White as Silence, Red as Song

by Alessandro D'Avenia

  As Aldo, Giovanni, and Giacomo say in one of their movies, “Ask me if I am happy. I am, at least, in my dreams.”

  Chapter 50

  I finally get to go home. Christmas is tomorrow and I am being discharged. Great . . . The only present that is wrapped so far is my arm—with plaster! But first I need to leave Beatrice my letter, so that once she gets out of the hospital too, we can see each other. Everything will sort itself out and we will live happily ever after. I’m waiting for the help of nighttime, when the hospital is filled with indiscriminate snoring that spills out of the rooms like the grunts of wild boars. The smell of illness seems to dwindle during sleeping hours, like pain does. I have my letter, in a new envelope I got Silvia to buy for me. It’s sealed. I stealthily make my way to Beatrice’s room. With every step I feel my soul dilate, and my heart becomes a home that Beatrice has already started to decorate—moving objects, feelings, dreams, projects, as she sees fit. I repeat the words in my letter from memory, as if they are detaching themselves from the paper and taking on a life of their own.

  The door of the room is closed. I open it as gently as I can. I walk up to Beatrice’s bed almost without breathing so I can hear her every murmur, smell her every scent.

  The bed is empty. The sheets are untouched, white, without a single crease.

  I sit on the bed. I crumple the letter in my hands until it’s crushed. My dream is like those kites I used to build with Dad when I was a kid. Months of preparation, and then they never flew. Only once did a red-and-white kite of ours take flight, but then the wind blew so hard that the string cut into my hand and I had let it fly away because of the pain.

  That’s how Beatrice is drifting away, carried by the wind. I try to hold her back, but the pain of the thread that binds her to my heart becomes stronger and stronger. I curl up like Terminator does when he sleeps, and the hurt slowly eases as I come into contact with the bed that held Beatrice. Tonight I’ll sleep near her, even if she has flown away from here.

  Chapter 51

  “What are you doing here?”

  These words interrupt my meandering in an immense white bed with no boundaries. If the Spam nurse hadn’t recognized me, I’d be in deep trouble.

  “I was looking for Beatrice . . .” I reply with such honesty that it can’t help but touch the soft heart shared by all nurses who are fat and capable of loving the smell of sick people.

  “She left yesterday.”

  She says nothing and turns serious.

  I pull myself off the bed, weighed down by the nostalgia of someone who has spent the night in Beatrice’s arms. I leave the room with my eyes to the ground, dragging my feet. When I walk past the nurse, she ruffles my hair with her soft hand.

  “Take care of her. For me too.”

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

  “I will.”

  Later, Mom arrives. She packs all my belongings into a carryall, and propping me up with her arm even though it’s not necessary, she helps me to the car. I pretend to feel worse than I do so she can feel my weight and I can feel her arms around me, making me forget the pain—the heaviest and most invisible thing I know.

  My room hasn’t changed. Who knows what changes I expected. I no longer sleep under the same roof as Beatrice, nor can I go and see her. My Batscooter has met the end that I could have too. I wouldn’t be able to drive it anyway.

  It’s Christmas and I have to stay indoors with my arm in a sling for another two weeks. “Make the most of your vacation by catching up on your schoolwork,” Mom said. Yeah, great vacation, studying twice as much as usual. But twice times zero is zero. I know that at least. When I open my textbooks the hands on my watch seem to stick to the dial and stop moving, trapped in a space-time bubble.

  I start floating in this white bubble that carries me up high, far into the clouds, where nobody can hear me, and then into cosmic silence: alone like a balloon that has flown away.

  When everything turns white, my heart shrivels up like a lentil, and even if it screams, no one can hear it.

  The only one who can save me is Silvia.

  Chapter 52

  Silvia has gone to visit her grandmother by the sea for a few days. Just as well. I can put off the wretched catching-up-on-homework a bit longer. Yet I am bored to death. I feel guilty about time that is just evaporating, but I can’t face all those pages I need to catch up on. The Dreamer says that when you get bored it’s because you aren’t living enough. What kind of a statement is that? It’s one of his philosophical manifestos. It’s something bigger than me. Maybe that’s why I like it. Maybe because it tells the truth: that I’m not living enough. But what does “I’m not living enough” mean? I should ask him.

