From then on, Clara began to observe. He saw how, some mornings, he took his hand to the right side of his head with an involuntary gesture. He saw blood stains on the pillow. He saw the way he contained the pain, as if he had made it part of his routine. One night, he asked in writing how long it took.
Elijah replied:
“From a child. The doctors said it was related to my deafness. That there was no remedy.”
Clara wrote back:
“Did you believe them?”
He was slow to respond.
“No.”
Three nights later, Elijah fell from the chair in the middle of dinner. The blow echoed dry on the floor. Clara ran to him. He was convulsing in pain, holding on to his head. She brought a lamp to her face, carefully removed her hair and looked into the inflamed ear. What he saw froze his blood.
There was something there.
Something dark.
Something alive.
He moved.
Clara backed up for a moment, with her heart about to explode, and then took air like the one who throws herself into the void. He prepared hot water, fine sewing and alcohol tweezers. Elijah, pale and sweaty, looked at her with distrust and fear. She wrote with a firm hand:
“There’s something inside your ear. Let me get it out.”
He denied with violence. He took the notebook from him and wrote:
“It’s dangerous.”
Clara took the pencil and replied:
“It’s more dangerous to leave it there. Do you trust me?”
Elijah held her with his gaze for a few eternal seconds. Then, very slowly, he nodded.
Clara worked with her pulse shaking, but the decision stuck in her chest. He introduced the tweezers little by little, while he was clinging to the edge of the table until he became white. He felt resistance. Then a pull. And suddenly, something came out writhing between the metal.
PART 2
He fell into a glass jar with alcohol. Clara looked at him in horror. Elijah, on the other hand, looked at her… and then it broke.
For the first time since I met him, he cried.
Not with discreet tears, but with deep, torn sobs, of a man who had just suddenly recovered twenty-five years of truth. He covered his face with his hands, hunched over an ancient pain that was no longer physical, but of the soul.
Clara hugged him without thinking.
And he didn’t step away.
The next morning, Elijah left the room with clearer eyes than ever. He pointed to the bottle on the table and wrote:
“It was real.”
Clara nodded.
“Yes.”
He clenched his jaw, took the pencil and wrote with rage:
“Everyone said I imagined the pain. That it was broken.”
Clara felt something burning inside her.
