FOLLIES
Orange
I saw her and I was immediately impressed. Something in her attracted me and repelled me at the same time, something infinitely sweet and secretly sad about a woman's mouth and a child's smile, as if a magical innocence and languid perversion had reunited in her. The more I looked at her the more I became convinced that she had a dual nature and, consequently, a dual beauty. And in fact, beautiful she looked to me, of a rare elegance, like a shy rosebush grown among the wild prunes. It was so, by instinct, that I followed her: she walked lightly without turning, fast and safe on long panther legs. But it was enough to look for a moment at her pure profile to find there the childish insecurity that had kidnapped me and that
now more than ever seemed to sound bad on her perfect body. As in a dream I can still see her brown hair left loose on her shoulders that seemed to tremble, her nose small and turned upwards, the bitter and soft fold of her mouth. As I followed her, I even imagined the acrid sound of her voice, which must have been as fine as her hips and as harmonious as the tender outline of her thighs. And it seemed to me that I had always known her as I wondered what I was doing there, alone on that long road, chasing only a woman's perfume.
These thoughts accompanied the long road that seemed to have no end. But nothing had an end that day: neither the quiet chatter of the larks, nor the heat of the barren hills, and even less the sweat dripping relentlessly and slowly from my forehead. But I kept on going, driven by the only longing that she would finally turn around and look at me for a single moment. Suddenly, almost annoyed by the sound of my footsteps, she turned around: I caught a bloody glance and sharp marten-like features. Fierce and bloody, then! But her lip trembled with fear and I felt in a moment the courage of the one who feels the strongest. I looked at her too, long, hungry and insolent, pouring into my eyes the forbidden thoughts that had been dormant for too long. But I did not advance one step, taken by the unconscious fear that this was only the vision of a moment, a mirage chased by a life that for a single imprudence could vanish. I felt an extreme need to sink into her, to feel the warmth of her skin and the sweetness of her mouth. I wanted to hurt her, to squeeze those thin hips and crumble them between my fingers, and lay my fingers on her breasts and then rip them off, to step on and destroy something too precious and fragile not to make me angry and spoil my heart. She stood there, motionless, and did not escape. But why? Unknown to each other and staring at one thought, neither of us moved, and we stared at each other like restless schoolchildren waiting for the sound of a bell that never came. Eventually it moved and I held it back. I was perhaps an accomplice to a mysterious implication hidden in her eyes. Disoriented and lost, I followed the gentle rhythm of her beats, the pleasure that came out of her skin and the dark voluptuousness of my senses.
So, we continued that eternal wandering between fields and hills, and the sky looked like the sea, and every smell was promising storm. I was accompanied by an omen of death that suddenly upset my soul and didn't seem to abandon me anymore. And I, who had never loved the warmth of my body, felt it with macabre impetuosity, as if he had awakened in vengeance from the long oblivion to which I had condemned him. Me, who had never loved a woman, now I would have lowered myself to ask, I would have thrown myself on my knees on impulse in front of those lovable hips begging for an hour of pitiful and loving caresses. But it me, then, the man who had been afraid to love, and for this reason had confined himself forever to the certainties of an irrevocable destiny, to a uniform work, denying himself the warmth of the domestic hearth out of sheer cowardice? Were they mine all those heavy years on my shoulders when I had forgotten that I was a child, and for this reason I abhorred the thought of a human touch on my forehead and the diamantine smile of a new-born baby? What had I done about my poor life but a dress that was too tight and in which I could barely find room for myself?
Buried by these thoughts I realised that we had arrived near a house, and that the woman was now lost. She looked at me and I stood outside, waiting in vain for an invitation that never came. Standing at her door nothing happened that day, nor in those who followed, and I stood breathing the earthy air of the fields until the sun became incandescent, and the dust burned my feet, and an impetuous wind forced me to retrace my steps.
From that day on I lived the terror of myself, I touched the futility of my empty life and saw with bitterness the collapse of my illusions. Suddenly I was disgusted by my thin old skin. And I finally understood that I had never loved, that I had chosen with ferocious stubbornness to walk alone this passage on earth, intent on giving value to what has no value, if not the imaginary and insubstantial value of the vanity of men. Following that woman one day I was for an hour myself: now I have returned to my life, to the downhill road that will lead me to her predictable end.
I know that I will never be happy; but perhaps I will be able to convince myself that I have no wrongs to reproach myself for and bad choices to deny. I will draw a veil over my soul as everyone does, and I will walk the line of time, justifying every minute of my bad deed. Forgetfulness is all I desire.
But now I know I'm walking on empty, hopeless and loveless.
MOTHER
White
That's not true, Mother, what you used to tell me about life: that every day is the same and that in vain the sun illuminates a world blinded by hatred. If regret is legitimate, I can tell you that even then I loved what was not given to me, and that I bitterly longed for the existence that you denied me. From the first moment I realised that I was there, still lost in the eternity of my infinity, so confused at the inviolable limit between life and death, I felt the weight of your remorse on my shoulders and a voice without sound pushing me away from the world. I had just been born and a spark of rejection lit up in my heart and burned me. Then a thick and indomitable pain dug into me anguish without tears, while in my heart I already caressed the idea of being your son.
I didn't know that you didn't like me, nor that you looked at your image in the mirror with terror, or that you trembled at the mere sound of the word "mother". I didn't understand why I existed if you didn't love me, and never spoke a friendly word to me. I only know that I was hoping and suffering and falling asleep crying among the horrible ghosts of my dreaded destiny. Wrapped in a soft fog I did not know the injustices and humiliations of your world, yet your cry was already known to me, and in it, like a sweet lullaby, I found my rest. I had learned to recognize your voice, and from the darkness I consumed my strength in an attempt to understand you and to find a fixed point in my uncertain universe.
Outside of you, of your sweet body, the noises came softly to me. But it was the beating of your heart that I loved to hear, so mysterious and absorbed, and of its only sound I fed waiting for my whole body to form. And as the blood began to flow in my veins and my eyes closed, waiting to re-open before you later, I spent the eternity of my time imagining your face and fantasizing about the life I was going to have, wondering if it would have been beautiful or not. It was so sweet to sleep on your breast and perceive from your belly the good smell of flowers, and listen to the rain dripping thickly on the windows, and watch the hours passing by even though you were always sad and your only words spoke to me about death. What did I know about life? Nothing. Yet I loved it and longed only to enter it and measure myself as a man in my actions before God.
But you attacked me with your speeches: that even a chicken eats its eggs, that all animals kill children they cannot feed. That the big fish eats the small fish, and that there is no place for a sheep in a world of wolves. That a child is a child only when it is born and that there is nothing before.
