White Like Milk, Red Like Blood

by Alessandro D'Avenia

  It is already night. There is darkness outside. I want to protect Beatrice from the night. I get out of bed and go toward her wing. I no longer notice the smell of the hospital, now I smell only the odor of the sick people, which I fear less. I go back to my room. I can’t go with empty hands. I enter a room where there are some flowers in a vase. Two ladies are watching TV. It must be one of those very boring films on channel four. They seem to have fallen into one of those hypnotic silences of channel four. Old people. I approach the vase. I take a daisy. A white one. One of the two ladies turns toward me. I smile.

  “It’s for a friend.”

  The face that seems like something out of a prehistoric cave nods “all right,” and her wrinkles deepen into rivers.

  “Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight,” she tells me sweetly, relaxing the rivers of her wrinkles into a sea of peace. I leave cheerfully with my flower in hand. This daisy is very beautiful. Simple, as a daisy should be. It’s as if the seed had been planted by someone who was expecting this very moment. That gardener didn’t know it, but he was doing it for me. His work had meaning for this very moment. In a corridor of a hospital, in the white silence of the night, I am bringing a daisy to Beatrice, in room 234 of the oncology ward. When I enter into the room, it is semidark. I can only distinguish the outlines of Beatrice and the lady with wrinkles.

  They are already sleeping. They are so similar in the dim light! They are both worn down by their illnesses. They are so near and yet so far apart. It’s not fair that one so young becomes so old so quickly. Beatrice sleeps. I barely see her profile, which seems to embody all the most beautiful profiles I know, under the brown hospital blanket. I approach and leave my daisy next to her, on the nightstand. I whisper a song, without shame, without blushing.

  “Good night,

  Good night, little flower,

  Good night

  Between the stars and the room.

  To dream of you

  I must have you nearby,

  And nearby

  Is not yet enough … ”

  I turn away in silence. I did what I had to do: my first serenade. In pajamas, but I did it.

  46

  I return to bed, unable to fall asleep. When I look at Beatrice, I feel like a brick has been planted in my stomach. It’s different from the sensation you get when you see a strikingly beautiful girl. There are girls who make your head spin because of their beauty. Beatrice planted a brick in my stomach, a weight that must be carried, a sweet weight … This must be the sign of true love. Not simply a love that makes your head spin like an attack of vertigo, but a love that pulls you down to earth like gravity. With these thoughts, I fall asleep with the light on, looking at the picture Silvia had given me. I was imagining myself at the helm of a ship and next to me, Beatrice, sailing to the island where all our dreams would become reality. A white daisy in her fiery red hair inflamed by the sun, as if it were made from the surface of the sea.

  As Aldo, Giovanni, and Giacomo would say: “Ask me if I am happy.” Yes, at least in my dreams.

  47

  Finally, I get to return home. Tomorrow is Christmas, and they are discharging me. You can’t imagine my joy! The only thing still wrapped up is my arm: with a huge cast! But first, I have to leave the letter for Beatrice so we can see each other once she gets out of the hospital. Everything will work out fine, and we will live happily ever after. I am awaiting the help of the night, when the hospital is filled with haphazard snoring that pours out of the rooms like the grunting of wild boars. The smell of diseases seems to quiet down during the sleeping hours, like pain does. I have my letter in a new envelope that I had Silvia buy for me. It is sealed. With silent steps, I make my way to Beatrice’s ward. With every step, I feel my soul dilate and my heart become a home that Beatrice has already begun to decorate, moving objects, feelings, dreams, projects, as she sees fit. I repeat the words of the letter to myself from memory, as if they could detach themselves from the paper and take on a life of their own.

  The door of the room is closed. I open it with all the delicacy I can. I approach Beatrice’s bed almost without breathing, in order to hear any murmur of hers, to smell the perfume of her being.

  The bed is empty. The sheets are untouched, white, without a wrinkle on them.

