He sighs. Maybe that men are not supposed to know. Maybe he just didn’t deserve it. After all, for him it’s enough to know that the order exists and that he almost revealed it.
He sighs again.
Suddenly the window slams and the room is invaded by a cold, freezing wind that, by destroying the spider web, brings chaos within all that perfection.
The captain screams and run to shut the window. He leans on the glass, devastated. Outside it’s dark.
Now the drawings have changed, the chaos dominates and he can’t recognize that perfection anymore.
He keeps crying.
The door opens and the lieutenant, breathless, comes in. He doesn’t stop, crushes the spider web and takes it off angrily.
«Sir, you need to come with me! You need to see what is going on!».
«Why? What’s going on?».
The lieutenant looks shocked. «You need to see this with your own eyes, come!».
The captain is doubtful. The thick spider web is impeding his way out; he suddenly fells like an idiot, an old idiot. He makes is way through by ripping apart the spider web. At this point, the lieutenant grabs him by his arms and pull him forward. «Come on! Let’s go!».
He leads him outside p, through the main door. Outside it’s dark and freezing cold. He shivers. «What should I see?».
«It’s gone!», the lieutenant screams desperately. «It’s disappeared!».
The captain looks outside again. «What has disappeared? I can’t see anything, it’ all dark!».
The lieutenant pushes him outside and turns on his torch. «The sun! It’s gone! It has suddenly disappeared!». The captain stares at him astonished. «It’s not there anymore! It was there, it was daylight! It’s not as it exploded or imploded, it just disappeared!».
The captain keeps shivering. «It’s cold out here…».
«The temperature is falling! We already lost fifteen degrees in few minutes!».
The lieutenant is terrified and starts shaking his torch. The captain grabs it form his hand. He moves forward and after a few steps he can see the fountain, the center of the square. It’s… weird. It looks like the plants are moving, curling on themselves and have changed color. Even the statue has changed, it now looks like glass.
He then points his torch at the floor. It has changed too. He makes light towards the wall of the church, which has now become transparent.
What’s going on? Where’s the sun? Why everything has changed? The consistency of everything has changed? Why is everything so messed up? Where are all those things that used to be familiar to the captain?
It almost fell on them. He illuminates the floor and sees the four kids, surrounded by so much blood. And the blood it’s still red. Three of them fell on their face, all in different positions. The fourth, the oldest one, he’s still on his knees. His torso his leaned towards the floor, with his head on the pavement.
There’s a big hole in his head.
The captain stares at that little corpse and screams: «Who are you?».
Then, suddenly, he comes to grasp with the meaning of his horrendous actions and he finally understands the meaning of everything. He screams even louder, desperate: «Who were you?».
September 2009
THE CROW
Translation by Alessandro
Is that all that’s left? Dust to dust.
A handful of dust over a coffin? How many times had he already asked it itself, how many times he went to look for answer.
The afterlife was real, the peace was real, blessing? Edgar didn’t believe that. No, not the blessing, not the peace, not the cessation of the pain. Maybe there was just nothing. Maybe everything ceased to exist.
What was left, then? A body left in a cage? To a slow decomposition, to rot? Was that why we born? Was that where all his poems would have ended up?
«How sad, Mr. Poe, how sad. A gentleman, father of four children. A role model husband. Who wonders why the good Lord wanted to have him back to him».
They were lowering the coffin, it was the saddest moment.
The widow was hiccupping, hugging even more her sons, the priest gave his benediction. She could have seen sweat impearling the undertaker’s forehead, while they were holding the strings. The gentleman must have exceeded in gluttony’s pleasures. Maybe that’s also a cause of his death.
Edgar had already grabbed a handful of dirt, ready for his final move. That annoyer was really unneeded. He knew him just by sight, a slimy person, too fat and with a feminine voice. «I didn’t know him».
«What? What’s that?».
«I don’t whose this is, the corpse. And I don’t care».
The amazement left place for something more. Concern, maybe, or curiosity. «Ah I see, you’re a writer».
What does that mean? Was everything allowed to him? What would have disqualified everyone else was allowed to him, only because he was a writer?
«Look for inspiration», said the man.
What kind of inspiration was there in a gravestone? Could it be that he wasn’t able to understand, that no one could? There was no time to answer, they already began. First the sons, then the closest relatives. Edgar went forward, without hiding his excitement.
He lent over the ditch, he watched thoroughly. The robust coffin, the flowers all over it, the handfuls of dirt that already had been thrown, dirting it. He imagined the man in the inside, he tried to figure him out, to put himself in his shoes. He imagined the anguish of that flesh, his prison, the horror. He imagined to be inside there and to see. To understand.
«Sorry».
He was loitering, others were waiting to give the last greeting.
Edgar escaped, way too agitated to talk with them. His heavy breathing, the vacuous look. In his mind he still was in that coffin.
He escaped mainly from that fat man, because he didn’t want to give him explanations. Inspiration? No, that wasn’t what he was looking for. He didn’t need that. He needed answers. Something that could justify everything.
