Like a little girl I barricaded myself behind pathetic excuses: if no one sees you it’s as if you’re not seeking his eyes, it’s as if you didn’t want him to tell you every morning that you’re beautiful.

And Pietro, placid and undeterred, continued to return my glances, not doing anything other than give me the hint of a smile that opened his lips and gave me a glimpse of his teeth, just enough.

But I was afraid that some of our colleagues would notice this game of glances, which gave me the pleasant and unfamiliar feeling that someone

noticed and appreciated me.

I wanted nothing more than this, to receive attention, to be noticed: I know, it may seem pathetic, but that’s how it was for me.

The management of the supermarket had

decided to buy a new accounting program, and more and more often after my miscarriage I found myself relieved of manual tasks, which were heavy, and I helped Pietro in accounting more and more often.

Pietro, who had attended a course for the use of the new program, was commissioned to teach me the basic principles of using it, so that I could then help him in setting up the complicated operations of accounting and administration.

I blushed instantly at that news and my heart seemed to go like a galloping horse.

Meanwhile, Pietro had already prepared two chairs in front of the pc.

As he began to explain to me how that new

program worked, I kept my gaze fixed on the screen trying not to notice the scent coming from his skin, and his warm breath on my cheeks flushed with embarrassment.

"Please God save me," whispered my mind, to try to distract me from the man who was a few inches from my skin.

"Please God save me."

But it was not God who had to save me from that web which awaited me, I could have done it very well myself, and instead I did not.

His hand slipped naturally onto my knee, squeezing it a little, and I slowly turned to him.

It was if my face had turned frame by frame, it seemed so long before I met his gaze.

His eyes searched the space around the desk we occupied, then with a small smile, he made me understand that there was no one there.

And then it happened.

It happened, and I don’t know exactly how it

happened that I found myself with his lips resting on mine, in a light kiss.

It happened, and I thought the sky would collapse on me if I did something like this, but instead nothing happened.

Embarrassed I quickly turned my gaze to the video on which a small dash was flashing waiting for someone to decide to tell it what to do.

How could this have happened?

How could I have allowed something like this to happen?

How would I be able go home to my husband that evening?

As soon the "lesson" finished, I went to the bathroom, and stayed there for a good quarter of an hour: I spent it almost entirely in front of the mirror, looking at myself, to see if something had changed in me, if you could see that I had kissed another man, who was not my husband.

I washed my lips with soap, rubbing hard as if

they were really dirty, and then I rushed to take the bus home.

As I ran my thoughts were galloping too.

I was a married woman, and Pietro also had a wife, even though he never talked about her.

What had I been thinking?

***

Filippo had not arrived yet.

Good.

I would prepare the hunter's chicken that he likes so much to be forgiven for what he will never know, and to seal my mute promise that I would never do it again.

How would I be able to kiss him?

Would it still be the same or had something changed, that afternoon?

He arrived when it was already dark and giving me an apathetic kiss on the forehead got me out of

the bind of finding out if he would feel the taste of Pietro on my lips.

***

A confession.

The first.

The words come out in drops, digging into recent events, too recent for them not to still hurt.

I have to shape my will.

"Forgive me father for I have sinned."

Forgive me.

Forgiveness.

"I desire another woman's man."

Forgive me, O father.

The confessional is dark and through the grate I glimpse a figure intent on listening to me, his head bowed.

"My girl, the flesh is weak."

Forgive me, O father.

"My flesh is not weak, I want his soul, I want his words, I just want a little sweetness, a little affection, a little love."

Forgive me, O father and tell me what I can do: my dark existence has found that glimmer that gives color to everything, but he cannot belong to me and I cannot belong to him.

"My child, I know, it's hard."

Forgive me, O father but I can't help but have him in my thoughts in every second of every minute of every day.

"Forgive me, O father."

My knees begin to ache, as if the wood on which they are resting had suddenly become very rough.