  Niko calls me. Last week we won the match against the Desperados, desperate by name and desperate by nature. We’re back on track and the next match is in a month. I wonder if I’ll be able to play. This year all my dreams are in the hands of the soccer tournament. I want to lift the trophy for Beatrice and possibly in front of her!

  When you get bored it’s because your life is boring.

  Chapter 53

  The day comes when you look at yourself in the mirror and you’re different from what you were expecting. That’s because mirrors are the cruelest form of truth. You don’t appear as you really are. You would like your image to correspond with who you are inside, and you wish others could immediately tell by looking at you whether you’re a sincere, generous, and friendly person. Instead, you still need words or facts. You have to prove who you are. It would be nice to be able to just show it. Everything would be much simpler.

  I’ll get myself gym-fit, a piercing, a tattoo of a lion on my bicep (which I don’t have) . . . I don’t know. Maybe I need to think about it. But these are all signs that tell someone who they’re dealing with at a glance.

  Erika-with-a-k has a nose piercing, and you can tell she’s an open kind of person, one you can talk to. Susy has a tattoo beneath her belly button that goes all the way down there. In this case you can tell exactly who you’re dealing with. In short, I need to make myself more visible so others notice me more. I am fed up with being anonymous.

  Beatrice doesn’t need to. She has red hair and green eyes. That’s enough to tell you how much she can love and how pure she is: as red as the brightest star, as pure as the most Hawaiian sand that exists.

  Chapter 54

  Back at school everybody makes fun of me and calls me C-3PO, the golden droid in Star Wars. I still have my arm in a sling, even though in a few days I’ll finally get the cast taken off. Apparently not even Giacomo is the biggest loser in the class since I got back, because it turns out I’m even unluckier than he is. To compensate, though, everyone has signed my cast. It is completely covered with my classmates’ and friends’ signatures. My arm is multicolored. My arm is famous. My arm cares about me, because I now carry about everyone who cares about me. “The Pirates are waiting for their captain! Niko.” “Your reincarnation will be a monument to bad luck. Erika.” “Better you than me! Jack.” “You’re still handsome! Silvia.” There is just one signature missing. Beatrice’s. But I don’t need it because I carry her name on my heart.

  There are names, and then there are names. If you buy yourself something from Fred Perry, Dockers, or Nike, those are brand names you wear. Sooner or later you’ll change, throw away, or lose those things . . . Sure, they make you feel good, but they don’t last. Then there are other names. Those you carry on your heart. Those names tell you who you really are and for who you really are. I have Beatrice’s name tattooed on my heart. She is my dream and I exist for her.

  But Beatrice hasn’t been coming to school: a new cycle of chemo. She’ll end up flunking the year if this goes on.

  When I get home there’s a crumpled letter on my desk. A Post-it from Mom says, “This was in the bottom of the carryall with your hospital things.” The letter to Beatrice! How could I have forgotten about it? I have to take
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 is always right.

  Chapter 55

  Compelled by the inexorable passing of days, I’m finally sitting in front of my books. I’ve decided to catch up on my schoolwork. Actually, Silvia is sitting in front of me because I could never do it on my own. We’re in that hair-raising phase of the semester filled with tests and assignments. And I am terribly behind.

  Silvia sits there telling me about The Dreamer’s lessons (especially his ad hoc ones, my favorites), and she summarizes the syntax of cases and explains a canto of The Divine Comedy. The one where Ulysses convinces his mates to face the challenges of the sea in order to seek out, I think, “virtue and knowledge”—I can hear the sharp, metallic voice of my teacher echoing in my ears—but then he tricks them and they all die in the depths of the sea.

