Chapter 16.

  You are only a crazy person. An old crazy person. You are only a crazy person. An old crazy person. You are only a crazy person. An old crazy person. You are only a crazy person. An old crazy person.

  To set aside the magic formula, to reenter in the house, to throw distracted the keys on the shelf, to lift the look to perceive him reflex.

  «You are only a crazy person. An old crazy person.»

  It repeated him/it to the hoary one I show up as soon as perceivable in the faint light of a house not yet ready to welcome him/it. The mirror returned a sneer whose ambiguity him volutamente fortified.

  Because the ritual vocabularies are repeated equal to itself same crossing unmolested the time? Because it always needs to submit himself/herself/themselves to the authority of the common places? Safety childish needs dignify even those sentences that seem drawn by a sample of banality for annoyed scriptwriters.

  And if Charles Pezzali that disturbed night had suffered the insulting reprimand, it was not able certain to escape him the mortifying coincidence; those words, the same words, were gone out him of mouth, a late afternoon of different years before.

  And as now it was contemplated conceited to the mirror recalling the to have felt her, so then, in that same mirror, a young bold researcher recalled the to have pronounced her.

  The light was slim, but he/she anchors the last shines of the day they gilded the entry of the apartment.

  A young Charles looked around him wary, as you/he/she always happened, from when you/he/she had elected to his authentic house the department of genetics, near which you/he/she spent whole days. The keys had tinkled on the shelf, then the silence attended only to be broken. It is Charles he/she knew that you/he/she would be happened in brief times.

  You saw then that afternoon again, lowered on the table to study some loots of international literature, with the apprehension of whom feared to see him blow from under the nose an intuition that he/she had been brooding secretly even for so much time and that only the contingencies of rigid rules too much and you read castranti they forced him/it to repress.

  «Charles, the prof wants you.»

  A sweet distraction called him/it to the present back. It was a student, whose useless name lost him in the memory. It strolled about in white uniform and short skirt for the department; all knew her/it, perhaps also very well. Of she remembered only the clammy humor of the vagina, while an evening, last to go out both, had swept her on the bench of the laboratory, without not having even removed her of back a head. You/he/she had been enough to remove her panties, and Charles was sure that she would even have desired more so much.

  You detached from his/her data and crossed the maze of the corridors up to reach the office of the holder of desk. It knocked and it opened the door.

  The baron was not alone.

  «Settled, Pezzali.»

  It told him mentioning to a free chair in front of the desk behind which is sat.

  The other chair was occupied instead. Very busy.

  Planted on it a fat man it was. A flax suit done custom fluttered on its mass lardosa. The collar of the shirt formed a line of border between the face and the body, pointing out where approximately you/he/she would be had to find the neck. Deformed fingers drummed on the arms without being able him to articulate on the phalanxes.

  But what more repugnant was the smile: damp lips like those of an obscene baby welcomed conceited the entry of Charles, while two small and black eyes, were almost you deprive some iride, they followed its footsteps inside the room.

  «I introduce you doctor Aldo Fornaci.»

  The guest limited him to flex the neck of that little that the gullet allowed him smiling at open mouth to breathe better. If a rivulet of drivel nobody was strained him you/he/she would be surprised. In the meantime Charles is already sat: you/he/she avoided therefore with relief the handshake.

  «The doctor is founder and holder of the Furnaces Pharmaceutics.» It continued the teacher, with the air of whom doesn't want to waste time. «And you/he/she has come of person to make you a proposal.»

  «A proposal to me?»

  «You are amazed? A long time ago he/she asked me to suggest him a young researcher, competent and motivated, to take in hand the laboratory of his/her firm. I have proposed you.»

  «You are speaking to direct a laboratory?»

  «Not to be afraid of the words: you should not do anything else other than to keep on working as is doing here but with a laboratory to yours complete disposition. The only tie is what ties yourself to a certain secretiveness. It is better to avoid that too many indiscreet looks assemble him on the firm.»

  Indiscreet looks. You/he/she had stirred in the darkness really to escape whoever approached him. The Furnaces protected from the storms, his/her house wound in the obscurity. You realized in the alone mirror thanks to the few shines coming from the road, from the staircase of the building, since the door of entry had not closed her yet. From inside the house, once, had to fear the intrusions. Now it was useless that it attended what you/he/she would not have come to upset him/it anymore.

  Disturbed, it attended the inevitable one. Its right hand slipped then in the pocket of the jacket, to graze an edge of paper. An envelope, dam.

  «Treasure?» it felt him call.

  The hand withdrew him, as that of a cultured child to sin. Noise of footsteps.

  «Treasure, is you?» A tired voice accompanied the to appear on the door of an outline. A body of woman wound in cloths androgens. A comfortable and warm overall disguised for a long time hidden forms. In head, a knotted handkerchief was the only decorum of a face whose alone pallor the controluce prevented from distinguishing.

  «Yes, I am me.»

  The girl the runs meeting, encircling him/it with the braccias. The face sank on his shoulder and didn't mention to loosen him/it from that embrace, that he returned for habit.

  Sweat and carelessness attacked him the nostrils. It recognized odor of rottenness but it didn't have courage to draw away himself/herself/themselves. That accursed day, some angelic intelligence had deprived him/it some courage to rebel to the death.

  «The project is the most ambitious to which the humanity is ever devoted. It is an international project, of which every participant realizes a small part. And it is useless to turn around us: it is a clandestine project.»

  Pezzali had listened to a long soliloquy of his/her teacher, in which at first had been explained his necessity to lately relaunch a sterile laboratory, then, as if the sentences took life, the possibility had been shaded him to create an artificial forewaters.

