Two

Now on the TV there’s a cop movie, outside it’s pouring rain.

I turn off the TV and off to bed, but now I am awake and so I decide to listen to some music to help me fall asleep. The first song on my playlist is ‘Adagio’ by Lara Fabian. Every time I listen to that song, my heart skips a beat and I think back to my grandfather and to the strong bond I had with him. I’m an orphan since I was little and thus he took care of me, and so he did until a cancer took him away last year, leaving me with the house I’m actually living in and with a

big hole in my heart. It comes immediately to my mind his place in the mountains near Rome and the beautiful summer days spent together the meadows or taking care of his little orchard, or winter Sundays spent in front of the fire listening to his stories about war and ancient times. I own him most of my memories on my family, I remember so little about my mother and my father other than through his tales.

Therefore, I picture the dark room full of the objects collected through the years. The glass cabinet with the ceramics that belonged to my grandmother, the pictures of all my family on the hutch at the bottom of the room. The two of us used to sit on the old rocking chairs with the big red cushions and the soft carpet between us. The only light was coming from the burning fireplace, between the crackling of the wood and the warmth on the legs that was waning rising towards the face.

His voice will always be burnt in my memory, so powerful and so gravelly, telling for hours anecdotes and real stories in a hushed and velvety tone. I used to lose myself in his words, and I wandered in far and familiar places as if I was the one who had experienced those adventures that by now I knew by heart, but that I wanted to listen to as if it was the first time. I was often the one who requested this or that story, while other times we were led to them through the events that happened to us during the day, and that brought back past-life memories. I would like to remember him always this way, forgetting about the last months spent in the hospital where he went back to be as helpless as a child, but always strong and proud of his life. Even when he was there, he didn’t lose the wish to tell and to give me strength, until the day we both fell asleep in that cold room where he has been hospitalized for a really long time: the night before, he wanted to talk

to me, to tell me things that wanted to burn in my memory forever.

Despite the fatigue of a man who was old by then, we spent the whole night chatting until late. This time I told a lot about me too, and he gave me big suggestions from a man who learnt how to live thanks to all the experiences that leads our way. His eyes weighted down by medicines, but always with a smile on his face that was marked by the disease. A neat white beard and big hands laid on sheets. I woke up on the armchair next to him, but from that night he has never opened his eyes anymore.

The song is over, and I found myself with bulgy eyes full of tears that try to overcome his absence. I turn everything off, I remove my headphones, and I let the storm cradle me while it’s still raging outside the window blowing on the shutters howling at the wind. When I woke up I am still a little shocked, so I decided to stay in bed a little while, wallowing in the warmth of the night that has already gone. The only thing that gets me out of bed is thinking that I am going to see him again.

When we arrive at the bar, the first time I notice when I enter is that he is already there, and this surprises me a lot. For the first time he arrives before me and he doesn’t even turn to look at me, even if I am sure that he is aware of our loud arrival. I stop at the door, a little annoyed from the fact that he’s not noticing me, but when the barman welcomes me and asks if we’ll have “the usual”, we answer in the affirmative and we head to our table. I am about to sit when I see a little daisy just in front of my place and for the second time in a few minutes I stop perplexed and a little bewildered for a gesture that changed the normal way things are processing. That was definitely

him, but this must not happen. Why is he looking for a different approach from our every morning usual mysterious look? I found myself sitting down with that little flower between my fingers looking at his back while he is at the counter, when he whips around, gives me a look, and furtively runs away from the bar. Yes, it was definitely him the one who laid that flower on the table… On my table.

It leaves me speechless and excited at the same time, but also a little confused and not so sure he was the one who made it. My friend looks at me and starts giggling, being a witness of that childish scene of two adults lost in such an absurd story that it makes no sense to the rest of the world. I look at her and, after the barman brought us our breakfast, I realise that I am still holding the flower in my hand and I quickly put it down next to my cappuccino just as if it was a burning object that was bursting my skin. I start to feel different emotions in a totally racing alternation. First of all, I feel honoured by that little present, then I become reluctant and I ask myself if I’ve really got the point. And if, perhaps, it was for my friend? What if the mysterious looks-giver was attracted by her and not by me? But so why is he always looking at me? No, ok, I am the source of his interest… But if it was only an exchange of looks and some secret smile, what does this ‘present’ means? As if it was a relic, I pick up the flower again, and I put it inside my book, and then I make it fall back to the big and large bag. Camilla, who can’t control her laughing, tells me that now we are at the turning point of this absurd non-affair, and hearing this from her voice scares me, and I want to run away for not coming back to that place again. Then I think about how I feel when I don’t see him, I couldn’t ever give up on these ten minutes that we share, even if at

short distance.

