Ghosts are often referred to as things that come back from the past.
Dead people.
Memories.
Missing faces.
In time, I realized that the real ghosts were different.
Real ghosts are questions.
Questions that refuse to die.
The weeks after the scandal tended to mix. I didn't sleep much. I ate even less. I was working by automation. Interviews. Studios. Repeat. Photographs. Always a big front smile. Everything went on. Like nothing happened. As if the world didn't know I was falling apart.
I was increasing the doses. Not a lot. Just a little. Still a little.
I think for everyone that's how bad habits start.
Nobody decides one morning to destroy themselves. Just add a pill. Then another one. Then a drink. Then two. And one day, we realize that the pain has never disappeared. She just moved in more comfortably.
Nights were the worst. Silence gave too much room for thought. So I was thinking about Milenca. Always. To his voice. His way of telling things. To her accent that appeared when she spoke of Spain. To his silences, too. Because, even in his accounts, certain areas remained prohibited.
I remembered his last months. She often told the same story. Over and over. Maeva's story. Rodrigo's story. The history of the camp. Kamino's story.
Back then, I was smiling. Sometimes I listened to him half-heartedly. Sometimes I looked at my phone while she was talking. Sometimes I even changed the subject. I was convinced that age was beginning to play tricks on him.
Today, this idea made me want to cry. Because I wish I'd listened to him more. Even if she had been crazy. Even if all this had been invented. I wish I'd listened to him.
One night, unable to sleep, I found myself looking for his old notebook. The one in which she sometimes wrote. Not a newspaper. Just a few notes. Phrases. Memories. I had recovered it after his death without really knowing why.
I opened it to chance.
And I fell on a sentence emphasized several times.
"The worst is not what Kamino takes. The worst part is what he leaves behind him. »
I've been watching these words for a long time. I didn't even know what they meant. And yet, something bothered me.
I've read the sentence several times.
Then I suddenly closed the notebook.
Like I'm afraid he'll answer me.
The next few days, memories began to come back to me. Fragments. Details I'd forgotten. Sentences by Milenca. Eyes. Hesitancy.
In particular, I remembered something strange. When she spoke of Kamino, she never seemed to be afraid of him. Never. She hated him. She despised him. But she didn't fear him. Like she understood something I'd never grasped. As if the curse itself was not the true subject.
Then I began to wonder. It's absurd questions. Questions that I had never given importance to.
What if she said it was true?
I hated that idea. Because she immediately made me feel ridiculous. A famous singer. An adult woman. A feminist. An artist. Thinking about a curse that was centuries old.
That was absurd.
Completely absurd.
And yet...
I couldn't drive that thought away anymore. Not because I saw Kamino. Not because something strange happened to me. Just because my life seemed to collapse exactly when I finally thought I was happy. As if happiness always had an expiry date. As if something always ended up destroying it.
I was thinking about Mickael.
Always.
To his rarer messages.
To his absences.
To his silences.
To all those things I was trying not to see.
And an idea was starting to settle down.
An idea I hated.
Because it made everything more complicated.
If Milenca was right...
Why didn't anything happen to Mickael?
Why didn't Kamino show up?
Why did our story look like an ordinary scandal rather than a tragedy?
Then a second thought appeared.
Much worse.
If Kamino destroyed love...
And if nothing happens to him...
Then maybe Mickael didn't like me.
I'll close the book immediately.
As if this could prevent the issue from existing.
But she was already here.
And, for the first time since my grandmother died, I realized maybe it wasn't Kamino that scared me.
That was the answer.