White Like Milk, Red Like Blood

by Alessandro D'Avenia

  Her paintings stand out on every wall; a sailboat suspended in a clear, almost white sky, which blends in with a milky sea; a forest of threadlike trees, which she told me are called birches, an image that moved her during a trip to Sweden; a field of red tulips against a blue, almost violet sky, from a Dutch landscape. I like Silvia’s paintings. You can rest inside them. You can travel in them.

  “I need your help writing something, Silvia.”

  “With the agreement that on the day when you get better you’ll play a song for me … ”

  I wink at her, accompanying the gesture with a smack of my tongue against my palate, which is a specialty of mine.

  “Which one?”

  “My favorite.”

  “Which is?”

  “‘Aria,’ by Nannini.”

  “I don’t know it.”

  Silvia seems amazed and shows it as only she can: she puts her hands in front of her eyes and shakes her head in a dramatic way.

  “You’ll have to learn it.”

  “Couldn’t you be happy with ‘Talk’ by Coldplay?”

  “Either that or nothing,” she says, feigning offense, then with eyes smiling, “What should I write: the essay on Dante or research on cells?”

  “A letter … ”

  “A letter … We don’t have any assignment like that.”

  “ … to Beatrice.”

  Silvia falls silent. She opens a drawer to look for something, and her hair covers her face. It takes a little while before she finds paper and pen. Then she stands up.

  “Sorry. … Okay, I’m ready. … ”

  Silvia writes the letter while I dictate. The former letter isn’t good anymore; I want to change it. Time has gone by, and the words of the first one are no longer fitting. Silvia is ready to write. She looks in my eyes, and I try to concentrate on the words. But they don’t come. The words for Beatrice don’t come. If I’ve run out of words for Beatrice, I am done for.

  Until now, the only words I’ve written freely, besides those from school, which I don’t regard as real words, are precisely the words of my letter to Beatrice. That was—now that I think about it—the first time my words had written my soul, written down in black on white paper. Yes, because the soul is white, and if it wants to reveal itself it must become black, like ink. And when you see it there, in black, you recognize it, you read it, you look at it, like when you look at yourself in the mirror and then … and then you give it away as a gift.

  “Dear Beatrice, I am writing this letter to you … ”

  Here is when my soul starts to come out and Silvia transforms it into black on white; she uses her handwriting and my soul seems more elegant coming out of her hands, more subtle, sweeter and more orderly. …

  “ … so that my words might keep you company. I would like so much to speak to you in person, but I’m scared I might wear you out and I’m afraid I might get upset seeing you suffer. And so, I am writing to you. It’s the second letter, because the first one was left in my pocket. That’s right, because I had an accident and ended up in the hospital. Now I am better and back on my feet, even if I have one arm in a cast, and I’ve decided to write again. Beatrice, how are you? Are you tired? I imagine you are. I donated my blood for you. I knew that you were in need of it, and I believe you’ll get better, because my blood will make you better. I am sure of it. Gandalf maintains that donated blood makes the patient get better. He says that Christ has cured people from sin throughout the ages by giving His blood. But that is a strange story, because in no way has that blood ever entered my veins. No matter what, I like this idea of blood that cures, and I hope that mine will cure you. If you have my blood, you will discover something important in you. When it passes through your heart, you will feel it caressing you and hear it telling you about my dream. The dream that I have. Dreams make people what they are. They make us great.”

  Silvia stops and asks me if all this talk of blood doesn’t risk hurting Beatrice, who probably is fed up with needles, hospitals, and blood. Silvia is always right. How can she understand my doubts before I do, and better than I do? It’s almost like she is looking at the world through my eyes. So scratch the part about the blood.

