Despite the fact that for the friends of all mothers, their friends’ sons all grow up to be “handsome young men,” Mom goes along with the game, minimizing things, feigning to be proud of that rascal of a son who, at noon, should have been in school with his butt glued to a green chair and certainly not sprawled out on a red bench in a park. …
Stop with these mental masturbations; the die is cast and “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s,” like Caesar said—at least I think he did. In the distance, I hear the tolling of the school bell, like the bells that toll at a funeral. And I don’t want to die. … Each step that takes me farther away from school opens a vortex of fear and transgression that forces the asphalt to swallow me up. Why is going to school so difficult? Why should we be obliged to do some things, when we are committed to resolving others that are more vital? And why is the English prof coming toward me precisely on this road, the least frequented in the neighborhood?
I barely make it in time to lean over my tennis shoes, pretending to lace them up, behind an SUV that gives me a sufficient hideout. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the prof scurrying because she too is late; she is so intent on looking for something in her purse that she doesn’t even see me and actually passes right by. She’s gone! I breathe a sigh of relief, and one second later I realize I have accomplished the fake tying of my shoes over the early morning, steaming shit of somebody else’s Terminator. …
My lucky day!
75
When you cut class you feel like a thief. And where do thieves go after a hit? Into their lairs. My lair is the red, out-of-the-way bench in the park near the river—the very same one where I spent my first night as a hobo—under an immense tree with low and twisted branches, which make it look like an umbrella with a million spokes.
On that bench, with the protection of the umbrella, I’ve seduced millions of stupendous girls, solved the thorniest problems of humanity, become a masked superhero, and devoured family-size bags of BBQ-flavored potato chips, which are my favorite, anyway. Time flows very rapidly down there, surpassing the placid waters of the river. The secret of time is hidden on that bench, and all dreams can become reality.
Well then, this is the right day to apply myself (every now and then I do apply myself, but when and how I want to … ) on my wooden bench, under the protection of the tree-umbrella. I put my backpack aside and stretch out with my knees bent. The sky is only patches of blue, with stark white clouds crossing it. They are not rain clouds, but fresh sea clouds. This makes the blue even more intense. My glance creeps in between the branches of the umbrella and mixes in with the color of the oval leaves, reaching to the sky, and on that sky I see the image of my happiness imprinted: Beatrice. Nobody pays attention to the sky, until someone falls in love. The clouds turn red and become her hair, flowing for thousands of miles, covering the world with a sweet, soft, cool cloak.
I must save Beatrice, if it’s the last thing I do, and I am in the right place to do it. Dreams become reality only on this bench, and so I fall asleep in the silence of the park, like the last happy hobo in the world, drunk on red wine. If we had the time and the right bench, happiness would be guaranteed. Unfortunately, somebody has invented mandatory schooling.
76
Something barely brushes against my leg, waking me from my torpor. I jump up, thinking it could be some repulsive grasshopper fallen from a branch. In reality, it is only my cell phone. Message: “The English prof said she saw you this morning but not in class. I have the feeling you are in deep shit. Giac.” And that bastard is enjoying this. I am in shit for real this time! But is it possible that it should be so difficult to be happy, and just when you are trying to definitively solve this problem, there is someone trying to impede you? Why didn’t Silvia send me a message? By now, she’s already gone.
I send a text to nobody, just to clear my thoughts. I write millions of texts that I don’t send; they help me to reflect. “I am in my dream.” Once again the T9 amazes me. I want to write dream, but instead I write bonfire. “I am in my own bonfire” is what comes out.
At any moment, the bench could be transformed into a fire, started by all the people nauseated by my heresies in life, as they did in the Middle Ages. They would tie me up at the stake and start burning me under this marvelous sky, accusing me of being a coward, consumed with fear—a fugitive, a deadbeat, a slacker. My dream would go up in smoke. But precisely for this reason I must protect it. I must protect it from the bonfire of my parents and my profs, from the envious, from my enemies. The wood of this bench today is worth much more than the wood of my school desk, all covered with graffiti.