  I sit on the bed. I squeeze the letter in my hands until I crush it. My dream is like those kites I built with Dad when I was a child. Months of preparation, and then they never flew. Only once, a red and white kite had taken flight, but the wind was blowing so hard that the string was cutting into my hand and I had to let it go, because of the pain.

  Beatrice is flying away like the kite, carried away by the wind. I try to hold her back, but the pain from the thin cord tying her to my heart gets stronger and stronger. … I curl up, like Terminator when he sleeps, the pain slowly diminishing when I touch the bed that had embraced Beatrice. Tonight I am going to sleep with her, even if she has flown away from here.

  48

  “What are you doing here?”

  These are the words that interrupt my wanderings in an immense white bed without borders. If the fat nurse didn’t know me, I would be in deep trouble.

  “I was looking for Beatrice. … ” I answer with such sincerity that it touches the soft heart that all fat nurses have, who are capable of loving the smell of sick people.

  “She left yesterday.”

  She falls silent and assumes a serious countenance.

  I leave the bed under the weight of the nostalgia of someone who has spent the night in the arms of Beatrice. I leave the room with my head hung low, dragging my feet. When I go by the nurse, she musses my hair with her soft hand.

  “Take good care of her. For me.”

  I look at her intently and feel the warmth of that hand giving me the courage that I lack.

  “I will. … ”

  Later, Mom arrives. She packs all my stuff into a big duffle bag, and supporting me with one arm, even if it’s not necessary, she helps me to the car. I pretend I feel worse than I do so that she can feel my weight, and I her embrace, which is capable of making me forget my pain, a pain that is the most invisible and heavy thing I know.

  My room has stayed the same. Who knows what changes I was expecting. I no longer live under the same roof as Beatrice, nor can I go visit her. My Bat-scooter has met its end, like I could have, too. Anyway, I couldn’t drive if I wanted to.

  It’s Christmas, and I have to stay inside the house with my arm in a sling for two more weeks. “Take advantage of this vacation to recover your strength and help you get better,” Mom tells me. Hey, what a great vacation, studying twice as much as usual. But two times zero makes zero, at least this much I know. When I try to hit the books, the hands of my watch seem to stick on the dial and stop moving, prisoners in a space-time bubble.

  I begin to float in the white bubble that takes me up high, far away among the clouds, where nobody can hear me anymore, and then into the real silence: alone like a balloon that has flown away.

  When everything turns to white, my heart tightens as small as a lentil and, even if I scream, no one can hear me.

  The only one that can save me is Silvia.

  49

  Silvia isn’t home, she’s at the beach for a few days at her grandmother’s. All the better: this way I can postpone that damn make-up work. Nonetheless, I am bored to death. I feel guilty over the time I’m wasting, but I can’t stand to face the toil of all those pages to catch up on. The Dreamer says that when we are bored it’s because we aren’t living enough. Where does this come from? It’s one of his philosophical statements. It’s something bigger than me. Maybe this is why I like it. Maybe because it tells the truth: I’m not living enough. But what does, “I’m not living enough” mean? I must ask him.

  Niko calls me. Last week, we won the game against the Desperados, who are pathetic both by name and in reality. We are back in the competition now, and the next game is in a month. Who knows if I’ll be abl
e to be on the playing field. This year, all my dreams depend on the soccer tournament. I want to raise the prize cup for Beatrice and, hopefully, in front of her!

  When we get bored, it’s because our lives are boring.

  50

  Then comes the day when you look at yourself in the mirror and you are different from what you were expecting. Yes, because the mirror is the cruelest form of the truth. You don’t appear the way you really are. You would like your image to correspond with the person you are inside, and that others, seeing you, could immediately recognize whether or not you were someone sincere, generous, kind … instead it always requires words or deeds. It’s necessary to demonstrate who you are. It would be better if you could just limit yourself to showing it. It would be so much easier.