  “Beatrice, I would do anything to make you get well. I have donated my blood for you. I hope it helps. Beatrice, I have a dream, and you are in that dream and so am I. This is why you will get better, because dreams, if you really believe in them, do come true. I know that now you are tired and have lost weight, and maybe you are embarrassed about being seen by others, but you must know that for me you are fine the way you are. You are very beautiful all the same. I am sure you will be better, and if it’s okay with you, I’ll come to visit soon and we can talk. I have a million things to say and tell you about, even though I think that you probably know them already. Anyway, if you are tired and you don’t feel like talking, we can sit in silence, and that’ll be fine, too. For me, it’s enough to be near you.”

  I stop because my voice is breaking, because for a second the image of Beatrice not being able to make it sweeps away all those words, of Beatrice closing her eyes in silence and not being able to go on. She doesn’t open them again. And then, the whole world around me goes dark. The light is gone. The light bulb burns out. If Beatrice’s eyes don’t look at things, those things are lifeless. I have always been afraid of the dark, and I still am even now, but I don’t tell anybody, because I am embarrassed. Silvia looks at me but doesn’t say a thing. Her index finger approaches my eye and gathers the tear I tried to hold back.

  “Silvia, I am still afraid of the dark.”

  I don’t know how it came to mind to say such an idiotic thing that would make even one of those stone statues on Easter Island laugh. … Silvia is quiet. She gives me a caress. And I give her one, too. Her skin is not skin: it is Silvia. Then she writes on the letter to Beatrice: “Yours, Leo.”

  And that Leo is written like I’ve never been able to write it. It’s written as if it were me. Without Silvia, I would be nobody, and my soul would remain white. And white is the tumor in the blood of life.

  Silvia dictates the address of the hospital where Beatrice is. It’s different from the first time, because now it seems the chemo treatment is different, longer or something like that. Or maybe there they must prepare her for surgery.

  I am at home. I take a monstrously long shower. I spray gallons of deodorant on every square inch of my skin, I look at myself in the mirror for three quarters of an hour, but I’m not satisfied with my appearance. For Beatrice, I must really stand out. She must see me and understand who I am. So I try all kinds of color combinations and clothes, but I’m not satisfied with any of them. Something isn’t right.

  Mom screams at me to get out of the bathroom and stop doing nasty things. Why don’t adults ever understand a damn thing? What do they know about what’s going on in your head? They are fixated on the idea that our heads are full of the things they can no longer do. Then they complain if you don’t ask them for advice. “You’re always closed off in your room, I don’t recognize you anymore, you were such a sweet child … ” Anyway, you already know the answer: don’t worry, it’ll pass. Locked in the bathroom, I try and try again. With my right arm still half out of commission, it’s an enterprise, but at least I don’t have to die of shame while Mom buttons up my shirt and takes advantage of this to give me a kiss and tell me I am very handsome. … Maybe a button-down shirt. Maybe a polo shirt with fleece. Maybe … I call Niko.

  “Put on a button-down shirt and you’ll make a good impression.”

  Thanks, Niko, you’re right, you’ve saved me. Niko always has the right answers, the right recipes, even if he doesn’t know the situation. I ask myself how he does it. I would like to be like him and have a clear idea on what to wear in any given circumstance.

  Niko, however, didn’t even ask me which girl we were talking about. …

  56

  I’m ready. By now, it’s dark outside, but I carry my light within. I have the l
etter written by Silvia. I don’t hope to speak directly to Beatrice, and so, for this reason, I’ve dressed a little bit better, because my image should be sufficient to make her understand how much I love her. And after all, the letter I’m leaving her will speak for itself.

  When I enter the hospital, a nurse asks me where I am going, and I tell her that I am going to see a friend.

  “What’s her name?” she wants to know, with the typical face of a suspicious nurse.

  “Beatrice,” I answer her with a defiant look. The nurse is very skinny, like a scarecrow, and rude; she doesn’t know what I am capable of. I turn my back on her, without saying anything. Bitch. I am looking for Beatrice. And I can’t find her. No, I really can’t find her. After one hour, I am still wandering around, and I haven’t found her.

