Читать книгу: «Two», страница 3

Almost forty years old, I am back to be an unexperienced teenager who discovers love for the first time, with a crazy desire to play. I feel like I’m reborn, I came back to life and I am no more afraid to feel something for someone. It seems absurd, but that little flower has been enough to shake me up so much to make me realise that have been wasting my time and that I had to go back to make my clock go round and round. I come back home that is already late, so I decide to stop to eat a slice of pizza at the pizza place down the street. When I enter the restaurant, there’s anyone, not even the owner who I overhear moving

in the kitchen, probably baking the last pizzas of the evening. The door points out my entering and few moments later I see him looking out onto the door in front of the still burning big ovens. We greet and shortly after we sit together at the colourful wooden tables, chatting while my pizza is firing. He offers me a beer and starts to make small talking about all the strange and funny customers who came to the restaurant during the day. It’s always amusing to hear him speak, because I know that he’s always prone to exaggerate his tales, enriching them by not exactly real details that make everything more colourful and interesting. Generally, he always has a comic base, so speaking with him always ends up in loud laughter that attract bystanders who overhear us from the street. I eat quickly, with a great desire to remove my shoes and soak my feel in hot water. We have been walking so much that, despite the cold of this day, my feet are so swollen that I can barely walk.

Once I got home and I throw away my shoes, I jump on the bed straight away with my trusted computer searching some information about my mysterious smiling friend. Maybe I can discover something about him linked to our café, a website, a Facebook page. I log in with my username and I start to search. Not a trace of him, it would have been too good to find a comment by him so that I could have finally discovered his name and snooping around his social networks home, at least on the public sections. Thinking about the fact that maybe he could have had the same idea, I start by pressing like on the café Fan Page and browsing numerous pictures, I comment a random one, just to leave a sign. Once it has been published, I look at the picture appearing next to my comment. A miserable close-up, loaded

haphazardly a long time ago. I immediately hurry up looking for a new photo where I look better, and I change my profile picture. Now I feel more relaxed and I childishly hope that he is online too and seeing me, could feel the desire of texting me.

For about ten minutes I stare off the screen, waiting for a sign that doesn’t come. I refresh the page over and over, I log in and out thinking that maybe the connections is not exactly perfect, and in the end I turn it off, but only after I have turned the Facebook notifications on my mobile phone, just in case the mysterious men chooses to look for me and texts me tonight. Before I was hoping that our non-affair could never change a thing, but now the idea of a connection became obsessive and irrational.

Tomorrow it’s going to be a great day for our game, so I try to fall asleep as fast as I can, but I am so nervous about how to advance our game that I can’t sleep a wink. At midnight I am still tossing and turning in the cold bed, when I decide to get up. Without turning any light on, helping myself only with the feeble street lighting that silently enters the window, I reach the kitchen. A good mug of milk and cookies is the only solution in these cases. Years ago, it was my grandfather who prepared me these night eating and to keep me company in front of a good mug of barely that he was heating in his steal pan, always until it boiled and often making it drop on the flame that started to creak and change its colour hit by the sudden liquid.

When he could start to drink it, I had almost finished my milk with cookies and so I was the one who kept him company until he didn’t finish to drink its hot mug. At night I’ve always been more talkative than in the morning, so I used to break free from a lot of discourses

and doubts about what was about to happen the day after. These nights together, usually, happened before university exams, so much it was the tension that I finished revising so late that a mug of milk was a great help in order to get some sleep and relax after the study day.

Sitting at the table, today, I still feel his strong absence, in a concrete way and not only as a hurt feeling, but just as a tangible lack. Now, in front of my cup of milk, I can’t talk to anyone, and the perfume of barely burning on the stove is missing too. One time, in order to relieve the pain, I prepared also the barely beside my milk in a steal pan, but this thing just made me feel worse, and so I promised myself that I would have tried to go on, pulling me off as much as possible from past behaviours without lose the memory of these beautiful moments with him.