Act of contrition... I repent of and I am sorry for...

my sins... I promise with the help of your Grace...

and to avoid the next occasions of sin.

I had never understood what I was reciting from memory, until now.

I promise, I promise.

I promise.

A saddlebag that was too heavy.

And my shoulders are too weak.

Small steps

With small steps I walked towards horizons forbidden even just to my imagination.

All the fears that Filippo would find me out dwindled day after day, drowned in our lives like poor devils, in every absent glance, in every click on that damn remote control.

Even his fits of anger, his words of accusation, his derogatory statements in my regard, did not hurt me so much anymore.

Every day that passed I was becoming more confident that I would be able to take what little happiness I deserved.

Pietro caressed me with his eyes in the long hours of work, whether I was among the shelves,

or if I was called to his office, and in doing so he unequivocally gave me to understand that the kiss we had exchanged, could, indeed should have a sequel.

One Friday evening, I had almost finished entering the suppliers’ invoices that had arrived during the week into the accounting management program. There were a lot of them.

All the other colleagues had left.

The manager came to the door of the office to say goodbye.

Pietro was putting on his jacket, and was about to leave.

"Miss Mysia, have you finished entering the invoices? Good, that means I can work on it tomorrow morning... Pietro will you wait until Mysia has finished? I don't like her being alone in here. I have to run. Have a good evening guys."

Pietro nodded yes, taking off his jacket again.

The door was closed.

We were alone.

I panicked at the mere thought.

Try as I might to concentrate on the work my head was in flames and my hands were shaking.

He sat down opposite me, his legs crossed, his arms folded, his big, dark eyes fixed on me, and his lips posed in a smile.

I couldn’t breathe, and there was a weight pressing on my chest.

"You want to kiss me, right?"

"..."

"Right?"

He was already on his feet with one hand resting on the desk and the other busy stroking me under my chin, the flesh yielding and quivering.

Nose to nose, with my eyes fixed in his, I felt his lips brush mine softly, like a touch of butterfly wings,.

He was so delicate, unhurried, as if we had all the time in the world.

"You wanted it too, baby, didn't you? I felt it, you know?"

I was unable to say a word.

Now we were standing and he was holding me in his arms, with my face pressed to his chest.

In the silence he caressed my hair, kissed me on the nape of the neck, made me feel as if I were the center of the universe.

And I wanted to weep.

I was clasped in the arms of what I had wanted so long.

And I didn't have him.

He could never be mine.

Unless a very small part perhaps.

But at that moment it didn’t matter: the only important thing was having Pietro a few inches from me.

He helped me finish entering the invoices, and at the door of the office we said goodbye.

With my cheeks red with excitement, I ran

happily towards the bus that was waiting for me under a lamppost of the space used as a station.

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.

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,

pathway,

discovery,

youth,

ransom,

mutation,

motive,

I love for all this,

but above all because in me

the stele of courage

it is not yet lost.

I stopped, rested the pen on the table, vibrant with emotion and surprise from my own words.

It was the first time I had stopped thoughts with ink.

It was time to turn off the stove and start waiting for Filippo to come home.

My mind wandered freely in dreams, imagining that Pietro came in through that door, with his smile, with his fresh love.

The phone rings and abruptly brings me back with my feet on the ground.

"Hello?"

"Hello baby, can you talk?"

"Yes, but how did you get my home number? And why..."

"I took the number from your file, in the office... I just wanted to tell you that I love you and I want you so much."

My right hand clutched the handset of the phone feverishly, as the front door opened letting my husband in.

I immediately closed the call, leaving the phone on the kitchen bench and with my back to my husband I started to move pots and ladles.

My hands were shaking.

He was talking via radio with a colleague, not yet tired of twelve hours of service.

"Is dinner ready?"

Bitter morsels, sweet crumbs

Perhaps all women find that they have to accept situations that rationally seem impossible to bear, unsustainable.

