I burst out laughing, even if the joke is a pathetic one. With my nose, I give one final sniffle and manage to hold back the tears that were ready to flow.
“It’s normal to be afraid. Just as it’s normal to cry. It doesn’t mean we are cowards. To be a coward is to pretend you feel nothing, to turn your back on the problem. To not give a damn. I believe that you have fled. I believe that you are pissed off”—he said pissed off!—“with everybody and even yourself. This is normal. But getting pissed off”— that’s twice—“ … doesn’t accomplish anything. You can get pissed off”—and three times!—“as much as you want, but this isn’t going to cure Beatrice. Once, I read in a book that love doesn’t exist to make us happy but to demonstrate how strong our capacity to bear suffering is.”
A pause.
“But I ran! Me. The one who should be capable of dying for her so that she might get better!”
The Dreamer stares at me.
“You are mistaken, Leo. Maturity is not revealed through the will of dying for a noble cause but through the will to live humbly for it. Make her happy.”
I remain silent. Somebody within me is coming out from the cavern. Someone who was there, hidden, wounded and in need of help. Maybe, finally, he is taking the decision to challenge the dinosaurs. In this moment, I am going from the Stone Age to that of Iron. It’s not a great step, but at least I feel I have some sharp weapons against the dinosaurs of life. The sensation is stronger than the shield of armor made of iron and fire that I believed I had built with my anger. It’s a different strength, this new somebody who adheres to my skin and makes it transparent, strong, elastic.
“It’s getting late,” says The Dreamer, while I am making an evolutionary leap of at least two thousand years.
He looks me straight in the eye.
“Thank you for the company, Leo. And thanks especially for what you have given me tonight.”
I don’t understand.
“To make a gift of one’s suffering to another is the best act of trust one can give. Thank you for today’s lesson, Leo. Today you were the professor.”
He leaves me there like a dazed baboon. He’s already walking away. His shoulders are thin, but strong. The shoulders of a father.
I would like to run after him and ask who his friend is, but then I realize there are things that are better left uncertain. … My eyes are red from sobbing, I am without strength, drained, and yet I am the happiest sixteen-year-old on Earth, because now I have hope. I can do something to put everything right: Beatrice, Silvia, friends, school … Sometimes all it takes is the word of someone who trusts you to lift you up again in this world. I am singing out loud, I am not sure what. The people I cross in front of take me for a madman, but I don’t care, and I sing even louder when I pass very close to someone in order to force him to feel my joy.
When I enter the house singing, with my face all flushed from crying, my mother sends a strange glance to my father, who shakes his head and sighs. Why do parents think we are fine only when we seem normal?
68
First: Silvia. This time I am going to see her in person, without any damn text messaging; I’m going in person, with everything written on my face—actually, tattooed, “I am a poor fool, forgive me.”
I do something I’ve never done: I buy her a bouquet of flowers. I am embarrassed by all the time I spend under the awning of the kiosk choosing them; I don’t know what I’m doing. Finally, I pick the roses. I get an odd number, at least I’ve learned this much from one of Mom’s magazines. I buy three white roses (the only exception from the fear of white that I have), and I stand beneath Silvia’s windows. I press the intercom. Her mother, who probably has no idea what is going on, opens the door for me. Something is going right. I climb up the stairs.
I go into Silvia’s room; she is listening to music with her headphones on, so she hasn’t heard me come in. She raises her eyes and finds three white blossoms looking at her and asking forgiveness. She is speechless. She removes the headphones and looks at me sternly, then sniffs the roses. When she raises her face, her blue eyes are smiling. She embraces me and gives me a kiss me on my cheek. Not just any old kiss, but a kiss like those given by someone with lips that have something more to say to you than when you simply greet someone. And you feel that added warmth, which lingers on your cheek.
She didn’t say a word. I only say, “Sorry.” And I say it with words, without the T9 danger that could transform it into fear even if I do feel a bit afraid. But Silvia loves me, and when someone loves you, sorry is never fear.
I am happy, so happy that the white roses seem almost tinted red, like those of Alice in Wonderland … “We shall paint them red, red we paint them … ” I’m singing inside, like a child diving into a pool of Nutella.
69
It’s already been a while since I removed the cast from my arm, but it seems that my brain has remained within a cast … it doesn’t move. This is why I am studying with Silvia. Only she can help me to recover from the days I’ve missed; I wouldn’t want to ruin the summer by failing some subjects. Together with Silvia I am strong. I am happy. But when I think about Beatrice, I continue to feel lost. After the umpteenth time when Silvia has to bring me back to Earth from one of my daydreams, she gets up and takes something from a notebook she keeps in her room, one of those notebooks where girls write their thoughts.
In this respect girls are better than us, I mean, Silvia is certainly better than me, because girls write the important things down in their diaries. Every time they discover something important, they write it down, so that at any time whatsoever, they can reread it and remember it.