  As Silvia talks, I drift off. If you think about it, it’s always the same old story. People who have a dream, or think they have one, force others to believe in it, but then time and death sweep everything away. Everyone lived in the mirage of that dream. Adrenaline pumps through your veins simply because someone believed it, but it was all an illusion. My dream is an illusion too. Illness wants to take it away from me. Without Beatrice I don’t exist.

  Silvia looks me straight in the eyes in silence, because she’s realized I’ve drifted off. She strokes me gently and the wind picks up again, making the boat in the painting navigate at full sail toward a harbor I don’t know but that I’m certain exists, just like the hand that caressed me. Silvia can do all that with a single caress. How does she do it?

  Thank you, Silvia. Thank you, Silvia, for being there. Thank you, Silvia, for being the anchor that keeps me from drifting and for being the sail that allows me to cross the rough sea.

  “Thank you, Silvia. You’re special.”

  “So are you.”

  Chapter 56

  There are afternoons when my room, which is better than the Euro Disney and Gardaland amusement parks put together, seems like an attic full of old junk. What is the point of life if it’s followed by death? And what comes after death scares me. And it scares me even more if after death there is nothing. And God Almighty scares me. Evil and suffering scare me. And Beatrice’s illness scares me. Being left alone scares me. And all this whiteness . . .

  So I call Niko, but Niko’s playing soccer and I can’t go. So I call Silvia, but Silvia isn’t home. I call her cell phone, but it’s switched off. I send her a message: “Call me when you can.”

  Silvia, could you stroke me like you did last time? I’m scared, Silvia. I’m scared of everything. I’m scared I won’t manage to do anything worthwhile in my life. I’m scared that Beatrice might die. I’m scared of having nobody to call on the phone. I’m scared you’ll leave me.

  I’m in my room and there are only silent things here. Nobody to talk to. My books are silent, and The Dreamer’s not here to explain them to me or make me believe I might enjoy them. My comics are silent, despite their colors. My stereo is silent because I don’t feel like turning it on. My computer is silent because the screen—deep enough to hold the entire world in it—is only a flat screen when you look at it from the side. And you wonder how it can contain so much world and so much ocean if it’s so flat. Everything is silent in my room today. But I don’t want to escape. I want to resist. Sadness is flooding into my room in waves today. I try to contain it with a sponge. I’m a joke. I resist a few minutes, then fear assails me and I’m shipwrecked in the middle of an ocean of solitude.

  I float in a white desert: a huge, infinite, soundproof white room, in which you can’t even make out the corners of the walls. You can’t tell which way is up, down, right, or left . . . and I scream, but every sound is stifled. The only things to come out of my mouth are rotten words.

  Silvia, call me. I beg you.

  Chapter 57

  When I wake up it’s four o’clock and the fear seems more distant, if only because I’m in a complete daze. I’ve landed on some unknown island. I’m looking for something that can help me survive. The posters in my room are looking at me. Then I see the letter. I have to take the letter to Beatrice. There are two problems. First, the letter is too ruined. It looks like the rough copy of my essays, so I need to rewrite it, but I can’t write with my left hand.

  The second problem is that I don’t know whether Beatrice is at home or in hospital. The first problem has only one solution: Silvia. I dictate the letter, she writes it for me. I know it’s not the same, it isn’t my handwriting, but Silvia has nice handwriting that’s better than mine. As for the second problem . . . the solution is obvious: Silvia!

  Am I pushing it? She can call Beatrice to ask her where she is. That way I can take her the letter and maybe even talk to her. Yes, I’ll talk to her because I need to talk to her. I need to tell her about my dream, and when she realizes that the dream is necessary, that the dream is our destiny, she’ll get better because dreams cure anything bad, any suffering. Dreams give color to all things white.

  I head to Silvia’s.

  Chapter 58

  Silvia’s mother is a lady who appears exactly as she is. I like her. Silvia takes more after her than her father, who is a quiet man and in some ways enigmatic. Silvia’s mother has a great gift: she knows how to take genuine interest in me. I can tell by her questions.

