I’d never seen it before. How long had it been there? Since before you got really ill? Or maybe from before then, from the period of half-gestures, when for reasons unknown even to you your actions suddenly struck out down a different path? I opened the envelope and saw that it contained a large notebook with a flowery cover. At that moment, however, I didn’t feel ready to face whatever might be inside, and so I laid the notebook on the kitchen table and kept cleaning until well past noon.
That day, while working furiously, I came to two important decisions. The first concerned a dog: I would go to the pound the next day and pick out another one, because I couldn’t bear looking at that empty garden. The second decision concerned my future; in the autumn, I would enrol in the university and study forest science, because I’d finally realised what it was I wanted to do for the rest of my life: take care of trees.
After the hottest part of the day had passed, I started watering the garden. The rose bush was at the end of its flowering and seemed not to have suffered too much from my absence, while the hydrangeas looked pretty badly off. I watered them for a long time, now and then aiming the hose high so that I could watch the stream of water turn into a shower of golden droplets.
When I was done, I took out a deckchair, put it in the middle of the garden, and sat down with an orangeade in one hand and your notebook in the other.
Opicina, 16 November, 1992 was written at the top of the first page.
I recognised your handwriting, as tidy and regular as always.
You have been away for two months, and for two months I have heard nothing from you apart from a postcard telling me that you were still alive . . .
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Copyright © Susanna Tamaro 2006
English translation copyright © John Cullen 2008
Susanna Tamaro has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
First published with the title Ascolta la mia voce in 2006
by RCS Libri S.p.A., Milan
First published in Great Britain in 2008 by
HARVILL SECKER
Random House
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London SWIV 2SA
www.randomhouse.co.uk
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9781846550645
Susanna Tamaro, Listen to My Voice
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