White as Silence, Red as Song

by Alessandro D'Avenia

  “You seem distracted. Your eyes are shining. Are you thinking about Beatrice? Let’s take a break . . .”

  I wake up from a dream.

  “No, no, carry on. I’m listening.”

  Silvia smiles with understanding. “Okay, now comes the part I like best, the one about the red apple. Concentrate: ‘Like a sweet-apple turning red high on the tip of the topmost branch. Forgotten by pickers: not forgotten, they couldn’t reach it.’”

  As Silvia repeats and follows the Greek words with her finger, I—for the first time—think I understand that dead language.

  I learned these verses by heart and repeated them until the break of dawn—which I’d never yet seen—caught me in love, in crazy-red love. But how can I betray Beatrice? How can I reach Silvia, so perfect? Yet it is Beatrice who opened my eyes, who made me see what I wasn’t seeing. Silvia is home. Silvia is peace. Silvia is shelter. Will I ever be able to reach you, Silvia?

  Chapter 97

  The worst thing about life is that there’s no instruction manual. With a cell phone you follow the instructions, and if it doesn’t work, there’s the warranty. You take it back and they give you a new one. Not so with life. If it doesn’t work, they don’t give you a new one. You’re stuck with the one you have—used, dirty, and malfunctioning. And when it doesn’t work you lose your appetite.

  “Leo, you haven’t eaten anything. Are you sick?” asks Mom. It’s impossible to hide anything from her.

  “I don’t know, I’m not hungry,” I answer dryly.

  “You must be in love then.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean, ‘I don’t know’? Either you are or you aren’t . . .”

  “I’m confused. It’s like I have a million-piece jigsaw puzzle without the complete picture to start from. I have to do it all myself.”

  “But that’s life, Leo. You build the road as you go along, with the choices you make.”

  “But if you don’t know how to choose?”

  “Try to find the truth and choose.”

  “And what is the truth about love?”

  Mom says nothing. I knew it. There’s no answer, no instructions.

  “You must search for it in your heart. The most important truths are hidden, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. They are just harder to find.”

  “And what have you found out in all these years, Mom?”

  “That love doesn’t want to have. Love just wants to love.”

  I don’t answer. I start eating again while my mother washes the dishes in silence.

  My phone is on the table, next to my glass. I pick it up and send Silvia a message:

  “Tomorrow, I mean today, at five o’clock at the bench. I want to talk to you! It’s a matter of life or death.”

  Chapter 98

  I get there half an hour early to practice by heart the speech that I want to make. A homeless guy approaches to ask me for some change and I, feeling generous with the world because I am about to declare my love to Silvia, give him a euro. Two, in fact. He says to me:

  “God bless you.”

  As soon as I see her approaching, I wonder how I could have been so blind for so long. She tells me what a wonderful place this is and that everyone should have a place like this to plan their dreams and share their secrets. I beckon her to sit down with all the respect I would have for a queen, and as I wring my hands in search of words, she stops me with the utmost seriousness.

  “I want to say something first, Leo.”

  I very much hope it is the same thing, so we can get it over with and hug each other.

  “I no longer want to keep this heart-wrenching secret.”

  Here we go. Once again, Silvia saves the day.

  “Beatrice never answered your messages because I never gave you her number.”

  I look at Silvia like someone who has just landed from Mars and sees a human being for the first time. Her beautiful features suddenly appear rigid, made of papier-mâché, like an empty mask.

  “I know, Leo. I’m sorry. It’s my fault.”

  I don’t understand.

  “That time you asked me to give you her number? I just pretended to do it.”

  I remember noticing, when Beatrice gave me her number, that it didn’t match the one I had. The love-filled words I had prepared vanish like the “I love you” messages written in the sand near the seashore.

  My tone of voice becomes as hard as ice.

  “Why did you do it?”

  Silvia remains silent.

  “Why did you do it, Silvia?”

  Silvia replies mixing words with tears.

  “I was jealous. I wanted you to send those messages to me. But I never had the courage to tell you. I kept your letter to Beatrice for months imagining that it was for me. I was terrified of losing you. Forgive me.”

  I sit in a white silence, similar to the one on the moon. She stares at the river’s current and doesn’t have the courage to raise her gaze. I get up and walk away, leaving her there, like a perfect stranger. Silvia is no longer anyone for me. Love cannot come from betrayal.

  “I want to forget you as quickly as possible.”

