I hold her hands tightly as if I could tear her from the emptiness of fear, like a trapeze artist who has been entrusted with the life of his partner suspended in emptiness, without a net below.
“Write … ”
Her whispering is confused, and I have to bend my ear to her lips to understand. Her breath is hot and rough like a piece of iron dragged on stone. I write down the words that Beatrice is whispering in a sigh. When she has finished dictating, she hands over her diary to me. “Take it. Keep it. As of today, I’ve stopped writing. I am giving it to you.”
I can’t do it: I shake my head and place it near her.
“I believed I was writing it for myself. Then, I understood I was writing it for you. It’s what I can and want to give to you, Leo.”
I don’t fight her.
“Beatrice, one day we’ll read it together.”
She smiles.
“Yes. Now go. It’s getting late. I’m tired.”
I also wanted to give her a gift, but I hadn’t brought anything. I couldn’t leave like this. I fumbled in my pockets. Nothing, except … the stone with a thousand shades of blue I had taken in her living room. How embarrassing! But it’s the only thing I have. I place it in the palm of her hand, as if it were a diamond. “My lucky charm, I want you to keep it.”
Beatrice smiles with heaven in her eyes.
“Thank you.”
I give her a kiss on her red hair, and in one second, my life fills up with her blood.
“Until next time.”
I hug Beatrice’s diary tightly to my chest, as if it were my skin. I think again about the fact that the only thing I could give her was something I had stolen from her home. I have nothing to give, if not the love that I receive or steal. Before leaving Beatrice’s home, I take another blue stone. I can’t go wandering around without my lucky charm. …
100
Night is the place for words.
The words in Beatrice’s diary have illuminated with daylight my first night without any sleep, my first night of being alive: my first night. That night in which others make love.
If heaven exists, it will be Beatrice to take me there.
“Pain obliges me to close my eyelids, to hide my eyes. I had always thought that I would devour the world with my eyes, like bees that would have perched on things in order to distill their beauty. But the disease forces me to close my eyes: due to the pain and fatigue. Only little by little did I discover that with my eyes closed I saw more, that under my closed eyelids I saw all the beauty of the world, and that beauty is you, God. If you are making me close my eyes, it is so that I will be more attentive when I reopen them.”
This is what is written in Beatrice’s diary. And today I am closing my eyes and looking at life with her eyes. If life had eyes, they would be those of Beatrice. From this day on, I want to love life as I’ve never loved it before. I am almost embarrassed not to have begun before.
101
I return home from school. Mom opens the door for me.
“What are we having for dinner?”
She looks at me as you would look at a small child who is wounded.
“No, not minestrone, no … ”
I tell her that I got an eight in Philosophy, but even before I specify the topic, she embraces me strongly, hiding my face in the hollow of her neck.
I smell Mom’s perfume, a smell that has given me a sense of tranquility since I was a child: a perfume that is a mixture of roses and lemons. Light. But she isn’t hugging me because of my grade, otherwise her tears wouldn’t be wetting my face. Only then do I understand.
I’d like to escape, but she doesn’t let go of me, and I sink my fingers into her flesh to feel if what she is telling me without uttering a single word is true.
My mother is the only woman I have left.
The only skin I have left.
102
Beatrice is dead.
This is the only word for it. It’s useless to beat around the bush, she wouldn’t have wanted that. People say she will be missed, she has passed away, she has left us. Lies!
Beatrice is dead.
This word dead is so violent that you can say it only once, and then you have to be quiet.
Silvia is the only person I’d like to talk to, but I don’t have the strength to forgive her for lying to me. Life is an interrogation made to extract from you a truth you don’t know, and you will feign to remember in order not to suffer anymore … to the point of convincing yourself about that lie, forgetting that you invented it yourself.
God, the stars are no longer useful: put them out one by one.
Wrap up the moon and dismantle the sun.
Empty the ocean; uproot the plants.
Now there is nothing so important.
And above all, leave me in peace!
103
The church is bursting with people; the whole student body is there. Everyone is closely gathered around a shiny, wooden coffin, which hides her body, her lifeless eyes.
The Beatrice I remember no longer exists, and now inside that wooden box there is another Beatrice. Here is the mystery of that thing called death. But what I loved in her and about her hasn’t flown away. It hasn’t vanished like one quick breath. I have her diary, held tightly between my hands; it is my second skin.
Gandalf is celebrating the mass. One more time. He speaks about the mystery of death and tells us a story about a guy named Job from whom God took everything, yet Job remained faithful to Him, even though He had the courage to throw His cruelty in his face.
“And while Job cries out among his tears, God says to him, ‘Where were you when I created the Earth? Who shut in the sea between two doors? Since your birth, have you ever commanded the morning and put dawn in its place? Has the rain a father? Who puts the drops of dew in the world? Can you bind the ties of the Pleiades or loosen the belt of Orion? Who provides food for the raven? Maybe by your wisdom the hawk takes flight and beats his wings toward the South? Speak up, if you have so much intelligence!’”
