If We Exist

27.

- Shall I bring Marta up here so that she can speak for you? He yelled. - Have you got no shame in your bone? Fifteen. You're fifteen and you're still hiding behind your aunt's skirt. Do you never learn?

He yanked me by the upper arm with enough force to tear a limb. I gulped his aftershave; my lungs filling with cedar and violence before I digested that I was pressed into him—tête-à-tête. His dark irises reflected my wide-eyed terror, and it fueled him. That cruel part of him that dug his nails deeper into my flesh—unrestrained—while his expression remained unchanged.

- Are you worse than a dog? He seethed in my face. - Are you? His hand clenched harder against my attempt to twist free from the pain shooting through my arm.

- You teach a dog a trick enough times, and eventually, it learns; are you stupid? Is that it? You've got an undiagnosed retardation and that's why you're so adamant?

- Why can't you say it? Speak! He yelled. Pulling away from him was no option, his grip was welded out of iron, so instead, I gave into gravitation and sunk, down to my knees. He wasn't expecting it, or he couldn't be bothered to exert the same energy. Either way, I was scrambling away from him; all four limbs propelling my butt in the opposite direction.

I saw his expression the same second the peacock fell to the floor. I would be lying if I said I didn't catch a glimpse of it, too. Hues of turquoise and green flashed in my peripheral vision. But more so than seeing it, I felt it. First when my spine met its wooden perch, and then when the crash reverberated inside my chest.

My father wasn't an exploder, but rather an imploder. Everything was sucked inwards into the very core of him and disappeared down a cavity where I imagined he stored his feelings; his disappointment, his frustration, his love.

His expression went completely blank, and I knew he had surpassed anger—he was livid. The stuffed peacock, its neck fashioned so that it looked to its side, stared up at the chandelier with lifeless glass eyes. Its train, dotted with eyespots, was sewn tucked to its body. It was beautiful, despite being so obviously dead, and at that moment, resembling a feather-duster more than an actual animal.

A silence so silent, to drop a pin would have sounded like a thunder, diffused over the room.

My father's eyes flicked between me and the bird. His attention lingered longer and longer on the bird's body until finally, he moved. His footsteps echoed inside the spacious room, out of sync with my hammering heartbeat. I gauged the distance to the double doors. The idea of escape shattered under a sudden, ice-cold shower of dread that glued my bottom to the limestone floor.

- Did you know? He asked, his emotions concealed behind a gossamer-thin veil. - Blue colour in animals, particularly the vertebrae, is almost always made through structural colouration. It's rare to find its pigment in nature. He squatted next to the fallen bird, and picked up a lone tail feather that had slipped past my notice.

- Millions of years of evolution...condensed right here, in the structure of this tiny feather. He twirled it between his thumb and forefinger, showcasing its luminous blue and green iridescence.

- Makes you realise, doesn't it? Why the struggle matters. Why we live-, he looked at me, - why we fight for our existence. It's so that something beautiful might precede us. Do you think the peacock philosophies on why it has so many ocelli, or why it's so decorated? It doesn't. It just knows that if it isn't, its chance of passing on offspring is significantly reduced.

- This, he said, twirling the feather again, - is evolution answering the question: how can I increase my chance of survival? You can't see it with the naked eye but embedded in this feather are crystal structures that refract the light in wavelengths that correspond to this lovely shade of turquoise and blue.