The continuous bell to play. To the beginning in the summer it seemed only also me impossible to imagine the death of someone of my family. And instead it had already happened. They tremble me the legs with the crosticines on the knees, but I insist. This time I want to be also us me.
Grandfather has preferred not to come. You/he/she has gone the afloat home and you/he/she has remained up to evening there. Today it had the eyes full of water more than the usual one. Grandmother, is empty instead of look, you/he/she walks slanting, you/he/she has the air of whom doesn't recognize the road of house anymore. You, really her, that he/she always knows from what it departs to go. Mother ago before and back in a room to the other, from a mirror to the other, it looks him as to make sure to be still there not to have disappeared. They tremble her the white braccias. And does her/it, above all its face totters. It is as if the strength that has gagged her the face for one whole year had him of hit freed. He/she cries without saying nothing and ago a strange effect to see a mother that cries.
I arrive in the church I don't know how, the feet don't respond better to the head. The priest says things any, things that you/he/she seems me they don't have anything to do with it nothing with us. I wonder me as we can be all there, in silence, while Luca is stretched out against the wood of a coffin. I wonder me as they make the others not to howl. For the time being me I don't howl, I confine me to sob and to torment my crosticines.
The priest insists, we must not cry, Luca has reached "the true life", that is not that terrestrial, that of the material goods. He/she calls Luca "George." Twice. To the third one, someone corrects him/it. It begins to wander, it is as that it doesn't have the full church and it takes advantage of it. All of a sudden it declares that "the television is the demon, as after all it also sustained Mother Teresa of Calcutta" and that we have forgotten the abc of the true life.
"You know him/it qual it is the weapon most powerful that have to disposition? Do you know him/it qual it is?"
You looks through in the white of the cowl.
"Is this!it " exults, tightening among the hands the keys of the car, from which it dangles sad a rosary.
It acknowledges the misunderstanding and straps; it eliminates from the senseless tangle the keys of the car and he/she leaves only the rosary. The mass is ended, you go to peace.
We emerge on the plaza that is a carpet of people come by every part. The message of the priest has not been of the clearest. People don't know what to say, therefore you/he/she doesn't say anything. There are the sisters of grandmother. There is Lawrence with his/her syntactic raddoppiamento, there is Charles that doesn't dare to approach to mother. There is someone who draws near plain. Seem him indelicate, but there is a matter of money in suspended. I recognize the employee of the funeral honors from the voice. There is also dad, but now I don't feel like seeing him/it. I turn me on the other side. Around, people are some confused, almost sfocata. Me, for me, continuous with the hiccups.
When we return home, the world is not before anymore the same of.
The ticking of foundation has bursted in a boato. Now the others feel him/it also, they feel him/it everybody. I am certain of it.
I take a seat me on the edge of the sidewalk behind the house, where the whole summer I have trained to the vertical one against the wall. I feel me the lead in the calves. It is in the braccias, also. I don't feel like anymore training me. I don't feel like doing nothing. I copy the grass of the lawn: I stay immovable. I won't move here me of for the next twenty years. I swear.
The people of the trailers comes to greet us, but I don't even lift the look. From the edge of the sidewalk, I the shoes of Mujo + two legs of Mujo + a face of Mujo = a Mujo all whole. I hear his/her voice that says:
"As is?"
"As summer, so winter."
I don't know why I have answered this way. None of the other ones has found best answers, however.
And then I am copying the grass, I cannot speak. I cannot even feel. I am copying her so well that I have not even realized that Mujo has spoken to me for the first time in the whole summer. And you/he/she has done him in Italian.
To supper I don't succeed in swallowing nothing. It bothers me the memory that returns, it bothers me the time that him riavvolge on himself as the ribbon of a cassette. My mind you/he/she had not made then such a wrong choice deciding to shake of back some memoirs. It also bothers me the people that try to console me, and for the occasion it says stupider things of the usual one. Gives around even me bother the braccias of mother. I have him with her. I have him with grandmother. I have him with everybody. But thing happens to this family, because all the men go? Why do all leave all and they want to make their crossing? I look her as if it were their guilt. I look her and I would feel like howling for the fear that one day also happens to me.
I go than above to chase tears in peace. Doesn't a water exist oxygenated that it disinfects these things? A water oxygenated as that of the sisters of grandmother. To the beginning it burns some, but then it passes everything. They come you the crosticines, you torment her some with the fingernails and at the end you recover.