After Gandalf’s sermon, a silence falls.
“We, like Job, cry out our disapproval to God today; we cannot accept what he has decided to do, we don’t accept it, and this is human. But God asks us to have faith in Him. This is the only solution to the mystery of pain and death: the faith in His love. And this is divine, a divine gift. And we should not be afraid if now we are able to manage. Rather, we must declare this clearly to God: we can’t do it!”
All nonsense! I hate God. What do you mean trust in Him?
He continues, unperturbed, “But we have the solution that Job did not have. Do you know what the pelican does when its young are hungry and it has no food to offer them? It wounds its breast with its long beak and causes the nourishing blood to flow out for its young, who will drink from its wound as if it were a fountain. Just as Christ has done for us, and it is for this reason that He is often represented as a pelican. He has defeated our death, the young hungry for life, with his blood, his indestructible love for us. And his gift is stronger than death. Without this blood, we would die twice. … ”
There is silence within me. I am a stone of suspended pain in a vacuum of love. I am totally impermeable.
“Only this love surpasses death. He who gives it and he who receives it do not die, but are reborn. Just as Beatrice has been … !”
Silence.
Silence.
Silence.
“Now I invite whoever would like to remember her.”
A long silence of embarrassment follows, then I get up, under the watch of everyone. Gandalf observes my gait with some apprehension. … He fears I might say something stupid.
“I only wanted to read the last words in Beatrice’s diary, words that she dictated to me and that I transcribed. I’m convinced that she would have wanted to make them known to everyone who is present.”
My voice breaks, and I drink unstoppable tears, but I continue to read on.
“Dear God, today it is
Leo who is writing to you, because I cannot do it. Even though I feel so weak, I want to tell you that I am not afraid, because I know that you will take me in your arms and you will rock me like a newborn baby. The medicine hasn’t cured me, but I am happy. I am happy because I have a secret with you: the secret of seeing you, of touching you. Dear God, if you keep holding me, death no longer scares me.”
I lift my gaze and the church seems flooded by the Dead Sea of my tears upon which I am floating in a boat that Beatrice has constructed for me. My eyes catch Silvia’s, who is staring at me, and in a single look, she tries to console me. I lower my gaze. I run from the microphone because, in spite of my wooden raft, I too am about to drown in my tears. The last words that I remember are those of Gandalf’s. “Partake and drink of me everyone. This is my blood, spilled for you. … ”
Even God has given His blood: an infinite rain of blood red love that bathes the world every day in an attempt to keep us alive, but we remain more dead than those who have died. I have always asked why love and blood are the same color: now I know. It is all God’s fault!
That rain doesn’t touch me. I am impermeable. I remain dead.
104
The last day of school. The last hour. The last minute.
The bell rings: the last one.
A shout of freedom accompanies the cawing, as if the imprisoned were suddenly set free from their sentences, having received the grace from someone unknown.
I am the only one left in class; it resembles a cemetery. The white seats and desks that have been alive for an entire year, animated by our fears and follies, wounded by our pens and pencils, are there, immobile, like stones. A deadly silence envelopes everything. On the blackboard are the quick final thoughts of The Dreamer, who, in his own way, has wished us all a good vacation.
“ ‘He who strives attains that which he is striving for, but he who hopes gets what he isn’t expecting.’ ”
A sentence from Heraclitus.
For me it is all a lot of nonsense; I have lost everything I had hoped for.
So the school year extinguishes like a firework. This year lasted a lifetime. I was born the first day of school, have grown up and aged in only two hundred days. Now I await the universal last judgment of my grades, and then I hope to begin the paradise of vacation … I will pass this year, with some pretty decent grades.
One thing I have understood, thanks to Beatrice: I can’t allow myself to throw away even one day of my life. I thought I had everything, but I had nothing, just the opposite of Beatrice, who had nothing and yet she had everything.
I have had nothing more to do with Niko and the others. We lost the tournament because of me. I never explained what happened. It doesn’t matter. To me it doesn’t matter at all. Silvia has sent me a letter, but I’m not opening it. I don’t have the courage to suffer anymore.
Blackbeard, the janitor, sticks his head in and finds me seated, immobile, looking out into space.
“I’ve never seen you leave last in three years. What’s happening? Are they failing you?”
“No, I was just thinking … ”
“Well, then they have truly performed a miracle!”
We laugh together, and a pat on the back is all that’s left to return to life.
Halfway down the corridor, turning around and looking back, I yell to him, “Don’t erase it!”
School is a backward world: you don’t put anything black on white, but vice versa. School is made to be forgotten, like the little white dust of chalk.
Blackbeard didn’t hear me and the eraser, weapon of so many battles, inexorably passes over the hopes of The Dreamer.
105
After the Summer:
“Poscia, piangendo, sol nel mio lamento
Chiamo Beatrice e dico: ‘Or se’ tu morta?’
E mentre ch’io la chiamo, mi conforta.”