  I repeat it through my tears. And that thing that a few nights earlier had nestled in a corner of my heart dries up into a grain of salt that comes out in my tears, dissolved, lost forever.

  I am tired of being betrayed.

  Chapter 99

  I have so much pain clenched in my chest that I could burn down the world. Being holed up at home fuels my fire. I can’t stand it any longer, so I go to my father’s study and tell him outright.

  “Dad, enough. I get it. That’s enough now!”

  He looks at me without saying a word. He remains silent. I provoked him, I yelled at him, and he says nothing. What kind of way is that to react to provocation?

  I slam the door and go back to my room. I turn the music up until the windows are shaking, so that everyone can hear me and nobody can talk to me. I want to close myself away in a house of noise, because today the house I live in is not mine. Terminator starts whimpering like he does in these situations. He always whimpers whenever he hears Linkin Park at full blast and whenever my mother cooks chicken with peppers. It’s as if they rekindle his primordial instincts or bad memories from his puppyhood. Terminator really is a weird dog. If I have to be reincarnated, I hope I don’t end up being Terminator. I wonder who Terminator was in his past life.

  I turn up the music up and the lyrics from “Numb” are on the verge of shattering the windowpanes, so that everyone can hear me. Suddenly Mom screams, “Leo, turn it down! I can’t even talk on the phone!”

  That’s exactly what I want, but you don’t get it and think I enjoy listening to this music at full blast. Do you think I care? I just want to fill this world with my noise while I plug my ears.

  Then my father walks into my room. He says nothing. I turn the volume down.

  “Let’s go for a walk.”

  He’s heard me. My father has heard me. He has heard what I was really saying.

  We don’t talk about anything. But with Dad near me I feel almost calm, my doubts about everything and everyone subsiding. My wounds burn less. Dad, Father. How do you become a father? You have to read lots of books, have at least one child, and have godlike strength.

  I will never be capable of that.

  Chapter 100

  We lie next to each other with our eyes closed after five minutes of deep silence. It’s a game that Beatrice taught me. The silence game: a few minutes of silence, eyes closed, staring at the colors that appear beneath your eyelids. Occasionally I cheat and look at her just a few inches from me, holding my breath so that she can’t tell I’ve turned my head.

  “Don’t open your eyes,” she says, sensing something.

  “I’m not.”

  “What do you see?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Concentrate.”

  “What do you see?” I ask her curiously.
r />   “Everything I have.”

  “What color is it?”

  “Red.”

  “And what is it?”

  “It’s the love I receive. Love is always a debt. That’s why it’s red.”

  I don’t get it. I’ll never get things at Beatrice’s level. Ever.

  “And you, Leo? What do you see?”

  “White.”

  “With your eyes closed?”

  “With my eyes closed.”

  “And what is it?”

  “ . . .”

  “Well?”

  “Everything I don’t have. Love is always a credit that will not be repaid.”

  “Oh stop it,” Beatrice says, laughing and giving me a kiss on the cheek.

  After today, I’m never washing my face again.

  Chapter 101

  The time has come to settle the score : the final showdown against Vandal. The match that will determine the winner of the tournament. We are one point behind them. All we can do is win. All we must do is win. There is much more than victory at stake here: revenge for Niko’s nose, the goal scorer’s ranking, and the Pirates’ pride. I feel the right kind of rage. Rage that explodes into fiery shots that scorch the skin of our opponents and turn into wounds on Vandal’s legs.

  We’re laying everything on the line. A year of hard work. If you win the tournament, the girls recognize you and you become cool. “The Pirate. There he is, that’s the Pirate. The captain of the Pirates . . .” I can already hear them. How I wish Beatrice could see me play. I want to dedicate the game to her, the victory, the goals, the triumph over Vandal. Now I just have to focus. Half an hour still to go but I’ve been ready for at least three. Niko is coming to pick me up on his scooter.

  Text message. It’ll be Niko telling me to head downstairs and wait for him there. “I’m frightened . . . I’m tired, extremely tired. I’m alone . . . Beatrice.”

  I call her.

  “What’s up, Beatrice? What’s going on?”

  Her voice is broken. She’s crying, crying like I’ve never heard her cry.

  “I’ll be right there!”

  I go downstairs, and when Niko arrives I don’t give him time to breathe.

  “Give me a lift. Now. I’ll meet you later, I hope I make it . . .”

  Niko is speechless and drives off, leaving me at Beatrice’s alone. I see him speeding away, his scooter making the sound of a friend who is leaving forever.

  And that sound is excruciatingly painful.

