The checked Moon

looked at her old prison, wondering how her life would be from that point onwards.

  The white blinded her.

  She thought it was time to say thanks. She took a sheet of paper, a pen, sat at the kitchen table and arranged her thoughts. Her hand moved on its own accord, and what she read did not seem bad. It was at least spontaneous.

  Dear Professor, my name is not important and it would be of no use to you to know whose calligraphy is flowing under your eyes. We do not know each other and I do not think we ever will. I wanted to thank you, I wanted to thank you for the time you devoted to your studies, the time you devoted to further topics that most people consider a primitive legacy of the dark ages from which it is better to keep their distance...

  She wrote to the bottom of the sheet. She did not sign. She put the letter into an envelope and did not write the details of the sender, only those of Cesare Seda, that she had found in the web site of the professor. She went out, bought a stamp and put the letter in the first mailbox she found on her way back home.

  Someone once had said that people are more beautiful when they don’t show themselves completely. Alida did not believe that. She believed she had always been beautiful, even when she had shown the worst side of her. However she could not answer the question; was the nightmare part of the past or was the present part of a new nightmare? The only certainty was that the world would no longer be afraid of her; she had become like every other person.

  Normal.

  Now that the beast had been defeated, perhaps it would be her to be afraid of life. Afraid of others. Of the real monsters, those who kill their own kind, those who make their children cry, those who live a life in the shadows and all of a sudden are found on the pages of the newspapers.

  She felt alone, she had no one.

  It was time to bite life, and she had lost her fangs. It was time to climb on top of the tallest tree, from where to look at the peaks of her future, and she no longer had claws to grip with.

  September 12 – 21:47

  The full moon in September was met with the typical indifference men reserve to things that are larger and more powerful than them.

  For Alida that was a special night, a night to savour.

  Her night.

  In silence they would look at one another, and in silence she would admire its lazy sailing. They would greet one another with respect, like two rivals come to a showdown, and, without turning their back, they would arrange to meet the following month, and the next, until one of them would be left hanging from the ceiling of darkness for millennia and the other would be reduced to a pile of ashes, not heavier than a dead leaf.

  Relaxed and incredibly receptive, Alida had cooked herself a great rare fillet. She felt in perfect shape. She took a chair and carried it into the room, undressed completely and, once sat in front of the opening in the wall – she had not yet replaced the bars with glass and perhaps she never would – she waited until the moon appeared, while a few miles away, in an apartment on the Gianicolense, a man and a woman had just finished celebrating the birthday of their daughter.

  September 12 – 21:50

  Paola Brembati, the wife of the inspector, loaded the dishwasher and wiped her hands on the rag hanging from the hook next to the sink.

  She was tired, but happy.

  From the hall came the cheerful voice of Silvia, who, with her father, was reviewing name after more imaginative name to give to her new little friend.

  Bunny, Calù, Cleo, Bow...

  Of those suggested by her father she did not like even one, she impertinently ruled them out even before they came out of his mouth. After finding the bunny in the cage under the table, while the lights were out for her to blow out the candles, she had jumped to the necks of her parents and had drowned them in kisses. Finally they could give the old beaver Popsy – her favourite plush toy – to her cousin. Now she had her real plush toy in flesh and bones.

  "Dad, look!" she said suddenly, jumping up on the couch.

  "Down with those shoes!" the inspector, sprawled beside her, scolded her. "What’s wrong?"

  "It has spots, the rabbit has spots." Silvia pointed at the animal crouching in a corner of the cage, resting on the floor.

  "I know, that's what makes it special, white rabbits with a spot on the head are very few, and you have one," the inspector said with superficiality.

  "Not on the head dad," the girl said "there on his side, and on the other side too."

  The inspector made a huge effort to rise from the couch. He brought his face to the cage and watched the rabbit breathing quietly. He had not noticed those strange wounds. They were holes in the flesh, dark but with a reddened outline. He must have gotten them scratching himself or rubbing against the walls of the cage, although it seemed odd, since there were no bumps of any kind on the bars.

