chrysanthemums, the flowers  he most detests), he took over FRank, and he even had the grace to dissolve his remains in a barrel of acid.
-If you know this , why did  not you tell us?
- I was not active then ,Derek.It  wasn’t  my business.
 -Go! What freshness to wash your hands, David!
-I know why you're saying all this, Dave.-Aaron third –It is to make Derek having  no remorse when pulling  the trigger ,before Gideon could articulate a single word.But  the fact is that I'm still your boss,-he stressed - in case you've forgotten, and I wanted to hear the other bell’s ringing.So ,sick sociopath, I tell you I will go before all of you, and that Morgan will only fire if I, and only I, personally, give the order.
 Morgan was the best shot of the team.His  bullets were always lethal.Rossi’s machiavellianism  had gone so far as to use an honest man to end a case that considered ((it was more than obvious) like something personal.
 -A man whom I owe all that I am, -'said Derek, not without a great sadness in his voice -He was the one  who officially accused Buford  of abuse me. He was  who proposed me for the FBI, pulling me out  a miserable ,monotonous life And he never asked me anything  in change.I swear on my mother.
 And it was true.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
(Gideon’s residence in Combourg,at the same time)

 The green liquid slowly bathed the white bun candy and capriciously poured into  the fresh water, tinting it with her ​​voluptuous litmus, turning  then luxuriously into the famous white “louche”..
 Gideon held the silver spoon in his left hand, while the right one was manipulating  a  bottle of Suissé, the finest and strongest  of  the Swiss absinthes.
-The time is approaching,-he said, offering the cup to Reid. -My life has been hard, but I have several things that I consider fortunate,..for to already  rescue them,.Among them,the most important is  to have known  you.
 Reid was visibly nervous.
-          'Drink,- said Gideon- This will help you..And think it's just an instant The events have precipitated, and this time,for once, not  because of my fault,precisely.
Spencer stood up and hugged  that singular man with all his might, stroking  him feverishly.
- I have not had anything from  you ... Your pleasure, I mean, your ... your climax, do not know it, and I booted eight spasms of incredible strength ...
-I told you they were only  old tricks of this old man- Gideon smiled -But I guess I should show you before I had left.
Slowly,he unbuttoned  his shirt;then,he undid the silver buckle of his black leather belt. Spencer gulped the glass of Suisse, and the liquid burned down his throat, foreshadowing the disaster.
Then he knelt in front of Jason Gideon, and eagerly sought the space between his legs.
-Creature …-murmured Gideon -If I had known you  before!
After a moment of hesitation, he  grabbed Spencer vigorously, and held him up, almost lifting him in the air.
-'No,' -he said,feeling himself horrorously repentant  -Never!. Never on knees.! Never.! Let  it  so, creature!!.You are  too beautiful…too beautiful!!
 Spencer shook the embrace, and Jason devoured his mouth with a  frantical kiss in which lived  and lasted  all his inmense pain, desire, anxiety,  murderer  rage ,and  infinite sadness.
 -We will be alone, '-said Jason, breaking the kiss,and spreading a little the hug'-Mrs Dutertre and her husband have gone to Rennes, to visit some friends and relatives..Please,promise me that they will live in this house when I will be no longer here. They were  my only company.They , and  the cats that are  out there, nameless and bearingless.Ah, and  my birds, my habitual companions,which I asked every day for you ...

-Absolutely! .-Reid paused-But  you expect someone else, right?
 -Yes..I already  said I'm not here to separate the lovers, but to bring them together.

 Spencer was  trembling:the  perspiration had  become a  thick veil on  his forehead and his hands: the thought of seeing Aaron under such unique circumstances terrified him.
-Aaron .... Aaron  will come ,perhaps?
Gideon smiled, and went to  embrace him again.His  breathing was painful.
- I'm here to gather you both,at the end of the most beautiful and perfect of all the stories.Do you know?-He lit a cigarette and leaned back in his chair, with his back to the windows,- I have always felt sorry because I knew all of you had seen my demise as a gesture of contemptuous abandonment..No.If I had continued to be there, maybe all of you,yourselves,would  regret it,and everyone  would have ended by asking me who I was for to insist resting there,after all my mistakes and my cowardice…I always would have been  a negative note, an obscure note.Can you understand? Too much death does not look  well with a black background, Spencer.And of course I know that  you suffered more than the others.
-I loved you as a father.
-Yes, but I did not love you nor I love you just like a son-Gideon  pulled him up to sit on his lap,and  he murmured :-I adore you. Nobody will love you like me, not even Aaron:but  you chose Aaron.
 -If I had chosen you instead of Aaron ... it would have  changed things?
 Gideon sighed:
-' Not yet , unfortunately..Mi disease is very advanced.This  is terminal..It is an inherited gene, aggravated by my constant use of alcohol.I  reached until  drinking pure ethyl alcohol  during  my tremendous crisis of  despair.I had delirium  tremens…But-he raised his index-,even in delirium, I could see your face .. and it was enough for me to lie to mourn as a child, and scream your name.Your name,Spencer!The  mere mention of your name and the mere memory of a lost smile,
  saved me from falling deeper into the abyss.
 Spencer shook the hug, and patted the hands of Jason Gideon with sincere affection.
 -You were always so tight ,so hermetic with us ...- he said.
-'It did not interest me none but you.I think of to  have been clear in the letter that I left before to go.
 -Derek has affection for you, however.
-And I for  him, but I could not get more involved than I already was. Derek is a honest man..Aarón is also a honest man.And honesty was, for me, as a direct slap in the face, Spencer.I was  born  corrupt.
Spencer smiled:
 - You saying about yourself what you never  could never admitted  even in the worst criminals.I think  that Rossi is the speaker of the genetic theory of evil, as it has been stated by the Italian school, but you were always different.
-Yes, I have always thought that the social factor was decisive, if we can speak of a determinant, exactly ... But, in my case ...- He reached in his vest pocket, and pulled out a  little black copybook-This is the story of my life.Read it,please,  when I will be  no longer here.
-You said a few months still missing …..
 -Yes, but I can not retain you  with me longer, even if I wanted, creature. You deserve to be happy.You may help Aaron to assume the reality of things ,as they truly are..That man  is perhaps the best person I've ever met, but heconstantly  lies to himself, and much.
 And do not give me that admonition :” the regulation has forbidden any interpersonal relationship”, because, in practice, this is not done .If Hotchner fears that he  can not bear the weight of the relationship,  then,he should  resign immediately .I did the same, and I did not even have any relationship with you, except labour, and perhaps a slight friendship.
 -You could have spoken then .You could  have approached me to explain what you  felt.
 -You were already with Hotchner.No.It wouldn’t have made  sense.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
(A stop on the road Paris-Saint Malo, near Rennes)

-'There's something here that does not make sense, boss-Morgan said, while Rossi, after stopping the car in front of a gas station, approached the police car in which  was  coming L'Heureux, accompanied by a half dozen of effectives-Something  ....
. -I think so too, Derek.
 All the men went to the little cafe .Derek  beckoned to Hotchner, and went into the bathroom.
. Once there, he turned his cell phone and dialed a number.
-Your computer siren, always at your service!
-Hello, my  princess.I need you.
 -Gee, Derek, I was deathly worried! Where are you?
-That's not matter.I am so far.. ... Well: I need to find out everything about the people whose names I am sending by private message., please.
-They are the victims?
-Yes, baby girl.Víctims of a serial murderer, we think ..Los crimes occurred in different countries: Italy, Greece, Czech Republic, Spain., Argentina, France ..
 (A constant clatter of keys began to be heard  at the other side of the line.)
... ...
 -Aha..You’re  in France, right?
 -Yes.
-This is unofficial ---?
- Yes.Please, baby girl...To  anyone else… a deal?
-A deal ,marron glacé. In  half hour you will  have  what  all of these alleged victims ate  during their  first communion party, bar mitzhvah, etc, etc.



