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The idea of soul mates doesn’t appeal to someone like Michele Crispino. All that crap about destiny and true love – sure, true love exists, but he wants a choice in the matter. He wants to be able to pick out his own destiny. He hates the idea that his own love life is pre-determined. When the words finally appear on his arm, one summer when he’s around four or five, he steadfastly ignores them for several years.
Michele later learns that the words only appear once your soulmate has been born. Michele’s must be a few years younger, and so must Sara’s. Both of their marks appear in the same year. He vows to protect Sara from all younger men and women, especially those who speak English. Both their marks, actually, are in English. Their parents tease them, saying they might get cornered by a group of lost tourists. Michele hopes this isn’t the case, because it’s a scary thought. Him and Sara, surrounded by strangers all yelling at them. The thought solidifies his belief that he wants nothing to do with his soulmate.
Finding his soulmate in the first place is going to be almost impossible. Once he has learnt enough English to read the words – the handwriting is scratchy and childish, but has a certain elegance, too – he is thoroughly disappointed.
‘Hello! It’s nice to meet you!’
That could be anyone. That it’s in English helps. Sara’s words – That was an amazing skate! – push her into the world of figure skating. Being the protective brother he is, he has to follow her to keep the creeps away. But when they’re training outside of Italy or when they have competitions, they are surrounded by internationals who speak English as their second language. Michele starts to hear so many Hello it’s nice to meet yous that he gives up. Not that he wants his soul mate in the first place. He has to keep reminding himself of that, or he’ll forget it and try to find him or her. He throws himself into protecting Sara. Romantic love doesn’t matter to him when he has Sara. When their mum dies in an accident when the twins are ten, Michele’s protective instinct goes into overdrive. Their dad tells him to always protect and love Sara, no matter what. His young mind twists this into protect Sara or she will die and leave you alone like mum did. So no matter what, he protects Sara.
As he ages from a child into a teen, he makes a point to ignore people younger than him unless their first words to him are something less generic. Every hello it’s nice to meet you is met with stone cold silence, or an equally generic reply, so that even if he finds this so-called soulmate, he will never know. They will never know. Michele knows he should feel guilty. What if his soulmate is the romantic type? What if his soulmate wants the classic happily ever after? Then too bad. They had to be tied to a guy like Michele, who eventually forgets why he’s even ignoring younger people in the first place and lets it become habit.
“Hello! It’s nice to meet you!”
Michele glances down at the kid. He’s a junior, with a central European accent. Wide, hopeful blue eyes shine up at him. Michele turns away and says nothing. The kid is undeterred.
“I’m Emil Nekola, but you can just call me Emil. Hey, can we be friends? You’re Michele Crispino, aren’t you? I’m a big fan!”
Michele growls under his breath. If this little kid (though, tall for his age – he must be about 13, but he’s almost Michele’s height) keeps on, he might explode. Still, he says nothing.
“That’s okay, you don’t have to say anything. My coach said you were mean to young people but I don’t think that’s true. I think you look nice.”
Michele tries to walk away, towards Sara who has just finished talking to their coach a couple of meters away, but the kid – Emil – follows. He keeps talking. They reach Sara, who looks mildly amused. She has clearly heard the whole (one sided) conversation.
“Do you want to come skate at my rink sometime, Mickey? It’s in Prague. It’s a really nice rink. I would say you could come to my house but my big brothers aren’t very nice. They’d probably tease you.” Emil’s eyes suddenly widen like he’s remembered something important. “Oh! I’m really sorry, I should have started out saying something poetic, like lots of people do! My usual line is ‘Never fear quarrels, but seek hazardous adventures’. But I was so excited to talk to you!” He then turns to Sara. “Never fear quarrels, but seek hazardous adventures! It’s nice to meet you, too. You’re Sara, right?”
Sara is about to reply, probably something teasing – because the twins both know that her mark isn’t some dumb quote about adventure – but Michele sees red. How dare this little kid even imply that he could be Sara’s soulmate? He’s been pushing the line for the last ten minutes and this finally pushes Michele over. He starts to rant at Emil, chewing him out and getting meaner and meaner with every sentence. Emil quickly turns three shades whiter than paper. Michele takes a threatening step forward, his temper flaring. At some point Sara shakes herself out of shock and pulls Michele back, apologising to Emil as she does. She silences Michele with a harsh, disappointed glare. For his part, Michele immediately starts to feel bad. It’s not the kid’s fault that Michele fears Sara leaving him so much that even the suggestion of her finding her soulmate makes him panic and his anger rise. If Emil had been Sara’s soulmate, that would have been the moment Sara left him. The moment he could no longer protect her from the dangers of the world. From the fate of their mum. But Emil had treated it so lightly, and Michele had snapped. He doesn't mean the words that spew out. He can't even remember what he'd said, years later.