  «Ambitious project? Are you speaking to me to create an useless element to the today's scientific knowledges and me the calls ambitious project?» Charles also looked for with the look Furnaces, at least that a sign shook him/it from the numbness. But in that study it seemed only a passer-by.

  «Its realization could be very more urgent than you believes.»

  «I have an urgent message for you.» The voice of that young woman still succeeded in being crystalline: if there was pain in that tortured body, the sounds were not certain to betray him/it. Her eyes looked for those of him. The smile dug her furrows on the emaciated face. But it was a smile that gripped, that howled a desperate need of love.

  «What message?»

  He looked for in her eyes a light by now darkened.

  «Kiss me.»

  And you/he/she had denied him/it that invoked kiss. You/he/she would have been useless now to repent him, to melt himself/herself/themselves for his/her own cynicism, to deny the idolatry of the life that had prevented him from becoming himself/herself/themselves intimate of his/her negation. If you/he/she had granted him, the kiss, would have removed every value of it.

  Nothing of what had among the braccias it was more what he had loved.

  The body was unswathed, the mind it staggered. Of that kiss, given or denied, in the five following
minutes it would not have more even preserved memory: the metastasi by now you/he/she had started to find her adorable the brain.

  What would you/he/she ever have remained of her? A squad of cells, perhaps? And would thing ever have done of it, whether not to preserve her as fetish? Which madness had you/he/she pushed him/it to believe to do of his loved a new phoenix, able to revive from a lean squad of microscopic ashes?

  «You are a crazy person. It is only an old crazy person.»

  You/he/she was turned so to the man that had glorified him marvelous fates and progressive, although that you/he/she had not done anything else other than to give voice to his/her most audacious desires.

  «Any problem, young fellow. Won't you want to be you? It will be somebody else. Nobody can stop the progress and I was convinced that you knew better it about me. I cared to that ditches you. Sin.»

  «Sinned» it snickered arrogant the young researcher. «You cannot be allowed to trouble the sin. You want to overturn the natural order. Is you/he/she telling me rather, that this subversion is already in progress; and should I follow her/it?»

  But the answer didn't come from the teacher. The voice that spoke to him was muddy and sweetish and the sounds bubbled as if from every syllable who pronounced her/it it had to inhale away liters of saliva.

  «You want that long live.»

  In the stickiness of the sounds, Aldo Fornaci had captured the attention of the young Pezzali.

  «I don't understand what.»

  «Your girl, Charles. You want that long live but you know him/it that can never happen. Not here, not now. But tomorrow.»

  «The corpses don't return in life» it repeated as a child that refuses a candy from a stranger explaining that you/he/she has told him him his/her mother.

  «But soon we can tell the life which died to return us. Of course, forcing her/it pure not to destroy him/it to us to twenty-five.»

  How much cazzo of things knew, his/her master. But not so many as you/he/she would have believed. You/he/she had left him in management a spectacular basement that even Hollywood could be dreamt and there you/he/she had let him/it splash about in a synthetic forewaters with which to fill artificial uteruses, realized who knows where in the world and joints in Milan for the testing. Then, in those futuristic basins, you/they would genetically have found to incubate nice bestioline modificatissime, you still clone probably in another head some planet. Since to each a small segment of the whole walk competed and nobody crushed the feet to the other, in an example of mirabolante human solidarity.

  Curious.

  For millennia, the logic of the survival of the strongest has forced the living beings to a competition without truce, of which the market is not but the most sophisticated and evolved form.

  Only now, the moment of pensionare the Old father approaching himself/herself/itself, the humanity succeeds in becoming consortium.

  «Bushels trying to understand what there is still of human in me?»

  That eyes had become cold. It didn't shine through anything, faded away the love, refused the need, an appalling indifference reigned. Thing other could graze who is seen to escape with the deception the most elementary of the rights?

  And what could you/he/she answer a person so too easily sbugiardata?

  You was already outdistanced by the healthy body of his/her man.

  «You have not wanted to kiss me: at least now not to look me this way. I have not decided him me to die.»

  It abandoned him/it that same evening. Orphan of tears that its fragile body was not able to produce anymore, you/he/she had abandoned the house that had with exuberance believed you/he/she would have become of both, forever. Until death you don't separate them.

  It is in the pocket of the jacket, while the noises from the room from bed sang of suitcases in preparation, his rough hand caressed avid a closed envelope. Her substitute had become already.

  «You take this.»

  Furnaces you/he/she had had to ripple dangerously on the chair to extract from the jacket a candid envelope, sealed, what time it handed to Pezzali with the sweaty hand. That envelope was already registered to him.

  «Thing is?»

  Seeking a look accomplice, Aldo it winked to the friend baron.

  «It sticks he doesn't entrust, your student.»

  «You talk to me, out of politeness: I have asked her what in that envelope is. Money, by chance? Does he/she believe me so effortless?»

  «It is not with the money that I can contaminate you, I know well it. This envelope is the beginning of a walk. At the end of which will find again your person in love.»

  The look of Pezzali looked for a sense in the envelope, through the fibers it hoped to gather the hidden secret.

  «That hair, that you have brought away her before the chemotherapy destroyed them to him and that now they attend in a bottle, they won't serve you to nothing without this.»

  It waved under his/her nose that piece of paper sudacchiato. The beginning of the walk, had told him. It lengthened the hand and takings the envelope.

  Himself knew him/it, that that walk would have given the soul to cross him/it.

  He/she knew today still it: it is the depth desire of whoever has to heart the destinies of the man. Of whoever has that so much of enough dignity not to want him to surrender to the monstrosities of the fates.

  The envelope is the beginning of the walk.

  On the shelf in front of the mirror, hidden from the dark, really close to the keys that you/he/she had allowed to fall with distraction, there was an envelope. It was candid and it was closed.

  By hand, with care, a thin line of ink composed the name of Helen Sastri.