CHAPTER 5
Away

After my escape from the café I keep walking away with definite steps without never looking back as if I’d committed some bad deeds.

Like a thief afraid to get caught and with the adrenaline for the last moves, I move away as fast as I can and I take the first bus that I step into without even knowing where it’s going to take me. I have a meeting in the centre at late morning and so I will be able to drain all this excitement for that little flower abandoned in her hands. Giving her a flower, how did it get into my mind? I try to imagine what is happening now at the café, maybe she threw away that little daisy that is already withering in, laughing out loud with her friend. Did I become the laughingstock of the day? But my hope is different, I wish I’d been able to break through her thoughts, where I can hide in a silent little corner ready to discover new things about her. I ran away afraid that our story made of looks could change, but deep down in my heart I may really hope this could happened. I would like to be a little fly, buzzing around their heads, looking into her eyes as blue as the sky and caught every small grimace of her face with all the thoughts that can come into her mind looking at every single white petal. I am almost tempted to go back but now I am too far and tired.

Luckily, the bus leads to the centre and even if I did it, she wouldn’t be there anymore. I found a seat and I sit down letting me cradle by the speed of the big means of transport. My fellow travellers are all silent and ready for a working or studying day, or even only for the morning stroll in order to kill the long days that you experience

when you reach a certain age. Many of them have a book opened between their hands, others are listening to music, others are lost in their thoughts. An old lady at the bottom of the bus draws my attention, dressed up in red with a big empty shopping trolley beside her. Her look is tired and she dangles at every curve. I got to thinking at how I will be when I’ll be old, and the first thought that I have is exactly that I don’t want to be alone, I want to reach that age with someone I can share everything with, even the little daisies picked up on the road. I go back to think of her while outside the window I see the majesty of the city and its impressing monuments that frame any adventure of my life.

When I got quickly off the bus at Vittoriano I suddenly woke up from this bliss reached between thoughts and the flowing of these beautiful places outside the window. The old lady gets off with me too, ready in front of the door holding with one hand her loyal shopping trolley while with the other she held for balance. We separate at the stop and I follow her with my eyes until she turns the corner at the bottom of the road, almost to check that anything bad happens to her and ready to help her if she needs anything. Sometimes it won’t take much to empathize with someone who will then disappear from your life forever as fast as he/she entered in it for a brief moment. I look at the watch: I am definitely too early for my meeting at the museum of Piazza Venezia and so I take advantage of taking some pictures at Fori in this beautiful day that deserves to be burnt in a visual memory. Just by coincidence, I see a little daisy popping up from the edge of the pavement and so I manage to take a close-up with the blurred monuments in the background that gives the illusion to be out of world

and time. I would love to send it straight away to my mysterious fellow traveller but I wouldn’t really know how to deliver it to her, not even knowing her name. Once home I’ll save it also on the phone, it will always be ready in case I manage to reach her through some more computerized way.

Strolling around the centre of Rome really takes you out the daily life and between the tourists you can even lose track of space and time.

A constant flowing of languages and colours between a lot of people armed with cameras and flashes smiles to fix entire days spent visiting the Eternal City. The gladiators at Colosseum are always ready to take part in the photographs under a very large reward and there are carriages that accompany the most willing to try new dimensions, because while in holydays schemes must change at least for half an hour, carried through the city in a chariot completed with horses. The hooves on cobblestones hide the noise of cars and the city seen from above tastes different, stepping back into the past. The queue in front of the Colosseum is already long despite the cold and the waiting times, ready to have a sight of one of the world most famous places to take back to their city photos and souvenirs to give to their friends and families. Later on, are going to arrive also the couples of newlyweds still dressed up for the usual photographs between the most amusing scenarios of the Capital, and so this place will acquire a new aspect and meaning for who choose it as his/her destination.