 In the small cafe, Robert L'Heureux and his men were arguing heatedly in French with David Rossi.
 Aaron ,sitting down apart, sipped his coffee served in an old  thick slab cup ,eyes fixed in a vacuum.
 Derek turned off his cell phone, left the bathroom and went to his boss.
. -In half an hour we'll know it for sure.
 Aaron’s olive face contracted in a grimace of fury.
-What did you do? You know I've given orders respect to this..You already know that nobody must be  in this, except us.
-          We can not risk being victims of an ambush. If  this is a personal vendetta, which are arranged between them. My suspicion  was born of a single sentence spoken by our ... "Supervisor", "Shoot to kill: no prisoners will be taken on this issue. "
. Hotchner was silent.
 -I guess we can trust her-he said,after a while. -And I guess you have not mentioned ...
-No, of course.
 -Whatever it is, his  name should remain unblemished.
-Now you're the fanatic  of the institutions?
 Aaron stood up, and no muscle of his face led  the interior martyrdom that  he experienced.
-'I have reason to hate him more than anybody else-he said, very quietly –But I  feel that everything crashes into a shadow. We are pursuiving a shadow…
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
(Combourg,,Ville d’Autrémont:the winter garden…At the same time)

The empty space  in the middle of the semicircle formed by the  carefully chosen three hundred three orchids indicated the absence of the colchicum.
 In a small black bottle, the kind that were common in old apothecaries, the root was mixed with laudanum, a little honey, wormwood, Madeira wine, and tincture of henbane(black and white) ,"the flowers of death."
- I knew you would not dare to press the trigger.It doesn’t matter yet. .Colchicum  acts rapidly,it reaches within one hour  to induce coma, and death is safe, easy, almost immediate,and painless..And, especially, clean..I’ve  been a Judas, a Nero , a Caligula, a Erostratus..: but I will die as  Socrate-he smiled- Anyway, if you think it is necessary shot, I do not expect anything else from you..Now., please, spit in the little bottle..I want   your saliva as the vehicle of the poison,  as the water of my death.
 Spencer hesitated a moment then salivated at the flask.Inmediately, Gideon drained its content to the dregs .
_-_This has been done.This is a  Fact-he  said, and went to the piano,.He steps were decise,secure.He sat down, and started playing the bars of the third movement of Rahcmaninov’s second Concerto.
 Spencer came up to him, and sat  down in the lounge couch ,facing the windows-On the table there was a book.He opened it. It was  Verlaine, and they were his Saturnian verses.
(TO BE CONTINUED)

TOWER OF SILENCE

Chapter VIII:

"les sanglots longs
Des violons
   De l'automne
Blessent mon coeur
D'une langueur
   M o n o t o ne. Tout suffocant
Et blême, quand
   Sonne l'heure,
Je me souviens
Des jours anciens
   Et je pleure Et je m'en vais
Au vent mauvais
   Qui m'emporte
Deça , de lá,.  
Pareil à la
   feuille morte "
(P. Verlaine, Chanson d'automne)

(The deep whispers
Of the autumn Violin
are like
a wound in the soul
A wound of strange anguish
without end.
Trembling,I  remember
This flight of time
I  left.
Evoking the past
and those distant days,
I
cry.
This wind blows
a yesterday of darkness .
It happens 
like a bad storm
raising ,littering dried leaves
like I am)


The rustle of those dried leaves in the road leading to the small town sounded like a kind of clatter, so percussive, incisive, sometimes unbearable.
After leaving the car, and leaving aside L'Heureux and his people (hiding behind a low wall overlooking the cemetery and  the Castle Forest), Aaron Hotchner nodded to Derek Morgan.
-Nothing, yet?
The brunette shook her head.
Wielding their weapons,they  were protected as they usually did. Hotchner walked forward; then, Rossi, and Derek brought up the rear, slowing  purposely his steps.
They were just leaves, a pungent smell of honeysuckle ,old dried flowers , a gust of wind, a dark cloud behind the tower : perhaps that slightly damp dew could  become rain.There was  a dead tree; an old blind fountain sorrounded by  the little circle of boxwood; a statue(naked and mutilated);a bird.
It was that hopeless time when  twilight begins to become evening.
No one could have imagined the storm  and the  persistent martyrdom that were shaking Aaron's soul.
He feared …but he also longed to know what had really happened: if Spencer was alive or dead, and in what circumstances.He wanted, (and at the same time fhe elt a terrible disgust, a sordid fear ) he carved to know every detail,even if  it was the cruelest  or the most infamous.
He knew that every man carries the constant fascination with death, and that its  aphrodisiac effect competes with the desire of transmitting life.
He finally knew  a new type of sorrow: the  voluptuous pain  of broken passion, jealousy, uncertainty, fear, anger, desire at their  finest terrible insistence.
To embrace the one  he adored, living or dead, maybe also cover the gloomy picture that awaited him with his  ​​tears, those tears that were pouring silently alone and only three times in his life .. (the death of his father, Hayley's sacrifice, Spencer Reid's farewell) ..
Aaron  Naphtali Elijah felt his rebellion against the eternal blood pogrom that imposed him to voluntarily waive any staff of personal rebellion .Several  centuries of  atrocities (characteristics of what at least three millennia  of historical hate did to his race) had prepared his heart to turn definitively like a stone.
That's when he heard the distant music, and when he saw the cats (the  countless cats!) running in the presence of the three men who, somewhat apart, were marching in single file directly into an iron gate that had a sign ,an old badge with letters  spent by time : “Ville d'Autrémont, 1679.”
A name and a date.
He thought he heard something behind him:  he  saw Rossi crouching behind the  small  blind fountain,.and could hear him whisper, as if nodding:
-Rachmaninov.
Some yards behind, Morgan pressed the call button on his cell phone (an anachronistic detail amidst that timeless solitude), and could not hear, but he could see still with his hawk eyes, trained to foresee what indecipherable, how Morgan’s face had turned pale.
And he could see him make a desperate sign.
Aaron fell, almost running.
-You will not believe, -said Derek, pale, with his features  that,without words,were  trying to explain what he  could not understand- These young victims are alive .... they are alive.. ...., Aaron!
Clutching the arm of his subordinate and friend, Hotchner said, not without the  slightest hint of surprise in his voice: -
-Is it safe?
-Absolutely.!One  of them ..-Derek looked at the small screen of his iPhone.-, the so called Laforgue, the pianist, even today will give a concert at the Salle Pleyel ..
-So? -Aaron asked, and did nothing but ask to himself..
-Someone lies.. Someone (a narcissist, certainly, some diseased erostratomaniac needing of public) have simulated these crimes, to bring us up here..This  is my personal theory.
Aaron had full confidence in the extraordinary ability of Penelope, and in the no less extraordinary good sense of Morgan.
So he insisted:
-Do you think we can trust Rossi?
Derek Morgan shook his head.
-I'm not so sure- he murmured.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
(Gideon’s private chamber,besides the winter garden,inside the house.At the same time).

Suddenly,Spencer stopped reading to ask, softly:
-Could you do me one last favour, master?
Jason, while caressing the keys on the piano, and feeling himself full of poison in his veins (he barely perceived his legs, and began to experience  blurred vision), tried to sound, however, natural:
-Anything, creature.What it is?
-Give me some anesthesic,some … soporipher drug. I don’t  want to see the time when Aaron…
-Are you afraid of to face him?-Gideon asked.
-What I fear is that he will not come alone .. The chances that he could come alone  are very few.
-I know..But  you, and only you,are  the one who should be able to face this..It  has caused great harm on you..It’s  time to speak clearly and openly.
-Also, if he come ... with  Morgan..or  Rossi –Reid continued-I do not know how to react ... They  may think that I killed you, because you  tried to force me .. Maybe (and this is the worst but most likely possibility, because statistically it is proven) they will think that it is you who abducted and tortured me.
-They are researchers of evil:as you were,and as I was .What do you  want them to think? That this  is a supreme act of pure love? Perhaps do you pretend that they could  understand the secret poetry  that lasts behind our pact?
-It might look like a suicide pact, and ...
-No.You shall  not die..-Jason  turned slightly to face Reid,with  his eyes like  glassy:​​obviously he could not see him.Then  he sighed,painfully.
'-I have ice on my legs –he said, finally.
Spencer approached, sitting on the carpet, and stroked Jason’s limbs ,that were so  rigid, like tetanised: they felt frigid  as irretrievably dead.
-They shall not have the happiness of  to execute me, or to get a single word from me.
His hands were  clinched.,but he already attempted to caress Reid’s hair.
He even had the strength, however, to draw his Eibar 38 special, which was on a low table next to the piano.
-Let's finish with all of this,and  say no more .... I want to give me a good time to tear this fucking useless life, dammit!.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
(In  the sorrounding garden)
A single shot rang out in the garden, after the sudden interruption of the music.
It was only an instant.
-Reid!!!-Hotchner cried-Reid!! My God! REID!!!!!!
He ran with the forces and momentum that only grant despair and delirium.
Morgan, with a bound, stood beside him.
Finally ,they situated themselves  outside the entrance ,almost with  the speed of light.
-Clear !-cried Morgan,pointing  to the  living room.
-Upstairs? -asked Rossi.
-In the lobby that is opening onto the conservatory- Hotchner murmured , and  he crouched beside the door frame.