When the breakfast is over, we immediately go to work, knowing that today the working day will be short and at lunch time we will be able to escape for a shopping afternoon together. Luckily, the night rain gave way to the sun, leaving behind only some spare clouds. At 1

p.m. we are out, like a clockwork, ready to take the car in order to spend the afternoon at the Outlet to do some shopping taking advantage on the sales. In the car we were blasting Claudio Baglioni, singing with the windows down like two teenagers free from any concern. At the first false note, we burst out laughing, while we discern in the distance the wheat fields with bales ordered in a row. They’re beautiful to see, I’ve always managed to picture me behind them, laid down in their shadow, looking at the sky, waiting for some plane passing by and leaving its white trail that cuts the blue. I would invent stories on its passengers and on the journeys which will take them far away, maybe in some exotic place or in an unknown city After a few silent minutes, Camilla goes back to seriousness and starts for the first time to take seriously my non-affair. ‘You’re the one who must make the next move, the game must go on in two. He gave you a signal, he wants to continue in a different manner, but without dive immediately into a real acquaintance. Now you’re the one who must keep leading the game in an equal romantic and mysterious way.

In short, not banal. It would be too easy to go there and thank him…’

She’s right, the little move of the flower is designed to change course, to choose which path to follow, and it must be done in a creative way in order to keep that veil of mystery that for quite some time makes us look at each other with passion but without going further, without

saying a single word. We don’t even know our names, and this has been enough until today. Now it needs to be decided if we want to go on in a different way or close the door. Maybe he’ll be the one to regret his move, today he ran away as ever. Maybe tomorrow he will not even show up. ‘You need to make a change into your life, maybe the mysterious watcher could be the man for you and if he’s not, you need to start living again and finding someone to share your life with.’

Camilla continues with her serious tone. A great desire to play comes alive in me, a desire to break the rules and to dare, even if this means losing everything. I start to laugh while the wind strongly enters from the window and throws my hair on my face: ‘Ok, let’s play’.

Arrived at the shopping magic world, this is how we like to name those massive haute couture low-cost outlets, we start to go around the various windows without much conviction, until we stop in a little bakery where we decided to eat something, given the fact that we didn’t even had lunch. A slice of chocolate cake and a coffee for me, while my friend limits itself to a whole wheat croissant and an orange juice, since she needs to keep the scale under control. Camilla is a beautiful woman who with her girth gives a sense of serenity and a pleasant sight when she goes by. Always all dressed up, without a hair out of place, she’s the type of woman who makes man turning in the street, despite a bit of extra weight well-proportioned on her harmonious body.

A new excitement involved the two of us in the play with the stranger, so we both start to think of my next move. Usually, he enters the bar, goes to the counter where he has breakfast standing, and then he immediately goes away. What could it be my next move to

concentrate in those few instants and without even have a precise spot in which take action, as he has been able to do with our table? The only thing that I know is that I want to leave him a tangible sign too, maybe linking to the daisy in order to make him understand that I am undoubtedly the sender. In the bakery I have an epiphany: I notice in the window a green chocolate box within there’s a beautiful white and yellow sketch of a daisy. Therefore, I add the box of chocolates to our bill and I start to think about how to have it delivered to him, maybe with the usual coffee that he orders every morning. I feel like a teenager, I went back to the high school times when the most beautiful side of a love story was exactly the one before the declaration. The nights spent with friends thinking of if this or that boy could be ‘in love’ with us or dreaming of the first kiss in front of a pizza and a glass of Coca Cola, when a simple ‘Hi’ started to assume three thousand meanings that we analysed one by one. Times when the heart was racing even when eyes met, and the excitement was about the idea of going together to the same party, standing by and hoping on his first move.

Almost forty years old, I am back to be an unexperienced teenager who discovers love for the first time, with a crazy desire to play. I feel like I’m reborn, I came back to life and I am no more afraid to feel something for someone. It seems absurd, but that little flower has been enough to shake me up so much to make me realise that have been wasting my time and that I had to go back to make my clock go round and round. I come back home that is already late, so I decide to stop to eat a slice of pizza at the pizza place down the street. When I enter the restaurant, there’s anyone, not even the owner who I overhear moving

in the kitchen, probably baking the last pizzas of the evening. The door points out my entering and few moments later I see him looking out onto the door in front of the still burning big ovens. We greet and shortly after we sit together at the colourful wooden tables, chatting while my pizza is firing. He offers me a beer and starts to make small talking about all the strange and funny customers who came to the restaurant during the day. It’s always amusing to hear him speak, because I know that he’s always prone to exaggerate his tales, enriching them by not exactly real details that make everything more colourful and interesting. Generally, he always has a comic base, so speaking with him always ends up in loud laughter that attract bystanders who overhear us from the street. I eat quickly, with a great desire to remove my shoes and soak my feel in hot water. We have been walking so much that, despite the cold of this day, my feet are so swollen that I can barely walk.