After spending the morning pretending to be a tourist, I come back with deliberate pace towards the not too far place of my meeting. I meet my interlocutor by chance at the base of the Vittoriano and so we decide to talk about my job open air without locking us up in his office

between paperwork and the dark of the room. They want to remake the fliers of the Monument and so they need new photographs, maybe taking advantage of the view of Rome that you have going up to its highest part, available only to chosen few. I’ve already worked for them a couple of time in occasion of particular exhibitions inside the ‘typewriter’, as the Altare della Pace is called in Rome. Since in 2000

they allowed the access of the staircase, once in a while I like to spend a few hours visiting the Vittoriano, seeing all its features dedicated to Italian cities and regions, and the part that I enjoy the most is the sacrarium of battle flags, countless artifacts ad sigils that taste like past between the texture of the consumed fabric. I am glad to accept the job and I immediately begin to take some pictures, taking advantage of the access to areas not granted to regular visitors. From up there, the city grabs you between marbles and ancient Medieval buildings until the luxury of the ancient Rome, all in the same view. It almost looks like you can touch the sun and immerge into the clear sky that blows cold blasts from time to time to awake you from this surreal and magic atmosphere.

I would like to stay there, curled up in some space between the columns and the endless staircase to see Rome and all that little ants that move back and forth through the streets below. I pick up my courage and I leave that place charged with so much history that it almost makes you hear the voices of everyone who was there before you, before that theatrical monument had been built. I decide to walk home, taking advantage of the day that spared us last night rain. I take a picture of the puddles that reflect the streets and in one there’s me, reflected with my blue jacket and blue jeans, black messy hair, and

sunglasses hidden behind the camera. I am there too, for a change, and as I see myself reflected in the little puddle I almost don’t recognize myself from how long I have not been thinking about myself and my actual life. A period spent only at work, without a lot of friends whom share something else with, and with few meaningless women whom spend some nights that don’t leave any emotion in me. A cold period, made more intimate by my photographs that however tell the life of other people and other places. There’s a bit of me in every shot, but it’s nothing compared to what a photographer can do if he puts his heart into it. I should start not to take commissioned pictures again, looking for myself inside of them, and maybe the daisy photograph is the first step to rediscover myself as changed and turning my life around, my life which now belongs only to others as a harlot that is only devoted to her job to please the others.

I cross Via del Corso for a little section for then throwing myself in the little back street that leads to the always crowded Pantheon. In that moment, Stefano phones me. He works in an office just behind Corso Vittorio Emanuele and knowing about my meeting, he called me to order for a quick lunch in his areas. In a few minutes we are already together, going through Campo de’ Fiori to eat one of the delicious express sandwiches made in a little place without chairs or tables. My favourite one is the eggplants and mozzarella one and so, lunch in hand, we continue our stroll until we stop on a bench in Piazza Navona. I start to tell my friend about my morning starting from the Vittoriano and then I confess about the daisy. As soon as I start to describe the moment at the café, he stops walking and eating and totally taken by my story, ‘Now is up to her’ says without reflecting

much on his words followed by endless silent minutes. ‘Finally, this absurd affair can work right, you should know each other and maybe you’ll find out that you have something true to share or simply that you don’t belong together. Leaving aside the morning look, you’ll start to think about building a life with a real woman who is not only a one-night stand’.

The idea that I might have idealised a woman that I don’t even know scares me, and if she wasn’t really as I believe? It would be like losing her forever without ever having had her. It often happened to me to think about her outside the café, I gave her many names and I have imagined her in a lot of different situations. I’ve imagined her by my side while we live the places that I love the most. In my dreams I took her to my mother’s village, we’ve climbed mountains and we’ve made long strolls by the seaside. We’ve even kissed in the shadow of ancient trees.

