Chapter 4.
The morning was by now forwarded but for Angel the day was not initiated a lot from.
The phone call of Helen had caught him/it by surprise, despite attending, when he/she anchors it was busy in the first and more private practices of the after awakening. It was not certain Helen to be early but it was Angel that for choice of life and job you/he/she could afford to reach also dreaming the hours twos figures.
While it was rearranging the suits heaped up in bedroom, it considered to the disturbances of his/her sister.
Angel had still dared. Alluding, you/he/she had wanted once more to involve her/it in a world that she had refused. A secret, dangerous and immense, it imprisoned both, and to that secret which he was devoted it aspired to tie the destinies of his/her/their sister. You/he/she would never have forced her/it, never forced. Helen one day would have understood from itself; but it was soon now still.
He/she left that the desire to share with her the inexpressible one abandoned him/it and that the call of the daily necessities brought him/it to the normalcy.
It had to go out: by now it was past midday. It attended to meet himself/herself/themselves with a friend, an old friend, which had given appointment for a brunch. Admirable linguistic synthesis, was what wanted us, for him, to calm the bites of the appetite, and for its social life, to connect again threads of discourses more times interrupted.
It didn't worry him about the look: to damage of the urbanistic transformations, in the district in which he had been born and grown it still felt to house, cleared to stroll about with the same cloths that it had I set the day before, the unmade beard, the disheveled hair.
With what rapidity was changed under his eyes the old Door Garibaldi, a calm popular neighborhood that the last two decades had made luxurious and lustful. To crowning of the transformation, he/she took form a triumph of glasses and cement, dizzy perspectives that raised him, day after day, to unimaginable heights for the Milaneses.
Out in house, the direction was forced by now. Raced Chest of drawers: the stumpy vialotto that once simply connected city and station but that today it contained the impudent soul in Milan. Raced closed Chest of drawers to the cars, laughing as the jets of the fountains that had realized you, seals to custody of the irreversibility of the time.
Angel crossed after all it until, where a place rose that once would have called bakery. He/she never closed, day and night. To strive behind the bench a small crowd alternated him, among which surely not the owner. The women, all you dress in grey, you are been nicknamed" the nuns of Armani." Great discovery, the uniform for the workers: it stayed to understand as you/he/she could make the better bread.
Angel hesitated before entering. You saw reflex for an instant in the glass.
It was tall, it had an enviable physicist, but the lines of the face were camouflaged by the indifference and its prestanza by a displayed shabbiness.
Perhaps it was what wanted: to distinguish himself/herself/themselves from that marvelous clients, tanned also when it had been raining for one month changing tide of made up manikins.
They looked him/it of escaped, really because it foresees, they scrutinized him/it and they passed away. They didn't waste time to judge him/it. They didn't even lose to recognize him/it of it, yet you/they would have owed, because Angel Sastri was one of the more hailed actors of the Milanese theatrical footlight. A man of the moment for the employees.
But nobody would probably, have recognized him/it not even if you/he/she had seen him/it on the stage the preceding evening: from consumed actor, its face changed instant for instant. For him it was only this the way of celebrating the life: to be able to delude himself/herself/themselves not to have an alone of it.
When Angel crossed the entry of the bakery, to the first table in front of itself you/he/she found to already attend him/it his/her friend. What, to surprise, it was not alone.
A sign of the head among the two men. A radiant smiled by a young girl, from the long blonde and smooth hair, with a graced face and innocent, the triumph of the perfect lines of an age that he/she sees very distant every possible decline; eyes I sea they observed with admiration the entrance of Angel, which returned to her, and only to her, that smile that would never have turned to the other.
Strange, he/she thought Angel. It was a normal day of school: it didn't understand therefore as Ettore had been able to bring itself the small Laura, the smaller sister. Small, at least, you/he/she had remained in his image from when you/he/she had known her/it: an eight year-old attractive and kind child. And, for a curious joke of the habit, destined to be indefinitely such.
To the table a chair already attended him/it.
The reception of Ettore was cold and resigned. Once would have gotten up, the arm would have stretched him and the other would have grabbed him/it, to reply a rhetorical gesture that the militancy of extreme right supposed to hand down of generation in generation, to rinverdire the authentic comradeship of the Roman legions. That day instead prevailed an annoyed separation.
It was Angel to speak for first but it didn't turn him to him.
«Miss, you thing does here us? Should not you be to school?» he/she asked gallant to the girl.
You inserted his/her brother.
«Imagine: they have the school on strike, so much to change. And she has taken advantage of it: he/she wants to ask you something to start to recite.»
«To recite? It would be fantastic.» You pleasantly surprised Angel.