The  brutal rose of  blood covered the carpeted floor around the piano. The body looked fallen down on its side, and almost in a fetal position. His eyes and mouth were still open.
Derek looked away, horrified.
Standing next to the bloody offal, blood stained himself, with capriciously crimson splashed stains on his tense  face , painless, contracted, but apathetic, still clutching the Eibar 38 special,it  sadly stood a victorious Spencer Reid.
He turned slowly to face them.His features were not accusing any kind of emotion, but his eyes were full of tears.
-Aaron –he whispered, almost inaudibly ...
Hotchner lowered his weapon, and saved with a jump  the distance between them, hugging Reid against his chest, almost wanting to embed him  in his heart, as he had done after Hänckel’s affair..
-Spencer ... -Aaron muttered, and his voice was softer than usually.-Spencer, I'm here, and do not worry, my life ....and nothing else matters.
Derek ("My life What the hell ...?" ,he said to himself ) bent over Gideon’s corpse, whose face he had a hard time recognising as his once good friend, teacher and benefactor.Jason had stubble, and very long hair, which sought uselessly to  cover his balding crown.He  was horribly emaciated, consumed; his now dead  body seemed to be little more than a bag of bones.
Rossi lit a cigarette, in a gesture of olympic contempt :.
-Thank you, my dear Spencer-he said, speaking to Reid in a tone that sounded like strangely relaxed-We've saved time and bullets here.I would applaud you, if I were not sure that Aaron certainly would disapprove the gesture.
Reid looked up, without leaving the safe haven of Aaron’s chest, and said:
-You have nothing to be thankful for, nor to applaud, doctorRossi. This isn’t a victory;this is a disgrace .... a huge tragedy.And I do  not want to think that it  is also an injustice ..
-He’s  right, David,' -said Derek -Gideon did not kill those victims. Everything  was false.
-I wonder if you knew that, David? If you knew it was all a sham, and if you bring us here this far deceived ?Should I take it that you were complicit in the madness of Gideon ?Or should I infer that it was a plan (truly diabolical) to deliver to get back at him ..?- asked Aaron.
Rossi shrugged, and walked toward the exit.
-Maybe so, '-he said-Or maybe  not.Think  what you want, Aaron.
Hotchner's voice again became steadfast, strong, recovering all his usual aplomb:
-When we get  back to Quantico, you’ll explain me this with  details..I will be inside., and you, of course, you're out. Dismissed.
'-Oh yes, of course ... Now is your lover who demands full attention, right?
 Rossi’s  almost mockingly  words almost dragged  Morgan to commit a silliness:.
-Will you shut up, David?
David made ​​a gesture with his hand in the air, and went out into the conservatory.
-He took a mixture of poisons'- began Reid, weakly-He was doomed to die of irreversible liver cirrhosis, it was a matter of few months.He did not  want to end miserably, spitting excrements.He  poisoned  himself because I hesitated to oppress the trigger..But he was suffering visibly much: the process of poisoning  was too long .. You were coming .. I did not want to see him fall apart even more ... He took the pistol,and pointed it to his chest: his hand were shaking horribly ... I put my hand on the gun, snatched it, and finally pulled the trigger..My traces and fingerprints  are still there, along with his own.Now, Aaron,I have to fulfill his request, his last will..His his corpse must be cremated immediately, and ashes scattered on the island where the poet Chateaubriand  is buried .He was his ancestor on his motherline , and a  symbol of a world he loved, and that  had died long before he was born.
-We can not ignore the legal requirements .The French police stomps behind us..They will want to  do the autopsy.-Hotchner said.
-Tell us, -asked Derek- Reid,please…He was the one who pretended  the crimes for to make us come here ?.
Reid shook his head.
-I know nothing about that-he murmured, and raised his eyes to meet the gaze of Aaron, those pupils in perpetual mourning which saw himself reflected-Help me , Aaron .. please ...... I gave my solemn promise….
'-Certainly,-' said Aaron.-Of course.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
(Island of the Grand Bé)
(Rachmaninov Concerto no. 2, second movement: Adagio sostenuto).
The ceremony was brief, simple.There were only  Reid, the Dutertre couple  (drowned in tears), and, at a safe distance, Aaron, Derek and Rossi.
"Goodbye, friend and teacher," Morgan said, his eyes following the quiet  flight of the  ash in the autumn wind. "I can never say I've really known you."
Aaron found himself buried in a contradictory  sea of feelings..His mind flew to the days of youth, when he had the opportunity to attend one of Gideon’s lectures.He was so amene then, so warm, with a simple treatment, so fine and gentle. ... She wanted to  remember him so..
Or perhaps as a vague shadow that was  dissolved in the night leaving the cabin in the woods deVirginia.He would have  wanted to recite  the Kaddisch  prayers (after all, Jason was half Jewish), but  he hardly remembered them..He murmured, then, a loss stanza  of  the Kol Nidrei.
Rossi was the one that could appeal the most  to the background, often painful, of remembrances..He closed his eyes,  and  the malevolent smile of a boy  with long dark  brown hair, insolent eyes, tall stature and strange beauty suddenly appeared to him.
He felt that, perhaps, in his youth, he had loved  him as a haunting presence is worthy to be loved. He was looking tasty, yet dangerous and always tantalizing..Jason was beautiful in those distant days..Later , the bitterness snatched up the same shade which he  had become ..
Rossi suffered the pangs of love-hate-love and the terrible sense of the irreparable, all in one, when, seeing the  ashes flying, he knew that something was going on forever in the wind next to that little handful of gray dust.
And then it was  when his chest burst into tears.
He fell to his knees, burying  his face in his hands, and almost shouted:
-Why ?…Why, my God, why? Fucking life, bitch, bitch life!!
Derek was going to approach him, but Aaron nodded:
-Let him alone.He has already his own punishment..
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….


The subsequent procedures and paperwork, the appeals to old friends and acquaintances in the INTERPOL to circumvent Spencer's intervention in the death of Gideon (declared  officially  as "suicide"), are part of what is  bureaucratically anecdotal.
Three nights at the Village Inn they still had to endure before they can take flight back to America.
During one of those nights, Aaron left Spencer after making him  sleep in his arms like a child, went  down to the pub for a drink, recommending Derek ( the three occupied the same room) to be alert in case the boy woke , and asked for his presence.
He  wanted to erase the terrible images of the crematorium, the smell of charred flesh, the sight of that inert mouth kissed by  Reid  before it became ashes ...
He ordered a cognac and lit one of the Gauloises he had found in the house, in an already open  pack .The tobacco tasted strong, hot, dry ,so feverish as the sick mind of the one  who used to smoke them.
At an adjacent table, a remnant of man, drunk, hopelessly drunk,was  humming a tune of unmistakable sadness.
It was Rossi.Aaron  bit his lower lip: Maybe now, drunk as never before,he  finally could tell all the truth.
Without a word, he walked over to his table and sat down opposite him..Rossi seemed  not to have noticed him: his eyes were fixed on the bottom of his glass of Pernod.
-David, -Aaron started to say, -I need to know the whole truth.
Hiccuping, Rossi said:
-Why, diamine? (Demon) .I am out of this..You already said it ,yourself.
Aaron looked at David’s  hand..He was grasping  something that he clearly wanted  hidden.
-What are you  hiding there?
-Nothing .. niente.niente ...
Aaron declined to show initiating a struggle, but finally Rossi's hand opened, and he saw the other Eibar 38, the twin of the  murder weapon.
-You're going to make silly?-he asked –This is pretty strange coming from one so cold as you .If yopu  kill yourself, it would be an act of manifested irrationality, which does not gel with your personality.
-Cold ! See you talk!
-Rossi, you're making people look at us.
-Me  ne frega!
-Rossi, I need to know everything, but absolutely all the truth.I promise  you that no one else will know.
-And what does it matter? He is no longer suffering, and I am free. Do you  have an idea of what I have lost?
'-I've lost things in my life, too,and too many,please,  remember ... Things and people I have  loved ... Hell, Dave! We were friends at one time! You were with me when I lost my wife!! You were one of those who held her coffin during the funeral! My son has  a boundless affection toward you! Let me join you in this terrible hour! Let me know the “what”, the “why” and  the “how”!
-What you want is to make me  tell you if I knew in advance about the murders. .No. Dall'Abaco got me the dossier after L'Heureux wrote to me that he had received a letter.
-A letter?Perhaps from Gideon ?…
-It had no sender, and was written using a typewriter..We never  could identify it: perhaps it was an old Remington, like the ones used in the Bureau thirty years ago.
-It could have been him:it was his style.
-Maybe.
He paused, his eyes fixed on the alcohol, like searching for  the strength  that  had abandoned him  forever.
-You do not know what I lost-he repeated -You have not the slightest idea.
Aaron took a sip of cognac, lit another cigarette, and looked decidedly at Rossi, with that  inquisitorial looks of his,with  the " unbearable and unsustainable look ", as Spencer had baptized it.
-Did you love him, David? –Aaron asked.
Silence.
Aaron insisted:
-You can tell me: he’s no longer alive:did you love him?
For the only answer, Rossi began to mourn as a child, with his  head on the table, mumbling unintelligible words in Italian, as in a monotonous singsong.

