A Very Italian Christmas. Джованни Боккаччо

      For some time, I felt something, like the soft graze of a hand, over my head as it hung between my arms—a touch at once tender and protective. But my spirit was elsewhere, wandering in the distance through all the places I had seen since childhood; the impression of them still throbbed inside me, but not enough to subdue the longing to revisit, if only for a minute, life as I imagined it might have unfolded in them.

      There was celebration everywhere: in every church, in every home, around the hearth, in heaven above, by the manger below; faces known and unknown dined together, rejoicing; there was chanting, the sounds of bagpipes, the cries of exultant children, quarrels over games of cards … And the roads of cities great and small, of townships, of villages in the hills or by the sea, were empty in the inhospitable night. And it seemed I was hurrying down those streets, from one house to the next, taking pleasure in the revelries of others; at each, I stopped briefly, wished them “Merry Christmas,” then vanished …

      I had already slipped into sleep unawares, and was dreaming. And in my dream, on those empty streets, I seemed to come upon Jesus wandering through the night, while the rest of the world, as usual, was celebrating Christmas. He walked almost furtively, pallid, withdrawn, with a hand holding his chin and his clear, sunken eyes staring intently into the void: he seemed suffused with the deepest sorrow, prey to an infinite sadness.

      I turned onto the same road; but little by little, his image pulled me toward him, absorbing me, and it was as if he and I had become a single person. But my lightness disturbed me as I maundered, almost hovered, through the streets, and instinctively I stopped. Just then Jesus pulled away from me, and continued alone, still lighter than before, a feather adrift on a sigh; and

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