  I’ve seen everything there is to see. I visited the museum of suffering, with that typical smell of alcohol that hospitals have and the vomit-green color painted on the walls. Someone smiles when, by mistake, I enter his room. Another little old man gets pissed off. He tells me to go to hell, and I tell him the same. I leave the room, and I bump into the scarecrow nurse who looks at me with disapproval, and I lower my glance.

  “Room 405,” she says with a good-natured and satisfied voice, crossing her arms as if it were a scolding.

  “How did you do it?” I answer with eyes lowered.

  “She is the only Beatrice in the computer.”

  I look at her and smile. I blow her a kiss with my hand and I wink.

  “On the other side,” the nurse shouts at me, shaking her head, “on the fourth floor.”

  I climb the steps at full speed. I climb and I feel that Beatrice is getting closer. I climb because Beatrice is there and I want to join her, and every step I climb is a step toward heaven, like it was for Dante in The Divine Comedy. The door is closed—actually, ajar. I open it very slowly.

  There is only one bed in the dim light of the room, and on that immense, white rectangle, there is a small and curled-up outline. I slowly get closer. It isn’t Beatrice. That nitwit nurse made a mistake on the room, and who knows where she has sent me. Before leaving, I observe the curled-up figure on the bed. She is a little girl. At first, it seemed like a little boy. She has a sunken and thin face. The skin is colorless, a near-transparent pallor. Her arm is violet around the needle that enters into her wrist. She sleeps tranquilly. She doesn’t have any hair. She seems like a small Martian curled up like a baby in the womb of her mother. She seems to be smiling while sleeping.

  On the nightstand, there is a book, a bottle of water, a bracelet of blue and orange pearls, a shell like one of those that hides the sound of the sea, and a photo. A photo of that child with her mother holding her. On the photo is written: “I am always with you, don’t be afraid, my little Beatrice.” That child has red hair.

  That child is Beatrice.

  57

  Silence.

  It’s midnight. I am sitting in the place where I sit when the world needs to go back to spinning in the right direction. Those are places that have a built-in button, the one used to return to the preceding song. You push it and the world goes back into place. You push it and the problem not only disappears, it never existed. In short: those are places that don’t exist. That place is a red bench along a river. A place only I know. And Silvia.

  I hold my head in my hands, as best I can with my arm in a cast … and I haven’t stopped crying since I ran away. Yes, because I ran away from my dream. My crushed-up dream. In my hands, I tightly hold the letter for Beatrice written by Silvia; it is soaked in my tears. I tear it into a thousand pieces with my teeth and my good hand. I scatter the pieces in the river’s current. There lies my black soul. My scribed soul.

  And now all the pieces of my soul are there drowning in the current, and each one goes its own way, and no one will ever be able to gather them together, no one. I am drowning in each of those pieces of paper. I am drowning a million times. Now my soul no longer exists. The current carried it off. I want to be alone. In silence. My cell phone is off. I want the entire world to suffer because it doesn’t know where I’ve ended up. I want the entire world to feel as alone and abandoned as I do right now. Without Beatrice, who is dying, without hair. Without Beatrice, who isn’t going to make it. And I didn’t even recognize the other half of my dream. I ran away from the girl I wanted to protect my whole life. I am a coward.

  I do not exist.

  God does not exist.

  58

  I wake up suddenly. Happy. It was only a dream. Beatrice is well. She has red hair. Just like in my dreams. God still exists, even if I don’t believe in Him, which makes no difference anyway. I hear somebody’s voice calling to me, “Leo?”

  I shake myself and I don’t recognize that face. I am not in my bed. Jack Sparrow is not looking at me from the wall, with his wild eyes, and I am freezing cold. I am on my bench, and in front of me is Silvia with a policeman?! This really is a dream. My magic place, Silvia and a cop?! I stare blankly.

  “Are you okay?” Silvia asks, with eyes swollen from lack of sleep or maybe from crying. I look at her and I don’t understand.

  “No.”

  The cop speaks into something I don’t recognize in the dark.