Aaron called the waiter, ordered a double espresso and a glass of water, and gave him to drink.
'-Here,please, drink this.
Rossi drank the water in small sips, still sobbing, and ,with a brief moment of painful hesitation,he began.,so quietly:
-After I slipped the trailer, as I said, he came to my hotel room, and he practically stalked me..I rejected him vigorously,after a first moment of absolute perplexity..He strongly urged me to let him go with me to California (I had told that I had thought to go to live there). He abandoned Frank (whom never forgave him, as it became clear later), and we traveled together to San Francisco.We rented  one crummy little room near the bay.We were very  poor, but we felt absolutely happy-. He sighed, and raised his index finger,like in a gesture of admonition-No, contrary to what you might be thinking, Aaron,we never had sex.Never..
-'I'm not thinking about anything -Hotchner said,-I'm only listening.
Rossi smiled bitterly.
-He used to  call me  "little bourgeois pig", because he knew my family owned a large grocery store in Philadelphia. …and  we used to fight hardly….but also  laughing, hugging us….yes,laughing to mourn .... Yes, to mourn.
When I met who would later become my  first wife, after making peace with my family and recover my lost welfare ,he was so enraged that he did not speak to me  for a long time.Therefore ,of course, he was not present in the wedding. Although he  sent a splendid present: the Divine Comedy in a beautiful bilingual edition, with illustrations by Gustave Doré.In the famous chant  on the forest of suicides (suicides   turned into trees in Dante’s Inferno), just where it bitterly complains an "anonymous Florentine suicide" ,he wrote, in pencil: "JMG".
He meant that he  was a placed number for suicide.
Did I really love him?
 I never asked this to myself.Did he really love me?.He never said it..But  when my wife gave birth to my only child ,and the little baby boy died inmediatley after , the only hand that landed on my shoulder, and the only one that welcomed my crying in his shoulder, were his.
When he wrote that he was about to  marry, I could not believe it.Replying to  his gesture, I also refused to go to the wedding, but I got a call that night from a hotel in Los Angeles.It was from him. He asked me to go out that night to join him in a hotel room.
-Just in his wedding night?! I heard right?! -Aaron's eyes almost danced in their sockets, and it was not because of the alcohol ,precisely.
-I flew to him,and…Yes.You heard it well...I don’t  know why, but I flew to his side.. He had rented an entire suit in that hotel,for  me .. for the both of us.And we  were there, talking and drinking, playing chess and discussing Lacassagne’s  theories. We hugged,strongly,as never before, always laughing and crying, at the same time..We were drunken ,of course.. But I was never literally devoured with kisses as I was that night….
(CONTINUED) ...


TOWER OF SILENCE

Chapter IX:
"... So, At That Hour When Time slips from us,
are we wedded to Whom I stood before him,
and With The sacrament of his kiss I signs himself unto us,
and makes us of one flesh With Him. '"

(Simeon Solomon, A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep)

-Everything  was all so ambiguous and confusing- continued David-, and I hardly knew what was happening between us.everything passed: time, events, milestones, and other ones  less so; the question about Anthony’s paternity (no, he is not my son; his father was one of the many ills that Eleanor used to take revenge of  Jason); my divorce;his  divorce; the military life in  Afghanistan, when  he came  home covered with wounds, and I took care of him day and night, leaving all for to moist those feverish   with a few drops of water, and he begged me for a kiss that I  repeatedly refused ...
Then came the founding of the unit, in which we put everything we had, and still more.The  lectures, tours, research, books, awards and recognition we received throughout everyone for himself, and altogether.I already say with conviction: I was always good, but he was certainly the best one .Without any doubt.
After the accident in which I lost my left eye, as I had done with him,he  did not leave my side for a single instant.He wasn’t neither eating nor sleeping: he just watched beside me, sitting next to my bed.I remember him  joking  in public,before the  doctors and nurses, sayingthat  I would be now like Hannibal or  Wotan ,an in famous one-eyed guy.. But, alone, when I felt asleep, he wept bitter tears ,so desperate as I had  never seen before in a man .He caressed and kissed me , whispering that he would have gladly given me his eyes, because he was tired of seeing so much misery and human filth ... He called me: "life of  his life and soul of his soul" ...Those words  broke my heart, and I know he wasn’t pretending anymore.He always used to feel guilty about anything ,even about what  could not be avoided,  as if he weighed on his head the image of living in eternal guilt of omission.Because all of this,he used to drink  as a sponge, increasingly, to the point that, when he was summoned by your superior orders he was  really and absolutely  sick ... and the disease was alcoholism.A legal technical euphemism turned it , however, into post traumatic stress.
After that time, time of continuous fatigue and  superhuman efforts(time when we slept together more than once ,embraced, knowing that we were not allowed to explore all that separated the torso from the  waist ), I decididely came  to my retirement (not sure if it was due to my personal fear,a sort of  constant feeling that I would have to work day and night beside him) , and then  was when I received the letter in which he said that, at last, as  never before in his life, he had fallen in love.
He regretted that the "little freak of nature, endowed with all the gifts as a budding dark archangel" (the pompous phrase could only be yours) was still almost a child, barely pubescent, absolutely innocent in his naive beauty and natural perversity.His astonishing beauty and his   sweeping intelligence had blinded him to such an extent that, contrary to every principle established by Regulation (the damn rules!), he himself became his personal mentor, risking even Van Houten (who still walked by Nevada) would be able to hunt him. Then  he did not care to live "in the capital of tacky and outlandish raids" (as he called Las Vegas), because it meant being close to his subject of desire.He  took him to Berkeley, with the resulting scandal ( a boy of fourteen, a little genius presented by a renowned protector ... whom, unfortunately,had a very  bad reputation in his private life.)

Rossi paused, and took a long sip of coffee..During that pause, Aaron felt like if the universe was collapsing again over him.An universe  whose order was blind. His arm was clawing to feel that nails were bleeding in a superhuman effort to hold on to his poor, low, miserable hope.
-'Do you know if anything…. could have happened  then?- he asked, and then he,the SSA Aaron Elijah Nephtali Hotchner , the man who never recoiled before anyone or anything,  confessed to himself: "I am a coward."
-No.His personal  ethics (because he had it , but twisted and incomprehensible to the others) did not allow it.The boy was only fourteen, and, except for his overwhelming intellectual superiority, he yet behaved as a c hild.Amd Gideon looked happy  in his role as an adoptive  father .Proud  and happy.
One day he came home to talk to me exclusively about that boy.A fact, he spoke quite  scarcely.He showed me photographs (he was a freak: photographing all the people around him, and displaying  the images in front of him, looking intensely, insistently, as devouring with eyes). Then ,he played the piano most of the afternoon, and he said he knew I could infer all just listening  to the music.
-And could you?
-Yes,I could.You  know very well that, when he wanted, he  knew how to be  understood without words.
Rossi paused;then,he  lit a cigarette, and said, gravely:
-Now, besides all this, and responding to  your constant demand : yes, I thought, indeed, that the crimes had really taken place. With L 'Heureux and I  received the photographs, with no return address, finding  the names of the alleged víctims.The   stay dates coincided with Gideon’s visits to the countries involved in the issue.-Rossi punched furiously on the table -And I believed this…I believed he was a murderer! Someone who had done what he did with Frank Van Houten, and with that  prostitute, someone who had  punished in a way as ruthless as when, at the time, rushed to the ones  who humbled Reid at the University, was well capable of this, and even more!
Aaron shook, and made ​​efforts to do not show this.But he soon felt that he should not worry about whether the disturbance was manifested  or evident.It was like  something coming suddenly to him: he felt that everything was useless.
-The fault was mine, maybe –Rossi continued -I should have researched more carefully.You have seen: Garcia solved it all with a simple clic. Regarding who sent those letters and those photos, and why the hell he did it , I have no more blooding  doomed idea.
David sighed long, finished his coffee, settled his long gray raincoat, and took his hat.
-I shall not go back to America .So…this is the farewell.Say goodbye in my name to the others, please.
-Wait !One more detail…
-What?
-Why did you  counsel us  to shoot at kill? And how did he know we were coming?
-Because he had asked me to do so. And he knew we were coming because he asked me for to notice you.Because of this I wasn’t worried  about Spencer: I knew he wasn’t in  a real danger.
-Did you already know  that Gideon was sick of terminal cirrhosis? Since then?
-I always knew that.From the beginning of his illness.And I was always in the disposal of  to seem cruel and inhumane if it could save him from more pain..He had already suffered too much in this life -he sighed,doing a long pause.Then,he continued:
 -What can  I say ... I advise you as a friend, not as a professional: Aaron, please,take care..When one has  lost the sense of reality towards a chimera, when things are stripped of their materiality and everything becomes confusing, and diluted in a reverie that never stops .... it is pain that approaches.And, with pain, it comes always misery.Misery of the  soul, loneliness of spirit, a disease that is increasing over time, and exhausts us, kills us, little by little, drinking  our life dropwise.
-That's what happened to him?
David nodded.
-And to me- he said, before slowly leaving the door open to the night, for the last touch of a dark past that definitely had evaporated when tossing that handful of ashes.