Once I got home and I throw away my shoes, I jump on the bed straight away with my trusted computer searching some information about my mysterious smiling friend. Maybe I can discover something about him linked to our café, a website, a Facebook page. I log in with my username and I start to search. Not a trace of him, it would have been too good to find a comment by him so that I could have finally discovered his name and snooping around his social networks home, at least on the public sections. Thinking about the fact that maybe he could have had the same idea, I start by pressing like on the café Fan Page and browsing numerous pictures, I comment a random one, just to leave a sign. Once it has been published, I look at the picture appearing next to my comment. A miserable close-up, loaded

haphazardly a long time ago. I immediately hurry up looking for a new photo where I look better, and I change my profile picture. Now I feel more relaxed and I childishly hope that he is online too and seeing me, could feel the desire of texting me.

For about ten minutes I stare off the screen, waiting for a sign that doesn’t come. I refresh the page over and over, I log in and out thinking that maybe the connections is not exactly perfect, and in the end I turn it off, but only after I have turned the Facebook notifications on my mobile phone, just in case the mysterious men chooses to look for me and texts me tonight. Before I was hoping that our non-affair could never change a thing, but now the idea of a connection became obsessive and irrational.

Tomorrow it’s going to be a great day for our game, so I try to fall asleep as fast as I can, but I am so nervous about how to advance our game that I can’t sleep a wink. At midnight I am still tossing and turning in the cold bed, when I decide to get up. Without turning any light on, helping myself only with the feeble street lighting that silently enters the window, I reach the kitchen. A good mug of milk and cookies is the only solution in these cases. Years ago, it was my grandfather who prepared me these night eating and to keep me company in front of a good mug of barely that he was heating in his steal pan, always until it boiled and often making it drop on the flame that started to creak and change its colour hit by the sudden liquid.

When he could start to drink it, I had almost finished my milk with cookies and so I was the one who kept him company until he didn’t finish to drink its hot mug. At night I’ve always been more talkative than in the morning, so I used to break free from a lot of discourses

and doubts about what was about to happen the day after. These nights together, usually, happened before university exams, so much it was the tension that I finished revising so late that a mug of milk was a great help in order to get some sleep and relax after the study day.

Sitting at the table, today, I still feel his strong absence, in a concrete way and not only as a hurt feeling, but just as a tangible lack. Now, in front of my cup of milk, I can’t talk to anyone, and the perfume of barely burning on the stove is missing too. One time, in order to relieve the pain, I prepared also the barely beside my milk in a steal pan, but this thing just made me feel worse, and so I promised myself that I would have tried to go on, pulling me off as much as possible from past behaviours without lose the memory of these beautiful moments with him.

CHAPTER 5

Away

After my escape from the café I keep walking away with definite steps without never looking back as if I’d committed some bad deeds.

Like a thief afraid to get caught and with the adrenaline for the last moves, I move away as fast as I can and I take the first bus that I step into without even knowing where it’s going to take me. I have a meeting in the centre at late morning and so I will be able to drain all this excitement for that little flower abandoned in her hands. Giving her a flower, how did it get into my mind? I try to imagine what is happening now at the café, maybe she threw away that little daisy that is already withering in, laughing out loud with her friend. Did I become the laughingstock of the day? But my hope is different, I wish I’d been able to break through her thoughts, where I can hide in a silent little corner ready to discover new things about her. I ran away afraid that our story made of looks could change, but deep down in my heart I may really hope this could happened. I would like to be a little fly, buzzing around their heads, looking into her eyes as blue as the sky and caught every small grimace of her face with all the thoughts that can come into her mind looking at every single white petal. I am almost tempted to go back but now I am too far and tired.

Luckily, the bus leads to the centre and even if I did it, she wouldn’t be there anymore. I found a seat and I sit down letting me cradle by the speed of the big means of transport. My fellow travellers are all silent and ready for a working or studying day, or even only for the morning stroll in order to kill the long days that you experience

when you reach a certain age. Many of them have a book opened between their hands, others are listening to music, others are lost in their thoughts. An old lady at the bottom of the bus draws my attention, dressed up in red with a big empty shopping trolley beside her. Her look is tired and she dangles at every curve. I got to thinking at how I will be when I’ll be old, and the first thought that I have is exactly that I don’t want to be alone, I want to reach that age with someone I can share everything with, even the little daisies picked up on the road. I go back to think of her while outside the window I see the majesty of the city and its impressing monuments that frame any adventure of my life.

