White Like Milk, Red Like Blood

by Alessandro D'Avenia

  “All the love I have felt around me in the past months has changed me; it has made me touch God. Little by little, I am done with fear, with weeping, because I believe I will close my eyes and I will reawaken near Him. And I will stop suffering.”

  I don’t understand her. In fact, she sends me into a rage. I climb mountains, I cross oceans, I immerse myself in white up to my neck, and she refuses me like this. I did everything possible to have her, and just when I have her so near, I discover she is so far. My fingers contract into a fist, my vocal chords tense up to scream.

  Beatrice comes closer and takes my constricted hands, which loosen up, while my vocal chords relax. She has warm hands, and I feel life leaving my fingers when they are caressing hers, as if through our hands we could exchange souls, or our souls could no longer find any borders to contain themselves. Then, delicately, she lets my hands go, giving our souls time to reenter their shells, and I can feel her sail off again, far from me, toward an unknown harbor.

  “Thank you for the visit, Leo. You should go now. I’m sorry, but I’m very tired. However, I would like it if you could come back and see me again. I’m giving you my cell number, this way you can let me know when you’re planning to come. Thank you.”

  I am so confused and cold that I act without thinking. I pretend I don’t have it, even though, in reality, I already have her number, but when she gives it to me, I realize that it’s different than the one Silvia gave me a while back. I can’t ask anything, but now all the unanswered messages are understood. So, then, Beatrice doesn’t think that I am a loser, and her silence was not intentional! I still have some hope. Maybe Silvia made a mistake, maybe she also had the wrong number, or I managed to write it down wrong. I have a memory for numbers that not even my ninety-five-year-old grandmother can equal. I bend down and kiss her on the forehead. Her thin skin has the subtle perfume of a simple soap, without the scent of Dolce and Gabbana or Calvin Klein. It is her smell, and that is enough. Without disguises.

  “Thank you.”

  She leaves me with a smile, and when I turn around toward the door, behind me I feel a white vertigo that wants to chew me up and swallow me.

  79

  Beatrice’s mother thanks me and lets me know that Silvia is waiting for me downstairs. I make an effort to regain my composure.

  “Thanks, ma’am. If I have your permission, I would like to come and visit Beatrice. And if you need anything, I am at your service, feel free to call me … even in the morning.”

  She laughs openly. “You are very astute, Leo. I’ll keep it in mind.”

  When I exit the main gate, Silvia is there waiting for me, leaning against a streetlight as if she wanted to become part of it. She keeps her glance fixed on my eyes, which barely see her while they float in a pool of tears. She takes my hand and, as fragile as leaves, we walk in silence for the remaining hours of that day, hand in hand, each one stronger not because of his or her own strength, but because of what one gives to the other.

  80

  When I get back home, I see my mother sitting in the living room. My father is sitting in front of her. They seem like two statues.

  “Sit down.”

  I put my backpack between my legs as a defense against the fury that will be directed at me in a moment. It’s my mother who makes the first move.

  “They called from school. You are at risk of repeating the whole year. Starting today until the end of the school year, you don’t leave the house.”

  I look at my father to understand if it’s the usual Mom attack, which will involve a series of stipulations along with punishment likely to include the withholding of my allowance or being grounded for one Saturday. But my father is dead serious. The discussion is over. I don’t say anything. I take my backpack and go up to my room. What do I care about punishment like that? If it’s necessary, I will escape; no way could they keep me at home. Besides, what can they do if I run away—can they punish me for a year? Then I’ll run away again, until they punish me for life, which is useless, because lifelong punishment wouldn’t make any sense at all, it would be overlapping. I stretch out on the bed. My eyes stare at the ceiling where Beatrice’s face appears like a fresco.

  “I don’t know if you understand: I am dying.”

