“All right. And I’m happy to believe you. And yet I don’t think I deserve such a gift.”
The loudspeaker began to call out Orlando’s flight number. Elvira felt her heart tighten at the thought of having to leave her newly discovered love.
“Go, we’ll see each other next week. I will come to pick you up! So let’s talk and put everything in place.”
“But I would say there is something we can do, before I go.”
“What?” She asked him confused.
“This?”
Of those moments immediately after, Elvira could only remember the strong and secure embrace, the wonderful feeling of Orlando’s solid body against hers, fragile and trembling, and the delicate, soft happiness that two soft lips gave her in a moment that lasted an entire life.
19.
“The years pass, my dear Elvi ... but you are an important presence for all those who have the privilege of being close to you...” Father Alfonso was tired and sick now, he knew that he would soon be gone. “What can I do for you my dear?”
“I’m here for a baptism, Father, don’t you remember?”
“It’s true ... little Alfonso, the heir to the Cimarosa dynasty, great scientists and great painters ...” He rose with his usual cheerfulness, looking at her with the same intensity as ever. How grateful she felt to this strange priest, always smiling, sometimes cheerful and, for allowing her to know and love her surly painter.
“I would say that Pentecost Sunday is the right date to welcome him among us God’s sheep, the fruit of such a great and clean love as yours, don’t you think Elvi? But... For the Holy Baptism, parents must confess and receive the Eucharist ... Orlando will have to come to my doctrine for some time before. Do you agree to make your imperialist painter come to catechism in this way?”
“For the sake of his son and for my sake, this and another, Father! Although, in fact, he often clashes with himself saying that a certain Father backslapper helped to catch him, and a lot before the extreme unction!”
“Yes, I knew you would be an important gift to the life of that impenitent man! I saw it right, as always!”
“Father, you too are an important gift ... you do not know how much you mean to me!” And slowly, with delicacy and serenity, holding his arm firmly, she accompanied him safely towards the exit.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I still feel you so alive, so present, so effective in your speeches, suggestions, advice, and consolations. I see you, with those eyes that penetrate any thickness, reach me and force me to lower my eyes, eternally and perpetually intimidated by your security and foresight.
I miss you. In a striking way. It will always be like this. It will be more and more until the end. Today, I write these insignificant words, unable to coordinate thoughts and emotions and make them phrases, with a powerful knot in the throat. The tears are overpowering and they want to come out, vent their anxiety running down my face, but I hold them in, with discipline, force them and imprison them. Today I will not cry. I will do so tomorrow. Reciting an Our Father and holding a wooden rosary tightly. Entering again into San Domenico, following the left nave and coming to look for you there, where I knew you ten years ago, I could find you every day inside a confessional. I’ll look at your “place” and I’ll kneel, praying. Come towards me, please, when the time is right. That’s all I’m asking you.
With love Michele.
AUTHOR NOTES
As a child I learned to read before all of my companions, animated by the desire to learn to decipher those strange black designs that adults called “letters.” And from that moment I have never stopped. Writing was a more complicated process; I was not very good at composing.
“This little girl has too much imagination and not enough grammar” was the teacher’s response. Actually, I liked telling stories; those stories that unfortunately my grandmother did not remember anymore and that I had decided to tell myself. And basically, if I think of today, it is still so. More than writing and bragging about a particularly poetic passage, I love to tell and that’s what I do.
Writing a novel was a kind of fixation during my adolescence and part of youth. But I could never conclude anything about the projects that I started. So I told myself that maybe that was not my destiny and I was devoting myself to other ambitions, putting me in charge of work. After a few years as an interpreter for press offices and a secretary for a sports-sponsored company, and a longer period as assistant to the presidency of an American clothing and accessories company, I realized that my true vocation was to have a family and to devote myself to my children. For years even the idea of not seeing their progress or the slightest change as a result of their growth was unbearable. The thought of writing was latent, as a resource that maybe would be useful in old age when, instead of engaging in knitting or stamp collecting, I could have delighted in writing stories just for me as I once did.
The advent of the Internet and of the communities changed my way of seeing things. I started enrolling in a community on the web and interacting with other members. I wrote crazy pages and full of poetry and received praise and appreciation in response. I tried to write a short story and sent it to a competition for writers on the web, “Tales on the Net” in 2003. I won it, along with six others and was published by Newton & Compton.
The thrill of seeing something of mine printed as a book and my name on the cover was amazing. I could barely breath, and I felt my knees trembling. The opening of my blog www.scarabocchi.splinder.com and the readers who slowly began to visit it leaving comments and their appreciation convinced me that I had to continue trying. But inside I felt that, although quite good at expressing myself in the written form, something was missing in my style, and I had to find a better way. I began to read all that I found on the web about creative writing, manuals, essays, writers’ forums willing to critically criticize others’ writings.
And sharing the same ideal, together with Fabio Musati I opened the FIAE Forum for Independent Emerging Authors, a quiet space on the net where you could meet and share your work, receive criticism, sometimes ruthless but that allowed everyone to grow and improve their own style and achieve the professionalism that makes the difference. Ten years have passed, and the FIAE is no longer operational, no longer a point of reference for those wanting to put themselves in the game. In recent years I have participated in various competitions. I have won some of them, been classified in others or I have received an honorable mention.