I have a ton of important things I would like to remember, but then I never write them down, because I am lazy. Therefore, I forget them, and I always make the same mistakes; I know, but I don’t want to sit myself down, with my butt on a chair, glued to the seat. This is what it means to have abilities but not apply yourself. To have a butt and never sit on it, which is the point of having it after all … If I wrote down everything I’d discovered, who knows how many things I wouldn’t need to learn all over again each time. I believe that rather than a diary, a novel would come out of it. I think I might like to be a writer, but I am not sure how to start, and besides, I’d feel discouraged right away, because when I try to think up a plot, it never comes. In any case, Silvia had one of those diaries that help you to remember things. In one of the pages of that diary there is a piece of paper.
“Here, this is the rough draft of the letter we wrote to Beatrice.”
In that moment, my soul recomposes itself. Like some sort of miracle, all the pieces of paper that the river swallowed up with my rage and cowardice are there in front of me, reconstructed by a miracle performed by Silvia, who preserved those words.
“Why did you save it?”
Silvia doesn’t answer immediately, she plays with the edge of the paper, almost caressing it. Then, without looking at me, she murmurs that she liked those words, she liked to read them over, and she wished that one day her boyfriend would dedicate such beautiful words to her. Silvia is searching my eyes, and for the first time, I look inside her eyes.
There are two ways to look at the face of a person. One is to look at the eyes as a part of the face. The other is to look at only the eyes, as if they were the face. It is one of those things that make you afraid when you do it. Because the eyes are life in miniature. White all around, like the nothingness in which life floats, the colored iris, like the unexpected variety that characterizes life, until you dive into the blackness of the pupil, which swallows everything, like a black well without colors, bottomless. And it is there that I dove in, looking at Silvia in that way, into the deep ocean of her life, entering within and letting her enter mine: through the eyes. But I didn’t hold her gaze. Instead Silvia did.
“If you want, we can rewrite it and you can take it to Beatrice. If you want, we can go together.”
Silvia is able to read my thoughts.
“It’
s the only way I can do it,” I tell her with a smile so wide that the edges of my mouth seem to reach my eyes.
Then we hit the books, and when Silvia explains things, everything becomes easier: life becomes more comprehensible.
70
The Dreamer gives me an oral test. I prepared for the test with Silvia. Everybody is expecting a duel to the bloody end after the skirmish we had the other day, but nobody, except Silvia, knows that in between there was an ice cream and an ocean of tears. Everything will go smoothly. By now I am friends with The Dreamer.
However, he asks me some very hard questions; I turn my eyes on him and say, “But this isn’t in the book.”
Without losing his composure, he answers, “So what?”
I remain silent. He looks at me seriously, and then he tells me that he regards me as more intelligent; instead I am the usual student, repeating everything learned from memory, who gets lost at the first unusual question.
“The most important answers are written in between the lines of books, and you must be able to read them!”
Who the hell are you, Dreamer, to ruin my life and to think he knows everything and to think that I care about things as you see them? You are the one who sees them that way, and only you. Now cut it out with your ball-breaking load of bullshit and give me a test that’s the same as everybody else’s.
I am on the verge of telling him to take a hike and going back to my seat when he says, “Are you going to run away?”
Then I think back to Beatrice and at my flight from the hospital. Something happens inside me, the man into whom I evolved a few evenings ago comes out from the cavern. And now I answer him. Not with the profanity of a capricious child. I answer him like a man would. I get a nine out of ten, for the first time in my life. And that grade doesn’t concern History. That grade concerns my story, my life.
71
Beatrice has come back home. The bone marrow transplant didn’t go well. The marrow hasn’t healed her, and her red blood cells continue to transform into white in her veins. One of the most poisonous serpents of the world is able to kill you with atrocious suffering with his poison. A poison that has the power to liquefy your veins. You begin to lose blood from your nose and your ears, and all your veins liquefy until you are consumed.
This is what is happening to Beatrice. Beatrice, the most marvelous creature to exist on the face of the earth. Beatrice, who is only seventeen, and had the most beautiful red hair ever recorded in history. Beatrice, the two most luminous green windows of the galaxy. Beatrice, a creature who exists for her beauty alone, to show it to the world and make it a better place with just her presence.
Beatrice is poisoned by this damned white serpent that wants to carry her off. Why is all this beauty wasted? To make us suffer even more. Beatrice, I beg you to stay. God, I pray to you, leave me with Beatrice. Otherwise the world will become white.
And I am left without dreams.
72
Today, I am seeing Niko again. The hamburger challenge we once took comes to mind; who could eat the most burgers from McDonald’s. It ended up 13–12 in favor of Niko. Both of us vomited for three hours straight afterward. I had never been so sick in my whole life. Every time we remember this, we fall into convulsions of laughter. After this, we always go for the Chicken McNuggets.
Niko.
It came to mind because Niko cast the goals challenge; the winner is the one who scores the most goals at today’s game against the fourth-year C, whose team name is Vitamin C, and they can certainly use some. … To win this game would be enough to catch up with Vandal’s team and sail smoothly toward the tournament final. There is one teeny-tiny problem: I shouldn’t be playing soccer yet. …
In this case, there is only one solution. Become the invisible man. Radio on, door closed, light steps, and a silent escape to the field. If my parents catch me, I’m dead. This time it would be they who break my arm and even my leg … but at least I would play the game, and if I score a good number of goals, I would be back on track for the high-scorers’ list. I have to at least finish ahead of Vandal.
