White Like Milk, Red Like Blood

by Alessandro D'Avenia

  “Because I wanted to love him.”

  Mom ruffles up my hair to free the gloomy thoughts that are still stuck inside my head, like she did when I was a small child filled with fear and hidden in her arms.

  Now there is only the complete silence of us looking at the moon and heaven and speaking with whomever we want, there beyond the stars.

  107

  Where could I have placed it? I can’t find it anywhere. Cosmic disaster. The day after tomorrow, school is starting and I haven’t found Silvia’s letter. Fin, please help me, at least this once. Then I saw the light: the History book. Good thing I didn’t sell it like the others, so as not to annoy The Dreamer, who finds so many things in that book, more than what’s really written there. …

  Here it is, where I left it, but I don’t want to read it yet. My dreams are realized on a park bench, and it’s there that I want to read it and think about it calmly.

  “Mom, I’m taking Terminator out to pee!”

  I am running, running, running. I run like I’ve never run in my whole life. Terminator drags his tongue on the ground, picking up all the dirt of the universe, unable to keep up with me. It looks like between the two of us, it is Terminator taking me for a walk and trying to make me put on the brakes.

  And there it is, my bench: empty, solitary, red, waiting for my dreams. I let Terminator wander off and do his business—after all, he is also so happy to be here, and he behaves well.

  I open the letter and see Silvia’s handwriting, that handwriting I have always wanted and will never have.

  108

  Dear Leo,

  Here I am, to tell you about something that made me think of you, and I couldn’t help but write to you. I know that you are furious with me, and you don’t want to speak to me. Take this letter as my venting, which only you can understand.

  The other day, I went on an excursion with a group of family friends. Suddenly I found myself alone with the son of one of them. His name is Andrea, and he has a crush on me. When we were alone, he came up to me and tried to kiss me. I rejected him, he turned to stone, he turned his back on me and went away, like you did that day. But while I was staring at Andrea’s back, I couldn’t find the strength inside me to feel bad. Andrea doesn’t mean anything to me. When I stared at your back, that day, from your bench, something in me shattered into pieces. I understood that I am only able to see the world together with you.

  The Greeks used to say that originally man was spherical and that Zeus, to punish him for his infractions, had broken him in two. The two halves wander around the world in search of one another. Nostalgia pushes them on in their search again and again, and when they do find each other, that sphere wants to be reunited. This story has some truth in it, but it isn’t enough. When the two halves meet again, they have lived their lives up until that moment. They are not the same as they were when they separated. Their sharp edges don’t fit together anymore. They have defects, weaknesses, wounds. It’s not enough for them to meet up again and recognize each other. Now they also have to choose each other, because the two halves no longer match perfectly, but only love brings them to accept the edges that don’t line up exactly and only an embrace can smooth them over, even if it hurts. That day, Leo, I discovered that our halves don’t match perfectly, and only an embrace can patch us up. Without your presence, the world has become empty. I miss everything about you: your laughter, your look, the missing subjunctives, the text messages, the chit-chat … All those little things are worth everything to me, because they are yours.

  That’s it, that’s what I wanted tell you. Your back for me will never be like anybody else’s. When you turn your back on me, it is life turning its back on me. Forgive me. And if you can, take me back with my defects. Embrace me as I am. As I will for you. It will be our embraces that change us. I love you as you are, you can do the same, even if I am not perfect like Beatrice. I would like your bench to become ours: two hearts and one bench. As you can see, I am happy with so little. …

  I lift my gaze and the river is flowing, indifferent to world changes, that river that has gathered centuries of tears, of joy and pain, and has taken them where tears should stay: in the sea, which is salty for this reason. I squeeze my lucky charm, shining blue in the blue of the morning, and I feel Beatrice near, so near that it’s as if I were living with two hearts, mine and hers, with four eyes, mine and hers, with two lives, mine and hers.

  And life is the only thing that can’t deceive, if you, heart, have the courage to accept it. …

  109

  It’s already evening. One of those September evenings in which aromas, colors, sounds seem like a rainbow capable of uniting heaven and Earth. Beatrice is looking at me from her star. I have my guitar in hand and a lazy dachshund at my feet: Terminator was the necessary excuse to go out at this hour without raising too many suspicions. I ring the intercom and ask her to come to the window of her room.

  “Who’s there?”

  When she leans out from the second floor of what has by now become a fairy-tale castle, she can hardly see me in the dark of the barely lit street. But she can hear my voice.

  “When you wrote the letter for me, I promised that I’d sing for you. … ”

  Silence. While I tune the guitar, I am lost in the dark blue of the sky and I begin:

  “You know, they are born like this

  Fairy tales I would like

  In all of my dreams …

  And I will tell you about them

  To fly to paradises

  I don’t have.

  It’s not easy to remain

  Without any more fairies to abduct,

  And it’s not easy to play

  If you are missing … ”

  In the darkness, I imagine Silvia’s face, listening, listening to my voice, and I am not ashamed of anything anymore, because if I have a good voice, it’s to give it to her:

  “Take me away with you,

  Among the mysteries of angels

  And demonic smiles.