I did all I coud to try to understand Philip, I justified his attitudes, always so aloof, his manner which had become more and more brusque lately, but all this hurt me so much that often in the recurring moments of solitude I burst into floods of tears that could find no consolation.

Even when the tears stopped falling and the sobs calmed, I did not feel a little more relaxed.

I was just tired.

Tired inside.

And as I felt myself founder, the only thought

that gave me a reason to exist was Pietro.

***

It was a cold winter, it had been raining incessantly for too many days to remember how many.

I was sorting invoices into the files, hidden by a shelf full of papers.

I hadn't heard Pietro approaching.

"I’ve found a place."

His warm breath on my neck left bare by my hair gathered on the nape of the neck confused me.

"Go down the stairs to the ground floor, then continue for two more ramps, where there are all those boxes. See you down there."

That said, he disappeared just as he had appeared, leaving me in the throes of a cyclone of emotions.

My arms felt heavy, and my legs did not support

me, my heart was thumping so fiercely that it seemed to me that everyone in the studio could hear it.

What was I to do?

Think.

Reflect.

I didn't give a damn about reflecting at that moment.

Think, make your head work.

What should I do?

Do I go down?

No, I don't go down.

What if I don't go down and he gets upset and doesn't talk to me again?

I can't risk being left without what only he can give me.

I’m going down.

No.

I don't know.

So I found myself going down the steps of that

place which was so squallid, where the entire condominium piled up things of no use.

It was dark.

What if Pietro hadn’t come down?

What if he had played a bad joke on me?

In the dim light that enveloped me I saw his face emerge, and his hands outstretched looking for me.

My steps raised small clouds of dust that danced in the beams of light that penetrated through the dirty windows.

I let myself be lured as if in a dream, as if it were not me taking part in that encounter, but that I was seeing it on a television screen.

His arms were strong and squeezed me hard against his chest.

"I have wanted to hug you like this for so long,"

he said to me.

I couldn’t speak: a knot of emotion and fear gripped my throat suffocating every syllable in my mouth.

His hands wandered over my body exploring it, showing him by touch everything that the darkness, which surrounded us, concealed from view.

Then gliding gently down my neck with caressing fingers he stopped at the first button of the cardigan I was wearing.

I stiffened.

And he felt it.

"What's wrong, baby? What are you afraid of, you know that I love you? Don’t you know that? So let yourself go. I've never wanted anyone like I want you right now."

His gestures became insistent.

My hands still crossed on my chest did not loosen.

It was he who capitulated.

"And that's fine. I understand, you need time."

He kissed me for moments that seemed

incredibly long.

He whispered words to me that I had never heard, filling me with unknown sensations, kissing me, on my eyelids, my eyes closed.

***

Under the hot jet of the shower.

Not moving.

Thinking of him.

With eyes wide open, see everything that happened again, like in a movie.

Incredible.

I was still feeling my heart beating furiously, when I looked out of the basement to see if I could go upstairs without anyone seeing me.

Holding the handrail anchored to the wall and quickly climbing the stairs.

Still aware of the neon light of the supermarket that hurt my eyes accustomed to the dark.

And finding myself answering a customer with

forced ease who asked me where she could find the crispbread.

Seeing Pietro again from my desk a few minutes later, coming back into the office, winking at me as he asks me for the packing slips from the mineral water supplier.

The water runs over my nape and slides down my back. There is no soap that can wash away the thoughts that are crowding my mind.

Or maybe I don’t want to wash everything away.

This will be my secret.

Our secret.

The small joy of each day.

The red notebook is waiting in my bag, Filippo is sleeping in the armchair with the remote control in his hand, the television tuned to one of those insane programs that I detest from the bottom of my heart.

I write.

And I lose myself thinking about you.

sweetly relaxed,

ineffectual

like all the hours

that separate me from you.

And I stretch out, sleepily,

with your dream chasing me,

indelible is the belonging

that tears me apart.

And I hold you close with memories to come relentlessly

to live you ten, a hundred, a thousand times.