IN FULL FLIGHT by Andrej Koymasky (C) 2005 written on September 17th 1993 translated by the author English text kindly revised by Brian
USUAL DISCLAIMER
"IN FULL FLIGHT" is a gay story, with some parts containing graphic scenes of sex between males. So, if in your land, religion, family, opinion and so on this is not good for you, it will be better not to read this story. But if you really want, or because YOU don't care, or because you think you really want to read it, please be my welcomed guest.
CHAPTER 10 - From Switzerland to London
Daniel, helped by Luigi, organized a workshop in his garage and started to build wooden objects on his own, even though continuing to work for Maggi. The master, self-assured in his trade, not only didn't thwart him but rather encouraged and helped Daniel, selling him materials and tools at cost price. Because the objects that the boy made were not in competition with his own products.
In fact Daniel started to make wooden clocks like the one he had to abandon, incomplete, at his home in Perugia, then different models with a different concept. After he gave his first clock to Giovanni, he managed to sell the next ones and started to receive more and more orders. Until Maggi advised him to start his own independent business.
At first Daniel worked alone in his garage. Then, as the orders increased, he first hired one worker, then another, but they were getting short of space. So Giovanni proposed he start a regular firm, to find a suitable place and to make a real workshop and eventually hire more personnel. With the help and advice of Maggi, they started the firm Gioda (from Giovanni and Daniel's names) raised, from the Losone Bank, the funds they needed to start. The rates were not very high and the agreed time to pay back the loan was rather long.
So Daniel opened his Gioda Workshop, hired the third workman and started the production of his wooden clocks inspired by models of the 14th-15th centuries. After about four months, as the trade was becoming profitable, Giovanni resigned from his job so that he could work full time to care for the financial and commercial side of their firm.
They had in Roberta and Rodolfo two skilled publicizers so that on their seventh month of activity they hired two more workmen making five beside the two of them. They were now sending their clocks all over Switzerland and even started to receive orders from abroad. Daniel now only designed and built a prototype that, once working perfectly, he passed to his personnel who manufactured the copies to fill the orders. One of the boys, Tonio, was really skilled and full of ideas so Daniel made him his right-hand man and head of the workshop.
"Are you happy, Daniel?" Roberta asked him during one of her parties when a clock seller from Bern ordered from him, just as a start, a set of all his models.
"Yes, very! I feel I am really the luckiest man in world!"
"Ha! Man! You are just twenty-two!" Roberta jested, then asked, "And you, Giovanni?"
"I too feel I am the luckiest... boy in world." the young man answered and everybody laughed.
She said, with a mock serious tone, "But... you chose the wrong name for your firm!"
"Wrong?"
"Sure! You shouldn't have called it Gioda, but Goda (= cum!). Cumming is great!"
While everybody was laughing again, Nicky approached Daniel, "Excuse me, I saw that model, the one with the medieval knight who, turning on himself, hits his mace against five poles... Why don't you make one with a naked man at the center who, turning on himself, hits five naked and aroused men? I'll buy it at once, and not only me! I think."
"Lashing them? No, I don't like the idea, sorry. But I too thought perhaps... Do you see that model there on the wall. The one I made for Roberta? See, the anchor escapement, as you can notice, has an up and down movement. If I made it in the shape of a naked man, upside down on top of another naked man..."
"... they'll perform a nice sixty-nine! A good idea. Make it and you'll sell dozens of them!" Nick said with a broad smile.
"Yes, and the first one, will be for you, and I'll call it the Nicky model."
"Perfect! I go crazy for sixty-nining!" the dancer merrily exclaimed.
Business was proceeding really well. After only a year, they repaid the bank one fifth of the loan, well before the due date.
But one day the Bank director summoned Giovanni to his office, "Mister Benedetti... unhappily I have some bad news for you..."
"Oh and what may that be?" Giovanni asked, alarmed by the serious expression on the man's face.
"Well, you see, ours is a small bank... We have a problem. A sudden need for cash, therefore... I am sorry, believe me, but we were forced to sell your bills of exchange to another one of our clients..."
"And this... what does it mean, exactly?"
"That if the present owner of your bills asked for their immediate payment... you will have to give him, in cash, the full amount."
"But... couldn't you have warned me, beforehand?"
"Could you have paid me, at once the entire sum?"
"No, but..."