When he calms down, he looks at Emil, who still has an expression that implies the world has just ended.
“Sorry. I-I didn’t mean to say those things.” He mumbles. Emil shakes his head and gabbles something about needing the bathroom, then staggers away. Michele doesn’t blame him. His rant had been scathing.
To his surprise, when he sees Emil at seniors just three years later, Emil comes over and smiles cheerfully at them both.
“Hey! I’m Emil, do you remember me? We should go out for dinner sometime!”
Somehow, Emil becomes… a friend. With no chance that Emil is Sara’s soulmate, he lets it happen. And if Emil makes him smile more than anyone else except Sara… then it’s just coincidence. If Emil starts to fill the lonely feeling inside Michele, it's just coincidence.
He completely forgets what Emil’s first words to him were.
Michele feels jealous when Sara finds her soulmate. He didn’t expect those feelings. They are both twenty-two, and Sara has been getting impatient. She wants to meet her soulmate as soon as possible. When Mila hurries over to Sara after a gold medal winning performance, he doesn’t think about it. Just a fellow skater come to congratulate. His eyes narrow and sharpen when he hears her words.
“That was an amazing skate!”
The twins both stare at her with a sudden intensity. Mila holds her ground with her hands on her hips. Michele wants to grab Sara and pull her away, drag her all the way to Italy and hide her there forever. But he’s too late. Before he can touch Sara, she opens her mouth.
“Turin would be a lovely place to spend the summer.” She says. It’s her go-to phrase – after all, this isn’t the first time someone has said ‘that was an amazing skate’ to her. Michele watches with dawning horror when Mila’s face pales and her eyes widen. Then the two girls are screaming, crying, hugging, speaking so fast that Michele can’t keep up. And then they’re gone before he can blink. He feels… he doesn’t know. He doesn’t understand.
It’s not until that evening, as he lies in bed alone, that he identifies those feelings as jealousy. And it’s not Mila that he’s jealous of. Mila, who gets to spend the rest of her life with his sweet sister Sara. No, he’s jealous of Sara, who has finally found the one person who will protect her and love her better than Michele ever could. He’s jealous of Sara, who will never be alone again. Sara, who is now going to leave him. He turns onto his side and curls up, feeling desperately isolated.
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Emil’s soulmark has been covered up from the world since the words wrote themselves across his chest at birth. At the beach (a rare occurrence, as their country is landlocked) he isn’t allowed to be the typical naked baby like his older siblings were long before him. He isn’t allowed to have his shirt off in company, ever. In fact, the only time his shirt ever comes off is when he’s changing for bed or in the bath. Even his parents don’t like to see his mark, and he can’t understand why because he can’t understand the words yet. His dad isn’t around much, and wasn’t around when he was born. When he got back from his business trip to see his ‘last minute accident’ child, the first thing he asks is about the mark.
Zikmund, the brother closest in age to Emil, is also in the room. He makes sure he brings up this moment as much as possible.
When their mum shows their dad the mark, cautiously lifting Emil’s shirt, their father swears loudly. He pulls down the newborn’s shirt to hide the mark with unnecessary force.
“Fuck. He’s going to be alone forever.” He mutters, only just loud enough for Zikmund to hear.
Zikmund delights in telling this story to Emil because of that last part. Emil is going to be alone forever, Zikmund seems sure of it, because it is what their father has said. But Emil doesn’t lose hope, because he doesn’t know what the words mean. As a child he dreams about what his soulmate could be like. He reads books and watches films where the two romantic interests have the most beautiful of first meetings. He imagines himself in their places. He thinks about the first words he will say to them, and imagines hearing those words in return and knowing, feeling that he and this person were meant to be together forever, in love.
Part of him obsesses over it because he knows that his parents are not soulmates. His mum’s real soulmate – who had fathered Soňa, the oldest of his siblings – had been killed by the Communist regime in Poland when their mum was young. He doesn’t know what happened to his father’s soulmate, but he knows they met, once, and it didn’t work out for whatever reason. His parents are what they call osamocený. Widows and widowers who are together, but aren’t soulmates. It’s clear in the way they interact. It was obvious to Emil even when he was a child. They love and respect each other, but they are not in love. Emil craves the knowledge of how soulmates treat each other.