  “Will you start playing music again soon?”

  “I can’t wait to . . .”

  She asks questions about details. Only those who ask about details have tried to understand what your heart feels. Details. Details: a way of truly loving. I like Silvia’s mother. If I could choose my mother, after the one I have, I would choose Silvia’s mother.

  Silvia’s room smells of lavender. That’s the name of the crumbled dried flowers in the bowl on the coffee table in the middle of the room. There are no posters on the walls, like there are in my room, but photographs. Photographs of Silvia when she was little, with her parents, with her younger brother, in junior high during a recital, dressed up as the Blue Fairy. I once told her that she is the Blue Fairy and I am Pinocchio. Perhaps Silvia emerged from that book.

  Each wall holds one of her paintings: a sailboat suspended in a pale, almost white sky that merges with a milky sea; a forest of spindly trees that she told me are called birches, depicting a scene that made an impression on her during a trip to Sweden; a field of red tulips against a blue, almost purple sky, which instead are taken from a Dutch landscape. I like Silvia’s paintings. You can rest in them. You can travel in them.

  “I need your help to write something, Silvia.”

  “On the condition that the day you get better you’ll play a song for me . . .”

  I wink at her, accompanying the gesture with a click of the tongue against my palate, which is a specialty of mine.

  “Which one?”

  “My favorite.”

  “Which is?”

  “‘Aria’ by Nannini.”

  “I don’t know it.”

  Silvia appears shocked and shows this as only she can: she puts her hands in front of her eyes and shakes her head dramatically.

  “You’ll have to learn it.”

  “Can’t you make do with Coldplay’s ‘Talk’?”

  “Either that one or nothing,” she says, pretending to be offended. Then with smiling eyes she continues:

  “What do I have to write? The essay on Dante or the research on cells?”

  “A letter . . .”

  “A letter? We don’t have any homework like that.”

  “To Beatrice.”

  Silvia says nothing. She opens a drawer to look for something and her hair covers her face. She takes a while to find paper and a pen. Then she pulls herself up again.

  “Sorry . . . Okay, I’m ready . . .”

  Silvia writes the letter I dictate. But it doesn’t work anymore, and I want to change it. Time has passed, and the words of the first lett
er are no longer the right ones. Silvia is ready to write. She looks me in the eyes and I try to focus on the words. But they don’t come. The words for Beatrice don’t come. If I’ve finished my words for Beatrice, I’m finished too.

  Until now the only words I’ve written freely, given that I don’t consider the ones for schoolwork as real words, are precisely the words in my letter to Beatrice. That was—now that I think about it—the first time I wrote something, the first time that words laid bare my soul, black on white. Yes, because the soul is white and to reveal itself it must turn black like ink. And when you see it there, in black, you recognize it, you read it, you look at it, like when you look at yourself in the mirror, and then . . . and then you give it away.

  Dear Beatrice,

  I am writing this letter to you . . .

  My soul starts to emerge, and Silvia turns it into black on white, in her handwriting, and my soul seems more elegant coming from her hands, subtler, gentler, and cleaner . . .

  . . . so that my words may keep you company. I’d love to talk to you in person, but I’m scared of wearing you down and I’m scared of being afraid of seeing you suffer. Therefore I’m writing to you. It’s the second letter I’ve written to you, but the first was left in my pocket. Yes, because I had an accident and ended up in the hospital. So now that I’m better, even if I have my arm in a cast and a neck like a robot’s, I’ve decided to write again. Beatrice, how are you? Are you tired? I guess you are. I gave blood for you. I know that you needed it and I think you’ll get better, because my blood will make you better. I’m sure of it. Gandalf claims that donated blood cures people. He says that Christ cured people from sin throughout the ages by giving his blood. But that’s a weird story, because in any case that blood has never entered my veins. Even so, I like the idea of blood that cures and I hope that mine will cure you. If you have my blood, you will discover something important. When my blood passes through your heart it will caress it and tell it about my dream. The dream I have. Dreams make people who they are. They make us great.