Life, Chronicle.. Adriana Sabato

      

      Adriana Sabato

      Three tales

      Life, chronicle

      Original title:

      La vita, la cronaca. Tre racconti.

      Translated by:

      Eva Melisa Mastroianni

      Publisher: Tektime - Traduzionelibri.it

      (http://www.traduzionelibri.it).

      ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE AIRHEAD

      The date of a sad anniversary approached. More than thirty years had already elapsed, but it was a fact never fully accepted, considering the havoc caused in the lives of all family members… And, perhaps, it still represented a loss as tangible as irreversible and repairable only to her… But, unfortunately, it had gone this way…

      A morning when she could not sleep, Alessia had discovered how a severe headache can become productive by using diligence and not more laziness. She learned that her own body, her limbs, could become a labor force and, at the same time, a way to release the stress of her many expectations, including even the physical well-being one. In the meantime, she had taken a pill and, while expecting for its magical effect, she alternated her right leg to the left one, with a cloth under her feet, to dart across the floor of her endless house, and, playing and dancing, to do such a real battle against the boredom of that expectation. Moreover, with this sort of strange exercise, her legs came alive from the soft night numbness, causing a sweet feeling of vitality, unexpected to be honest, as unexpected was the regress of the extreme migraine which had aroused so many bad thoughts.

      Alessia had developed a very strange mania… never had before: the urge to have her whole life and all her stuff under strict control, perhaps because, up to now, she had not had her own territory to keep at bay, to keep in house as a beautiful rose… perhaps because, up to now, she had not had anything seriously belonging to her… everything was for rent. Her own existence was in rent. How can this be? But yes! When for years they make you believe that you owe something to someone, in the end, your life gets out of your hand… As her dearest friend… Where was she? That day she could have found her or not. She had suddenly popped up in front of her, abruptly reminding her the carefree years of her life, but not for that they were lighter years in her memories… They certainly were the truest and authentic ones, together with her new home, back then as now. Now that she had found her, that she had found them – her friends, her companions – a strong emotion had shocked her heart while waiting to see all of them, all together… But is it true? Is it possible? “We'll see,” she had told her beloved and sweet husband, “In the meantime, I live” she told herself “and I endorse this feeling… And that is saying a lot!”

      Meanwhile, she also thought about her musician friends: those friends who had dominated the meanness of the people the night before, forcing their mouths to silence, their empty words to dissolve into nothingness, to disappear swallowed as by black holes, enraptured by the beauty of their notes and amazed by the magic enchantment of the music which had really saved the whole world that night. The really as annoying as inappropriate noises and yelling of that useless crew gathered there, were the most representative nonsense of our times. Hard and tough times, but just as light if interpreted with the eyes of that useless riffraff who saw - see, luck or need - everything with the blinds' sight.

       “We need a revolutionary page, considreing the times we live,” said the priest during the homily of All Saints' Day “but that page does exist! It was written two thousand years ago… It is not true that rich people do not have problems; it is not true that the well-being is all that you could want in this life. The opposite is true. Not easy to accept, but that is it, just like that… And so, understand it and try to explain it!”

      Those days were full of important meetings and equally important emotions. Dates to be marked, to be remembered. Alessia could not forget that beautiful, sunny but not hot afternoon when she had seen again the faces of her past… Swapping stories, at last, as they were used to, joking, playing and enjoying the elapsing time.

      They were amusing themselves, but they were not the only ones. Yes, because the image of some poor people, immigrants and others, had impressed a lot during the weekly fair - a great deal had been said about that those days. They were forced to discharge their physiological needs on the street, on the beach, behind a concrete corner… They were ugly images to be seen as well as to be transmitted, the reality of itinerant workers who cannot find almost never the right means to carry out their activities in peace; they were oppressed sometimes by bad urban habits, sometimes by the local ones, but above all by the failings of those who would have had to provide for the reception habits from immemorial time!

       A strong thematic, never addressed in the right way, never fully figured by hosts and guests, by offering the opportunity to the many charlatans on duty, to complain, criticize, offend while doing nothing, sitting back. Or even worse, seeing non-existent positivity, appearing and being seen as a party game without a purpose, other than to “appear”… a game for the sake of it. A game harmful to themselves and to the community, a game without foundations and the house without a foundation crumbles. Everyone knows it, even babies. It’s a risky game.

      Will it be worthless to live honestly? Well… Sometimes we are led to truly think so, but being dishonest is really out of our habits, of our way of life, our “mindset”! “We were brought up too well,” Alessia often said to her husband. And he nodded, he always nodded and they ever more kidded on this topic which at the beginning represented a reason to argue… But now “you always have to say yes”, he said to Alessia kidding. Well, it was not a joke at all! It was the truth and she accepted this way of playing, she liked it… This is love, too… Was it a challenge she had won? No, love is not a challenge… But, until a few years before none, including herself, would have bet on her future as a mother, wife and professional; everyone pitying with their half-said words and sentences… But what did they pity with their whiny tone? And… With the increasingly accepted and already assigned situations, arrangements and parts, as in a great theatre - a dark theatre - where at some point the “deus ex machina” comes to overturn everything, to disrupt what is planned, crystallized, petrified in the heads and small brains of those who are around and do not understand these words; REVOLUTION, CHANGE, OVERTURNING. The most beautiful thing in life is change: the habituation, you know, generates boredom, dullness, sedentary lifestyle. Life, however, is a continuous movement, a continuous growth. “The elderly get well that.” Alessia thought “Think of the 100-year-old people! They do not expect at all of living that long, they do not expect at all of waking up the following morning! At least the elderly who are conscious of being alive! It is possible that there are seniors who are not aware of it… The diseases of the elderly lead them to think, to say and to do things that we would never have remotely thought. And yet they are always there, looking in our eyes while waiting for some understanding… And as long as they are in life they are there, then tomorrow… who knows! The fact they have added one more day to their existence, to be still there - where they could be gone the next day - is a great revolution for them, a great achievement. A challenge!

      And then there was her most important piece of paper… Another successful challenge by pure chance? Alessia sometimes was afraid of too many successful challenges, although they appeared as failures to other people's eyes… But reality has different angles, like a camera lens: depending on how you place the photographer with respect to what he portrays, the picture will have a different flavor, a different effect in the beholder's eyes; there are many variables and it is for this reason that the reality of a shot will never be equal to itself. Well, even in the reality of every human being what could be an achievement for one person, it could represent a failure for another one. Still nowadays when knowledge is a “click” away, we use brain without prospects, without a background, without warp and weft, without a theme proposing and developing under many variations, and then still developing and therefore evolving, transforming and then returning again, giving rise to the path that could never end… in theory. If only we would offer every