‘Are you listening to me? If she’s not going to make the next move, enough… You’ll go there, and you’ll introduce yourself and it all happens the way it has to, once and for all.’ Stefano goes on, now completely caught up in my story and willing to arrive to a conclusion, whether it’s positive or negative. I agree with him, now I’ve realised that we must move on, we’ve been standing at the entrance of this non-affair from too long. I don’t even know her name yet. I say goodbye to my loyal friend, I go back to my way home completely wrapped in my thoughts, as much that I arrive home without even notice the miles travelled on foot. I didn’t even notice people I stepped by on the road, cars speeding beside me, fountain that were constantly streaming water, and thoughtless birds in the sky. I came back to reality only at

the sight of my closed front door before my eyes like a silent and massive guard. In the distance, I discern the old lady with my neighbour’s dog, so I hurry up to enter, with not a great desire to remain stuck on the door chatting about medicines or about the dog potty spread in who knows what street of the district.

As soon as I close the door behind me, I breath a sign of relief and I continue moving silently not to be overheard from the outside and I jump on the bed. When I woke up I am in a pull of sweat and I’m still wearing my jacket. It’s 7 p.m. and I have been sleeping for almost all the afternoon abandoned in a deep sleep. After a swift shower and with my pyjama already on I turn my laptop on and I start to work on the photographs taken today. The most beautiful are the one of the daisy and the one of the paddle with me inside… I start to recognize myself in what I am doing, and this provides me with the right energy to find the courage to turn around the story with the girl in the café.

The day after, despite I’ve been awake until late to work on the computer, I woke up following my weekly routine so that I arrive at the café at the usual hour curious to see what she was going to do after my little gift of yesterday. When I enter, I see her already sitting at her table, as usual, prettier than ever. She gives me a look, blushing a little while she turns her farce towards her friends who stands still and stares at her. There’s something weird about their behaviour, they’re not immerged in the other mornings usual naturalness between their chats in a low tone. The counter is empty, so I sit at my usual corner waiting for the barman to come. I quickly glimpse at her again and as soon as she notices that I am looking at her, she turns away from me again.

With my arm I drop an envelope that was probably laid on the sugar can in the corner. I pick it up and I notice that there’s written ‘For…?’

and on the side there’s a little flower sketched. I stop for some moments without knowing what to do and then, caught up in curiosity, I open it, being the only one in the place. Inside of it there’s a little chocolate with a daisy sketched on it. The adrenaline is going, here’s her move, the envelope is just for me. I smile while I realise that there’s also a card inside, written in pen: ‘We have other senses beside the sight and today I’ll try to please the taste too. A.’ I read it three more times almost as if I wanted to learn by heart that sentence so short but meaningful to me. When I turn, I see that she’s gone as silent that I didn’t even notice. I start to unwrap the chocolate trying not to break the envelope that I store inside the wallet. I eat it as if I’ve never eaten chocolate in my whole life, tasting slowly the bitterness of cocoa and the sweetness of vanilla that wraps it up in its smoothness. I realise that I’ve closed my eyes totally caught up in its taste and only focused on the sense of taste, just as A wrote in her card that I read again for the fourth time almost looking for something between the lines. Then I store it in the pocket of my jacket where it’s ready to be read other more times, till death. The taste of chocolate is fixed in my mind and from now on I’ll never be able to eat something that has the same taste without thinking about this catching morning made of coffee and vanilla chocolate. With a dumb smile on my face, I say goodbye to the barman who in the meantime had offered me my usual coffee, and I go away a little bothered by the fact that I am not going to see my mysterious woman for the next two days, with the weekend just around the corner.