  Her words, like a thousand needles, are perforating my veins. I haven’t understood anything about life, about suffering, about death, about love. And I believed that love could conquer everything. What an illusion. Like everyone, we are reciting the same script in this comedy, to be massacred in the end. It’s not a comedy, but a horror. While I am becoming petrified on the bed, I realize that my father has come into my room. He is looking out the window.

  “You know, Leo, I also cut school once. They had just given a convertible Spider to my classmate’s brother, and that morning we were going to the beach to try it out. I still remember the wind that overpowered our screaming conversation, and that monster of an engine stabbing through the air like a rocket. And then the sea. And all that freedom of the sea that appeared to be ours. The others were closed within the four walls of school, and we were there, fast and free. I still remember the vast horizon without any vanishing point, where only the sun could set limits to infinity. In that moment, facing the freedom of the sea, I understood that what counts is not having a ship, but a place to go, a harbor, a dream worthy of all that water to be to crossed.”

  My father interrupts himself, as if he has seen beyond that window toward the horizon, and the lights of a distant harbor far away like in a dream.

  “If I had gone to school that day, Leo, today I wouldn’t be the man I am. The answers I needed I received on a day I didn’t go to school. A day when, for the first time, I searched by myself for what I wanted, at the cost of being punished … ”

  I don’t know if my father has become Dumbledore or Dr. House, but the fact is that he has perfectly understood how I feel. I almost can’t believe it. He already amazed me when he told me about the first time he met Mom, but now this; I just didn’t expect it. After all, I have known him more or less for sixteen years, and I really don’t know much about him, almost nothing about what really counts. I am about to say something, but it is so cheesy that it would be nauseating, and luckily Dad continues.

  “I don’t know why you didn’t go to school, and for this you deserve punishment, which is part of the game of facing one’s responsibilities. I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. I trust you.”

  The world is changing. I begin to expect that from one moment to another, the world will start to turn in the other direction, that Homer Simpson will become an exemplary husband, and Inter-Milan will win at the Champions League. My father is saying something incredible. It seems like a film. Exactly the words I need. I ask myself why he hasn’t done it before. The answer arrives punctually without my having to formulate the question.

  “Now I understand that you are ready to risk one year for what you deem important, and I am sure it’s nothing foolish.”

  I remain silent, asking myself how it is possible that cutting class just one day can change your life from black and white to color. First Beatrice, now Dad. The only thing I can say is, “What punishment did you get slapped with that time?”

  My father turns toward me with a wry smile. “We will discuss that one day. I have two or three tricks up my sleeve to teach you about how to avoid some beginners’ mistakes.”

  I smile in return. And that smile between Dad and me is the smile between one man and another. He is about to leave the room, and the door is closing, when I find the courage, “Dad?”

  He sticks his head in, snail style.

  “I would only like to go out to visit Beatrice. Today I was with her.”

  Dad remains serious for a moment, and I prepare myself for his “Don’t even bring it up.” He lowers his glance toward the floor and then looks up. “Permission granted, but only for this reason. Otherwise—”

  I interrupt him. “You will reduce me to the dust of my
shadow, I know, I know. … ” I smile. “And Mom?”

  “I’ll speak with Mom.”

  The door is already closing when he says it.

  “Thank you, Dad.”

  I repeat it twice. The words are rolling on the floor while, stretched out on the bed, I observe the white ceiling transforming itself into a starry sky. The blood is pumping quickly in my veins and sets them on fire. For the first time after a punishment, I don’t hate my parents and myself. And the dust of my shadow is the dust of stars.

  81

  Not being able to go out until the end of school means that more than two months of seclusion are awaiting me, except for the visits to Beatrice, which Mom has ratified like a clause to our armistice. In spite of the punishment, I am happy because the only really important reason for going out has been granted. Regarding the soccer tournament, I’ll come up with something. … And besides, something good should come out of this punishment. I’ll probably pass the year in the end. Without distractions and being forbidden to go out, my time is spent studying (mostly with Silvia, who applies herself, I don’t); spending time on the computer (but there, too, on a fixed schedule set by the pact of March 21st, which is the day of my visit to Beatrice’s and the consequent punishment); reading books (even better: a book lent by Silvia, the umpteenth that she has lent me, entitled, Someone to Run With; the title isn’t bad, even though it talks about having a dog to run around with ( … it’s torture!); playing the guitar (every now and then Niko comes and we play a couple of songs together. He, meanwhile, has dumped Alice; actually, Alice has ditched him for someone else); and finally, as incredible as it is to say, looking at the stars.