And so here I am, with my brand new cleats, which caress the third-generation grass as if it were the cheek of a girl. Back on the field with Niko again. He doesn’t know everything that has happened to me in these past weeks; I don’t tell him everything like I do Silvia. There is no need. Or maybe I am ashamed. However, on the field we are always the best. Both of us, since we were little, have wanted to be like the Derrick twins, those guys from the Captain Tsubasa anime cartoon that do the infernal catapult move, but neither one of us had a twin. So when we met in school, we understood that we each became the twin the other had always hoped for. We never learned to do the infernal catapult, but once we tried: I got an apocalyptic bruise from it and Niko slammed his face into a pole. …
However, when necessary, we are capable of triangulating in a way not even Pythagoras could have imagined with his theorem. We are creaming them. I score five goals. We are tied with Vandal’s team, and I am one goal behind him in the goals record list. It couldn’t be going any better. I get dressed quickly to go back home without being seen. Niko stops me.
“I have a woman.”
He tells me this point blank, while taking off his Pirates jersey, and the news is mixed with his sweat.
“Her name is Alice, she’s in the second year, section H.”
I rake my memory trying to visualize the girls from the second year, but no Alice comes to mind.
“You don’t know her. Her parents are friends with mine and I didn’t even know it. I found her at my home one evening, at dinnertime.”
I am curious to know what she looks like.
“She’s really hot. Tall, long black hair, black eyes. She even does track and field, sprinting. You should see her. When I hang out with her, everybody turns to look at us.”
I am mute. I can’t enjoy this news. Niko is too intent on thinking of his strutting along the street with this super-hot babe on his arm, and too immersed in our victory to realize that I should feign curiosity and be happy for him.
“I am happy for you.”
Niko wants to introduce her to me as soon as possible. I mechanically answer yes, in reality hoping never to see this Alice.
“Have you seen the new FIFA videogame? We absolutely must crack it.”
I assent with a forced smile, while seeing Niko sucked back into the Stone Age and into the wonderland of Alice.
“Absolutely, of course. … ”
It’s the only thing I can get out. The only challenge I have in my mind is the black fear of losing Beatrice. I’ve never been so alone after a victory with my team of Pirates.
“ … it’s a question of life or death. … ”
“Come on Leo, don’t exaggerate. It’s only a videogame, after all! I’m out of here, Alice is waiting for me. See you tomorrow.”
“See you tomorrow.”
73
I insert the keys like a thief.
The door slowly opens. Nobody in sight. I hear the radio playing music. I recognize Vasco’s voice repeating, “I want a dangerous life, I want a life like that in the movies,” and I think it’s all a joke in bad taste. I close the door again. Mom didn’t hear me, but in that moment Terminator begins to bark like crazy, overtaken by the pressure on his bladder, which begins to act up every time he sees me open or close any door. Mom appears, called in by the ruckus, and I am there, with my sweatshirt and my backpack, and Terminator running circles around me and yapping away.
“What are you doing there? Weren’t you in your bedroom studying?”
Leo, breathe: you are gambling everything here.
“Yes, but I took a break, I took Terminator out to pee. … ”
The only excuse that can save me. …
Mom looks at me like a police officer interrogating someone in an American cop film. “And why do you stink like this?”
“I took advantage of the opportunity to take a short run. I can’t stand
just studying and doing nothing else, that’s all. … Sorry, Mom, I should have told you before, but Terminator was going nuts. … You know how he is!”
Mom’s face relaxes. I take off toward my room, where Vasco is screaming, “Which doesn’t care about anything … yeah!” before my face can betray the lie and Terminator demonstrates, in fact, that nobody has taken his incontinent bladder for a walk. …
74
Monday. Five minutes to eight. A five-hour day is waiting for me, with my English homework half done. A kind of gigantic cheeseburger with a slice of marble inside. From a distance I see Niko with Alice, who in reality doesn’t go by unobserved. They didn’t notice me. I can’t go up to them, they’re too happy.
I go stealthily and hide behind a group of fourth-year students who, with the Sports Gazette in hand, check the list of players to calculate the results of Fantasy Soccer. Lately, I’ve been following soccer much less. I’ve been caught up by all these things that have been coming my way; I don’t have time to watch every possible transmission and all the games of each and every championship invented on the face of a rectangle of green grass.
Anyway, the image of Niko and Alice so happy together is too much for me this morning, and five hours of torture would make it worse. I walk back out onto the street, and I choose a side street I hardly ever use, making close encounters of any type less probable, from the first to the third and beyond. Who knows why when you decide to skip school you inevitably run into people you haven’t seen for centuries, in particular, your mother’s friends, with whom, by chance, she will be having tea that afternoon.
“How your son has grown, how he has become a really handsome young man. … I saw him this morning at the park around noon. … ”