"Therefore it would have been meaningless telling you beforehand. We needed that money at once. I am sorry, believe me, but..."
"Will you tell me who bought them?"
"I'm sorry, mister Benedetti, but that is against our banking ethics..."
Giovanni left the bank, feeling dazed. If the new owner of the bills demanded payment, that would mean bankruptcy for Gioda. He went at once to tell Daniel.
The boy asked, "Do you know who bought our bills?"
"No, he wouldn't tell me. But he said that if the owner wants to, he can foreclose the debt..."
"Shit! It is the sword of Damocles! But possibly whoever bought them will let us continue the payments as before..."
"Let's hope so my love!"
But two days later came a letter from a lawyers' office in Lugano, demanding payment of the bills, before the end of the month.
Giovanni and Daniel called Roberta and explained the huge problem that had arisen. She invited them to go at once to her place. Then, as she knew the amount, she phoned first Rodolfo, then Maggi.
"All three of us, pooling our savings, can cover your bills. But as it is a large amount, Maggi asks you to sign three new bills in our favor, and to pay them back at the same conditions that the bank agreed with you. Will that suit you?"
"You are saving our lives! Thank you, we accept!"
"All right. Then we will prepare a contract with the terms of the loan, so that you can sleep peacefully, and we too. But... I'm curious, who bought your bills? It doesn't make sense to me that Losone Bank, small as it is, has liquidity problems. I think that... I'll try to see if I can find out what gives, I am really curious about this business."
When Maggi went to the Lugano lawyers with payment, they told him that they were not authorized to sell the bills to a third part, and that they would only accept payment personally from Gioda's owners. Maggi went back dejected to see his friends and told them that the only solution was that they took the money after signing the new bills, so that they could buy the old ones. This meant, for a while, they would have bills for double their actual debt, but Giovanni and Daniel knew they could trust their three friends, so they accepted.
All seemed well, but a few days after the old bills had been bought and destroyed, Roberta, thanks to some of her friends, managed to get the information she wanted. Backing that dirty business was Giovanni's father. The extremely rich industrialist, who in one way or another got to find out about his son's enterprise, and found out the bank that granted the loan. He then sent one of his men to meet the bank director and persuaded him to sell him the bills, in exchange for the opening of a fixed time deposit in his bank for several billions, adding to that also a big sum as a personal backhand. The director accepted at once.
When they came to know this fact, Daniel said to Giovanni, "If your father wants to ruin us... I'm afraid we would never be able to face his challenge."
"What can he possibly do, now! He can't buy us three also, can he?" Roberta said.
"No, Robbie. He can endanger all of you, if he knows your are backing us." Givanni gloomily said.
Maggi, after a short, melancoly silence, said, "I'm afraid he can, and mainly with me. And also perhaps with the Buttafava. We too, in a way, depend on banks. And on the suppliers for me, on the theatres for the Buttafava. And with his money... he could really put us on our knees without any difficulty."
"But then... what can we do?" Roberta asked with a lost expression.
Giovanni looked at Daniel and said, "Sell the workshop and disappear. And thus make him lose our tracks. Then start a new life elsewhere."
Daniel nodded in assent and girded Giovanni's waist, "Yes, I agree, Love. I'm just asking myself how he could have found us..."
"Our letters to Pietro, or his letters to us..." Giovanni said thoughtfully.
Daniel exclaimed, astounded, "But Pietro would never have betrayed us!"
"No, not him, I'm sure. But probably my father knows that Pietro is your only true friend in Perugia and so he for sure bought somebody at the post office to check all your incoming letters or his outgoing ones... Yes it has to be exactly so, I can feel it..."
"Yes, it is likely so. That means that I'll write to Pietro a last letter, explaining our suspicion and telling him I can't send him our new address, or write to him anymore... Even though this is so sad..."
"But... and what about your workshop? If you leave..." Maggi objected.
"Change its name and manage it yourselves. For the technical part, Tonio will be able to manage wonderfully. And anyway... I'll give you all my designs and the rights to reproduce all my models..." Daniel sadly said.
Roberta said, "We can change its name, put it in our names, and you two can continue to work in it..."
"We too are sorry losing everything, and losing you above all. But my father would certainly smell a rat, it would be almost useless. Thank you Maggi, thanks to all of you. You really are true friends."