An old  photograph and the  Eibar special were left on the table.Aarón put the gun in his pocket, and looked at the picture, which, in the dim light of the lamp, it acquired the  tinge of a phantasmagory .It was  Gideon (he would have little more than twenty years in that picture, but Aaron recognized him instantaneously,at that "unmistakable aura" emanating from a familiar , rare light, incisively coming  from the apple of his eye), probably  dressed for a party,in the costume of a swashbuckler, with mustache and goatee to the Spanish; long hair, almost black, and again those bright eyes, lit by a malignity that was a sly mixture of tenderness, infinite wit, insolent contempt and helplessness ..  Atrocious  eyes wrenching on a smiling face ... Aaron recognized in  that vicious young lad the features of a pure blood Sephardi .Gideon.The  "strong warrior." El unbeatable.
He was beautiful in that distant time, without doubt.Aaron experienced  an immense pity for him, for Rossi, and for himself.
He drained his glass, then stored the picture in the same pocket with a strange kind of mercy he was surprised by how deep and unusual, and went upstairs.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

The journey was tiring, but almost a relief compared to the events that had been left behind.
Derek fortunately didn’t do  more questions.He  only asked if Rossi would accompany them back home, and, to meet face to face with the silence of Aaron, silent, he  headed his headphones, and got lost into his world.
Before boarding he bought perfume for all the girls, and also to his mother, sisters, aunts and cousins, plus a magnificent ring of great beauty, extremely expensive.Aaron has not need to ask  who was the addressee of this last special present . Derek spent all he had, and  he did so with great pleasure and infinite affection.

Aaron felt a healthy envy: why he could not do as Derek, whom intelligence had managed to get along with a simple heart, noble and affectionate?
Why, in the narrow world of Naphtali Elijah Aaron Hotchner, everything was subject to a permanent structure, which depended on the environment settings, circumstances, and even expectations, desires, aspirations, etc., of others?
A pogrom mentality, certainly: a permanent spirit of ghetto strictly controlled from within the ruins .... that is not noticed from the outside.
Unscathed hieratic, severe, with eyes shining like sparks mourning inquisitive, digging through the stinking reservoir of human misery: he had been trained well, because it had been raised so , and so was his father's world, and  his grandfather’s, and his great-grandfather’s, in the Jewish quarter of Prague.

During the trip, Spencer was dozing with his ​​head on Aaron’s chest, like clinging to a shelter that  he, Aaron, could not offer.
Thank God, the boy slept almost the entire period of the long journey, or remained in the intermediate state between sleep and wakefulness (that world of shadows and delusions), muttering incoherent words (perhaps still circulating in their blood the remains of those infamous  substances ), curling up like a hungry child in search of the chest to be fed.A c hest that was dry, hurt, tired, but could not afford to show not one of his wounds.
Sometimes he  looked up, glancing  at Aaron with his beautiful sleepy eyes, barely open, asking something that did not quite put into words, and he, Aaron responded with silence and more silence, stroking her hair soaked in sweat, wrapping the strands that stuck to his forehead, dying for to place  a kiss on it, but without the capability of to do  it, feeling exhausted forces in a mere gesture that never came to fruition.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

(Back at Quantico)
It took several weeks to ordain and arrange everything.He redacted his irrevocable resignation, signed it , and submitted it to his superiors, resulting joy of the Strauss woman , who looked at last free from her most hated obstacle.
He would not go more into it, accusing her of blatant discrimination and anti-Semitism, but made ​​it clear that he had suffered countless humiliations by that proud woman, who filled his mouth calling him "fagot Jew dog" in how many times she  may be put before him.
Derek would take command again: he was more than qualified to do so, and he would have also,  the help of a special kind of very experienced man, as  it was Sam Cooper, the best at what they were doing, only just a step below .. the master.
After congratulate Derek on his upcoming wedding (he had finally decided to make Penelope throw downstairs  her absurd "operetta fiancé"), Aaron went to his lonely apartment (his son Jack was at his sister Ruth’s, in DC) waiting  for the acceptance of his resignation.
When the phone rang (he had spent just over a month since his return), he thought he wasfrom  the office for the confirmation.
But it was a long distance call: Ms. Mariangela Rossi Di Leonardo, whose beautiful  villa in the Neapolitan coast David had taken as a refuge,  announced to him  that his brother, the former chief Supervisor of the BAU , had died of a stroke , two days ago.
A shiver ran not only  Aaron's body ,but also his soul.
("Aaron, take care ...")
He was still under the effect of the news ,shocked by what  had occurred ,when he received the call he had been waiting.
His resignation had been finally accepted unconditionally.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
(Refectory of the Dr.James Urquhart’s psychiatric clinic ,, in Chevy Chase)

The nurse accompanied Spencer until his seat.Aaron stared at him,in silence.The boy  looked somewhat better, but still he had not said a word.
-I'm going to get you out of here -'said Aaron- We will go away from this country.Together. I'm taking the child also with us: I will situate him in a boarding bilingual school.-
He clutched the white hand, which felt cold, as if he had run out of blood,and continued:
-But please my life .. please ... speak ... say a  word ....
In response, Spencer looked up, and stared at him, until his tears sprout, that eyes veiled in mourning were bathed like a in  slow,painful rain ...
-Tell me something .. for mercy! ... Aaron insisted, and his voice muffled.
It had been a month that Spencer had joined the clinic after intense depressive symptoms, which led him to an almost catatonic state.He had crumbled just when the plane touched down in America.
His lips were closed.His  eyes,like  dead.In his  climax of pain and despair, Aaron had to solve the indefinite medical leave,  interning him in  Urquhart’s clinic, one of the best institutions specialised in this type of diseases.All of this together with the formalities of his resignation, and the rest of the unit with their damn questions, and the Strauss woman laughing in his face ... And Rossi, who had died so suddenly, and so far ... without have said goodbye ...
Aaron wondered how far he could bear.
And,perchance for  the first time in all his life, he made ​​a bold decision in the area of his own privacy.
After leaving Spencer in the refectory, he asked to speak to Urquhart, and let him know that he would take Reid with  him.
Urquhart, contrary to his expectation,  nodded, smiling:
-That's exactly what I was going to propose, Dr. Hotchner. Dr. Reid is not really sick: if we look at the characteristics of his actual  state, I will tell you that it is anything but a form of post traumatic stress: a type of shell shock. In order:  you know enough about human behaviour to having to waste my time (and make it miss you, too) with more explanation.
That said, he signed what  Hotchner asked him, and after a brief nod, he retired.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
A week later, after to have seen Spencer spending seven days  with his chin resting on his knees, hearing continually the second concert of Rachmaninov in twenty different versions, and still without having uttered word, given the desperate look of Aaron, both the lovers ( accompanied by the little Jack, for whom everything was a kind of game) left the country, for to do not return nevermore.
(TO THE EPILOGUE….)