  And there I will transform them

  In confetti of tender light.

  And I will always succeed in fleeing

  Within colors yet to be discovered … ”

  I am in all the fairy tales of the world, and I am reinventing all of them, in an urban key, to make them real. Other faces appear at the window of the enchanted building, curious about the serenade. But I don’t give a damn, like the freest of men who is not afraid to face the entire world, as long as he doesn’t lose what really counts.

  “Air, breathe in the silence for me,

  Do not tell me goodbye,

  But lift up the world … ”

  I hear my voice, free and heavy at the same time. Its heaviness is from past events, transformed in wings and feathers that make it fly, light and heavy at the same time. I know how to fly only now that I am weighed down.

  “Air, embrace me.

  I shall fly, I shall fly, I shall fly,

  I shall fly away … ”

  Silence. When I raise my eyes, Silvia is gone. Somebody whistles and blows raspberries at me. Somebody laughs at me, maybe out of envy. Somebody applauds.

  The gate of the enchanted castle opens. Slowly a shadow comes toward me. I stare at the face approaching me in the half-light.

  “Silvia is at dance class. … I told you from up above, but you couldn’t hear me. … She should be back any minute now. You are very good! I listened to you very carefully. You were a hundred percent. … ”

  Silvia’s mother smiles. I mistook her for Silvia, but it is her mother. Luckily darkness hides the redness burning up my face, which could explode at any moment into a thousand pieces, like in the worst horror movies.

  “Do you want to come up until she comes?”

  “No, thank you, I’ll wait here for her. … ”

  “As you wish. But … sing it to her again. … ”

  I sit on the steps in front of the door, with my guitar, like a gypsy begging for money for his
art, trying to hide the shame or some secret in the middle of the night. Terminator curls up comfortably at my feet, quiet, for the first time in his life.

  I close my eyes and sing again, almost whispering, while my fingers play arpeggios of the melody, like a flying carpet on which my voice crosses the rooftops of the city freely, grabbing the stars as if they were the notes of my song floating on the infinite score of heaven.

  When I open my eyes, a face is looking squarely into mine. That face smiles with blue eyes, attentive, fatigued, like a rusty door that is opening, smiles, and from that door left ajar, a sudden rush of air hits me with forgotten happiness, a happiness, which, after Beatrice’s death, I didn’t expect anymore. It blows, wraps itself around me, submerges me, and whispers almost as if she were singing, “And I will always be able to escape inside colors yet to be discovered. … ”

  We hug like two pieces of Legos.

  “It seems to me that we match perfectly,” I whisper in her ear.

  Silvia answers by embracing me more tightly. Thanks to that, I feel my sharp edges, my defects, my thorns. And I already feel them softening, becoming sweeter, and sweetly fitting into her empty places.

  Terminator runs around us forming circles that magically protect us from any possible evil wizard, just like in the fairy tales.

  And a kiss is the red bridge we are building between our souls that are dancing on the white vertigo of life, without fear of falling.

  “I love you, Leonardo.”

  My name, my whole name, my true name preceded by that verb in the first person is the formula that explains all the things hidden in the heart of the world.

  They call me Leo, but I am Leonardo.

  And Silvia loves Leonardo.

  110

  “I’ll teach you a game.”

  “It’s not one of your absurd dares?”

  “No, no, it is a game Beatrice taught me: it’s called the game of silence.”

  “But which one, the one we used to play in elementary school?”

  “No, no. Listen. We lie next to each other in silence. We stay quiet for five minutes with our eyes closed and concentrate on the colors that appear under our eyelids.”

  On the red bench, there isn’t much space for two, but squeezing in we manage to fit, very closely, with our faces looking up at the sky. Love is this too: making space together, where it is lacking.

  Hand in hand, quiet, our eyes closed, with the timer of the cell phone upside down to signal five minutes.

  When we are into the second minute, I surreptitiously open my eyes and turn toward Silvia, who I find staring at me. I pretend to be angry, and looking at the cellular display, I tell her there are still three minutes to go.

  “What did you see?” she asks me.

  “The sky.”

  “And how was it?”

  “Blue … ” like your eyes, I would like to tell her, but the words don’t come out.

  As if she had understood, Silvia produces a perfect smile, without clouds.

  “And you?”

  “All colors.”

  “And what were they?”

  “Harlequin … and it was you. … ”

  “Thank you … very cute … ” I say, a bit miffed.

  I was thinking about the sky, perhaps as the most predictable of romantics, but the sky is always the sky. But with her closed eyes, I was the figure of a carnival mask, of a loser.

  Silvia laughs, then becomes serious, and without withdrawing her gaze, she starts, “Harlequin was a poor child. One day he came back home very sad, and his mother asked him why. The next day would be Carnival; everyone would have a new suit and he wouldn’t have anything to wear. His mother hugged him and told him he would have nothing to worry about. Harlequin went to bed with a lighter heart. The mother, a seamstress, took her basket of colored remnants, scraps from other pieces of cloth, and spent the night sewing them together. The following day, Harlequin had the most beautiful and original suit. All the other children were amazed and asked him where he had bought it, but he remained silent and kept his mother’s secret, she who had spent the whole night sewing those colored remnants: white, red, blue, yellow, green, orange, violet … And he understood that he wasn’t poor, because his mother loved him more than any other, and that costume proved it.”

