Be', anything pits, that thing has happened really today.
This time it doesn't deal with a simple coffeepot that bleeds or of a step that lifts the skirt and it decides to run away from the staircase. This time has happened the unimaginable one: earth is sunk under to our feet. And we are not at all on the side of a mountain. Nossignori, is here in the delta of the Great River and mountains he/she doesn't even see the shade.
It has happened that, from some days, grandmother saw to appear on the surface a regurgitation of water in the lawn. It is a very strange thing because it doesn't rain from some. All the inhabitants of the house-train have told her to be calm, that was not anything. But since grandmother is stubborn and practises the unhealthy vice to always want to go after all to every thing, you/he/she has grasped a baton you/he/she is you/he/she has pressed him against the incriminated grass. In all answer, the grass has sent a funny gurgle, as if same digesting the water that you/he/she was drunk. Then the gurgle has become a boato and the lawn you/he/she is sunk of hit, so, without telling. To his/her place, you/he/she has left a hole. Round and perfect. Grandmother was frozen by the fear, you/he/she has fallen even the baton from her hands: up to two seconds before it walked on a sure grass and now, in the same place, there was the void.
Without saying a word, we have approached all to the wide open mouth of the earth there. We have looked of under. The terrestrial digestion had made to sink down the lawn, after all, who knows where, and to its place you/he/she had left a cylinder cable, some spanciato, long more than four meters and breadth at least two. The inhabitants of the house-train have remained to open mouth. Everybody. To mouth open Lawrence, to mouth open Charles, to open mouth even Demetrio. But me, me no. I know well that the things want to tell us of something. It is a piece that you/they do him/it. What I have not understood yet is of thing they want to tell us.
In the afternoon the surveyor has come to make the reliefs and you/he/she has said to be calm, that that hole in reality had a more logical explanation: it dealt with an ancient cistern for the water of the other century. When they had him dismessa, you/they had covered the round opening with wood beams and you/they had buried her lifting the level of the whole lawn. A normal procedure. Normal. With to spend some years, the wood to the mouth of the cistern had surrendered few to the time, until that day, later who knows how much time, it was sunk down bringing himself/herself/itself behind also the grass.
The passengers of the house-train have nodded lifted, comforted by the rigor of that geometric logic. Anybody likes the idea that the lawn sinks under to the feet, so, without telling. A whatever cistern of last century is all right for covering a hole in the grungy fabric of the world.
But who want to take around? Here he keeps on smuggling the reality. I know that it deals with all other. Footstep in front of the surveyor and I shake the head. With me it doesn't attach the bluff of the cistern. He looks at incuriosito the outline of a frowning ragazzina, long of leg as a heron. Then it lifts the shoulders, and it continues his/her reliefs.
Tomorrow they will come with a truck of earth to fill the hole. For them the matter is closed this way. It will be again everything normal, everything as before. But I will keep on feeling in foundation that strident note, continuous, as if reality squeaked to every gesture that we do. And now I know that also the others, despite the appearances, they start to feel her/it.
41
This morning mother there is not
This morning mother there is not. You/he/she has returned in the city to pay our bills and to make a lot of other things that I don't remember me. Charles inserts in the stereo Memories of Paris and I understand that you/he/she is sad. For strength. How does it do him not to be sad? The problem is not only at all the cistern and the hole in the lawn. This summer is full of holes. Of things that are not understood, that do pretense to be normal and that I am not at all it. Continuous to have the feeling to turn in round, to pursue a ghost to tag after someone who tags after me. There is a predicament in the air. There is someone who has marked the papers. I look at the house-train on his/her dead platform, I look at the immovable grass of the lawn to reassure me. Nothing to be done.
The crack on the wall of side in the garden has widened and there is something of left in that breaking. Something that scricchiola in imperceptible way, as to say: did you believe that this pits a harmless summer, a summer as all the others? Did you believe that the world was everything solid mechanisms and small wheels and well oiled gears? And instead no! It is a whole crack a crack from which you/he/she can penetrate anything. It is everything in unstable balance as a castle of papers on the nothing. And the equilibrium on the nothing is fragile. A puff and it falls everything.