  Yes, looking at the stars, for the simple reason that Dad has contaminated me with his passion for astronomy. He knows all the names of the constellations, and he’s capable of recognizing stars, and with the tip of his index finger, he creates invisible silver cobwebs that join them, like in the game of connect-the-dots in the weekly puzzles of the newspaper.

  One day, maybe, this might be useful with Beatrice. I want to point out all the stars to her and to invent a constellation for her with her name. What shape will it have? What form does a dream take?

  82

  I enter into Beatrice’s room with my guitar slung over my back. I feel like one of those wandering players who frequents the subway trains and in the end begs for a little happiness.

  Beatrice smiles: I’ve kept my promise. She is lying on her bed, on her belly, reading, while the stereo makes the voice of Elisa bounce off the walls—Elisa, who is looking for a way out through the crack of a partially closed window.

  “Well then, today we begin!” says Beatrice, her smile spreading all the way to her green eyes, as if we were destined to begin something that would never end.

  “I want to learn to play this song,” she says, nodding with her head toward the stereo.

  “I have waited for so long

  For something that isn’t there,

  Instead of watching

  The sun rise … ”

  “With a teacher like me, no problem. … Of course, I’ll have to come every day … ”

  Beatrice laughs with all of her heart in her eyes, throwing her head back and bringing her hand to her mouth, as if wanting to suppress a gesture that is more expressive than what she normally allows herself, she who could allow herself anything she wanted.

  “I would like you to, Leo, but you know that I can’t do it. … ”

  I take out my guitar from its case as if I were The Edge.

  I sit on the edge of the bed, near Beatrice, who pulls herself up. I would like to capture the perfume of her movements in a smell recorder, if such a thing exists. I arrange the guitar on her legs and show her how to hold the handle, which seems too awkward on her weak body. My arm guides her from behind to help her reach the correct position, and for a second, my mouth is so close to her neck that I wonder what my brain is waiting for, why it doesn’t order my lips to kiss it.

  Elisa’s song ends.

  “Here, now you have to hold the chord down on the handle, putting pressure with your thumb from behind and strumming the strings with your right hand.”

  Beatrice tightens her lips in an effort to make a sound come out, a dull sound that leaves her body without strength. Her body, which should fill the world with a harmony never heard before, with a symphony that is limitless, cannot produce one graceful note. I place my hand on hers and apply pressure with my finger, delicately. Our hands are overlapping, like mine when I used to pray as a child.

  “Like this.”

  And the strings begin to vibrate. With my body I am allowing Beatrice’s to play. Beatrice stares at me and smiles as if I have shown her a treasure that has been hidden for centuries, and yet I have simply taught her how to strum a chord.

  She passes me the guitar, impatient. “Show me how you do it so I’ll learn more quickly.”

  I take my guitar while she sits back, curling up and hugging her knees between her arms. I begin to strum the chords of Elisa’s song. Beatrice recognizes it, closes her eyes in search of something lost.

  “Why don’t you sing?” she asks me.

  “Because I don’t know the words.” I hurry to answer her, but the truth is that I am embarrassed to sing, out of fear of singing off-key.

  Beatrice, with her eyes closed, opens her lips, lightly, and a fragile sound comes forth from her lips like a freshwater spring that has just started flowing.

  “And miraculously

  I can’t give up hoping.