My literary production has grown significantly, I collaborate with a weekly magazine of lived stories, with the online information portal Rete-News.it and in June 2012 my first novel came out, “Nient’altro che amare” edited by Centoautori. Small steps, however, are leading me in the right direction. On 3 October 2011, Potterology came out: Ten Essays about the Universe of JK Rowling, including my essay entitled “Mom, not Mom: The Challenge of Being a Mother in the World of Harry Potter” published by CameloZampa Editore the proceeds of which were donated to the Onlus www.theodora.it, while on the 15th of November 2011 the beneficial and animalistic anthology “Code of Stampa” came out, inside which was my tale “Zanna” whose proceeds were donated to the Onlus Animalista www.savethedogs.eu. On 15 March 2013, however, a book was published for middle school children, titled “Next stop ... Italy!”, for Onda Edizioni a novel “container”, for a school project, inside which can be found my story about the Calabrian Region, while my novel “Sirena on the horizon” was published by Editions Domino in September 2013, winner of the Contest “Cercasi Jane (Looking for Jane) and was later ranked second in the Magician Rose Prize in Fiuggi, in 2014. Domino Editions closed their doors at the end of the year and Amarganta Edizioni bought the rights for “Sirena on the horizon” re-publishing it in 2015. In 2014, Aim straight for the Heart (Mira dritto al Cuore), was published with Runa Editrice and my essay “Mom not Mom: Mothers in the World of Harry Potter”, an essay that returns to and completes the one published for Potterology. Since 2015, I have been collaborating wit
h Amarganta, a cultural association that has also become a publishing house and I take care of the series of fantasy and for under15, as well as scouting for Amarganta in English and Portuguese speaking countries to acquire the rights of works by foreign emerging writers and translating their novels. I translate English and Portuguese novels into Italian for Babelcube. I am writing for... Rete-news.it, blogs on topical issues and I have collaborated with the magazine Inkroci.it as a translator.
If you liked Mysterious is the heart, let me know, maybe leave me a brief review on amazon.it or write a comment on my blog http://amnerisdicesare.wordpress.com Or on my Facebook author page
Https: // www .facebook.com / AmnerisDiCesare2
Thank you, anyway, for reading my work.
(Adc) p.s. For whoever has read it, know I have a small gift for you. The story of Hearts on the Net, Prize for Tales on the Net 2003. The first story I ever wrote. For you!
HEARTS ON THE NET
One of the 6 Winners’ Tales on the Net 2003
It was dark early, and often, like that evening, the fog was already falling, mixed with thick drizzle and the smell of wet wood. He quickly removed the keys from his coat pocket, but the gesture was too fast and they fell to the ground, forcing him to bend down to pick them up, an irritating inconvenience. He felt an unjustified uneasiness, a state of malaise that had accompanied him for many days. He had tried to reflect on the possible causes of this impatience that even prevented him from focusing on work during the day, but had only received a negative response, leaving him, however, suspected of lying even to himself. He took off his wet and dripping coat, absently letting it fall on a chair in the kitchen.
“In fact, it’s very strange...” he grinned ironically talking to himself, beginning to undress he was just as amused at how he had changed; he was so ordered, fussy, even methodical, only a while ago he would never have done it. He would just hang the wet coat near a heater to allow it to dry, while he was now disseminating all his work wear - tie, jacket, shirt - along the corridor, crossing it almost at a run, to stop in front of the computer to push the switch, then back to the bedroom. A comfortable and warm track suit, worn slippers, cigarettes ... from the kitchen a fresh beer and a sandwich-full-of-everything-and-a-little-more ... here, he was now ready to relax, the connection already loaded ...
To tell the truth, he had never been a great computer expert. He had never shown any particular interest in the computer. Until then, even in the office, he had always delegated any work requiring automation voluntarily to other colleagues. He had bought the computer one evening at the supermarket. One of the first times he had faced weekly spending as a single. He had always detested that appointment to which his ex-wife had forced him for years, every Saturday afternoon without exception. He laughed to himself, thinking of the acidic cries she would have issued, if she had only seen him that night, come out of the mall with two large boxes and no detergent in the basket ...
And if she saw me now, then!
Almost six months had passed since he had been separated. After years of misunderstanding, accusations, criticism, one evening she had filled a small suitcase and left. In silence. No scenery, no tears. She was a little disappointed. From her, so passionate, so controversial and so quarrelsome he would have expected some “Mother of all scenes”, maybe an insult ... and nothing, just indifference. Despite the ten years of marriage and a common child whose birth had been such a big emotion to prevent any word from describing her joy. Instead, with their separation, an aseptic letter from an anonymous lawyer, a handshake with a bored judge, perhaps even a distracted “hello”, but he did not remember well ... he had moved away that day to close himself in the hotel room that had been his new home for a few months.
The community page was now available for him to see. The dense list of messages that had been inserted had as yet not been examined...