  "What are they, dad? Do you think he’s sick?"

  "No honey, it’s only..." only? "We’ll take it to the vet tomorrow, okay? You'll see it’s nothing. Now go to bed, you have to go to school tomorrow."

  Desecrated graves, drilled convicts, unexplained suicides... He just needed the veterinarian on top of that. Would he be given thirty seconds to wipe his ass?

  He rose from the couch, picked up the cage and placed it at the foot of his daughter’s bed. She was watching him with bright eyes.

  "Can I sleep with Alida?"

  The inspector, still kneeling on the floor, looked at Silvia like one would look at a motorbike about to run him over.

  "Honey, what did you say?"

  "I asked if we can sleep together, oh daddy, please!"

  "That I understood, and don’t even think about it. How did you call the rabbit?"

  "Alida, you like it? Until I find a better name. It’s the character of the book mom’s reading me, it just came to my mind."

  The inspector stood up too fast and his sight was weakened by a sudden drop in pressure. "I honestly don’t think it’s very suitable for a rabbit, there are better ones, you just have to think, and besides, who tells you that it's a girl?"

  "Well," the child said innocently dropping with a soft thud on the sheets, "I did not see the little thing, did you?"

  Brembati coughed in the palm of his hand. "I haven’t noticed, but then if it's a girl what about Jenny? You don’t like it?"

  "It's awful dad. Alida is much better."

  "Oh yeah? And why?"

  "Because it makes me think of snow, and she’s white as snow."

  The inspector weighed in silence the answer of his daughter, then planted a kiss on her forehead, thinking that after all the coincidences were not only part of his job.

  When he left the room, Silvia waited until the last noises in the house wore down to the last squeak of the door of her parents’ room. Tiptoeing, she reached the cage where Alida slumbered quietly and gently grabbed her.

  She was hot, very hot.

  The soft belly was a real stove.

  Maybe she has a fever, she thought. The thrill of the new house made her temperature raise.

  She removed the pillow and settled Alida – she liked the name more with every second – near the headboard of the bed, then curled an inch away from her soft muzzle.

  The breath of the rabbit, however, had a bad smell, like the breath of her father when he woke her up in the morning, and she began to breathe noisily, with more and more stinky gasps.

  Silvia tried to resist, but the breath of the animal became so bad that it forced her to turn toward the window. The sky was no longer dark like when her father had turned the light off. Soon the moon would appear. She loved to see it rise clove after clove from the edge of the window. She played guessing whether or not it was full. This time she did not find out. She was too tired, and even if the rabbit was shaking from time to time, as if shaken by cramps, she fell into a black sleep that no moon...

  checked, not checked...

  checked, not checked...

  would bright up.

  September 13 – 00:12


  Alida was playing at joining and separating her hands in front of her face, forming a sort of grid with her fingers.

  The checked moon, the moon unchecked...

  The checked moon...

  The disease was over, but how much blood had been shed for this to happen?

  You are healed. Don’t look back. The road is straight and the sun shines.

  The air was cool on her bare skin, a light breeze penetrated the wall opening, hardening her nipples. She lifted her hands in front of her eyes and joined them once again, looking through her fingers at the unmoving checkerboard that burned with stubborn beauty. As if she was rehearsing for a shadow puppet show, she separated her hands slowly. She felt the need to blink, but refrained from doing so. She wanted to fill herself with light, with candour, like never before. Her eyes were burning, but she still resisted, until she was forced to blink twice.

  Her tears, brightened by the rays of the moon, illuminated her face like a mask of diamonds.

  No one would have been able to say which one shone brighter, if the face of Alida or the cunning face of the moon.

  September 13 – 00:20

  Opening with a kick the door of the room of Silvia – who had started screaming in the dead of night – the inspector immediately understood that there was only one thing he could do if he did not want that the child was mangled by the mouth bristling with teeth of the... the...

  monster that towered and dribbled over her.

  Holy Christ! How had that thing come in?

  He had to fire, shoot, shoot now, and that fucking gun in his hands, that he could not stop shaking because of the