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Epilogue:
(Music: Violin Concerto No.2 by Max Bruch: First movement)
             

(Location: Cabo Polonio, Uruguay coast, a year and a half later)





-What do we have here? ... Oh, I see, I see! Another conch!!
-Síiiiiiiiiiii! Yeah, Uncle Spencer!
Jack's little eyes shone like small coals  stolen from the sea while Reid "mined" skillfully snails of his hair and ears.
The laughs were like a chorus of bells with foam, distant sirens and joyous shouts of fishermen.
-Now, let's go  to prepare the books and copybooks, that you leave early morning to school.
Aaron was smoking,supported under the door into the small staircase that separated the house from the  beach, while watching the sea..
It had been  a brutal year, with time elapsing at breakneck speed, devouring hours and minutes, evaporating the days: the arrival in Buenos Aires, to settle in the department that Spencer had inherited; the contacts with distant relatives who put him in touch with the Hebrew school to enroll in it to Jack; the comings and goings to arrange the details of their future support; the wandering looking for a suitable location that would allow them to get away from the world..First, really,it  was the trip to Ushuaia, looking for the distance of the Tierra del  Fuego.Then, the return to Buenos Aires, a city that had seemed wonderful to them, but also full of pitfalls. They could  not forget that the one whose shadow they had suffered for so long was a regular visitor to the Southern capital: not in vain he  had written not less than three books on criminological aspects in the stories of Borges, and a highly celebrated study on serial murderers of that country for them so far and strange..A sort of Paris city amid a fantasy, with a touch of  expressionist haze ,some romantic  Dickensian brushstrokes , and a smug air of Southern nonchalance .
 Spencer loved Buenos Aires, but he also felt overwhelmed by it.
A tourist agency provided them with guidance on the Uruguayan coast, which contained a site without electricity, no gas, no cell signal, no internet, no cars, no clackson horns .. A fishing village with little tourism, quiet and reserved: Punta del Diablo in Cabo Polonio.
. Having rented the  apartment in the neighbourhood of Palermo to a couple of friendly Germans, and after to manage the transfer of Jack to a boarding bilingual school in Montevideo,  they left for the small neighbouring country, feeling that ,at last, they had found their place in the world.
They purchased  (with the income from properties that Spencer received in  inheritance that allowed them to live more comfortably, helped by the dollar exchange) a house by the beach, not very big, but comfortable, and an all-terrain vehicle( a Land Rover), to move easily from the village to the capital to pick up Jack in the summer, and to return him  to the boarding school for the school year.
At that shred the world they still had, however, certain bonds of sociability.
The main character of the people was an old fisherman, an Englishman,  former whaler and currently the only inhabitant of the lighthouse:people called  him Don Welsey.
And ,so,Aaron had become, also "Don Aaron," and  he did not disgust endless rounds of  mate and gin, and the equally endless games of cards..
Don Welsey had approached them. when he heard, after a while, the native language, "but painfully misrepresented"(“not even Irish!”). He immediately inferred that  the odd couple of fellows,was a couple of Americans.
  But Spencer was understood by him  almost immediately ,overall after to have seen the young lad stopping  by to recite the verses of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner.:
"Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink .. "


In short: the inveterate distrust of the English man for their “children once spurious” was defeated once again, by the pen of a poet.
And by the mellifluous voice, yet almost childlike, of  Spencer William Reid.: a voice that softly licked (but also cruelly remarked ) every word, as if they were made ​​of the same oozing   of the sea.
Reid was nearing almost thirty-three years old , and he had never been more beautiful.His  almond coloured hair fell without any reservations to below his shoulders.He had  put on some weight, so his corporal  forms acquired full roundness :he was a  beauty in the right point of ripeness, like a ripe fruit. Aaron, meanwhile, was showing clearly the marks of the premature ageing. He  hid his almost fifty years behind the beard he wore on his face :it looked sharp and hieratic ,and also as a touch of carelessness, or perhaps it was pure  patriarchal severity, while his hair fell also almost to his  shoulders, and clearly reveal the threads of time at the temples (a detail that Spencer loved).
The Englishman  used to come at night to play the guitar, to discuss things from the sea,to  hear the old ballads recited by Spencer, and he was visibly moved by the verses of Ossian-McPherson, of Coleridge and Keats, Byron and Edgar Allan Poe.
The prodigious memory of Spencer kept intact every line.

In the meantime,
Aaron looked at his  lover with a quiet devotion, and got into the vapours of gin and black snuff, as if to grasp a dream in which he, Aaron, was the permanent spectator of a star, that,however, he could still caress with his hand .. although he knew it was hopelessly distant.

The summer came to an end, and with it, Jack vacations also ended.
The child had adapted perfectly (as all children!), when he was surrounded by new friends at school, and in the village.He played  football with the  fishermen’s children, spoke Spanish River Plate as any “botija”("jug": Uruguayans’ name given to creatures), and Aaron swore he'd never seen him grow so happier and  freer.
For that night Spencer had promised a party to dismiss the summer, around the campfire,on the beach, with magic numbers, costumes and dance.
Aaron smoked  while watching the sea, wondering, once again, what kind of surprise could countain the box that  Spencer had gathered at the port of Montevideo,on the  last week.
He smiled, and assumed that Reid’s pigeons would fly over the children’s heads , like those that he had suddenly awaken  in his soul that distant night in the north, when he,Spencer, surrendered to him..To him, to Aaron,whom, since the first moment he had seen Spencer’s  face, adored him  in silence.
And nothing had changed, however..Aaron continued worshiping him in silence.
At night (except when it was Jack who was always sleeping with his father), when he was  lying beside him, Spencer turned his head to the window that overlooked the sea, and Aaron, linking, hugged her waist from behind, in a delicate embrace, that he wanted be like a gesture of  possession, and that  was almost religious devotion.

It might seem a joke, but they  never had sex again.

The relationship was now made ​​of looks, of soft sporadic caresses , of words that rested  unspoken, of immense (and intense) silences.
Once, while they were  in bed and almost asleep both of them ,Spencer said:
-Aaron ... what will you do when I die?
-Don’t even mention it., my life,please ...
-Well,  no..but…but .. I am still curious…
-I shall die with you.
-You can’t:you have a son.
-I suppose that when it happens he will be an adult, and have already  made ​​his life, and damn if he could  want to hear about me ....
-Why do you despise yourself so much, Aaron?
The question was totally out of context, since it belonged to a time that both wanted desperately to forget.
Although not quite. Aaron was writing his memoirs, and Spencer wrote in a little black book which clearly did not want it to be read by anyone, not even for him.
-Do you  know, Aaron. …you, who have served in Pakistan and Central Asia, which is a djaméh?
-A tower of silence- Aaron said, and felt a chill that  was walking by his dorsal spine -A place to leave the dead.
-Exactly. It has been conceived or to allow raptors  do the work that you can not trust to the purity of water, earth or fire.
-Is that what you want, when you die?
-No, Aaron, I want to be thrown into the sea. I was amking allusion of it simply because this will be the title of my book.
-How so?
-It's what we have experienced in the BAU, exactly what we have lived and the way how the spoils came on.We left the corpses to the raptors..We attempted to do not contaminate anything with them, leaving the vultures do their job ,tearing eyes , tongue,… devouring and crushing with their picks ... and we waited for the bones will bleach in the ossuary; then we removed them and developed the corresponding case file.
He paused, and then turned, staring into the dark eyes of his lover:
-Do youou know, Aaron,that I enjoyed killing him? Do you know  that I celebrated his death,like  a mutual release? ... -He bit his lower lip- ... However .. And yet ... -he sighed- I had already killed people before.I remember even  that I saved your life killing  a man for the first time ,after to have received   that formidable beating  you gave to me, pretending your hatred and your annoyance  to see yourself  in the company of "an useless piece of nothing   that only serves to whining and to ask for his nursing bottle ", as I remember you called me ..... Of course I loved you since that day, I loved your mock insults, and even feared (but wanted!) that they were true..But  that .... That was different:that was only a matter of work,a matter of duty..This ... was personal.Do you know which  was the last thing ... he ... told me before he died bled,like a dog? (because he bled immediately, as you came:  Ididn’t  hit him in the chest, but in the belly ... on purpose). He said "I adore you and take you with me, for
"A man's character is his fate" –Spencer sighed again ... -And he died for what it was, like a poor miserable dog ,so old and sick, too cowardly even to be rabid.