“Skywalker where are you?” they were talking about him!
He had become the undisputed king of all web messaging. But he couldn’t understand why. He was very courteous, pampered by all the participants in the various virtual communities to which he participated with his fleeting appearances and above all from female figures who populated what he called “virtual squares”. The thing surprised him. He didn’t have a captivating style of writing, anything else. His writings were, for the most part, very short and sibylline phrases, the tone often overwhelming, almost opinionated, and sometimes even presumptuous. But when he expected revolts, attacks, violent controversy, instead came approvals, prayers, invocations to remain, to be even more present, and to continue to take part. Skywalker was the nickname that he had chosen but that many had affectionately shortened to “Sky”, the Americanized “Walkie”... some who were more romantic called him “Cloud Man”...
“The diminutive of a nick ... the nickname of a nickname ...”
He smiled perplexed thinking of the strange world that was the Internet. Every person who faced him needed a fictitious name, the “nick” precisely to protect themselves with anonymity, but at the same time to identify themselves, and for a “password”. This set of codes was eventually printed on a second skin. He had been listening to long discussions on why some were so jealous of their first and only “nick”, while others felt the need to use many, all different and imaginative ...
“Perhaps the lack of having a definite personality?” There was the “netiquette”, A set of behavioral rules, a kind of “bon ton of the virtual” all of which had to be ... writing in capital letters and using exclamation points, was equivalent to screaming, and never to be misunderstood, a series of graphic expressions had been invented to acknowledge allegories, rage, disappointment through dots and brackets, the “emoticons”. There were also a whole series of abbreviations, the “acronyms”, which abbreviated whole sentences and even contained whole concepts.
The Internet however, with its own rules, its traditions were a true virtual society, a kind of parallel to real life, where many people found shelter, comfort, and why not? Right of asylum He despised all this, found it decadent, and yet seeing how many people took it seriously, they even appreciated him for his “intellectual cruelty”, which amused him. And as much as he felt he was accepted, required, lauded, his words became even heavier and closed. He conceded very little. When he had the impression that the attendees were now confident of his constant presence in that community, he was defiled, most often silent. However, he followed the conversations that followed, moving from this to that link from one to the other community. He had noticed, while his experience and assiduity increased, that his familiarity with certain nicknames had also increased of those that inhabited certain communities and preferred writings, preferring others that at times he couldn’t even remember that they existed. In a certain sense, images had materialized in him, more or less concrete, of these signatures, though none had struck him in any particular way. The Internet was just a game for him and he wanted it to stay that way. To be popular enough to show a little more than what is in reality, anonymity did the rest. The secret was not to get involved. Never.
Iride’s Message: Being or Feeling?
Iride had written again, and she was expecting an answer from the night before. He felt the impatience increasing, waiting for the few seconds that separated him from the text that was supposed to appear ... seconds that seemed eternal. Iride had just entered the community. But she immediately proved to be different from all the other nicks. At first she had left a veil of mystery about her sexual identity, when generally they all held to claim immediately whether men or women.
“Does it matter to the web, if you are a man or a woman? Isn’t it the soul we are looking at here?” She had written provoking a type of verbal earthquake. It was him who had unmasked her as a female, but in fact she seemed to be interested in hiding rather than showing herself, but if forced, she objected a proud, masculine attitude. This attracted him a lot. He hated women like that. His ex-wife was just that way, which had m
eant that for a while he had to close himself like a hedgehog to defend himself. Now he had a chance to take revenge. And he was looking for her for that reason, pursuing her, though she did not seem to want to collect his provocations. They did not bother her, she did not pamper him like the others, but she did not even disagree with him ... she simply ignored him. That made him crazy.
******
He had married because he was very much in love. What had he gained if he was still asking himself today, after so many years. The doubt was whether he really had fallen in love with her, or just the idea that he had of her. She was so impulsive, sunny, sometimes aggressive, always full of ideas, ideas, friends, she was interesting to know, to discover and then to attempt, without much success, to “storm” that rocky fortress that had been the husband. A handsome man, certainly, but shy, silent, very methodical and terribly polite. One maybe too “above” things, people. ”I had surely thought that I could change him, damn my stupid maternal instinct!” He must have thought she was extroverted enough for both of us. And that had not paid off in the end.
He had got to know her on the benches at school. Also many of his companions had first tried a timid advance, then excluded him as “strange” or “proud”. Not her. She had insisted. Despite his stubborn silence, that obstinate indifference, she had continued to greet him, to try to talk to him during the intervals between the lessons, and at the end of the final year she had been able to snatch away from him the permission to accompany him home for a long walk, the days ending at the same time.
Even for the first kiss, she had done everything all her. “Now I’m going to kiss you” and he had closed his eyes, bowing his head forward, waiting for a kiss on his forehead as his mother used to kiss him ... and instead she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him on his mouth, holding him tight. Then, she realized his amazement, she was ashamed and had even apologized. She had believed that he was astonished and that too much emotion had prevented him from saying anything. Today, aware of the actual reality of things, he hated himself for his stupidity
Mysterious is the Heart Page 4