When he is eight, he starts to learn English on his own. His parents had forbidden him from learning because his mark is in English. He can’t understand why they don’t want him to know what it says. What if he meets his soulmate tomorrow and doesn’t even know, because he can’t read his own words? But his mark is long, the longest he has ever seen. It goes from his collarbone all the way down to the hem of his underwear, covering his chest. He isn’t allowed to go swimming, or other sports where he might end up taking off his shirt, so he takes up ice skating. It’s cold in the rink so he won’t ever forget himself and take off his shirt because he’s too hot. Somewhere along the way, he gets good at it. Then he realises that if he gets better, he can go abroad, and meet people who might say those words to him in English. So he gets better.
Some of the words on his chest are hard to find in a dictionary. He can’t find the first word, or the sixth word. But Emil has a knack for languages. It only took him a year to learn German fluently from a teacher, so it only takes him a year and a half to learn English on his own with resources from the internet. With growing despair, he translates each phrase written across his chest in curly, fancy handwriting. By the time he is ten, he knows what the words mean. He knows his soulmate will hate him at first sight. He knows his soulmate does not want him.
Some of his older siblings bully him for it, especially Zikmund. His classmates are the same. One of them gets a good enough eyeful to read the words one day in the changing room when they are ten, and from then on they don’t leave him alone. They put him down constantly. They call him the insults on his chest over and over until the words have burnt into his skull. Until those words trigger in him nothing but panic, especially once the kids get violent. They pin him down and strip his shirt off to look, swipe their fingers over the words like they are writing them in. They hit him until he can’t see the words for the black and blue bruises they have left behind. For a moment he doesn’t care. For a moment he is glad the words are gone, before he starts to miss them because they are his words, his precious words that someday his love will say to him. He can’t read them anymore because they make him hate himself, but he still loves his mark.
He doesn’t give up. He is destined to meet his soulmate someday. Maybe said soulmate’s tone won’t be as bad as the words imply. Maybe his soulmate is joking? With a childish optimism only Emil can conjure, he continues to look. He falls in love with figure skating. Partly for the pure joy he feels on the ice, and partly because it helps him look for his soulmate. He prepares an unusual greeting, like most people have. ‘Never fear quarrels, but seek hazardous adventures’. It’s a line from The Three Musketeers. He thinks it suits him. On the off season he does extreme sports – anything that doesn’t involve taking off his shirt – and doesn’t fear the consequences. If he dies before he meets his soulmate, then maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing. His soulmate seems to hate him so much, after all. But no, Emil has to feel it. He has to hear those words, spontaneously, from someone, not rehearsed, not from his brother or the kids at school. Needs to hear them as if they had never been put there by destiny. Needs to hear them from someone who doesn’t know they are seared into his skin. Someone who doesn’t know how much the words hurt.
So, he goes to as many competitions as his coach will allow. He sees the senior skaters and admires them from afar. People like Victor, or Michele, or Chris, or Georgi. He wants to be just like them. None of his costumes can be see-through or netted like theirs, and they have to be high-collared, but he feels just like those older skaters when he dances out on the ice and earns his medals. Many competitions have junior and senior skaters on consecutive days, and when he is thirteen he finally gets the opportunity to talk to one of the seniors. He spots Michele Crispino by the side of the rink, near his sister. He hurries over, his chest bursting in excitement to finally talk to one of his idols.
“Hello! It’s nice to meet you!”
Michele glances down at Emil and says nothing, looking vaguely annoyed. Emil is used to such treatment by adults, and is undeterred.
“I’m Emil Nekola, but you can just call me Emil. Hey, can we be friends? You’re Michele Crispino, aren’t you? I’m a big fan!”
The only answer is more silence. Emil forces himself to push harder, because he really wants to make friends with Michele. Michele, who always looks so lonely when he’s not with Sara.
“That’s okay, you don’t have to say anything. My coach said you were mean to young people but I don’t think that’s true. I think you look nice.”
Michele starts to walk, and Emil follows.
“Do you want to come skate at my rink sometime, Mickey? It’s in Prague. It’s a really nice rink. I would say you could come to my house but my big brothers aren’t very nice. They’d probably tease you.” Emil said. More like, they would probably tell Michele all about Emil’s horrible soulmark. Then Michele would think Emil was gross. Suddenly, he remembers that he hadn’t even used his greeting on Michele. He had said something so generic! Some people thought that was rude. “Oh! I’m really sorry, I should have started out saying something poetic, like lots of people do! My usual line is ‘Never fear quarrels, but seek hazardous adventures’. But I was so excited to talk to you!” He looks at Sara. She doesn’t look mean enough to say those things to him, but it never hurt to try just in case she was his soulmate. “Never fear quarrels, but seek hazardous adventures! It’s nice to meet you, too. You’re Sara, right?”