In the past, Saturday and Sunday have always been a blessing but since I met her they have become the two days to live as fast as possible, craving for the oxygen that her next Monday morning look will bring to me. This will be even longer and heavier, even if this way I’ll have the chance to think longer about my next move. The game has been decided, I must focus on the five senses and decide if I want to follow what she designed to be the second or go on to the next one. I still taste the strong flavour of chocolate in my mouth and I hope it will stay longer to fix it more powerfully in my memory. It immediately comes to my mind Proust’s Magdalene, what he remembered eating that by a distance of years and I start to understand his writings more and more and the strong feelings evoked by a little and simple childhood sweet. I wish I could have a lot more of these chocolates, so that I could eat one of them every time the memory starts to fade or any time I want to keep alive the thought I have about her even when she’s not here. A taste that by now is linked to two deep and piercing eyes, her beauty, and black straight hair on her shoulders. It’s linked to that hardly evident smile framed by pink lips and clear and shining skin. Today she had a forest green dress with black high heel boots glimpsed under the table when I arrived. It’s a pity that I didn’t have the chance to see her going out in order to detect some more details of her perfect body too often hidden under coats and scarfs during this season. But today the sense is taste, so I stop my thought at the chocolate that I’ve found in the envelope. I wonder if she had tasted it too, in order to share the velvet sensation of taste. Going out, I noticed on her table that she took a coffee instead of the usual cappuccino, maybe just to taste the same experience that I had. I almost feel like

I’ve kissed her, tasting the chocolate of her lips, tight in an embrace made of a wise mixture of perfumes and tastes. I take another picture of the card written in her beautiful tidy and full handwriting and I send it to Stefano. His answer is immediate: ‘The game has begun ’

CHAPRER 6

The chocolate of remembrance

Here we are, today Camilla came to pick me up so that we could revise our plan before entering the café. We try to arrive at least ten minutes earlier compared to the usual so that we could set everything before he arrives. Before going out, I wrote a card to explain my gift.

The little chocolate, in addition to the link of the same common thread of the daisy, must carry on our non-affair with the discovery of the senses, our senses, moving from sight to taste. I’ve decided not to sign the card but to put only the initial of my name, so that I would not reveal too much and I would not end too soon this game that is getting more intriguing, different from the usual flirting schemes. I write on the envelope ‘For…?’ since I don’t have a clue about what is name is, I put everything inside and I come down running towards my friend who has already buzzed from a few minutes.

Today I woke up earlier than the usual and it took me half an hour only to decide what to wear. In the end, I opted for a wool soft dress of my favourite colour, dark green, and my high heel boots. While I’m in the street, I can’t wait to arrive and I almost got hit by a car since I’m so head over hills that I didn’t even notice a red traffic light. Arrived safe and sounds at the café we laid the bags at the usual table and we wait at the counter. When it’s almost the time of his arrival, Camilla placed herself in front of the entrance and I made the barman get away towards the kitchen with an excuse. At this point, I placed the envelope in front of the sugar box on the side where he always stands to have a coffee. I know for sure that he’s going to take the sugar box and he’s

going to find the envelope in front of his eyes hoping that, realising that it’s for him, he would open it.

Camilla waves at me when he’s arriving and so we quickly sit pretending that nothing is happening despite a whisper of shortness of breath provoked by emotions and by the brief run towards the table. In order not to express my emotions, when he enters I look at him only for few instants. I am as excited as never before and I hope not to blush too much revealing my fake carelessness with regards to his arrival.

When he finally reaches the counter, we secretly spy on him, hoping that he hurries up and takes that envelope on display just before him.

He turns towards me in a blink and, feeling caught, I immediately look the other way. Today there’s not the usual harmony of our meeting: the last events left us more excited than the usual, he’s not the usual too. In order to break this awkward moment, he accidentally drops the envelope to the ground. When he picks it up, he gets slowly up looking at the mysterious addressee marked on the envelope with a little flower that I sketched while we were already on the road. It was to help him decoding the massage and to make him realise that he was exactly the one who had to open the envelope.

When we notice that he was opening it, we took the opportunity to go away secretly without making any noise, running away in the street.

The only thing that makes me sad is that I’m going to wait two days to see how our game will continue and I already know that it will be a very long weekend. Luckily, it matched a little trip that I had planned a long time before. Therefore, in the late afternoon I’ve already taken the train that will lead me to Venice to meet the baby of one of my five cousins who was born only a few months before. Her husband will be

outside the city in these days, so I grasped the opportunity to help her and to be together after a long time that we haven’t seen each other.

