your favourite footballer. Shall we go to the sea together on Tuesday? I see you all the time, Ninon. I set up shop in the Piazza Marconi and I see you on the far side of the crowd. I’m in Parma and you’re in Modena and I see you four or five times in a day. I recognise your elbow, and the way you slip your arm through the strap of your white bag and the Chinese crumpled silk dress you wear with orangey flames on the left hip. I see you because you’ve got under my skin. Yesterday, Sunday, I sold forty-three Ricci shirts. A good day. About a million and a half profit. A whole summer month like this, I was telling myself, and we’ll go and buy, Ninon and I, air tickets to Paris. I love you.—Gino. I tore up the letter, Marella, and I flushed it down the lavatory. It wouldn’t disappear the first time. The paper floated.
The road passes between two large farms, each with its yard, its gate and its square buildings. Outside the towns, every habitation on this plain is built square so as to resist a little the endless space which dwarfs everything. When the signalman and his bike have passed, the two large farms are silent.
I’m on a trolley, Papa, and they’re wheeling me somewhere down a corridor, two men in white, who are thinkingabout something else, not about me. Where are you taking me? I ask. To the Endocrinology Unit, one of them says kindly. I don’t understand. It’s a detail, anyway, and on a trolley like this, with wheels which turn in every direction, I’m going to be wheeled out.
In the village of Crescentino a funeral procession winds its way from the church and the signalman is obliged to follow as slowly as the last rank of mourners, men in hats who walk with their heads bowed.
Marella phones. She isn’t weeping any more, so I don’t either. Let’s not call it SIDA, she says, between you and me, just between you and me, let’s call it STELLA.
Nothing hides like flatness. On the plain the signalman is riding across, a man doesn’t know about last night’s violence until he trips over the body.
Marella, I have another letter from Gino: Ninon, it says, Ninon, I understand nothing. You stand me up. You giveback the turtle ring. You drop it in my letterbox without a word. You come all the way to Cremona and you don’t see me. I don’t even know when you’ll get this letter. But I’m going to find you and I’m going to love you. One morning, wherever you are, you’ll wake up and you’ll see my Mercedes with VESTITI SCIC written on its sides outside your front door. And that morning, you’d better get back into bed. NINON + GINO = AMORE.
This one I don’t tear up. I reply to him on a postcard which I put in an envelope. On the postcard I tell Gino he must have a test to see whether he’s seropositive. I say nothing about myself because there’s nothing to be said. It’s obvious. The postcard is of Vialli, scoring.
The signalman is now crossing paddy-fields which extend to the horizon and which shine like a hundred irregular mirrors. On their surface is a green filigrane made of the shoots of the early rice crop. The rice fields were a part of a dream of Cavour’s in which he saw Italy become a rich country. A canal was built for the rice fields. And here, in 1870, the first long, smooth, milky, light Italian rice, which melts in the mouth like no other, was picked and dried and poured into sacks.
I have nothing. All, all, all, all, all I had has been taken.
Nothing moves on the still water. The irregular mirrors reflect the light from the sky. No colours. No clouds. Only the signalman on his bike moves. He is driving very fast.
The gift of giving myself has been taken away. If I offer myself, I offer death. Always, till my dying day. When I walk down the street and the
ragazzi
look at me, I’m reminded how all the while I’m death. Come close enough to me, once, twice or a hundred times and, supposing I love you, you will die. Not if you use a condom, they say. With a condom
The road passes between two large farms, each with its yard, its gate and its square buildings. Outside the towns, every habitation on this plain is built square so as to resist a little the endless space which dwarfs everything. When the signalman and his bike have passed, the two large farms are silent.
I’m on a trolley, Papa, and they’re wheeling me somewhere down a corridor, two men in white, who are thinkingabout something else, not about me. Where are you taking me? I ask. To the Endocrinology Unit, one of them says kindly. I don’t understand. It’s a detail, anyway, and on a trolley like this, with wheels which turn in every direction, I’m going to be wheeled out.
In the village of Crescentino a funeral procession winds its way from the church and the signalman is obliged to follow as slowly as the last rank of mourners, men in hats who walk with their heads bowed.
Marella phones. She isn’t weeping any more, so I don’t either. Let’s not call it SIDA, she says, between you and me, just between you and me, let’s call it STELLA.
Nothing hides like flatness. On the plain the signalman is riding across, a man doesn’t know about last night’s violence until he trips over the body.
Marella, I have another letter from Gino: Ninon, it says, Ninon, I understand nothing. You stand me up. You giveback the turtle ring. You drop it in my letterbox without a word. You come all the way to Cremona and you don’t see me. I don’t even know when you’ll get this letter. But I’m going to find you and I’m going to love you. One morning, wherever you are, you’ll wake up and you’ll see my Mercedes with VESTITI SCIC written on its sides outside your front door. And that morning, you’d better get back into bed. NINON + GINO = AMORE.
This one I don’t tear up. I reply to him on a postcard which I put in an envelope. On the postcard I tell Gino he must have a test to see whether he’s seropositive. I say nothing about myself because there’s nothing to be said. It’s obvious. The postcard is of Vialli, scoring.
The signalman is now crossing paddy-fields which extend to the horizon and which shine like a hundred irregular mirrors. On their surface is a green filigrane made of the shoots of the early rice crop. The rice fields were a part of a dream of Cavour’s in which he saw Italy become a rich country. A canal was built for the rice fields. And here, in 1870, the first long, smooth, milky, light Italian rice, which melts in the mouth like no other, was picked and dried and poured into sacks.
I have nothing. All, all, all, all, all I had has been taken.
Nothing moves on the still water. The irregular mirrors reflect the light from the sky. No colours. No clouds. Only the signalman on his bike moves. He is driving very fast.
The gift of giving myself has been taken away. If I offer myself, I offer death. Always, till my dying day. When I walk down the street and the
ragazzi
look at me, I’m reminded how all the while I’m death. Come close enough to me, once, twice or a hundred times and, supposing I love you, you will die. Not if you use a condom, they say. With a condom
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