White Like Milk, Red Like Blood

by Alessandro D'Avenia

  However it might be, I find myself writing—I don’t even know how—“Dear Fin … ” because the word God doesn’t appear with T9. And Fin for God doesn’t seem to be too bad of a nickname. The name God scares me. I continue writing, just like I did with Beatrice, but on the cell—at least the lines are straight: “ … You tell us you are our father, but it seems to me you are too remote in the heavens. I don’t know your name, and if you aren’t offended, I’ll call you Fin, because that is what T9 calls you. I can’t accept your will, because what you are doing to Beatrice doesn’t make any sense. If you are omnipotent: save her. If you are merciful: cure her. You put a dream in my heart: don’t take it away from me. If you love me: show it. Or are you too weak to be Fin? You say you are life, but you take back life. You say you are love, but you make love impossible. You say you are truth, but the truth is that you don’t care for me at all, and you can’t change things. I am not amazed then that nobody believes in you. Maybe I am presumptuous, but if I were in your place, the first thing I would do—you don’t have to be Fin to understand it—is to cure Beatrice. Amen.”

  While I am writing, a message interrupts me, and I read it aloud, “Always remember that I am here. I love you, even if you don’t deserve it … ;-) S.”

  Silvia is an angel and is in direct contact with God; maybe I should ask her if she has Fin’s cell number so I can send Him a message: “Fin, I am sure that you will cure Beatrice! In your place, I would do it, and I hope you are better than me. … ”

  91

  I went back to Beatrice’s. I was beginning to get worried, but then her mother sent me a message. I find her asleep, very thin, opaque. An IV drip counts the seconds that transpire, drop by drop. She opens her eyes, and her smile seems to come from far off, like the elderly smile, a smile of melancholy.

  “I’m very tired, but I’m glad you came. I wanted to write in my diary, but I can’t hold the pen. I feel like an idiot.”

  I pull out a sheet of paper from my pocket and secretly put a lined page behind the white page I have to write on. When I want to, I do apply myself, and how! I write what Beatrice dictates to me, in stops and starts, her voice breaking, with beleaguered breathing. Then she dozes off. I wait and I watch her slide away like a boat without a motor, without a sail, without oars, carried off by the current. She reopens her eyes.

  “I am too tired … you tell me something, Leo.”

  I don’t know what to talk about. I don’t want to tire her with stupid stuff. I talk to her about school and about my difficulties, of what happened this year, about The Dreamer, about Gandalf, about Niko, and about the soccer tournament that we Pirates are about to win … I speak to her about Silvia, of the times she has saved me from trouble, about the day she cut school with me, and how she encouraged me to come to see her … Beatrice suddenly interrupts me.

  “Your eyes sparkle when you talk about Silvia, like a star. … ”

  Beatrice knows how to say some incredible sentences with the simplicity of a child who is asking for the umpteenth cookie. I’m struck silent, like someone undergoing a great injustice but who can do nothing to defend himself. I cannot love Silvia. I can and I do love only Beatrice; and it is precisely she who tells me that my eyes shine like stars when I speak of Silvia.

  “Have you ever fallen in love, Beatrice?”

  She tells me she has with a light sigh and then falls silent. I realize that it isn’t the time to ask her anything else, but I also know that only she has the right answers.

  “And what was it like?”

  “It was like a home to go to whenever I wanted. Like when you go scuba diving. Down below, everything is silent and immobile. There is an absolute silence. There is peace. And maybe when you come back up to the surface, the sea is rough.”

  I listen quietly, and I have the suspicion that the words I have used in my life might have something to do with the word love, but actually, if I look for the real state of the word, the only thing that I find written is “look to the voice of Beatrice.” While I am caught up in these useless thoughts, Beatrice falls into a surprising drowsiness, as if her light were suddenly going out. Or maybe she only has her eyes closed, but I understand that I must go.

  Silvia is blue, not red. And yet, my eyes sparkle for blue.

  92

  When you don’t know how to answer a question, there is only one solution: Wikipedia. On Wikipedia, however, there is nothing written about whether Silvia is more than a friend to me; the question torments me like the summer cicadas, and I can’t shake it. I try to divide it in two. Does Silvia love me? Do I love Silvia? I take at least eleven tests on Facebook to discover if there is a person who loves me. The result is unanimous: Silvia does everything for me that a person in love does, someone who, however, doesn’t have the courage to reveal her love. Now it is up to me. But I don’t want to discover it with a test. It is too important. I have to verify this in person.

  “Silvia, should we study together? I need some help with the Greek poets.”

  Decidedly, poetry serves no purpose; it is only an excuse to fall in love.

  93

  While Silvia repeats the translation of some very difficult lines by Sappho—“Immortal Aphrodite with a multicolored throne”—I stare at her without listening to the words, following the movement of her lips.

  “ ‘ … And you, blessed one / you asked me again what I felt and why / once again I was calling you / and what I desired above all was happening / in my foolish soul … ’ ”

  I am following the waves of her black hair, which are moving with the words she is pronouncing. Wings of a seagull, effortlessly giving way to the wind.