Ignoring the sadness that had been planted in Aaron's face, or his own sadness, Spencer continued:
-I did everything as promised, however.I closed his eyes; I kissed him before being placed into the crematorium, and the ashes scattered in the Grand Bé.But it  was then-Spencer  lifted hisr long-tapered forefinger-, yes, it was then, when the ash started flying in the wind of that autumn ,so sad, so tragic, that I understood everything..I could hear Rossi sobbing,I foresaw,I felt   his immense pain , when it was  supposed he was  enjoying a kind of triumph. And right there, facing the sea, I realised how much we had been  manipulated by Gideon,who made ​​us think and  say what he wanted.;I realised how dreadful was the fact of to have been  his personal automata, his puppets, his stooges, Aaron. He programmed us that we should be fit and able to wallow in excrement, in the dregs, in the most foul of the psyche ... of the human  soul .While he didn’t commit no crime either , I think he wanted,he needed  the crimes , since each of them  was used to show off his "infinite capacity of phenomenological knowledge as a researcher of evil. "
Reid took something from the nightstand :it was a  little black book.
-My book is based entirely on his memoirs.Probably,it shall  be the most horrible book ever written.. But I do not care, I swear, Aaron, I do not care!.The  world must know who we are,   whom they entrusts their safety and tranquility, and  from whom they derive the alleged "knowledge of the truth." This book contains the most terrible details of what I assume will be a candid autobiography (I believe) of Jason Gideon and the deranged universe created by him..If you talked toRossi  that night, you know what I mean.
Aaron was going to say something, but Spencer stopped him:
-Wait, Aaron, let me finish,please.Derek, the girls, you ... including myself, we did not deserve this!.We firmly believed  in what we were doing; we were confident that we were free to think, to reason, to decide..But it  was not so! Rossi was the only one who knew, and he did not say a word..But he did  not tell us because he couldn’t!. "He" …Gideon…was dominating everything,despite  time, distance and all the possible differences .Rossi, in his strange  way, loved him….and desperately..But,of course,. He couldn’t stay at his side. ... "He"(Gideon) should want to swallow him; so Rossi walked away. '"He" used to  swallow those who were with him, no matter anything.That  was his way of love ...?. Maybe he thought it was something else ,and not love….Who can know!



Aaron's blood ran cold inside his veins.That  reasoning was not at all typical of  Spencer.If  Reid was a sort of morbid voyeur, incisive and voracious, he was still empathetic, and always showing  up some strange kind of mercy ,some sweetness,even when he tried  about the most nasty details.

-Stop torturing yourself  with that, and  do not talk anymore about him, please, Spencer.You terrify me ... and ....

Spencer suddenly had hugged him, kissing him tenderly.This dispelled any hint ,any shadow of doubt:it was  a kiss of sea salt with a sweet aftertaste of caramel and coffee.

And they never talked about it after that time, but Reid was still writing in the mysterious little black book.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
The flames of the fire cut the deep blue sky, greeting the night, after an evening of purple and gold.
The shouts and chants glad the beach, and ... yes, indeed, they had flown pigeons, flapping on the astonished heads of the”botijas”( "jugs"): they barely knew nothing but the sea, boats and fishing nets, sand and the school in the village, with the  slate and perhaps sad monotone voice of the old teacher.

All children wore a disguise: pirates, clowns, fairies, elves, animals ...
Spencer changed his clothes many times, always with his huge multicolour galley , and, when  surprisingly a rabbit came out and ran away, all the children ran behind it.
Jack caught it and returned sweaty, happy, shouting:
-Look, Dad !My new pet!
-You shall not be able to have it with you at the boarding school, Jack, I think, -said Aaron
'-No, but you will care for it for when I come back in the winter holidays ..

Spencer had disappeared again, to wear the last costume of the  night.
The old man  Welsey, who had laughed like a child again,  approached to Aaron and put a hand on his shoulder.
'-It's a pity that the Dutchman has  lost the party.Yo consider myself a hermit, but he won that kind ... away.
-Dutch? What  Dutch?- Aaron asked, without much interest, but somewhat choppy.
-The man living in the miserable hovel placed  downtown. He has the perfect type of the “rare one”.He came about three months here, I think from Buenos Aires, and, although not a Dutchman by birth, everyone calls him so, because he wants to be called so.
Aaron did not ask anything more, and that was  when Spencer made ​​his triumphal appearance.
The children chanted an endless "Oooooh!". While Aaron turned ,he froze to be suddenly paralysed: he could not believe what he was seeing.
That picture was silhouetted against the light of the huge fire under the dark sky  saturated of stars and a moon almost ferocious ... No. .. it was not possible ... So ... that was the  containing in that famous box ?
High boots style sixteenth century ;the tightest pants, made by black silk; a leather jacket of the same colour;a beautiful  dark green shirt, with wide sleeves; a belt with silver buckle;a Spanish hat with feather plume, and one sword in his hand…
Spencer had darkened  hair (maybe with ashes?), and he was wearing   false mustache and goatee.He  looked like a gentleman of thirds in Spain ..
Seen against the light, although he was thinner  and infinitely more beautiful, and his eyes, especially were powerfully different .... God !In the view backlit, he was like a parody of .....

Aaron would not stop screaming desperately .,,, but warned his terrible embarrassment,and he refrained.Welsey (anyone would have noticed, but nobody was looking) approached him, bottle of gin in hand:
-Is there something wrong, Don Aaron?
-No, nothing, nothing .. Please ... leave me alone ...

("And there, facing the sea, I realised how much we had been manipulated." ..)
("We were his  robots, his automata, his puppets ....")

Aaron turned away from the group around children,  walked to the lighthouse, and sat on a rock, his eyes lost in the dark waters of the Atlantic, smoking, with  the bottle of gin at his side.
He was waiting….
…………………………………………………………………………………………….
After the party, Jack looked for his father, and not finding him among the people, he went to sleep at  his good friend Diego’s house, the son of the small store’s owner .  
They had many things to talk about, and then there was "Wonderland", the rabbit!
He was assured that his dad would pick him up the next day; also the good uncle Spencer (now disguised as a swordsman of novel) had given him  permission.
-Maybe Dad has felt bad, because he has remembered mom, or that bad man who hurt him.. ...... or "before" ...
Spencer asked Welsey by Aaron,quite worried. The Englishman  said he had gone to the lighthouse for a while, but then headed to the other end of the village,totally  drunk.
-Aaron ... we've worried about you..Your son, I, Mr.Welsey ..... everyone in the town was worried about you. .. What has happened?
Aaron lifted up his eyes in mourning, and looked at him with a consuming hatred over the waters of that sea blackened night.
-Go, damn !-he said, biting the words, and in every word, each of the letters-Go, get out of my sight and my life! You won’t manipulate me, like you did with  the others!

-Too late. -it said a calm freezing  voice behind him, in English-Too late, my dear Dr. Hotchner.