Yesterday the car of the policemen has come again, you/they have talked to mother. They have been careful, you/they have made of everything not to make to be seen, but I have seen them the same. In every case, I would have acknowledged their passage however. Every time that you/they go away, mother is strange. Strange. He/she doesn't even answer to the questions when you speak to her, it seems that I/you/he/she am parks in another dimension of it. Usually, the day after the policemen have passed, she goes out to go to pay the bills.
I rub me the lobe of the ear. This summer is so strange that cannot be done anything else other than to rub the lobe of the ear. I rub him/it so strongly to me that it detaches me an earring and it goes to conceal behind the closet. Here it is there, that tipsy spiteful and unattainable, to few centimeters from my ridiculous recorded height on the wall with the pink pennarello.
I try to insert two fingers in the crack between wood and wall. Nothing. I try with an alone finger. Nothing the same. I decide for a drastic solution: to move the closet. Luckily it is small. I take a beautiful breath and I support us to me above with the whole body. An inhuman effort for one of my age that is tall only. be', you/he/she is written on the wall there.
My face becomes violet, also the body becomes violet. Around all becomes violet. But I succeed in moving the closet of some centimeter. That so much that enough to insert us behind two fingers and to recover the earring. While I/you/they have been crouching to earth, I also find the time to give a heading against the wood. I lift to work the eyes from the floor.
And it is then that I see her/it. Behind the closet, close to the writing in vertical that marks my growth in the time, it is us of it another, equal, written with a blue pennarello.
I rub the eyes, incredulous.
I try to put better her to fire. The writing proceeds parallel to mine, it is almost equal up to the three year-old age. Then the writing in blue he/she takes the rush and it begins to detach more, always more. It continues upward his/her run, lanky, until all of a sudden he stops. He/she is not seen well from here, but I am almost certain that ends to the thirteen year-old age.
"Zoe, we go out to shop. Do you also come?"
Mother's voice, of return from his/her bills.
With an inhuman effort, I push again the closet against the wall and I return in the reality. I go down of under, trying to ignore the words that flash me in the mind. Fire, fuochissimo! Fire, fuochissimo! I rub me the lobe of the ear in which I have as soon as rinfilato the earring. I am panting.
"Thing there is?mother " says.
"Nothing, has lost an earring. But I have found again him."
"Then prepared. And help to write me the list of the expense."
It looks through among the inside and the out of a purse with his/her very beautiful hands painted by Boldini before finding a blue pen. It hands me her, as nothing happened.
42
It is almost evening
It is almost evening. Ago warm. There is no anybody in the house besides me. I make a rapid sopralluogo in every room to verify. Green light.
I begin to look for. I open the leaves of all the furniture, I look through inside and out of every shutter. I know that what I look for must be there, from some part. I rummage everywhere, until I don't find h
er/it. Here it is there, the yellow envelope that you/they have delivered that day the policemen and in which the patient hands of mother have continued to insert all the other papers that have delivered her.
I fiercely rub me the lobe of the ear. Again that feeling to have been thrown in a blender. A blender of the time that mixes him back with the before, the tomorrow with it slams together yesterday them up to scatter around all the pieces. My fingers have an instant of hesitation in front of the yellow of the envelope. Am I making the correct thing? Do I feel like knowing indeed? I take time. I still rub me the lobe of the ear some. Then I decide: I open her/it.
I lift the tongue and reverse the content on the table. There is here a lot of stuff inside. There are of the sheets stung together. On one you/he/she is written there "Relationship." There is then an article of newspaper with the title "it Dies to 13 throwing himself/herself/itself from the bank." And a photo.