  And if there is a secret

  It is to do everything as if

  You saw only the sun … ”

  My fingers become part of her voice, which runs over them like a vocal river along its bed. Her song fills every corner of the room, even those where the light never reaches; it sails forth from the window, floating around the sleepy city, which is blind in its gray and repetitive comings and goings, softening the right angles of daily life, and the tensed jaws of pain and fatigue.

  “The secret is

  To do everything as if,

  To do everything as if,

  As if you were seeing only the sun,

  As if you were seeing only the sun,

  As if you were seeing only the sun …

  And not something that isn’t there … ”

  I accompany the last words with a closing arpeggio. We remain in silence, in the silence unleashed by the end of the song: a double silence, squared, in which the echo of the lyrics resounds like a lullaby that has put to sleep all useless worries and awakened what counts.

  Beatrice opens her eyes and smiles; the green of her eyes and the red of her hair are immersed in her blinding smile. These are the colors that have painted the world.

  Then Beatrice is crying, with a smile that is mixed with tears. With a fixed stare, immobile, aimed at her, I ask myself why pain and joy cry in the same way.

  83

  Afternoons studying with Silvia, in some cases, serve as the only antidote to the venom of sadness. We study, and sometimes a line of Dante or a saying from a philosopher carries us off. I tell her about my visits with Beatrice. I repeat to her everything we say and I feel better; the meetings with Beatrice stay within me like a stone to be digested. But digesting stones is impossible. In some way, the chats with Silvia contain the enzyme that helps break down those hard stones. Silvia listens to me attentively, without commenting. Even her silence is enough. Once, however, she asked me, “Should we pray for her?”

  I trust Silvia, and if she thinks that something is good, I’ll do it. So sometimes we say a prayer. Not that I believe in it, but Silvia does. And so we say this prayer for the healing of Beatrice, “God, (if you exist—I add this secretly), make Beatrice get better.”

  It is no big deal of a prayer, but the substance is there. And if God is God, He doesn’t need too many words. If God doesn’t exist, all those words are useless; but, if God does exist, maybe He will awaken from his centu
ry-old sleep and finally get busy doing something that is worthwhile. I’ve never said this to Silvia, so as not to offend her, but that is what I think.

  84

  Beatrice. I go to her place every week. The day always changes, depending on her condition, because on certain afternoons she is too tired. There are no improvements; however, after the latest transfusions, her situation is stable. Either she or her mother send me a message when she is feeling better, and I rush to her house with public transportation (after the accident, my scooter is defunct, and I don’t believe it will be reincarnated one way or the other. Then, even if the damage is covered by the insurance, the pact of March 21st assures an eventual discussion of possibly acquiring a new means of transport, provided I achieve the goal of passing the school year).

  Every time, I bring something that might be useful in distracting Beatrice. When I enter her room, my objective is to give her a piece of paradise (in a metaphorical sense, because I do not believe in heaven), but then I find paradise there, because she is it (so maybe paradise does exist, because such beautiful things surely cannot end). Once I brought her a CD with only piano selections, which she likes.

  “Will you dance with me?”

  She asked me with the thinnest of voices. I can’t believe it. I support the very fragile body of Beatrice in the light of her room, and I make her float slowly, like a bubble, which from one moment to the next could fly away into the air. Her hair has grown back enough to smell its perfume. I hold on to her hand and her waist: a crystal glass that can shatter into small pieces at any time, even because of the red liquid I want to pour into it.

  All the ardor of taking her to bed with me that I once associated with the thought of her is far off, but I haven’t become gay. Under her thin clothing, her body seems to be a part of me, as if our skin didn’t know anymore which bones and which muscles to cover. Her face, nuzzled in the hollow of my neck, is the missing piece of the disconnected puzzle of my life, the key to everything, the center of the circumference. Her legs follow my steps, which invent the choreography designed by the first dance of a man and a woman. My heart seems to be beating throughout my body, from my big toe to the northern end of my hair follicles, and the force that I find within me would be enough to create the entire world in this room.