  “ ‘ … Come to me even now, free me from the painful / the uneasiness, and all the things my heart desires / you fulfill … ’ ”

  I stare at her eyes, full of life and caring for me. For the second time I don’t look at her eyes, but into her eyes. A dive into a blue sea, calm and refreshing.

  “What’s the matter, Leo?”

  I shake off the daydream I had sunk into without realizing it, from which I had no desire to be awakened.

  “You seem distracted. Your eyes are shining. Are you thinking about Beatrice … ? Let’s take a break. … ”

  I wake up from a dream.

  “No, no, continue. I’m listening to you.”

  Silvia smiles, understandingly, “All right, now this is the part I like the best, the one about the red apple. Concentrate: ‘How the sweet reddish apple is at the extremity of the branch / up high on the highest branch: the apple pickers forgot it / no, on the contrary: they didn’t forget about it, but they couldn’t reach it.’ ”

  While Silvia repeats and follows the Greek words with her finger, for the first time, I think I understand this dead language.

  I have learned these verses by heart, and I repeat them until dawn, when I find myself surprised and in love, in a rotten-red love. But how can I betray Beatrice? How can I reach the level of Silvia, who is so perfect? And yet it is Beatrice who has opened my eyes, who has made me look at what I wasn’t seeing. Silvia is home. Silvia is peace. Silvia is my harbor. Will I ever manage to reach you, Silvia?

  94

  The ugly part of life is that there are no instructions, unlike a cell phone. You can follow those instructions, and if the phone doesn’t work, there is the warranty. You take it back, and they give you a new one. With life it’s not like that. If it doesn’t work, they don’t give you a new one; you have to keep the one you have—used, dirty, and malfunctioning. When it doesn’t function right, you can lose your appetite.

  “Leo, you haven’t eaten anything, are you sick?” asks Mom. I can’t hide anything from her.

  “I don’t know, I’m not hungry,” I answer dryly.

  “Then you are in love.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean, ‘I don’t know’? Either you are, or you aren’t. … ”

  “I’m confused, it’s as if I had a million-piece puzzle wi
thout the complete image to start from. I have to do everything by myself.”

  “But Leo, that’s the way life is. You build the road as you go along, with the choices you make.”

  “But if you don’t know how to choose?”

  “Try to discover the truth and choose.”

  “And what is the truth about love?”

  Mom remains silent. I knew it, there is no answer, no instructions.

  “You need to search for it in your heart. The most important truths are hidden, but this doesn’t mean they don’t exist. They are more difficult to find.”

  “And what have you discovered in all these years, Mom?”

  “That love doesn’t want to have, love only wants to love.”

  I don’t answer. I start eating again while my mother washes the dishes in silence.

  My cell phone is on the table, next to my glass. I take it and send a message to Silvia: “Tomorrow, actually today, at five o’clock at the bench. I want to speak to you! A question of life or death.”

  95

  I arrive half an hour early, in order to repeat by heart the speech that I want to make. A homeless guy approaches to ask me for something, and I, feeling generous with the whole world because I am about to tell Silvia that I love her, give him a euro, actually two. He tells me, “May God bless you.”

  I no sooner see her approach than I understand I’ve been blind for so long. She confesses to me that this is a marvelous spot and that everyone should have a spot like this to project their dreams and declare their own secrets. I make her sit down with all the regard that I would have for a queen, and while I am twisting my hands looking for the words, she very serenely stops me. “First I want to tell you something myself, Leo.”

  I profoundly hope that it is the same thing so we can make the whole thing short and embrace each other.

  “I don’t want to keep this secret that’s breaking my heart any longer.”

  There we are. Yet again, Silvia saves me beforehand.

  “Beatrice never answered your messages because I never gave you her number.”

  I look at Silvia like someone who has just landed from Mars and sees a human being for the first time. Suddenly, all the beauty of her features seem rigid to me, made of papier-mâché, like an empty mask.

  “I know, Leo, I’m sorry. It is my fault.”

  I don’t understand.

  “That time you asked me to get her number for you, I only pretended to do it.”

  I remember noticing, when Beatrice dictated her number to me, that it didn’t coincide with the one that I had. The words of love that I prepared disappeared like the “I love you” writings in the sand at the beach. My tone of voice becomes hard, like ice.

  “Why did you do it?”

  Silvia doesn’t speak.

  “Why did you do it, Silvia?”

  “I was jealous. I wanted you to be sending those messages to me. But I didn’t have the courage to tell you that. I kept your letter to Beatrice for months imagining that it was for me. I was terrified of losing you. Forgive me.”

  I am left in a white silence, similar to that from the moon. She is staring at the current of the river and doesn’t have the courage to lift her gaze. I get up and walk away, leaving her there, like a perfect stranger. Silvia is no longer anyone for me. Love cannot be born from betrayal.

  “I want to forget you as soon as possible.”

  I repeat it through my tears. And the thing that a few nights before had hidden itself in some small corner of my heart turns arid and becomes a grain of salt, which comes out in my tears, set free, lost, forever.