When I got quickly off the bus at Vittoriano I suddenly woke up from this bliss reached between thoughts and the flowing of these beautiful places outside the window. The old lady gets off with me too, ready in front of the door holding with one hand her loyal shopping trolley while with the other she held for balance. We separate at the stop and I follow her with my eyes until she turns the corner at the bottom of the road, almost to check that anything bad happens to her and ready to help her if she needs anything. Sometimes it won’t take much to empathize with someone who will then disappear from your life forever as fast as he/she entered in it for a brief moment. I look at the watch: I am definitely too early for my meeting at the museum of Piazza Venezia and so I take advantage of taking some pictures at Fori in this beautiful day that deserves to be burnt in a visual memory. Just by coincidence, I see a little daisy popping up from the edge of the pavement and so I manage to take a close-up with the blurred monuments in the background that gives the illusion to be out of world

and time. I would love to send it straight away to my mysterious fellow traveller but I wouldn’t really know how to deliver it to her, not even knowing her name. Once home I’ll save it also on the phone, it will always be ready in case I manage to reach her through some more computerized way.

Strolling around the centre of Rome really takes you out the daily life and between the tourists you can even lose track of space and time.

A constant flowing of languages and colours between a lot of people armed with cameras and flashes smiles to fix entire days spent visiting the Eternal City. The gladiators at Colosseum are always ready to take part in the photographs under a very large reward and there are carriages that accompany the most willing to try new dimensions, because while in holydays schemes must change at least for half an hour, carried through the city in a chariot completed with horses. The hooves on cobblestones hide the noise of cars and the city seen from above tastes different, stepping back into the past. The queue in front of the Colosseum is already long despite the cold and the waiting times, ready to have a sight of one of the world most famous places to take back to their city photos and souvenirs to give to their friends and families. Later on, are going to arrive also the couples of newlyweds still dressed up for the usual photographs between the most amusing scenarios of the Capital, and so this place will acquire a new aspect and meaning for who choose it as his/her destination.

After spending the morning pretending to be a tourist, I come back with deliberate pace towards the not too far place of my meeting. I meet my interlocutor by chance at the base of the Vittoriano and so we decide to talk about my job open air without locking us up in his office

between paperwork and the dark of the room. They want to remake the fliers of the Monument and so they need new photographs, maybe taking advantage of the view of Rome that you have going up to its highest part, available only to chosen few. I’ve already worked for them a couple of time in occasion of particular exhibitions inside the ‘typewriter’, as the Altare della Pace is called in Rome. Since in 2000

they allowed the access of the staircase, once in a while I like to spend a few hours visiting the Vittoriano, seeing all its features dedicated to Italian cities and regions, and the part that I enjoy the most is the sacrarium of battle flags, countless artifacts ad sigils that taste like past between the texture of the consumed fabric. I am glad to accept the job and I immediately begin to take some pictures, taking advantage of the access to areas not granted to regular visitors. From up there, the city grabs you between marbles and ancient Medieval buildings until the luxury of the ancient Rome, all in the same view. It almost looks like you can touch the sun and immerge into the clear sky that blows cold blasts from time to time to awake you from this surreal and magic atmosphere.

I would like to stay there, curled up in some space between the columns and the endless staircase to see Rome and all that little ants that move back and forth through the streets below. I pick up my courage and I leave that place charged with so much history that it almost makes you hear the voices of everyone who was there before you, before that theatrical monument had been built. I decide to walk home, taking advantage of the day that spared us last night rain. I take a picture of the puddles that reflect the streets and in one there’s me, reflected with my blue jacket and blue jeans, black messy hair, and

sunglasses hidden behind the camera. I am there too, for a change, and as I see myself reflected in the little puddle I almost don’t recognize myself from how long I have not been thinking about myself and my actual life. A period spent only at work, without a lot of friends whom share something else with, and with few meaningless women whom spend some nights that don’t leave any emotion in me. A cold period, made more intimate by my photographs that however tell the life of other people and other places. There’s a bit of me in every shot, but it’s nothing compared to what a photographer can do if he puts his heart into it. I should start not to take commissioned pictures again, looking for myself inside of them, and maybe the daisy photograph is the first step to rediscover myself as changed and turning my life around, my life which now belongs only to others as a harlot that is only devoted to her job to please the others.

I cross Via del Corso for a little section for then throwing myself in the little back street that leads to the always crowded Pantheon. In that moment, Stefano phones me. He works in an office just behind Corso Vittorio Emanuele and knowing about my meeting, he called me to order for a quick lunch in his areas. In a few minutes we are already together, going through Campo de’ Fiori to eat one of the delicious express sandwiches made in a little place without chairs or tables. My favourite one is the eggplants and mozzarella one and so, lunch in hand, we continue our stroll until we stop on a bench in Piazza Navona. I start to tell my friend about my morning starting from the Vittoriano and then I confess about the daisy. As soon as I start to describe the moment at the café, he stops walking and eating and totally taken by my story, ‘Now is up to her’ says without reflecting