  Maybe I’ll work out in the gym and get really buff, get a piercing, a tattoo of a lion on one large bicep (which I don’t have yet). … I don’t know, I have to think about it. These are the kinds of things that say everything about you at a glance.

  Erika-with-the-k has a nose piercing, and you get that she is an open person, one you can speak to. Susy has a tattoo that starts under her belly button and converges right there. In this case, you understand exactly who you are dealing with. It’s a sort of sign of the type of girl who is easy. In short: I must become more noticeable so that I will stand out more in the eyes of others. I am tired of being anonymous.

  Beatrice doesn’t need to do any of this, she has red hair and green eyes. These are enough to tell you that she knows how to love and how pure she is: red like the most luminous star, pure white like the most Hawaiian sand that exists.

  51

  Once back to school, everybody makes fun of me and they call me C-3PO, the golden robot of Star Wars. I still have my arm in a sling, even though finally, in a few days, they’re going to remove the cast. It seems that even Giacomo isn’t the biggest loser in the class since I have come back, because I’ve turned out to be even more unlucky than him. However, as compensation, everybody has signed my cast. The cast is completely covered with the signatures of my classmates and friends. My arm is multicolored. I have a famous arm. My arm loves me, because now I am wearing the name of all those who care about me. “The Pirates are waiting for their captain! —Niko” “Your reincarnation is going to be a monument to bad luck … —Erika” “Better you than me! —Jack” “You’re still handsome, even like this! —Silvia” Only one signature is missing. That of Beatrice. But I don’t need it, because her signature is written on my heart.

  There are signatures, and there are signatures. If you buy Fred Perry, Dockers, Nike … those are signatures you carry on things and sooner or later you change them, you throw them away, you lose them … Sure, they make you feel better, but they pass. Then, there are other signatures. Those you carry on your heart. Those signatures tell you who you really are and who you care about. On my heart, I have Beatrice’s signature tattooed. She is my dream, and I exist only for her.

  She, however, doesn’t come to school: a new cycle of chemo. She’ll end up missing a whole school year if this goes on.

  When I get back home, there is a crumpled letter on my desk. A Post-it from Mom that says, “It was left in the bottom of the hospital bag.” The letter to Beatrice! How could I have forgotten it? I must bring the letter to her, even if it’s the last thing I do, because, “It’s what you do that defines you, not what you are.” Batman’s always right.

  52

  Finally, forced by the inexorable passing of days, I am seated in front of my books. I’ve decided to catch up on my studies. Actually, Silvia is seated before me, because on my own, I could never do it. By now, we are in the final crunch phase of the semester, between oral exams and homework assignments. And I am so far behind.

  Silvia is telling me about The Dreamer’s lessons (above all, those in which he strays from the set program, which are my favorite), she summarizes the rules of syntax for me, she explains a canto of The Divine Comedy to me. The one about Ulysses, where he convinces his shipmates to confront the sea in order to seek out, it seems, “virtue and knowledge” (in my ears I can hear the sharp, metallic voice of the prof), and then he betrays them, and they all perish in the depths of the abyss.

  While Silvia is explaining it to me, I get lost. Thinking about it, it’s always the same old story. There are some people who have a dream, or think they have it, and force others to believe in it, but then time and death sweep away everything.

  Everybody has lived in the mirage of that dream. Adrenaline explodes in your veins simply because someone has believed in your dream, but it was all an illusion. My dream is also an illusion. The disease wants to take it away from me. Without Beatrice, I don’t exist.

  Silvia looks at me, staring into my eyes, in silence, because she understands that I am lost in my thoughts. She touches me and again the wind blows the boat in the picture, at full sail, toward a harbor that I don’t know but I know exists, just as the hand that caressed me. How does she do it with just one touch?

  Thank you, Silvia. Thank you, Silvia, because you are here. Thank you, Silvia, because you are the anchor that prevents me from going adrift, and you are also the sail that allows me to cross the rough sea.

  “Thank you, Silvia. I love you.”

  “Me too.”