Laura, radiant in his/her simplicity, it was there there for saying something but you/he/she could not do him/it, because his/her greater brother parafascista was able well to afford to speak to his/her place.
«I have told her not to come but you/he/she has insisted» it added Ettore.
«Because it would be never due to come?»
«We have to speak of things that don't concern her/it.»
«Already» he/she ascertained disappointed Angel. «Politics.» Its look abandoned that of Ettore, finding shelter in that of Laura. Angel knew that the politics would have been in the foreground but it was not waited for a street of escape you/he/she was offered him: now that so much neighbor saw her/it to recognize its impatience, you/he/she hated more still the idea to make himself/herself/themselves contaminate from so scanty matters. «There is not more nothing of which to speak.»
A new hurry pushed him/it to definitely close the games.
You/he/she could not already bear the idea of rhetoric pasteggiare and ideal, from the moment that its escort was already dried up by a piece and the drought of the modern times it was not able certain to help to regenerate her/it.
And then Laura, with that curious and serene look, in his/her thoughts it was already something more of a simple diversionary. It was there, in simple attended. Its modesty deserved only attentions, its silence made her/it a rare pearl in a world of trombones.
They already impended in fact the clashes of the revolution.
«Then you have decided to go. You have also betrayed you, at the end.»
Once, only the word betrayal would have done him/it go off standing, ready to cancel the shame with the blood. Betrayal: evoked uncomfortable ghosts, from Badoglio to Ciano, from the King to Gianfranco Fini. That day, a weak indifference grazed him/it as soon as.
«I have not betrayed, since there is not anything to be betrayed.» Lie: you/he/she was betraying himself, in reality, really in that instants. And it betrayed the beauty, he/she thought, grazing Laura with the look.
Ettore had already begun a monologue arrembante on the honor, the values, the tradition. But those words already lost him in the nothing: Angel was found curiously attracted by the hands of Laura. Anemones sinuous, they caressed aritmicamente the cup of the coffee by now empty; they seemed intente to intrecciar flowers. Ofelia, sweet victim of the wars, of the avarices, of the conventions: the honesty of your feelings must be defended by every ugliness.
«You don't
think about our corpses anymore?» Only the intrusive hold on the arm dared to dissuade its thought from Laura to conduct him/it to them.
The corpses.
Boys torn from the life because rich and grazed gentlemen you/they could confer upon some title of Honorables and bearer documents. And the mass of the activists accepted the role, convinced to dress again him of a mission salvifica.
«Ettore, the times are changed: the punishment is not worth to die for the ideology anymore» (to Die, to sleep, to dream, perhaps.)
«For the idea, cazzo!» the comrade bursted out. «The ideology leave her/it to the companions. We defend ideas, values.»
«Values, say?» For a last time he/she was still wanted to grant a spun discourse. A synthesis, four slogans would have been enough. Ofelia attended, honest as beautiful. It deserved protection, it deserved devotion, it deserved to like. «For you it is a value to unsheathe the swords in defense of the statuettes of the presepio? Have you ever felt to belong you the country against the assisted fertilization? (In the convent, in the convent!) And at the same time, as did you feel yourself about defending the mercimonio mafioso of a leader that you have been to have to love, (Not you leave your honesty) or to justify the sand-banks reserved to the puttanes of regime? (Alone with your beauty.) Do you remember yourself when to the averages we wrote on the benches" V and V?" For us he/she wanted to say" to win and we will win"; at the most you/he/she can mean now" veil of it and vaticano." But it is not even perhaps your guilt: the same world has buried those that you call ideas, so you are forced to take her in loan from who has more rooted of it of you. Or from who has more frivolous of it and you/he/she can sell more of it.» There was an instant of silence. The eyes of Laura you fix in his, his/her mouth more times on the point to open himself/herself/themselves and to steal his/her soul from them. «I repeat him/it to you for the last time: I/you/they have gone down from the barricades. (In the convent!) And I don't have intention to go up again you anymore.»
Ettore threw down the last sip of the cappuccino as if you/he/she had preserved him/it for the surrender.
«Then we deserve there the humanity that we have. Imbelle and corrupt.»
The humanity recalled in cause instigated in Angel the last rebellion.
And he/she spoke, and I spoke through him.
«The humanity will be never able to improve him, not until the man it will exist. Only a leap over the man himself can allow us to revive. And on this walk I have never stopped proceeding.»
This and an all it took is greeting silence it fell on that table. It was to close now.
«Then we go» it said Ettore and it got up. With the look it attended Laura.
«You go, I reenter later.»
An unexpected rebellion, doubling of defeat for the brave warrior. It was the first time that her voice played again in that mess.
«His/her mother doesn't want that you do you delay.» To evoke the auctoritas, although stucchevole, is effective often in the world of the men. But never with such a banal evocation.