“After, crying, alone in my lament
I call Beatrice and say: ‘Are you dead now?’
And while I call to her, she comforts me.”
by Dante Alighieri, Vita Nova, XXXI
106
Summer is our reason for living, but this one has been different. It wasn’t a time of screaming, but of silence. I didn’t see or hear from anybody during the whole summer. I spent almost three months up in the mountains, in the hotel where we always go. This was the first year I really wanted to go. I needed the silence. I needed to walk alone. I needed not to make new friends. I had absolutely no need to meet girls, in order to have something to talk to Niko about after the holidays. I needed my parents. I needed Beatrice’s diary, because in it I found a sliver of happiness. I needed the essentials in life, and in the mountains it was easier to find.
In the mountains, at night, we can see the stars like they can’t be seen anywhere else. Dad often tells me stories about the stars. Mom listens, looking at us more than the stars. One evening Dad tells me the story of the star I gave to Silvia as a gift, and that light, still warm, brightens a small corner of my heart I had closed with a thousand angry locks.
I wasn’t able to bring myself to open Silvia’s letter, I didn’t even bring it with me. I continue to write her text messages, but I am unable to send them. However, I save all of them: category MWD.
Just like I save all the messages she has sent to me in the past. I am unable to delete them. I must have more than a hundred on my cell, and every so often, when I don’t know what to do, when I need to, when I get bored, I reread them at random. I glance them over, and I choose the number of the message that inspires me the most. Thirty-three: “You are the most stupid guy I know, but at least you’re not boring … ” Twelve: “Remember to bring the History book, stupid!” Fifty-six: “Stop being a dumbbell. Let’s go out and talk things over.” Twenty-one: “What’s your shoe size? What is your favorite color?” One hundred: “Me too.”
The most beautiful message: I would fill it with whatever I wanted and she would always say, “Me too.” I was never alone. It was number one hundred and brought good luck. I could write a novel of only text messages. At the moment, there are only a few characters: Silvia, Niko, Beatrice and her mother, The Dreamer, and me. Yes, The Dreamer: I have his cell number, and this summer I sent him a message, just a greeting and to ask him if his friend, the one who had had a problem with his father, was better. He answered that thanks to Beatrice’s words that I read at the funeral, his friend has begun to recover from his wound. I then asked him how his friend knew about Beatrice. Maybe he had invited him to the funeral?
“In a way … Thank you, Leo, I am happy to have met you.”
I answer, “But, what for?”
Is it possible to have such conversations by texting? Yes, I am convinced of it.
“Because you had the courage to read those words. We will meet again with those we have loved, and there is a whole lifetime to ask for forgiveness.”
I reread that answer at least one hundred and twenty-seven times; it was too philosophical, but at the one hundred and twenty-seventh time, I understood three things:
I call all “things” philosophical that are truly important, and maybe this is what philosophy is for …
I must answer The Dreamer’s text: “Thanks to Beatrice, I’ll see you soon!”
I can’t wait to go home and read Silvia’s letter.
I spend the evening looking at Silvia’s star, then Mom sits next to me in the middle of the night, with the aroma of fir trees and the gleaming moon illuminating her relaxed face.
“Mom, how is it possible to love when you can’t love anymore?”
Mom continues to fix her gaze toward the heavens; now she is lying next to me while I stare at the Dwarf Red Giant called Silvia.
“Leo, to love is a verb, not a noun. It’s not something established once and for all for everybody. It evolves, grows, climbs, descends, sinks into the abyss, like the rivers hidden in the heart of the earth that never interrupt their course toward the sea. At times, they leave the Earth’s surface dry, bu
t underneath, within dark cavities, they flow; then at times they climb back up and spring forth, nurturing everything.”
The sky seems like the sounding board of those sweet words, words that only on a night like this don’t sound rhetorical.
“Then what should I do?”
Mom is quiet for at least two minutes, then her words come out from the silence like a river, which after much effort reaches the sea, “Love all the same. You can always do it: to love is an action.”
“Even when you’re talking about someone who’s hurt you?”
“But this is normal. … There are two kinds of people that hurt us, Leo: those who hate us and those who love us. … ”
“I don’t understand. Why should those who love us also hurt us?”
“Because when we are dealing with love, people sometimes behave stupidly. Maybe they go about it the wrong way, but, somehow, they are trying. … You must worry when the person that loves you doesn’t hurt you anymore, because it means that the person has stopped trying, or that you have stopped caring. … ”
“And if you still aren’t able to love?”
“You didn’t try hard enough. We often deceive ourselves, Leo. We think that love is in danger, instead it is actually love asking us to grow … like the moon: you only see a sliver, but the whole moon is always there, with its oceans and its peaks. All you have to do is wait for it to grow, and little by little, the light will illuminate the whole hidden surface … and to get to this point takes time.”
“Mom, why did you marry Dad?”
“Why do you think?”
“Because he gave you a star?”
Mom smiles and the moon illuminates her perfect row of teeth framed by the face capable of calming my every storm.