As if I were in a trance I sat down on a seat, still feeling his touch.
His perfume had stayed on my hands: the road ran quickly by, I closed my eyes and breathed him in from the palms of my hands.
7.
The Scarlet Notebook
Perhaps a part of me would have liked Filippo to discover my relationship with Pietro.
I wanted to wound his indifference, reduce it to shreds, and respond with facts to his constant offensive statements when he said that I was worth nothing, to see even one emotion scrape his face.
Thinking about what I was doing made me feel sick, I recognized that I was a two-timer, but looking at the thing from my point of view, I could no longer help but seek a little appreciation.
With a bitter smile, I remembered when I accompanied my father to the conversations with my teachers and, after listening to the praises they
wove about me, he invariably concluded by advising them to ask more from me. I justified the embarrassment and disappointment of never receiving any praise with the conviction that in doing so I was driven to do better and better. And instead I realize that all this desire for recognition comes, perhaps, from the lack that I had experienced until then.
The manager, who was now assigning me more and more tasks in administration, had sent me to the stationery shop to buy some office supplies.
I was wandering among the shelves going past packets of clips, reams of paper, notebooks, when my attention was captured by a notebook with a hard cover in scarlet red.
I took it, even though I had no idea what I would do with it: it had been impossible not to buy it, as if that object had had a will of its own, and wanted to come with me.
Holding it in my hands I remembered my
grandmother and her exercise books in which she wrote her recipes and the phrases that struck her, and which she also used to dry the daisies that I sometimes picked during recreation, at school.
I went back to the office with two bags of supplies, and my notebook in my bag.
Pietro came to meet me at the door, took one of the bags, and helped me put away everything I had purchased.
As I passed him a pack of paper he said to me:
"We should find our own place, somewhere just ours where we can meet without problems."
"Pietro, are you crazy? What do you want to do, rent a room in a hotel by the hour? And where, anyway, in this provincial town, where everyone knows everything about everyone?"
"Don’t worry baby, the important thing is that you want me. We could take a train and go a bit further away, and find some place near the station."
I didn't want to go a bit further away and find a place near the station. I feared that that moment would soon arrive, I feared that Pietro would ask me for more. It was enough to feel his gaze on me, his words, I needed it desperetely.
That might have been enough for me, but maybe not for him.
***
I had put the pots with lunch for the next day and the stew for dinner on the stove, when I took the notebook out of my bag, put it on the kitchen table and opened it.
Spontaneously, without knowing where the pen would take me, I began to write.
If loving is a mistake
then I am guilty.
Tie my lungs
and stifle the song
that comes out improperly
to disturb the sleep of the righteous.
If loving is a defect
then I am imperfect,
Unworthy.
Tear pieces from my heart
and lay them on the cold tray
of respectability.
If to love is inappropriate,
when the path deviates,
lose me.
Nothing is more dangerous
than a burning spark
when dead branches
are stacked around it.
But if loving is inevitable,
appropriate
deserved
if it is breath,
light
magnificence of the soul,