I didn’t cut school because I am a slacker, but because first I need to solve a more important problem, that of happiness. Even The Dreamer said, “Love does not exist to make us happy but to demonstrate how strong our ability to bear suffering is.”
That’s it. I will say exactly this to my parents when they place me on the bonfire of deserved punishment. I only want to love. That’s all. I want to be cured of any drug: laziness, PlayStation, YouTube, The Simpsons … Can you understand that?
I pull out my pocketknife and begin to carve something in the trunk of a nearby tree. While I am doing it, mechanically, I am thinking about my next move, the move of checkmate on destiny, the move to be happy. Every now and then I look up at the sky, and my fingers feel the century-old wrinkles of that tree, which is strong, which is solid, which is happy in the heart of the park. It is a tree and acts like one; it sinks its roots in the river nearby and grows. It follows its nature. Here is the secret of happiness: to be yourself, and that is all.
To do what you are called upon to do. I would like to posses the strength of that tree: rough and hard on the outside, alive and tender on the inside, where the sap runs. I don’t have the courage to go to Beatrice. I am afraid. I am ashamed. I have myself, and that isn’t enough, it’s never enough. I go on carving the bark, without thinking …
“What are you doing?”
I don’t even look at the guard’s face, and I answer, “Scientific research … ”
“But you’ve never even studied it!”
It’s not the voice of a guard. I turn around. “Silvia?”
She is looking at me with eyes I don’t recognize. Silvia is excellent in school, never unprepared, never skipped a day unless dealing with a serious disease like scurvy or leprosy, not a generic indisposition of the thermometer warmed up over a light bulb, as I do. Silvia is there, in front of me. Silvia is cutting school with me, and because of me. Silvia would come to find me even in hell, just to make me happy. Silvia is a blue angel. I knew it. Or maybe she is an angel who resembles Silvia, who will punish me with her fiery sword for having skipped school.
“Well, then? The two of us had a pact. We have to go together to see Beatrice. When I saw you take off this morning I knew you were coming here.”
I make space on the bench where dreams come true.
“You too? Today everybody has seen me; maybe they caught me on Big Brother and I don’t even know it?”
Silvia smiles. Then she stares at the tree’s bark; the trunk has been wounded by my pocketknife with a mathematical formula: H = B + L. Silvia looks serious. For a second she contracts her face, a grimace of pain. However, it disappears immediately, and she says, “Well then, shall we go solve the equation of happiness?”
Silvia is the lifeblood of my courage, hidden but alive, she gives me the strength to overcome my limitations. I take her by the hand.
“Let’s go. Today there won’t be any bonfire. Only dreams.”
Silvia looks at me with her face expressing a question mark.
“Nothing, nothing. The genius of T9 … ”
77
Below Beatrice’s building, I am struck by the syndrome of the grasshoppers: like in the Blues Brothers, any excuse is good enough to escape. But Silvia is inflexible. She holds my hand tightly and we climb up. They open the door for us, and we find ourselves in the living room, s
eated in front of the lady with the red hair I had seen for the first time at the hospital and afterward in the photo: Beatrice’s mother. She knows Silvia, but not me. Luckily. She tells us that Beatrice is sleeping. She is very tired. Lately, her strength has diminished.
I tell her about the donation of blood, the accident, and all the rest. She is a lady with a calm voice. Her face is tired and has aged since the last time I saw her, and the youthfulness in the photo seems to have remained only on the photographic paper. She offers us something to drink. I, as usual in these cases, don’t know what to do, so I accept. In speaking with her, I seem to be seeing Beatrice as an adult. Beatrice will be even more beautiful than her mother, who is a stunning woman.
While she goes to get something to drink, I try to memorize all the objects in her home. Everything that Beatrice sees and touches every day. A vase in the shape of a glass, a row of small stone elephants, a painting of a shimmering marina, a glass table on which rests a bottle full of oval stones, colored and iridescent. I pick one up. It has all the shades of blue, from dawn to the deepest night. I put it in my pocket, sure that she must have touched it. Silvia pierces me with the blue glare of her eyes. Beatrice’s mother is back.