How was Elena now? How many years had passed, twenty? How was her body ended up being? Was there still flesh over her bones? Was it dust? It would have happened to Virginia too, soon, very soon. The one that she had was a harm that doesn’t bless.
Her daughter. Her fragile, delicate child bride. She always had been, a flower, a lily. Never to bloom was her destiny, never to open to life, to feel the harassments of fate. Her too would have been brought away from him, as it already had happened with Elena and with Sarah. He couldn’t accept it.
Lenore, Berenice, Ligeia, Eleonora, Irene. All were there, the women that he wrote about. Beauties ripped from life before time, sweet stem cut by the ferocious fate. No, he never met them: they were only paintings over a grave. That’s how he imagined them, yes, because that was his only power: to imagine.
Inspiration, was that it? Were gravestones the ones that gave him it? No, it was what was inside of them. Marvelous women that had ceased to exist, small flowers cut that he could bring them back to life. That he could recreate at his own pleasure, to which he could talk to.
But that wasn’t enough. Death, dissolution, were everywhere. The same way their body were worms’ food, even those odes dedicated to them were wrong, rotten. They were obscene. And that was his guilt, he couldn’t not think about it, that he had corrupted even their memory, the desire of taking them back to life was immense.
Everything was there, in that graveyard, his poetical source. The big Usher’s mausoleum, abandoned from over a century, to which he gave justice, making it immortal. The candid Berenice’s smile, that showed teeth so perfect that never could he forgot about them. Mr. Valdemar’s grave, dead at the late age of a hundred and ten years old, almost an eternity, just like he tried to go against the inevitable.
From them he took life, art. But an ill art, putrid, stolen. Those tombs were his nightmare, his obsession. Both captured and terrorized.
«Hello mother».
Edgar tried to ca
lm down and he looked around. It was a young girl’s voice the one that he heard. He got further away from the engraving place, he got into the poor place of the graveyard, between the tombs of the less rich. Plain graves, lots of crosses, some made just of wood.
He leaned over a tree and peaked with the head to see.
There was a little girl, yes. An eight or nine years old child, with a dress full of stitches and arms covered in dirt. Her face wasn’t in plain sight, her hair were very curly and a pink bow was attached to them.
«I do really miss you, mom. Come back home».
The tomb in front of her was recent, the munch of dirt wasn’t still totally set in place. Edgar was an expert in those kind of things. That women might had been buried around three or months before, six at least. A grave was inside the ground, a simple marble block.
«He punches me, mom. Now that you’re not here he kicks me. He tells me horrible things. Why do you let him do that?».
Edgar thought to go away silently, as she didn’t notice him, but he didn’t.
«He says you’ll never be back. That I have to forget you. I don’t believe him».
He felt wrong, anxious, he should have talked to that child, however the most appealing desire was to just watch, keep on spying her.
«He makes me work, the whole day. He says that’s your fault, that you shouldn’t have died. That someone has to continue it. But he just keeps on drinking».
Almost caught in its flight, Edgar bounced back. An ugly black bird flew silently and lied over a grave.
A crow. His eyes seemed like shining.
«Go! Go away!», screamed the girl, but he wasn’t intentioned to move.
The crow placed himself better just like he was on a perch. Then he turned to look at them. Edgar too felt spied by him.
The girl tried to ignore it.
«When are coming back home, mom?».
The crow crooked. An intense voice, almost humanoid, that would have scared easily a person.
«You’d better shut up!», screamed the girl. «That’s not true!».
The crow crooked again.
Edgar felt a shiver. It was just an impression, but its voice felt like a word.
Ne-ver-mo-re. Nevermore.
«I don’t want to listen to you! Go away! Leave me alone!».
The crow crooked. Nevermore.
«Mom, could you come here and talk to it? Tell him… that he doesn’t have to do it?».
The crow crooked. Nevermore.
«It’s not true», shouted the girl, and again: «In paradise, mom? We will see each other in paradise?».
Why was she doing it? Why she continued? She already knew the answer, the crow couldn’t give any different. And if she knew it then why all those questions?
The crow crooked. Nevermore.
The girl started crying. «What about me? How is my life going to be? I can’t handle it without you. Will I ever be happy?».
The crow crooked. Nevermore.
The questions continued, becoming obsessive, while Edgar kept feeling worse.
«Will I be able to free myself by him?».
The crow crooked. Nevermore.
«Am I ever going to have an husband, an house and some sons?».
The crow crooked. Nevermore.
«Will I survive?».
The crow crooked. Nevermore.
What does that meant, what madness was she living? Didn’t she understand that it was nothing more than a crow?
The fact that it was its natural animal voice, and not an human speaker. That it wasn’t an answer to her questions?
Why was she behaving like that?
«I don’t believe it! You’re a liar! Leave me alone!».
Before Edgar had the chance to intervene she threw a rock at the crow. Nevermore.
She grabbed some more stones, before the bird could flew away and threw them at it. The crew fell from the grave.
The girl didn’t stop, she kept on throwing. She hit it again, more and more times. Edgar saw blood rushing.