I lift the look from the table. I leave half open the eyes. Of hit I feel the head that pulsates, it pulsates, it is about to burst. I look at the objects on the ledges, as nothing happened, praying that the pliers that he/she snaps at me the temples releases the taking and leaves me alone. I look at the shepherdesses nullafacenti, the horrendous cats of porcelain, the postcards and the wake of photo that it squirts from the piece of furniture to the wall making the whole turn of the room. And for the first time I realize me that at the end of the photos there is a clearer shade on the wall. A rectangular shade, from the alive and perfect edges.
The telephone starts ringing and the room begins to turn of hit. He doesn't exist anymore now. And all, falls then around. It is an earthquake of the soul. The pictures fall, the frames fall with the photos, the white space falls on the wall from which someone has removed something, the walls fall one to one as papers. Everything falls and I feels a piece of past that returns. That also falls. It falls on to me, to this body that is mine and that it is not already yesterday anymore the same of, in last summer. I don't have time to think of us and I am already there inside. It is not the future that has made me the trip: it is the past. The past is the key. It was right that gentleman of the time and the crescentines. The past. An instant and I am on him fallen.
The telephone rings, it rings, continuous to ring. I draw near me breathing strong. Strong. I lift the cornet.
"Good evening, talks to Mrs Merlante? Funeral honors."
I race out, I open wide doors that beat against walls. Footstep in front of Charles and Lawrence without seeing them. I race, I race, I don't know neanch'io where. I race from another part. I race away from the train of the house. I race for running after the string of the time. To bring him/it back, to before the cut of forbice. There will be a way, must be us! I race over the afloat house. I race on the bank of the river. I race until I don't cross a road and I fall on the raw one some catrame. I am firm, immovable, hair on the asphalt. I think about the kite with that "L" written, above that won't fly never.
The "L" of Luca.
My brother's L.
From far, distant, voices that call from out, from the real world. You shout that speak me and they caress me the hair. They are those of the sisters of grandmother. My run in the time is interrupted in front of their house. The voices lift me from earth, they continue to caress me, to say that it is not anything. Only some blood on the knees. Oxygenated water and it resolves him everything. It is not the case to cry.
43
The night tumbles down of hit
The night tumbles down of hit. The time is rolled up on same, you/he/she has returned back as the ribbon of those songs that Charles has given me.
It is one year ago. We are in our house, that true. That than before the crossing. There are it howls in the air. They are the voices of mother and dad. I lean out me to the door of the kitchen and I see them quarrel. They don't see me to Them. It is night, only the light of the kitchen has turned on and it draws a yellow blade on the floor. I am out of the blade in the dark. But I am not alone, there is someone of side to me. Turns the look and I see him/it. There here it is is equal to me, just as Cackle you/he/she has said Zampacorta. Apart the eyes, that are full of water like those of mother. You/he/she is also looking at him. Also he has understood as the things you/they are going.
The time continues to roll up him on himself. Plain, plain, he/she returns me the memory in the fingers (Luca's skin), in the nose (his/her odor of grass just cut), in the ears (his/her words of tredicenne in crisis). It is summer and ago very warm. The warmest summer of the century, they say those some television. Mother and dad have decided to bring us the same from the grandparents, you/they have pretended that was all right everything. They have been of the enough good actors so much that I have also believed it for some. But Luca no. Luca doesn't believe it. It is greater than me and he/she already knows as it will go to end. It spends the days to throw kicks to the leather of a ball. I sometimes convince him/it to make a turn, we pedal along the bank in bicycle, up to the house in which many years ago mother was born. It is there that it tells me to have seen dad with another woman, to the exit of a commercial center. I say that I don't believe it. No, I don't believe at all it. He twists the lips in a sneer:
"You are naïve. Don't you know him/it that they keep on seeing here also him along the bank of the river? They set apart in her car, parked among two acacias. If you don't believe it, you can ask him/it to Demetrio, you/he/she has also seen them him. Mother and dad will leave, it is certain."
