A Naked Frame

What had changed, really? Perhaps nothing. I was still alone, consumed by this obsession that there was no room in my life for the world as it was. Asia Vieira. She was a star in history, and for this psycho, she was more than just a woman. She was a target, an ideal, a victim. And I was her husband, her protector, or someone who just happened to be in the way of this evil game.

But now I had a hard time finding a place for it in this reality, where all that remained were memories and pictures drawn by someone's sick hands. Why was I so weak that I let this touch me at all? Why did I let this be reborn in my life?

I sat there, trying to comprehend it all. And at some point I realized that the songs, the letters, this "fanfreak" - all of this was like an unbearable poison that was eating away at my consciousness. I sat there, digesting these absurd lines, the terrible images and sounds that continued to resound in my head. It was like an endless spiral in which I wandered, having no way back. Everything that was happening seemed like part of some kind of nightmare from which I could not wake up.

What should I do with this knowledge? With this horror that Vitaly Ivolginsky was somehow connected to my wife, and that he continued to haunt us, even after his death? I could not forget those lines, those strange songs, those pictures of a girl with brown hair holding a piece of paper with her name in her hands. I was connected to it, as if I had become part of his crazy game.

I tried to calm down. I got out of bed and went to the window. Cars were driving down below, people were walking along the streets, an ordinary day. But how could I return to this ordinary world if I had this damn "fanfreak" in my head, the songs, his letters and thoughts that now did not leave me? My life turned into a strange kaleidoscope, where reality merged with madness, and I could not understand where one ended and the other began.

I decided I needed to get rid of all of this. Leave the book, the tapes, the recordings, all this evidence that this psycho was with us even when he wasn't. But where could I put them? Burn them? But would that destroy their influence? Or would they haunt me like a shadow for a long time?

Maybe I should just forget, try to start over? But how can I forget when my life turns into a theater of the absurd, where all my memories of my wife, of the past, are tainted by this nightmare?

I wondered again what kind of man he was. Why had he lost touch with reality, why had he written about my wife, then an actress? What kind of face did this psychopath look at the world with, and what made him twist love, or what he called love, into such dark and twisted forms?

Bits and pieces of what I had read kept spinning around in my head - his letters, his lyrics, his pictures. He wasn't just a fan, he was obsessed. Maybe I was just a character in his personal drama, and Asia Vieira was some kind of bright symbol he was striving for, even if that striving led him to the edge of the abyss.

I tried to imagine his life. He was younger than my wife, as I understood from his songs. Perhaps he was one of those people who lived their youth on the edge of reality, trying to find meaning in their painful feelings. Maybe his childhood was as confused and unhappy as his soul. No wonder he went down this path. But why couldn't he stop? Why didn't he seek help when he had long since lost his mind?

I tried to imagine what could have happened to him if someone had stopped him earlier, if someone had shown him that his desires were not love, but an illness. But now, looking at all this, I understood - it was too late. His fantasies, his monologues, his cruel songs - all this was too far from the normal world. It seemed like he was just another lost person, but his interference in my life, in the life of my wife, destroyed everything.

And then I thought about how if this had continued… If he had continued to live among us, I might never have known the whole horrible truth. It would have just been a series of strange events that I couldn't explain. But now that I knew this psycho had left his mark on our lives, it felt like I couldn't escape his shadow.

Why? Why did he choose my wife? Why did she become the object of his obsession? Why did his love for her lead him to this terrible path? After all, she was just a girl, an actress, with her dreams and ambitions. She did not deserve any of this.

I wondered again. Maybe he saw something in her that I didn't? Maybe she was something he couldn't achieve on his own, or something he wanted to make his own, to feel powerful, to feel important?

There were no answers, and I felt more and more that with every step, with every mental leap into the past, I was plunging deeper into his world - a world where there are no norms, no boundaries between reality and madness.

I remembered that he was Russian, according to the book. That explained a lot. He had never been anywhere but Russia, and in my wife he saw the foreign land he could only dream of. Asia Vieira, an actress who had become famous beyond her country's borders, with her bright, expressive appearance, with her life full of opportunities and successes. For him, that was something unattainable. She was a symbol of something else, something better, something he would never get. She was what he wanted, what he dreamed of, but which remained unattainable for him.

I could understand why he had become obsessed with her. I could understand how his limited world in Russia could fill with fantasies about a man who was far away, a girl he had only seen on TV and in newspapers. For him, Asia Vieira, with her eyes, her charisma, her success, could be the embodiment of everything he wanted to have but could not. She became some kind of ideal for him, an unattainable peak to which he aspired despite his desperate helplessness.

But what could have made him cross the line? What could have pushed him down this path? One thought, one obsession, that he could be with her - he, so small, unknown, weak, dirty. And how this poor psycho had tried to make her a part of his life, in reality only by absorbing her image. He did not understand that the love he felt was not love, but a sick obsession.