«You’re a liar!», shouted the girl, in front of the dead corpse of the crow. Then she turned and escaped.
She didn’t even notice Edgar or even if she did, she didn’t give much importance to him.
Edgar stepped forward and reached the animal. The poor crow was dead, wings teared, the cranium broken. He stared at it for a long time without touching it.
After all it was just an animal, a slimy beast, however that scenario stuck up in his mind. There was something in that girl, the desire to suffer, to be punished, that in some ways resembled him. Was she accusing herself for the death of her mother, was that the secret? How could she had believed that the poor crow was answering her questions?
Edgar stumbled and moved back. In that moment the cemetery felt way more oppressive than usual. He felt the desire to escape too.
Virginia got sick again. She had spitted blood. Her skin was transparent, Edgar could see her veins scar her. He kissed her on the forehead, before leaving her.
How long could she last like that? Wasn’t that a suffering even for her?
«Can you go, Mrs. Martha, go back home. She’s under my custody now».
He showed the way to the door to her, then he went in his office and started drinking.
It was one of his habits, even more often lately.
That’s not the life he would have desired, not all those diseases, that suffering, that dissolution. He didn’t want to stay alone.
He decided not to go to the cemetery, it would only had made him feel worse. Some scenarios were way too sad, even for him. Poor girl, how much anger and pain. Who wonders who the man she was talking about was. Her father? What was he making her do, what was her life?
He poured something to drink, and again and again.
That crow. That poor crow.
Knock. Knock.
Someone was knocking at the door. Firm hits, soft, like a walking rod.
Edgar wobbled, on his way to open the door. He didn’t want to see no one, he wanted to be left alone, but Virginia needed some rest and those knocks would have awaken her.
«Who’s there?», screamed with a hoarse voice, opening.
He almost had to fall to the ground to avoid being struck by the door, something broke in his house, with a big noise of wings, and Edgar got struck by an ice cold wind.
An almost out of focus image got him for a fraction of a second, black as the night, then it disappeared, while the noise made by that decomposed flight was fainting in the distance.
The ice cold breeze kept on coming in from the outside so much that Edgar was forced to close the door.
A bird? A bird got in his house? What bird? It was nowhere around to be found.
He got back in the office cautiously. The glass with the booze was still on the desk and it was calling him. He looked around, trying to figure out any movements.
Something over the shelf, between the bronze faces of the greatest from the past, crooked.
The crow was there. A crow. It couldn’t be that crow, it was impossible. But it was a crow, another crow.
To him it was the same.
«Go! Go! Go away! Out of here!».
The crow crooked. Nevermore.
He had to lay over another armchair to avoid falling. His sight went immediately to the half full glass and he grabbed it, drinking the inside in just a gulp.
Then he poured some more liquor.
It couldn’t be, no. He couldn’t believe it. It was a coincidence, just that.
The crow was still, like a statue. Just its eyes would have followed him everywhere, wells of darkness.
What was he supposed to do? Open the window, take a broom, try to make it flew away? Who knocked at the door? Was that the crow with its beak? He felt imprisoned in one of the gruesome stories he used to create, without a way out.
Carefully he went around the animal and opened the window. The night freeze gave him the energy he needed.
«Away! Away
! Go back to where you came from! Go away!», he repeated, swirling his arms.
The crow stumbled and crooked. Nevermore.
«What do you want from me? Why are you here?».
No answers, nor he hoped to receive any.
Those weren’t the right questions.
The crow had one and one only answer to give.
He drank some more, his hands were shaking. The crow was staring at him.
Was he guilty? To which extent? Why does everything around him was crumbling, why everything was going wrong? What was his guilt?
He asked. «Will Virginia heal? My sweet loving bride will heal from this disease?».
The crow crooked. Nevermore.
Edgar closed his eyes and the shaking increased. What was he doing? Was that madness?
«Sarah… Sarah left me, she married another man. Am I ever going to meet her again? Is there still hope for us two?».
The crow crooked. Nevermore.
The need was obsessive. «Elena! Elena buried in a coffin! Elena that doesn’t exist anymore! Are we going to meet in the afterlife, are we still going to be together?».
The crow crooked. Nevermore.
«Is there life after death? Is there a hope of redemption, of blessing?».
The crow crooked. Nevermore.
Now his hands were visibly shaking, he couldn’t even pour liquor in the glass and fell all over the desk.
What was he doing? That was insane, that crow wasn’t talking, those weren’t answers, that wasn’t the truth!
Then why couldn’t he stop himself?
«Am I going to find peace? Is there going to be a single moment without suffering?».
The crow crooked. Nevermore.
«No!», screamed. «Not alone! I don’t want to be alone I don’t want to end up like this! It can’t be, it’s not right!».
The crow stayed quiet.
Edgar reached the furniture, he started screening the animal, tall above him. It seemed like a statue, a fake, an image of some gods.
«Who are you? The creator? My god?».
Still and silent.
«Does God exist? He truly exists? Am I ever going to meet him? Does he take care of me?».
Lizzi Bizzi and the Red Witch Page 35