I turn in round, in front of the mirror that reflects contrarily the world and in which recognize me every day less. I think about the house on the river, to the kites and the ball, so alone in the night. I pick her/it to me with the salvapensieri up. I open the rubber cork on the fund and it is a rain of paper that fills the floor. I read at random tickets. From some time it happens that the things speak to me. I cry. The carpets are plotting something. I throw above with the nose. Day of immovable leaves. Recovery from the pocket of the shorts the leather bracelet from which Luca never separated him. Stray night. I rub him/it between the index and the thumb as it was a talisman. I hear the voice of the bell. I think that I won't hear anymore his/her voice and it hurts me the belly. Ago really bad.
In bath, there is a stain of red that waits me on the underpants. I look better and it begins to turn me the head. I look for saliva to send down, to reassure me, to tell me that it is a normal thing, even if it doesn't seem. I sniff me the skin of the braccias to feel if I have another odor, as Iris has said.
I feels like calling mother, but I don't do him/it. I steal from the locker one of his absorbent. I do as they do in television, in the publicities. But I read well before the instructions on the box, for fear to be wrong.
I go out of the bath and I look at graze my image drawn on the glass of the mirror. I have the ruffled hair the red eyes. I seem a cat that has fought against an armed with stray dogs. I return in my room, with the wet one of the tears on the cheeks and in belly the desire to vomit. Ago warm. Warm. I beware of the window. Out, the neighbors of the house of forehead sleep in sacks to hair, trailer of side, stars above the head. I look for with the eyes Mujo, I look through, I investigate, I rummage everywhere. But there for earth there is not. I find him/it in the house, to the first floor, leaned out to a windowsill. We beware there of the squares of our windows, one in front of the other. Between us there is the distance of twenty-eight footsteps, a basket field or a whale. Yet it seems me that we are distant worlds and worlds.
With the hands, Mujo says "it Waits", it makes me sign to be to look. You bends behind the windowsill and it traffics of hands with something that I don't see, until it doesn't lift him/it and it shows him/it to me. I sharpen the look in the dark. Seem me a toy balloon. Yes, a blue toy balloon.
With the conjurer fingers, Mujo models him/it, it inserts him/it, it pushes strange noises in the night and he doesn't feel that that. When you/he/she has ended, ago the gesture to offer me him. It is a blue dog. A poodle.
I smile some, I lick the wet one some tears and they are saltier than the usual one and they don't want to stop to slip her/it me on the cheeks.
With the magic gesture that the illusionists only know, Mujo frees the animal from the window. The air if the door away, above our heads, above the boundless fields of the night. I stay to look until the dog a dot it b
ecomes, until I don't see him/it anymore. When I lower again the look, the window of forehead is an empty hole. Mujo has disappeared together with the toy balloon.
I don't know how, but I feel something that moves me in the head, that gets excited as an ossicino in the skull. It is the bulb of a thought that is trying to ignite. Just as Charles it said.
I rub me the lobe of the ear in front of the window. Barabau doesn't stop her/it barking in the dark, head for air, four earth legs. I think about the blue dog that is sailing in the sky. I think about Mujo. Until, to a line, the bulb ignites and every thing is illuminated.
The wind! Is blowing the wind!
I lean out me from the windowsill, I insert in the blue one some night the whole head and a bit of bust. Barabau, astute ears, look me surprised. There is no doubt, what grazes me the cheeks, what combs me of side the hair, what shifts me inside and out of the shirt it is really wind. It is as if someone had finally pressed an interrupter.
In hurry, I go down the steep one some staircases. I climb over the outline of Barabau and I fork the white bicycle. I pedal fast, fast, wind among the hair, up to the house on the river.
As I imagined, Mujo is there already. Look me at all, with the ruffled hair, the red eyes and the whole rest. We don't need to tell us nothing, we exactly know thing to do. One for one, take the kites, we bring them out of the afloat house. The wind is not strong, but it is constant. In silence, we start there toward the platform of the house-train, loaded braccia of kites. We pass close to the mute river. The road is longer because it is night, it seems to never arrive.
I tag after the heels of Mujo, tracing the track of his/her footsteps in front of me and some misses me the breath: it is the damp dark that suffocates me as a thick and black fur. It is only an instant. An instant and the reality he transforms. The branches of the trees are dilated downward as long fingers, the path makes smaller him, it tightens him to excess, by now you/he/she is reduced to a thin thread suspended in the night and me I know well about as acrobat not to be good. Don't look down, not to look down.
Too late. The reflex of me on the fund of the river makes me stop the footstep. I stay to half road, petrified on the thread. I look down again. I have the impression that that black reflex is not mine but that of Luca, that calls me, that wants to drag down me with itself. Who doesn't run away from the abyss. You his/her voice mixes him to that of the water, liquid, winding. Few would be enough, so little. A footstep, a solo I pass out of the thread and I would belong also to the Great River me. A solo, small footstep.