«It is midday, we are in the heart of the city and I am not alone: there is Angel with me. You know him/it that I had to speak to him: I have not interrupted you, I have let you discuss some problems. Now however it is my turn.»
Ettore attended anchor faking not to have suffered the outrageous frown of his/her/their sister. He/she thought that a severe look all it took is for redeeming her/it. He/she thought us Laura about to close him every small opening.
«Ettore, please: not to force to add me that I am not a child anymore!»
Coup de théâtre! Natural talent, in front of which Ettore was not able whether to capitulate. The conversation didn't belong him anymore.
A sign of the head, a distant regard. You dispersed silent, leaving them alone.
«Forgive him/it. It is always so possessive» it was the justification of Laura.
«You/he/she has always been him/it» it liquidated Angel the matter. «We come to us, now. From how much I have understood, you want to begin to recite.»
«Yes, it is from so much that I wanted to try us seriously.»
«Now yes that the conversation does him interesting. Do you know then that I tell you? We take something and let's put us comfortable.» It got up with a leap; the boredom of a little before it was enfeebled. «Thing I bring you?»
«Nothing, thanks you. My mother waits me for lunch. Rather I still have to pay my coffee,» she responded, while in the bag it looked for the wallet. «And also that of mine.»
«Calm, I think it me» it felt him say. Lifted the look, it perceived that Angel had already disappeared; you/he/she found again him/it in line to the bench, where you/he/she quickly recovered a pair of flat colds. It immediately returned to the table, accompanied in every footstep by the look of Laura, until he didn't sit.
«Good appetite.» It almost seemed to exult and, to so much enthusiasm, Laura could not hold back a giggle. «Because you give back?» he/she asked her, accomplice and had a good time.
«Forgive me» she began. «You have made me come to mind how much foolish have been in all these years. This scene, to eat with you, to attend to feel to speak to you: he/she remembers me so much the first time that you came to supper to our house. I was still a child, I had not ended the elementary ones yet; you studied anchor, however you talked there the whole evening of your appointments to the theater. It seemed that I didn't follow, it seemed that with the head I was lost in my world of games. I dreamt to open eyes instead; I gave life to your descriptions, with me protagonist, and with you to my side, to help me, to sustain me to recommend me. You spoke of the applauses that you received and I already started to feel them; and for magic here that also me, wound in thousand colored lights, I received them together with you.»
Then angel applauded. Few, slow, felt pulsations of his/her hands they closed the discourse, pronounced with so much transport.
«Beautiful test, already from great actress, indeed.»
Laura remained disorientated.
«But I didn't want to recite» he protected. «I have not done anything else other than to tell you the truth.»
«No, I pray you: not to break the spell!» Angel was already in desk. «It doesn't care if everything that were true that have told or if you were you him invented to the moment: it is as you have told him that you/he/she has made him/it alive. This is what it is waited for the public by us: the makeup to be a good actor on the scene is to never go down from the scene. In the life it is never stopped reciting. And more characters you embody, more you succeed in living. It is more you succeed in living, greater you will be as actor.»
«But so nobody will be more himself.»
«The world is annoyed of the himself. That's why he/she reveres us. Do you see him/it to you a Tom Cruise himself? In pajamas as soon as awake, without heels? We can accept him/it because his/her life, as stupid as ours, it perfumes us of vanilla, because we know that soon it will go down in his/her playpen, it will start and it will dart away on his/her jet. The himself behind the cerone I believe that I/you/he/she don't even exist.»
«But you exist. True?»
The great actor allowed to hang in the void the question as a conjurer that you/he/she allows to levitate his/her assistant.
«If I told you him, I would stop being the actor of the moment.» With a hit of wand, the magician hid the makeup. «You feel, we do this way. Do you have appointments for tonight?»
«Appointments?» What an unexpected application. What to answer? «No, anybody.» It opted for the truth, sufficiently made theatrical from the embarrassment.
«We have a resumption de The game of the parts. I make you find two tickets in box, I record them to your name. You bring who want. Then, to end show, counts up to thousand, give me the time to change me and wait me in the foyer.»
Laura was about to give voice to thousand emotions, when to brake her/it providential the trill of his/her jail cell came. It observed him/it with c
oldness.
«It is my mother» it murmured disappointed. «It is better that goes, now» it added without still answering. «Thanks of everything.»
You bent, the sweet Laura. Long blonde hair caressed the forehead, the face, the neck of Angel; delicate as the wings of a butterfly, the lips grazed its rough cheek.
Frightened by his/her same audacity, it was addressed fast to the door. Correct the time to mention a yes with the head when Angel renewed her the promise.
«Remembered of tonight.»