  53

  There are afternoons when my room, which is better than Euro-Disney and Gardaland amusement park put together, seems like an attic full of worn-out stuff. What the fuck do you do with your life if death follows? And what comes after death scares me. And what scares me even more is if after there is nothing. And God scares me, He who is omnipotent. Evil and suffering scare me. And Beatrice’s disease scares me. To remain alone also scares me. And all this fucking whiteness …

  I want to call Niko, but Niko is playing soccer, so I can’t. Then I call Silvia, but Silvia isn’t at home. I call her on her cell: it’s turned off. I send her a message: “Call me when you can.”

  Silvia, could you give me a caress like you did last time? I am scared, Silvia. I am fucking scared of everything. I’m afraid of not being able to do anything worthwhile in my life. I’m afraid that Beatrice might die. I’m afraid of not having anybody left to call on the phone. I’m afraid that you might leave me.

  I am in my room, and inside my room there are only mute objects. Nobody to speak to. The books are mute, also because The Dreamer isn’t here to explain them to me or give me the illusion that I could like them. The comics are mute, in spite of their colors. The stereo is mute, because I don’t feel like turning it on. My computer is mute, because its screen, so immense that it can hold the entire world in it, when looked at from the side, is only a flat screen. And you ask yourself how could it contain the whole world, the whole ocean, if it’s so flat? In my room today, everything is mute. But I don’t want to flee. I want to resist. Today, my room is inundated by waves of sadness. I try to contain them like a sponge. Ridiculous. I resist a few minutes more, then fear assails me, and I am shipwrecked in the center of an ocean of solitude.

  I am floating in a desert of whiteness: an enormous, boundless, soundless white room, where not even the corners of the walls can be distinguished. You don’t know what’s up, down, right or left … I scream, but every sound is stifled. Only rotten words come out of my mouth.

  Silvia, call me, I beg you.

  54

  When I wake up, it’s four o’clock, and fear is farther away, simply because I’m completely out of it. I’ve landed on some unknown island. I’m looking for something that might help me survive. The posters in my room look back at me. Then I see the letter. I must take the letter to Beatrice. There are two problems. The letter is too messed up, it looks like the rough copy of the rough copies of my essays; therefore, I need to rewrite it, but I’m unable to use my left hand.

  The second problem is that I don’t know if Beatrice is at home or at the hospital. There is only one solution to the first problem: Silvia. I’ll dictate the letter. She’ll w
rite it for me. I know it’s not my handwriting, but Silvia has beautiful handwriting, better than mine. As for the second problem … the solution is clear: Silvia!

  Am I taking this too far? She’ll call Beatrice and ask her where she is, that way I can bring her the letter, and maybe I will even speak to her. Yes, I’ll speak to her because I have to. I must tell her about my dream, and when she understands that the dream is necessary, that the dream is our shared destiny, she will get well, because dreams can cure anything gone wrong, any suffering. Dreams can color any whiteness.

  I’m going to Silvia’s.

  55

  Silvia’s mother is a lady who is exactly as she appears. I like her. Silvia has taken more from her than from her father, who is a quiet man, and in a certain sense, almost enigmatic. Silvia’s mother has a great gift: she knows how to show real interest in me. I understand this from her questions.

  “Are you going to play music again soon?”

  “I can hardly wait. … ”

  She asks questions about details. Only those who ask about details have really tried to know who you are, in your heart. Details. Details: a way to truly love. I like Silvia’s mother. If I could choose another mother, after the one I have, I would choose Silvia’s mother.

  Silvia’s room smells of lavender. That’s the name of those crumbled up dried flowers that she has in a bowl on a low coffee table in the center of the room. On the walls, there aren’t any posters like there are in my room. Rather, photographs. Photographs of Silvia as a baby, with her parents, with her little brother, at the elementary school during a recital, dressed like the Blue Fairy. I once told her that she is the Blue Fairy and I am Pinocchio. Maybe Silvia has stepped out of that book.