  “Found him.”

  Silvia sits down next to me, placing an arm around my shoulders, and holds me tightly, sweetly saying to me, “Let’s go back home.”

  I look at the black water of the river, where the streetlights are reflected like trapped fish. My soul is like that right now. Like so many paper fish that have flown away. Prisoners of the water. They will never come back. The word home is equal to all the others—actually, worse: who knows what is waiting for me there? I lean my head on Silvia’s shoulder and begin to cry, because I am cruel.

  59

  I don’t want to play the guitar. I don’t want to eat. I don’t want to speak. I am being punished for what happened. It’s the right thing; I deserve it. Mom and Dad were desperate when I came back home: bags under their eyes, upset faces. I have never seen them like that. Because of me. It was four o’clock in the morning. But I got what I wanted. Finally, I found a way to defend myself against this poisonous scorpion, which is reality. Hating is the only way to be more poisonous than the scorpion. A swift hatred like the fire that devours paper and straw, and a hatred that burns all that it touches, and the more it touches the more it is exalted. To be bad. To be alone. To be fire. To be iron.

  This is the solution. Destroy and resist.

  60

  Five hours of lessons. Five hours of war. I told that dog-fur–wearing Prof Massaroni to go to hell when she asked me what I was doing with my cell phone. A disciplinary note on my record. I also skipped the whole hour of English class, and nobody noticed. I beat my record in Snake during the philosophy class, while The Dreamer was speaking about someone who had declared that death doesn’t exist, because when you are alive, there is no death, and when you are dead you are dead; therefore, it doesn’t exist even then.

  To me it seemed like colossal bullshit, as usual. Before, Beatrice was alive, but now she is dying. Like that poet who wrote, “La morte / Si sconta / Vivendo,” “Death is discounted by living.” I had considered it one of those lofty stories of poets, instead unfortunately, it is true. Beatrice has become unrecognizable, or better yet, I didn’t recognize her. Death poisons all living things. Philosophy is useless. T9 doesn’t contain the word God, which proves that God doesn’t exist. Playing Snake is the only possibility left for not thinking about it.

  Afterward, The Dreamer opened his usual briefcase from which he can pull out any book, like the shorts of Eega Beeva. Actually, he also seems like some kind of an alien sometimes. Often, he doesn’t even use any of those books, he just leaves them on his desk. He says that books for him are like pieces of home, wherever he has them, he feels at home. Books … what a load of crap! All those lines full of stories and dreams are not worth the number of the hospital room where Beatrice transfor
med into a child, returning to the womb of the earth: swallowed up.

  The Dreamer reads a few letters of those condemned to death before being executed, from the period of the Resistance: one of his off-curriculum discussions. I don’t know how he does it, but The Dreamer always has something to say, confronting you head on and from which you can’t turn your ears away. But why doesn’t he leave me in peace? I listen to him only because I can’t avoid it, since you can’t close your ears like you can your eyes, but I won’t believe a word of it. And afterward, may he go to hell. Here is what he reads:

  “August 4th, 1944—Mom and Dad, I am dying, caught up in the dark tempest of hatred, I who wanted to live only for love. God is love and God doesn’t die. Love doesn’t die. … ”

  The Dreamer takes a pause.

  “Bullshit!” I leap up like fire, burning paper dreams and words of straw. The word is violently hurled against the face of the prof, like a fist full of nails from a night warrior. Everyone turns toward me with helpless eyes, closing their gaping mouths after suddenly hearing the first declaration of truth ever pronounced in school. I could burn all of them, except Silvia. The Dreamer looks at me too, sure that he hasn’t understood.

  “That’s a load of crap!” I repeat, challenging him.

  Let’s see what you are going to do when someone has the courage to say how things really are and destroys your castle of literary cards. He is silent for a minute. He seems to be searching for something he can’t find within himself.

  Then, with an absolutely calm voice, he asks, “Who are you to judge this man’s life?”