“How come you aren’t in school today?”
Silvia is silent.
It’s my turn. “Because of happiness.”
The lady looks at me, surprised.
“Beatrice is paradise for Dante. So we came to visit her.”
Silvia bursts into laughter. I am serious and turn red, almost violet. However, when I see Beatrice’s mother laugh, I begin to laugh, too. I’ve never felt more ridiculous and happy at the same time. The lady smiles with a sweetness that I have rarely seen on the face of an adult; only Mom smiles this way. Even her copper-colored hair smiles, some parts luminous, others opaque. She stands up.
“I’m going to call Beatrice. Let’s see if she’s up for it.”
I stay put, petrified by terror. Now I understand what we are really doing. I am in Beatrice’s home and I am about to speak to her face-to-face for the first time. My legs are not trembling, they are rippling like a flag in the wind, and my saliva has retreated somewhere else, leaving a miniature Sahara in my mouth. I gulp down a sip of Coke, but my tongue remains dry like the wood in the fireplace.
“Come.”
And I am not ready at all. I got dressed haphazardly. I have only myself, and I don’t think it is enough. I am never enough. However, there is Silvia.
78
I find myself face-to-face with Beatrice’s smile. It’s a tired smile, but a true smile. Her mother left, closing the door behind her. I sit facing the bed; Silvia’s on the edge of the bed. Beatrice’s cropped red hair makes her look like a soldier, but she’s always a perfect mix of Nicole Kidman and Liv Tyler. Her green eyes are very green. Her face is drawn but delicate and full of peace, with sweet cheekbones, and the elf-like cut of her eyes. Her whole being bespeaks happiness.
“Ciao, Silvia! Ciao, Leo.”
She knows my name! Her mother probably told her, or else she’s recognized me as the author of the text messages. Now she might think that I’m stalking her, and that I am that loser who was trying to seduce her with text messages. Whatever the reason, she has pronounced my name, and that Leo coming from Beatrice’s lips suddenly seems to become real. Silvia takes her hand and remains in silence.
Then she says, “He wanted to meet you, he is a friend of mine.”
I was about to start crying from sheer happiness. My lips were moving by themselves, even without knowing what they should say. “Hi Beatrice! How are you?”
What a dumb question! How do you think she feels, nitwit?!
“Fine. Only a bit tired. You know, the treatments are harsh, and they take your strength away, but I am fine. I wanted to thank you for having donated your blood. My mother told me all about it.”
So it’s true that my blood is nourishing Beatrice’s red hair. I am happy. Very happy. The sparse red hair now growing is thanks to my blood. My blood-red love. I’m thinking about this so intensely that something absurd slips out, “I am happy that my blood flows in your veins.”
Beatrice lights up with a smile that could make a million frozen fish sticks melt in a second, and my heart doubles its number of beats, so much so that I think my ears have become hot and red, too. I pardon myself immediately. I uttered something ridiculous, tactless. What an idiot! I want to disappear into the darkness of that room, where I haven’t yet set fire to anything. I am so concentrated on Beatrice’s face: the center of the circumference of my life.
“Don’t worry. I am happy to have your blood in my heart. So today you didn’t go to school in order to come and see me … thank you. It’s been so long since I’ve been to school, everything seems so distant. … ”
She is right. Compared to what she is going through, school is a piece of cake. Is it possible that a sixteen-year-old is convinced that life is school, and school is life? That hell consists of profs and heaven of vacation days? That grades are the last judgment? Is it possible that at sixteen the world has the diameter of the school courtyard?
Her green eyes are dancing on her pearly-white face like fires in the night, betraying a life gushing within, as if she were a mountain spring, hidden and silent, and full of peace.