"Yes, we can do as you say. I too think that Tonio would be able to manage it. But are you really sure you want to leave? I'm so sad at the idea of losing you..." Maggi said shaking his head.
"But why is he so ruthless to you? What's his gain?" Roberta asked with wrath, on the brink of tears.
Giovanni tiredly smiled and explained to her, "I dared disobey him, therefore he promised to destroy me - it has become an obsession for him... And knowing him, I think that he isn't even taking care of it in person - he for sure is paying somebody to persecute us on his behalf and report to him only the results... Dad is not used to losing... But if we could just disappear..."
"Think some more about that, anyway. If we could find another solution..." Rodolfo said, visibly shaken and sad.
Daniel and Giovanni discussed the issue some more between themselves, and also with their friends, but realized that the best solution was just to vanish into thin air.
They gave the workshop to their friends, asked Roberta to keep their belongings for a while, and carrying only two suitcases, they left for London. Rodolfo gave them addresses of some of his good friends.
After giving away their firm, the two lovers still had some savings, and their three friends wanted to pay them the rights for the clock designs. They lived in London for two months, until Giovanni found a job as a hotel receptionist and Daniel as a waiter in the same hotel. They signed the contract. They had to start their new job on the following month, therefore they used this time to look for a little flat. They found a furnished one at reasonable rental on the Southern outskirts of London.
They then went back to Losone to fetch their belongings which they sent via a carrier to the home of one of Rodolfo's friends in Germany, with sender as Nicky. Then the German friend would send everything through a different carrier to London, to another of Rodolfo's friends home, where they would finally get them. Doing so, Giovanni's father absolutely couldn't in any way trace their new abode. The three friends decided to change the name of the wooden clock firm - they called it "Fordag" that is "for Daniel and Giovanni", as Roberta, to whom the new name was due, explained to them. She also threw a party for them in her apartment. They all knew that it was a really definitive farewell, therefore the atmosphere was not so merry even if everybody pretended to be cheerful, not to sadden the others.
Daniel and Giovanni settled in London, At first they were lonely, not knowing anybody. But they gradually started new friendships, both gay and straight. What pleased them very much was that their straight friends knew about them and treated them with respect and affection as any other married couple. They could at last live their relationship in the open, without showing it off, but neither worrying to hide it. They were really happy again.
At times they recalled their past with some nostalgia, above all for their friends with whom they had to cut relations, to be sure not to have to undergo again the persecution of their parents.
One evening of summer, while they were relaxing on their bed, after making love, Giovanni said toughtfully, "We had to renounce so many things, to protect our love, to allow it to live..."
"Regrets?"
"Not at all, Dani - I have you, our love. All the rest has very little value, compared to that."
"Will it last forever, our love? At times I ask myself this question... and I am somewhat worried..."
"What does last forever? Very few things, unhappily. But I hope that our love will be one of those."
"We will do our best to make it last, right Giovanni? And meanwhile we will enjoy it day by day. At least, even if... God forbid, a day should come it had to end, we would have enjoyed it up to that moment and nothing will be wasted... Just think that, when I was a kid, at times I wished not to be gay! But if I wasn't gay, I would never have met you."
"I never asked myself if I am gay or not. And yet, I met you and all my life was transformed. For better. Before I was just a dad's son, quiet, a little spoiled, doomed to a life rich in money but poor in values, poor in love. On the contrary now my life is really rich. I am rich. Rich of you. At times I think that up there somebody created us expressly one for the other, and that He loves us..."
"I too felt so..." Daniel thoughtfully answered squeezing himself against his Giovanni.
The young man said in a whisper, "I love you, Dani."
"I know, Gio..." the boy murmured with happiness.
"Yes, but I like telling it to you."
"I too like hearing it."
London's night wrapped the house of the two lovers, silent and quiet, almost as if it didn't want to disturb them, warm for the happiness of their communion, vibrating like their love-filled hearts.
The moon was smiling, sweet and bright, bent to look at them and caressing through the wide open window their naked bodies, languidly intertwined in the abandon of their sleep.
The galaxy was spinning slow and solemn on herself, to cuddle them in their love nest. She knew that what allowed her to travel through the infinite, what allowed her to pulsate forever, were only the love vibrations radiating from those small, insignificant beings, whose life span was shorter that the shortest of her pulses, but that she proudly hosted.
THE END
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