Today I finished work soon, taking advantage of some time off hours that I’ve previously asked in order not to have last minutes pranks. My pretty and little trolley awaits me home, packed with all the necessary things for these two days out of the city. I wear my comfy skinny jeans that I can fit into my boots with my hot and slim blue and brown sweater, unfailing during my winter trips. After a while I wear my coat again, with scarf and hat, ready to face Venice during this time of the year. I have been waiting for this trip for weeks and luckily it seems that the weather is going to help us providing us with two sunny days not even so cold with respect to the season. To avoid being late, a taxi that will take me to the train station is already waiting for me under my front door. As soon as I sit down and I close the door I already feel like I am on holyday. On the way I check a few last things and I prepare tickets and money to pay the ride. In ten minutes we’re already at the entrance of the station right on time for the departure. Arrived at the departures board, I look for my train and I receive the bad news of a delay of half an hour. On one hand, I thank heaven that this is the only delay and I take advantage to have a stroll between the shops renewed in the last years so that they create a real mall under the tracks, in a sort of underworld. There are all the trendiest brands especially for youngest girls and fast foods unfolded between scents and appealing colourful advertising that offer a good lunch at a few euros cost.

At this hour this area of the station is really crowded, who arrives, who is simply here to do some undisturbed and easy linked shopping. I

stop to buy a bottle of water in a shop entirely provided with automatic dispensers of every kind of water. Before I choose, I look at all of them: plain, still, sparkling, slightly sparkling, soda, not to mention the one containing more or less sodium and so on. Well, nowadays even choosing water becomes difficult. Just in case, I choose a brand that I know and I go back to my tour, looking at the watch now and then to avoid the risk of remaining in Rome. When my train finally arrives, I get on the coach displayed on the ticket and I have a seat. I connect my tablet to the station free Wi-Fi and I check the last messages, always hoping to find a contact from him. Disappointed from receiving only advertising e-mails and some answer to work messages, I turn everything off and I wait to hear the whistle that heralds the departure.

When the train starts to move I close my eyes, cradled by the increasing pace on the tracks that are slipping under my feet. That noise brings me back in the years, when I was a girl and I used to go to the mountains with the group of friends of my district. We always travelled by night and we almost never slept during the ride. There was always someone who brought the guitar and played in the couches with all the others pushed inside to sing. Someone stopped in the corridors, watching outside the windows the darkness lighted only by many street lamps along the way that moved away leaving behind a light trail. The rumour of the tracks, always identical like a chant that was a base for the choral voices and the sound of the guitar. Long trips that passed quickly in the euphoria of a holyday far from home, from families, from school… Ready to the adventure that only mountain experienced in tent can offer. The same train would have seen us again after ten days spent totally immersed in nature, between green trees and cold

streams that became source of water to bath and wash dishes. The same train that would have taken us home tired but as happy as ever with the backpack full of dirty clothes and with many adventures to tell. At that time there weren’t mobile phones or Internet to divert our attention from what surrounded us and the only contact with home was a single call made in the half of the week from a cabin far away from our camp. And we used to live so well…

When I open my eyes again, I am alone and outside the window it’s still day. I am enchanted by the landscape that surrounds me and it seems that it was eaten by the unbridled run of that long means of transport. Its sound is still the same of the one of a lot of years ago, its regular pace is always unaltered. I am the only one who changed, but with the usual smile that is finally came back to shine on my face tired and marked from the events of a lifetime. I enjoy taking some picture from the window. Luckily, my seat is just the window one and so I can admire undisturbed the scene that changes before my eyes. I enjoy modifying the photos that I’ve taken through some applications that are nowadays installed on every mobile phone and I post some of them on my profile. I check the mail, even if I see that there is any new message. Nothing, not a trace of my mysterious café friend who probably doesn’t even know where and how to find me.