Sara Crispino opens her mouth to reply – something nice, or funny, going by her expression – but instead he hears the words from his nightmares. That long, winding tirade of insults, seeming never ending. Only, now they are real, they are unpractised, they are being spat at him in a quick, low, Italian accent.
“Fuck off you annoying little prick! How dare you speak to her like that? How dare you assume that a bastard like you could be good enough for her? You keep being that fucking annoying, and you won’t be good enough for the dirt on my shoes! You even assumed there’s a possibility you and I could be soulmates – no, that’s disgusting, you’re disgusting! I don’t want a soulmate, I’m not looking for my soulmate, and if you were my soulmate I’d kill myself, because otherwise you would bother me to death! You would stop me protecting her! Leave us alone!”
Sara pulls Michele back and stops the outburst. He eventually apologises, but Emil isn’t listening. It’s the moment he has been waiting for, hoping for, his whole life. He knows. He has that sudden realisation he had been waiting to feel. The rush. Then it all leaves him, sifts through his fingers like sand. And in the next few moments, when he searches his heart for feelings, he feels…
He…
He’s…
Shattered.
Utterly, hopelessly, heartbroken.
The words stab him so much deeper when they are really meant. This isn’t something being thrown at him as a playground insult. This is something being said to him, off the cuff. Spontaneous. He doesn’t know if Michele means it. It doesn’t matter, because Emil can’t stand to be in his presence anymore. He runs for the bathroom to vomit into a toilet.
He doesn’t see Michele again until he makes his senior debut. In the intervening years he has read the words on his chest over and over to try to figure out what he should do. He still hadn’t figured it out by the time of the competition, but as soon as he sees Michele, he knows.
He can’t tell him.
He’s lucky enough that he can even get close to Michele, to be his friend. Sara has found her soulmate but Michele – who quickly becomes Mickey – is still so utterly fixated on protecting her. He still seems to think of nothing else. Emil can tell he is lonely, so he throws caution to the wind and becomes Mickey’s friend. It is surprisingly easy. The Italian man is angry and cold, but when Emil weasels his way in and gets close enough, he finds that Mickey has a heart of gold. He is kind and protective, lonely and soft, angry and hurt. He is a man of dichotomy.
So Emil can’t tell him, because Emil loves him. The feeling grows the more time they spend together, and the more Emil loves him… the surer he is that Mickey can’t know. Those words burn when Mickey cries drunkenly in his arms on Emil’s 18th birthday. If you were my soulmate I’d kill myself.
“I-I’m so… scared… I’m scared Mila won’t… protect her, like I will… a-and if I get pulled away…”
If Mickey gets pulled away. He means a soulmate.
I don’t want a soulmate, I’m not looking for my soulmate, and if you were my soulmate I’d kill myself, because otherwise you would bother me to death! You would stop me protecting her! Leave us alone!
If Emil didn’t have to see those words every day, hadn’t had them used against him so often as a child, maybe it wouldn’t be a big deal. He could forget about them. They wouldn’t play on his mind. But then Mickey will say something which contradicts himself. Dichotomy. The man is a walking paradox.
“…but… Emil, I… I’m so, lonely, too… I don’t… know what I want, I….”
Mickey is scared. He’s only admitting these things to Emil because he has no idea who Emil really is. Mickey wants his soulmate, but he also doesn’t. He doesn’t know what he wants. So, Emil doesn’t know what to do, either. In the end, the status quo is better, isn’t it? He doesn’t want to upset the boat. He tries to be the best friend he can, to soothe Mickey’s lonely heart. Emil feels almost as lonely, knowing that the soulmate he yearned for all his life is right there in front of him, within touching distance but so, so far away.
Because he knows that if he told Mickey, he’d be further away than ever. Mickey would push him away out of fear, confusion, guilt, maybe anger. Emil takes what he gets and tells himself that this is enough for him. This is okay. He can be Mickey’s friend. He will protect Mickey from Mickey’s own heart, his own emotions. And he will protect him from Emil's emotions, too. The years of hurt and betrayal he feels when he looks in the mirror. He watches Mickey glide across the ice and smiles.
He will pretend it is enough.