“I would like to do so many things, but I can’t. I am too weak; I get tired right away. I was dreaming of learning new languages, of traveling, of playing an instrument … Unfortunately, there will be none of that. Everything has gone to pieces. And then my hair … I am ashamed to be seen like this. Mom had to convince me to let you come in. I’ve lost even my hair, the most beautiful thing I had. I’ve lost all my dreams, just like my hair.”
I am looking at her and I don’t know what to say, in front of her I have become a drop of water evaporating under the August sun, and my useless words are only a breath that is lost in the air. In fact, just as punctual and out of place as the school bell, I say, “It will grow again, and the same for all your dreams. One by one.”
She manages a tired smile, but her lips are trembling. “I hope so, I hope so with all my heart, but it looks like my blood doesn’t want to hear about getting better. It keeps on rotting.”
A pearl in the shape of a tear springs from Beatrice’s left eye. At that same moment, Silvia gives her a caress on the face and gathers the tear as if it were her sister’s. And a second later she leaves the room. I’m left alone with Beatrice, with her eyes half-closed, tired and concerned about Silvia’s reaction.
“I’m sorry. Sometimes I use words that are too strong.”
Beatrice is worried about us, and it should be just the opposite. I am alone with her, and now I must share the secret of her healing. I am your cure, Beatrice, and you are mine. Only when we both know this, when we’re in harmony, then everything will be possible, forever. I focus on telling her that I love her, starting from within, as if my body were on an athletic track, but I feel like I’ve got my back against the wall. I love you, I love you, I love you. They are only two plus three letters; I can do it. Beatrice sees me struggling.
“A person shouldn’t be afraid of words. This is what I’ve learned with this illness. Things have to be called by their proper names, without fear.”
That is why I want to tell you what I am about to tell you. … That is why I am about to scream that I love you.
“Even if that word is death. I don’t fear words anymore because I no longer fear the truth. When your life is at stake, you can no longer stand riding the merry-go-round of words.”
And that is why I must tell her the whole truth now. The truth that will give her the strength to get well.
“There is something I would like to tell you.”
I hear these words come out of my mouth, and I don’t know from where I’ve pulled this phrase, or who had the courage to utter it. I don’t know how many “Leos” are within me, but sooner or later I will have to choose one of them. Or maybe I will have Beatrice cho
ose the one she likes the best.
“Tell me.”
For a minute, I remain silent. The Leo who had had the courage to utter the first sentence has immediately disappeared. Now he should say, “I love you.” I find him hidden in a dark corner, with his hands covering his face, as if something monstrous were about to assail him, and I convince him to speak. Go on, Leo, come out from there, like the lion coming out of the forest. Roar!
Silence.
Beatrice is waiting. She is smiling at me to encourage me and rests a hand on my arm. “What’s happening?”
Her touch is transformed into a flux of blood and words, “Beatrice … I … Beatrice … I love you.”
Painted on my face is the typical expression you have during an oral test in Math, where you try and fake it and hope the prof, with some gesture, lets you know whether you’ve made a mistake or not so you can backtrack as if nothing wrong was said. Beatrice’s hand, fragile and white like snow, is resting on mine, like a butterfly, while she keeps her eyes closed for an instant, then breathes deeper, and upon reopening them says, “It is beautiful of you to say this, Leo, but I don’t know if you understand: I am dying.”
That mass of pointed syllables, like a hurricane of swords, leaves me naked in front of Beatrice. Naked, wounded, and without defense.
“It’s not fair.”
I say this like somebody who is waking up after a long night and is in the middle of a dream, when he is still unable to distinguish reality from the night. I have barely whispered, but she has heard.
“It’s not a question of fairness, Leo. Unfortunately, it is a fact, and this fact has happened to me. The point is, am I ready or not? Before, I wasn’t. Now, maybe, I am.”
I can’t follow anymore, I don’t understand her words, inside me something is rebelling, and I don’t want to listen. Is my dream taking me back to reality again? The world has decidedly turned upside-down. Since when do dreams make you see reality? Something invisible is beating me, and I am left without defenses.