  Silvia fell silent for a few seconds.

  “Leonardo, you are the most beautiful person of all, because you knew how to receive love and give it; you didn’t pull back. And you are carrying the traces of all that.”

  “You are the one who is like that, Silvia.”

  I stay there staring at the sky in silence, with Silvia nuzzling her face between my shoulder and my neck, her fingers entwined with mine, like in a perfect puzzle. I seem to see my skin covered with a thousand colored cuts of cloth.

  In the end, life does nothing but cut you a multicolored suit, at the cost of so many sleepless nights, nights made from the remnants of other lives sewn together.

  Just when you feel the poorest, life, like a mother, is sewing the most beautiful suit of all for you.

  111

  The first day of school. I wake up forty minutes early. Not because it is the first day of school, but because I have decided to go and pick up Silvia at her home. I signal with my new scooter (which is the reincarnation of the preceding one, but with brakes … ), in a September air that has blue within it, like the blue of my lucky charm that I wear around my neck. I fly between the cars like Silver Surfer.

  I am laughing at everything and everyone, even at the traffic cops asleep at the red lights, who try in vain to stop my flight. When I get there, Silvia is already waiting for me. She is the punctual one, not me. She hops on my steed. I feel her arms holding on tightly to my waist. My waist and her hands.

  I am not afraid like I once was. If for no other reason than now I have brakes. My scooter has become a white horse, which doesn’t gallop but flies over the asphalt. I am alive! I look at the sky and it seems almost like the still white moon that might be God’s smile … which is nothing compared to the look of acquiescence from Niko, who comes up next to me with the attitude of a challenge. I cannot refuse. I let him win because I have Silvia behind me, but the smile that we exchange with Niko at the end of the dare is the warmest of handshakes, the reddest of embraces. With guys, everything is so much easier.

  The first day of school. Seated near Silvia, even the school hours seem short, marvelous, full of life. It seems that the universe, at the end of life, has received a blood transfusion that I badly needed in order to breathe again.

  Starting today, I begin to write. I have to write all these things down in order to remember them. I don’t know if I can do it, but at least this time I want to try. Maybe it’s better if I use a pencil. No, a pen is better. A red pen. Red like blood. Red like love, the ink on the white pages of life. I believe that the only things worth remembering are those told with blood; blood doesn’t make any mistakes, and no professor can correct them.

  The white of these pages doesn’t scare me anymore, and I owe it to Beatrice: she, white like milk, red like blood.

  I stare at the blue in Silvia’s eyes: a sea where I can be shipwrecked without dying, an ocean floor where there is always peace, even when a storm rages on the surface. And while this sea cradles me, I offer the perfect smile. Without words, my smile says that when you truly begin to live, when life swims inside red love, each day is the first, each day is the beginning of a new life.

  Even if that day is the first day of school.

  112

  Dear Leo,

  I am returning your manuscript. I read it all in one breath, in one night, and it called to mind the story of a famous Greek general who, with only six hundred men who had taken refuge on Mount Parnassus, had to confront an immense army of enemies who had surrounded them at the foot of the mountain. Defeat was certain, but the soothsayer of the small army had an idea: he advised spreading wet plaster over his companions—their bodies and their weapons. />
  This army of ghosts attacked the enemies during the night, with the purpose of killing whomever they saw who wasn’t white. The sentries of the enormous army were terrorized as soon as they saw them. Thinking this was a strange phenomenon, they began to scream and flee in the middle of the night, pursued by an army of ghosts, whose pallor was accentuated by the light of the moon. The troops were terrified, so much so that the six hundred men took charge of the field in the end, in the company of four thousand bloody cadavers. The blood had also stuck to the armor and the white skin of the army of ghosts, who, in the early light of dawn, appeared even more frightening in that mixture of white and red.

  Leo, at times we fear enemies who are much weaker than they seem. Only the white that dresses them in the heart of the night makes them appear mysterious and terrible. The true enemy is not a soldier covered with plaster, but fear.

  We need the white.

  Just as we need the red.

  Maybe you don’t know that recent anthropologic studies show that, in most cultures, the first words in reference to color distinguish between light and dark. When a language is refined enough to include three names of colors, almost always the third one refers to red. The names that pertain to the other colors develop only later, after the term denoting red becomes commonly used, and frequently the term red is connected to the word indicating blood.

  Scholars confirm what you have discovered with your life. Cultures and civilizations have elaborated over decades what you have understood in one school year. Thank you for sharing your discovery with me.

  I limited myself to integrating parts where you speak about me, and to correcting a few subjunctives here and there, but as for the rest, I didn’t touch any of your lines. It would have been like touching your life, and I want that to remain intact.