  I am tired of being betrayed.

  96

  I have so much pain locked up in my chest that I could burn down the world. The fire feeds on me, as I stay holed up in my house. I can’t bear it any longer. I go into my father’s study and tell him bluntly, “Dad, it’s enough. I understand. Shit! It’s enough already!”

  He looks at me without saying anything. He stays silent. I’ve provoked him, I said a bad word, and he doesn’t answer. What kind of a way to react to provocation is that, anyway?

  I slam the door and go back to my room. I turn up the music until the windows are shaking so that everyone can hear me but no one can speak to me. I want to close myself in a house of noise, because today, this one I am living in is not my house. Terminator starts howling like he always does in these situations. He always howls when he hears the music of Linkin Park at full blast, and when my mother is cooking chicken with bell peppers. It seems that some primitive instincts or bad memories from puppyhood are being awakened. Terminator really is a strange dog. If I have to be reincarnated, I hope my destiny is not to become Terminator. Who knows who Terminator was in a past life. …

  I turn up the music even more, and the words from “Numb” are about to shatter the windowpanes into fragments so that everyone can hear me. Suddenly Mom shrieks, “Leo, turn it down, I can’t even talk on the telephone!”

  Just what I want, but don’t you realize it, and you actually think that I like to listen to this damn music at full blast? Do you really think I give a shit? I only want to fill this world full of noise with plugs in my ears.

  Then my father walks in the room. He doesn’t say anything. I lower the volume.

  “Let’s go for a walk. … ”

  He’s heard me. My father has heard me. He has heard what I was truly saying.

  We didn’t speak about anything in particular. But with Dad near me, I am almost calm, my doubts about everything and everyone are quieting down. My wounds burn less. Dad, father. How does someone become a father? You have to read a ton of books, have at least one son, and have strength similar to God.

  I will never be capable of that.

  97

  We lie down next to each other with our eyes closed, practicing five minutes of heavy silence. It’s a game that Beatrice taught me. A game of silence: for a few minutes, we are quiet, with our eyes closed, staring at the colors that appear under our eyelids. Every so often, I cheat and look at her, a few inches from me, holding my breath so that she doesn’t hear that I have turned.

  “Don’t open your eyes,” she tells me, as if suspecting something.

  “I’m not opening them.”

  “What did you see?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Concentrate.”

  “You, what do you see?” I ask her out of curiosity.

  “Everything that I have.”

  “What color is it?”

  “Red.”

  “And what is it?”

  “It is the love that I am receiving. Love is always a debt, that’s why it is red.”

  I don’t understand. I am not able to grasp things at Beatrice’s level. Ever.

  “And you, Leo, what did you see?”

  “White.”

  “With your eyes closed?”

  “With my eyes closed.”

  “And what is it?”

  “ … ”

  “Well then?”

  “Everything that I don’t have. Love is always a credit that will not be paid back. … ”

  “Oh, cut it out. … ” says Beatrice, laughing, and she gives me a kiss on my cheek.

  From this day forward, I am not going to wash my face anymore.

  98

  For a fistful of goals. It’s the moment to settle the score: the final challenge against Vandal. The game that will determine the outcome of the tournament. We are one point behind them. All we can do is win. We must win. And there is much more than a victory riding on this game: there is the revenge for Niko’s nose, the list of the top scorers, and the Pirates’ pride. I feel the right rage. The rage that is exploding in fired-up shots that burn the skin of our adversaries and is being transformed into rough dents on Vandal’s legs.

  We are playing the game of our lives. A year of struggles. If you win the tournament, all the girls know who you are, you become cool. “The Pirate. Here he comes. That’s the one, that’s the Pir
ate. The Captain of the Pirates … ” I can already hear them. … How I would like for Beatrice to be here and see me play. I want to dedicate this game to her, the victory, the goals, the triumph over Vandal. Right now I have to concentrate. Half an hour still to go, but I’ve been ready for three hours. Niko comes by to pick me up with his scooter.

  A message. It’s probably Niko telling me to come down and be ready for him. “I am afraid … I am tired, very tired. I am alone … Beatrice.”

  I call her.

  “What’s happening, Beatrice, what’s happening?”

  Her voice is broken up. She is crying, crying like I’ve never heard her do before.

  “I’ll be right there!”

  I run down and when Niko gets there, I don’t give him time to catch his breath. “Take me to her. Right away. I will catch up with you later, I hope I can make it. … ”

  Niko is struck dumb and leaves me standing there, all alone. I see him taking off fast, his scooter making the noise of a friend that is going away forever.

  And that noise hurts wretchedly.

  99

  Beatrice opens her eyes, red from crying, and slips away from my embrace.

  “Thank you for coming. Today, by myself, I wouldn’t have made it. … ”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I am afraid.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of losing everything, of ending up in the void, in the silence, of disappearing and that’s it, of never seeing the people I love again.”

  There are no lines, no words acceptable in my head. The only thing I get out is the only truth that is remaining, like those trees you see all alone in an immense field of green. “I am here.”