I am about to lift a foot, when that thing happens: the red ball of Maria Petrova crosses me the mind. It shines in the night, shining. It circles on the Indian music as bottom to a spell, before being captured by the hands of Maria, sheathed in his/her custom of white lycra. One after the other, cross me the mind the trumpet of Miles Davis and the denture of Chet Baker, Lieutenant Christopher Columbus overcoat and the hump of Leopards. I shake the head. It doesn't suit me to abdicate the hump of Leopards. It doesn't even suit me to abdicate the trumpet of Miles Davis, neither to the denture of Chet Baker. It doesn't suit me not to even abdicate Lieutenant Christopher Columbus overcoat and, above all, to the customs of white lycra of Maria Petrova. It doesn't suit me to abdicate to no in general I decide.
I push downward with strength the heel and I force the reality to make dietrofront. The thread returns path and the fingers of the trees simple branches. Mujo is there still, kites among the braccias, only some more meter before. You/he/she has not acknowledged anything. I accelerate the footstep and I reach him/it. Together we start over marching toward the house-train.
The world, has started over now migrating from the past to the future, as you/he/she must be, and the river to move water from the top of the mountains toward the sea. You/he/she has put us one year, but you/he/she has now returned to have the usual usual lazy face.
Mujo and I are almost on the platforms, our footsteps puncture the dark, sure. By now anybody you/he/she can stop us. This is the kairos the correct moment. In silence Mujo climbs as a wild animal on the eaves of the house, as I has seen him make that afternoon. He was not practicing to make the thief, he was training for this night. One after the other, pass him the kites. Of now in then I think, I must teach to the world to obey me. The coffeepots won't have to bleed to blunder anymore, neither the carpets to go for a walk believing himself/herself/itself fishes on the bottom of the sea. Of now in then I must tame the things and to make her be to their place, because to become great perhaps means to learn to do this. There will be good and other moments less good person. It will be some as in that song that it likes so much to Charles, there will be the sun in plaza few times and the rest it will be rain that bathes us.
But this night no, not yet. This night steals the wind from a place where the wind never blows and every thing is granted. With two kind braccias, Mujo helps me to climb on the roof. This night we can do everything. We are not in the reality. We are in a crack a crack of the world. We are in unstable balance on the edge of the time, between thousand and thousand years.
We walk on the tiles as apprentices funamboli. Behind of us, the moon and other kilometers of things distant from here. In head to the locomotive, we support the kites plain, plain, as if we were handling eggshells. With patient fingers, we tie the threads to the fireplace. The skin of the kites is crossed by a shiver. I feel them get excited on the roof, impatient, restless, until the hiss of the wind it makes to take off their bodies of paper. They turn helixes and they wag the tail tails. One after the other, the kites get up in flight, they remain I suspended as nighttime birds on the roof of the house. The airplane with the green wings opens the flock, the hot-air balloon closes him/it.
In the night, there is only now noise of wind and a fleet some strange that the black. I stay me to look, open mouth and nose in on. When riabbasso the look, Mujo has eyes glued on me and a smile he/she fills us the lips without asking permission.
We stay firm so, without speaking, two deserters from the reality that they are enjoyed a truce by the world. We stay to look us until a scrunch it squeaks in the air and it makes to jolt our bodies on the tiles. Mujo takes me the hand and tightens her/it strong. We look around at there. The creaking continues. It is a patient movement, imperceptible, then intense, more and more definite.
Slowly, the house-train begins to stir on its dead platform. It pushes his/her carcass in the night as an old mechanical animal some rusted but intenzionato to go on. To always go before.
The wind blows strong in the belly of the kites. The locomotive is mute, it doesn't whistle, but continuous to advance. Mujo and I look at there in the silent, black and shining night. We smile, without asking us where it will bring us the wind. We smile, and it is an oasis of light in the dark.
Thanks
An important part of this novel has been written to Bordeaux, near the Résidence de the Prévôté, where I/you/they have been invited to sojourn in 2011 in the picture of a cultural program of the region Aquitania. A special thanks goes to Olivier du Payrat, to Corinne Chiaradia and the whole équipe of Ecla Aquitaine for the extraordinary reception. It is to Threadbare Chapuis to have made her/it possible.
The author
Ilaria Vitali was born in 1979 near the Great River.
After the degree in Languages and foreign literatures she is transferred in Paris and she has achieved the doctorate of search near the Sorbona. Translator and expert of contemporary French literature, have begun in 2011 with the novel “A tua completa traduzione", in which tells in playful way the work of the literary translator.
Currently she works as assegnista of search near the university in Bologna.
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