Aaron turned..Before him, it was the one  which  was called the Dutch, and that was just another ghost: tall, thin, wiry, with a shaggy gray beard that hid just
a face that was horribly familiar .Monstruosly familiar.
-Van Houten ....? ....
-The same who wears these  clothes and shoes ,and who is wielding the weapon that shall  kill you, my dear doctor.
The gray haze of alcohol gave way to the  awareness of one unique certainty: that of knowing that he would die in that  hidden place , killed by a ghost, manipulated by his own nightmares.
Reid stepped forward without fear:
-We are unarmed -he said-. It would be uneven, and you've always presumed to be a man of honour.
Van Houten pointed them (when not!),with a special 38 Eibar, similar as those  both sadly  already known,, .. ("but .. not that there were only two equal?")
That was almost inexplicable.But  lethal as anything else.
-Now you know the truth- Frank smiled -I  was the one who sent those letters.I  pretended ,I simulated those crimes, detail after detail, and appropriated them to make David Rossi receive them  .. At this point in life, it is much easier to simulate than to commit. I had  two powerful allies: the desire for revenge dictated by Rossi’s love-hate-love and  by his wounded and mocked  pride  ,and his  meridional blood. I knew  that, despite who he was, and despite his famous rationality  so uncompromising, David Rossi  would act, this time, impulsively.
There was a long pause that was summarized in an equally long sigh of weariness and  hatred .Then,Frank  continued:
-When – he chewed-speaking letters, syllabes, one by one, licking them - "I has disintegrated  my bones, presumably in a barrel of acid," asccordingly  to the FBI’s ridiculous report…He.. ... Gideon…the beast! ... and I ... made ​​a   pact .A secret one..He would  facilitate me a flight from the country if I promised,if I swore to do not bother all of you nevermore.I accepted…but I actually wanted  something else…. I loved him, and I hatred him so much as I had loved,so he was my trophy,the sole prize I wanted !!- he shouted -Many years ago (thirty five years ago!), that bastard left me to go away with the Italian, and then betrayed me haughtily, joining those ones who were destined to hunt me.Then, I swore to myself  that it would take the finest  vengeance .
He paused, and pointed a finger at Reid:
-You know it well, truly, Dr. Reid?.-he  laughed, with a sinister laughter whose  blackness was darkest than the more voracious sea-You've known him,Gideon,, like me, ... 'biblically .... I mean ... carnally ... in the biblical sense ... right?
It was not enough to keep the tension of waiting in which one dies not once but ten, a hundred, a thousand times, but Frank wanted to increase further torture, using that confidential tone, perhaps intimate, to prolong the agony, perhaps indefinitely.
-No need to ponder the answer  from you, Dr. Reid: I know it can be uncomfortable-he  glanced at Aaron -.. But how it has not noticed by you( by a genius like you!),that everything he touched was destined to perish, inevitably, in a terrible and tragic way ? He carried the misfortune to any place where he was going: he betrayed my loyalty, because he was born doomed.
-That is fatalism-Reid said, in a tone  that was the calmest in the world-He told me it , yes.. His sentence was exactly this: "I was born corrupt." And I said  I was astonished.But now I  can see  the truth, and you're right,  Frank.,no doubt..
Aaron, despite the awfulness of the situation,  felt that his whole being was filled with joy: Spencer was back to his usual self, trying to establish a current empathetic power   with the monster, and he argued with him, pretending to be seduced by his words .
-I do not understand this  at all- Spencer continued –Why Aaron, if the one involved in this story was I, myself?.
-The head  is always responsible for what each member brings to -Frank Van Houten said.Then ,suddenly,he jumped:.
-Who killed him? You, Dr. Reid?
Spencer nodded, hesitated a moment, then said, gently:
-It was assisted suicide  ... I….
The raucous laughter interrupted him:it was an animalistic  laugh, which  guessed a savage joy.
-Assisted suicide! Now they call it so! -he spat on the ground-I congratulate you, my dear doctor.Sincerely.. You freed  the world of one of its more vile slag..And,by the way… what happened to the Italian?-he laughed again-It was an ..” unassisted suicide”?-he laughed harder.
-Hhe died of a ruptured aneurysm-third Aaron,approaching to him,very slowly.
-Did he suffer?.
-Probably he did not feel anything..He was sleeping ...
-No, no ... Him .. the monster .... Gideon…did he suffer?
-As wounded and cornered beasts do- Reid said, and his words were unusually cruel-He suffered worse than an animal does in the slaughterhouse.. He drank a mixture of poisons, and, as the effect was not as immediate as  he expected ...
-You did help him..-interrupted Van Houten, happy-Good,very good…..but I had left him to suffer further.
-Do not think that I was not tempted  to do it,too-Reid said, smiling.
-I would have let him die of cirrhosis, breaking himself in an outburst,as a balloon- Aaron interjected .
Van Houten could not stop smiling.
Go-go! I see you both finally knew what that bastard was doing with your lives,with your entire existences ... You fell on account of the way that he was manipulating everyone and everything-. he sighed –Good! Anyway, I can not let you live anymore.I'm so sorry , really, but nothing that he touched, used, loved, shaped, directed, inspired, etc, etc ... must be standing on the surface of earth..

Frank took away, just a few steps back, and pointed decidedly to the center  ,and up:
-A single shot, doctor Reid.It will not hurt too much ...
Distracted by his dialogue with Spencer, Van Houten did not see that Aaron, obeying an instinct perhaps inveterate, slowly let himself fall to the ground, crawling on the sand to catch his feet.
There was a shot ,that ended up in the air, because Aaron took Van Houten clinging to his ankles, dropped him, and perhaps remembering what he did not want to remember, launched a brutal flood of punches that did sprout a jet scarlet staining those untouched sands .A scarlet staining of violence and crime, certainly,was there ,in those sands, for the first time.
-Damn! –
shouted Van Houten, crazy-Damn!

Suddenly, Reid, who tried to separate them, while  he was pointing Van Houten with the gun, but with a trembling hand,could  hear footsteps and voices behind him.
Welsey was there with some men of the village, among them the  Commissioner Ríos.He was  was a big man, dark, with a thick mustache and a deep voice of thunder:

-Stop, stop! Police!-he  shouted, pointing with his gun.
Welsey approached.He was carrying  a torch, and his old Mauser, "as old and as deadly as what happened at Verdun", as he put it everyday.
Among several ones  managed, finally, to separate the two men.

Aaron muttered imprecations, sobbing gasps, and Foyet’s name escaped from his  lips in a faint howl that went unnoticed by everyone, but not for Reid.
Van Houten, whose condition was lamentable, was easily dominated.The  policemen dragged  him to the lonely precinct, that never had received more prisoners than some  tourists’ thieves  ,occasionally , and that, for the first time, would be the subject of a  special attention by all the media in Montevideo, Buenos Aires ... and even further.

-It's over, Aaron.It has been completed yet- Reid said, hugging, caressing him,. Hugging him against his chest, crying himself, and heedless of the prying eyes of the local villagers..
-You ... did you know?-asked Aaron.
-Yes, I knew.-Spencer replied- I could just see him once, while walking through the boundaries of the village.You already know that I cannot forget .. I carry the curse or maybe the  blessing ... to own an absolute Hyper eidetic memory..Then,I  thought these damn clothes (cursed grace that makes me  to be wearing them now!) would make him come out of hiding and decididely attack us .I needed to  have good witnesses, so that, finally, this monster would go with his  bones to prison.And , if he  fell dead as the result of our reply, for to make everyone  know that it had been in legitimate defense I had  discussed  this with Welsey previously Welsey was the one who was always lurking, covering us,and pointing him,only few  feet from here,. all the time.
The Englishman approached to them..His expression was  more serious than the usual.
-I had flown his head immediately-.he.said.-Like one more  head  as many as I flew in my life.
Aaron had noticed long time ago that Welsey was not who he said he was, but he never asked anything.Not intended to do it: not now, not ever.
 ……………………………………………………………………………………………….
That very night, before dawn, Spencer Reid lit a bonfire and threw on the clothes; the  little black book; a portfolio that consisted largely in ornithology catalogs, results of observation of birds,;three volumes of poetry; several photographs , and a bulky folder containing a detailed list of all cases that they had followed  during their years at the BAU, beneath  the shadow of the beast.
And, while the fire consumed paper, cardboard and cloth, throwing sparks in which Spencer could read the remnants of hatred, misery and vice that a damn day he,Gideon, had  inject into his own  heart, wrapped in fantastic lies.Inmediately after  he cursed himself a again for giving in to the needs of the flesh, that day in Combourg, and, finally , he swore himself washing his awareness of the manner whatever to clean all traces of so much pain and so much crime.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
CODA: (Same scenario,twenty years later…)
(Paganini, Concerto no. 4 - Adagio flebile and with sentimento) -.
 They have passed, more or less, about twenty years.
Jack is now a man, and lives in Buenos Aires, graduating as a civil engineer with all honours.And he is not living alone: ​​has either a young boy ,a young physician,otherwise nice and friendly, with often he visits them, when their duties allow.
Aaron along well his almost seventy years, except for diabetes, which has left no light in his eyes.
Spencer, true to his promise, has become his guide.
Every night there are long walks on the beach, talking about the things of the day, about Jack and his boyfriend, about who are still around,and about those who left, involving themselves in the sea of nostalgia.
Tonight, however, is even more special.
There is a fire, and the heat of those flames thatAaron cannot see anymore still warms his  face and hands, while Spencer caresses his hair,  all white, and opens himself  friendly  to confidence.
-My life-Hotchner says-, you have sacrificed yourself  for me.
-It was and it is a pleasure, Aaron.It is  what I want: I've chosen.
-I can ask if you still love me? And.... Whether you loved me ever since the beginning?
Spencer smiles, though he knows, of course, that Aaron can not see it..
-Since before.
-Before? ...-Aaron laughs, like a child-Then…since that beating?
-Before.
Then Spencer tenderly embraces him, resting his head on  Aaron’s chest.
-There is no time,  Aaron.There are only you and I….since  the beginning, and forever.
Spencer closes  the embrace, a night bird rubs the seawater with its flight, surreptitiously, and the tide with its ineffable  tongue licks  the  foam on the sand.

And it’s then, just then,  when the blind man’s night ,suddenly,  is populated with stars.

(END OF "THE TOWER OF SILENCE")

(Thanks for reading and commenting ....) (THANKS FOR READING AND COMMENT)