Luca turns back. I take his arm, but he tears him/it away from my fingers and it goes down along the staircases. It tears him/it so strongly that its leather bracelet bounces to earth.
You/he/she has been the last time that I have touched him.
After that day, there is the silence. The total silence. Luca spends alone the days, along the river, to the afloat house. He/she almost eats nothing. It decides that he/she won't talk to anybody anymore. Even with me. In the air there is the sound of the crickets. And that annoying creaking of foundation that disappears only to the sunset, when the swifts return home and they dart around the tiles of the roof. Grandfather smiles, you/he/she says to be calm, not to worry me for Luca, things that pass. All passes in the life. Next year will make a kite to form of shark. I tell that there is still perhaps hope. Or even to form of hot-air balloon, continuous. I follow him/it up to the afloat house on the river. The sunset returns us the life of before, with inside its histories.
"Between thousand and thousand years there were two brothers, a male and a female."
That history there, however, grandfather has never finished telling me her. You/he/she is entangled too much in his mouth, because you/he/she was also entangled in the reality. The last day I remember him/it well to me, now. I have done as soon as in time to see Luca sink in the water, with the grace of a stricken animal to death. The river has swallowed him in silence, without even not making a squirt.
From the shore, Barabau barked strong. I would have had to plunge me to try to bring him/it in the Aldiquà. Me, that had not even succeeded in deciphering that application of his of help writing on the glass of the afloat house, and I have discovered her when by now it was too late. I/you/they have not succeeded in doing nothing. I/you/they have fainted and enough.
Also that time has been Demetrio to launch the alarm. It was to make the watch to his/her trunks full of gold there, not in the house where mother was born, as that day that Lawrence and I have crossed his/her outline on the bank. Or it was only perhaps there for spying the coppiettes that you/they are kissed. He/she thought about seeing two that they made gymnastics naked and you/he/she has seen a suit that plunged him in the water with the grace of a wild bird instead. However. You/he/she has been him to tell the others to tell what you/he/she had seen: the boy had not slipped, you/he/she was thrown of intention, aware of to do him/it. With a perfect flight, without afterthoughts. The ragazzina was him/it to look without succeeding in moving a muscle and an instant after you/he/she had collap
sed to earth.
That day you/they have dragged away me from the river and loaded on the AZNALUBMA to dead weight. Luca you/they have found later only him one year, as he/she explained that relationship in the yellow envelope.
After the faint I/you/they have remained for a piece in the hospital, with the tubicinis in the nose. From my bed, while I was swimming in the white, I felt mother and dad blame him some things. Ugly stuff they are said too much by to remember. When the tubicinis and mother have removed from me you/he/she has come me to take, my mind you/he/she had done cleaning. You/he/she had swept away some things, of those too much strong, that do the sparks come in the breast.
"The trauma has made her lose the memory of that that has happened" the physicians have said "and perhaps it is not an evil."
"As?mother has said.
"There is the possibility that his/her daughter he feels responsible of not to have succeeded in saving his/her brother. It happens too much to the sensitive little boys. His/her mind you/he/she has had to cancel what has happened, does it understand? You/he/she has had to make to survive him/it. It is a good sign" you/they have insisted "it means that his/her daughter has chosen the life. You/he/she can give him that growing the memoirs little riaffiorino to the time, up to the partial or total recovery."
"When?mother has asked.
"If" they have responded.
You/they have written her on a piece of paper the name of an old doctor with the hair all white ones. You/they have also recommended her to leave. However the house of before we could not allow her/it anymore. Then we have made the crossing. Dad there was not already more.
44
I hear the voice of the bell
I hear the voice of the bell sing to dead, as one year ago. But that time I was not there. Now that the policemen have found again the body of buried Luca under the water, the adults you/they have decided to bury him/it under earth. Matter of points of view. It seems that earth comforts them more. I don't know him/it, but I was not sorry the idea of a grave with the walls made of water. However, they have decided this way.