  Chapter 102

  Beatrice opens her eyes, red from crying, and pulls back from my embrace.

  “Thank you for coming. I couldn’t have gotten through today alone.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m frightened.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of losing everything, of ending up in a void, of silence, of disappearing, and that’s it . . . of no longer having the people I love near me.”

  There isn’t a single acceptable word or sentence in my head. The only thing that comes out is the last remaining truth, like those trees you see standing alone in a field of green.

  “I’m here.”

  I squeeze her hands as if I could tear her away from the emptiness of fear, like a trapeze artist entrusted with his partner’s life as it’s suspended in the air, without a safety net.

  “Write . . .”

  Her muttered words are confused, and I have to bend my ear to her lips to understand them. Her breath is warm and her words are as rough as a piece of iron being dragged across stone. I write the words that Beatrice whispers to me in a sigh. When she has finished dictating, she hands me her diary.

  “Take it. Keep it. As of today I’m not writing anymore. It’s for you.”

  I can’t take it. I shake my head and place it near her.

  “I thought I was writing it for myself. Then I realized I was writing it for you. It’s what I can and want to give you, Leo.”

  I don’t resist.

  “Beatrice, one day we’ll read it together.”

  She smiles at me.

  “Yes. Go now. It’s getting late. I’m tired.”

  I want to give her something too, but I haven’t brought anything with me. I can’t just leave like this. I rummage in my pockets. Nothing, except . . . the stone with a thousand shades of blue that I took from her living room. How embarrassing! But it’s the only thing I have. I place it in the palm of her hand, as if it’s a diamond.

  “My lucky charm. I want you to keep it.”

  Beatrice smiles with the sky in her eyes.

  “Thank you.”

  I kiss her red hair and in one second my life is filled with her blood.

  “See you next time.”

  “See you next time.”

  I clutch Beatrice’s diary tightly to my chest as if it’s my skin. I think again about the fact that the only thing I was able to give her was something I stole from her home. I have nothing to give, if not the love that I receive or steal. Before leaving Beatrice’s house I steal another blue stone. I can’t go around without a lucky charm . . .

  Chapter 103

  Night is the place for words.

  The words in Beatrice’s diary have shone like daylight in my first night without sleep, my first night of being alive: my first night.

  If heaven exists, Beatrice will take me there.

  The pain forces me to close my eyelids, to hide my eyes. I always thought that I would devour the world with my eyes, that like bees they would rest on things and distill their beauty. But my illness is forcing me to close my eyes: because of the pain, because of exhaustion. Only little by little did I realize that with my eyes closed I could see more, that from beneath my closed eyelids I could see all the beauty of the world, and that beauty is you, God. If you are making me close my eyes it is so that I pay more attention when I reopen them.

  This is written in Beatrice’s diary. And today I’ll close my eyes and look at life through hers. If life had eyes, it would have Beatrice’s. Starting today I want to love life as I’ve never loved it before. I’m almost ashamed not to have started sooner.

  Chapter 104

  I get back from school. Mom opens the door for me.

  “What’s for lunch?”

  She looks at me as you would look at a wounded child.

  “Oh no, not minestrone . . .”

  I tell her I got an eight in philosophy, but even before I’ve specified the subject she hugs me tightly, hiding my face in the hollow of her neck.

  I can smell Mom’s fragrance, a fragrance that as a child brought me comfort: a scent of rose mixed with lemon. Subtle. But she’s not hugging me because of the grade; otherwise her tears wouldn’t be moistening my face. Only then do I realize.

  I’d like to free myself, but she won’t let go of me, so I sink my fingers into her flesh to understand if what she is telling me without saying a word is true.

  My mother is the only woman I have left.

  The only skin I have left.

  Chapter 105

  Beatrice is dead.

  That’s the word for it. No point in beating around the bush. She wouldn’t have wanted that. People say she has departed, passed away, left us.

  Beatrice is dead.

  The word dead is so violent that you can only say it once and then you have to be silent.

  Silvia is the only person I’d like to talk to, but I don’t have the strength to forgive her for lying to me. Life is a test to get a truth out of you that you don’t know but that you’ll pretend to remember just to avoid any more suffering . . . to the point you end up believing that lie, forgetting that it was you who made it up in the first place.

  God, the stars are no longer needed. Turn them off one by one.

  Dismantle the sun and wrap up the moon.

  Empty the ocean, uproot the plants.

  Nothing is important anymore.

  And most of all, leave me alone!

  Chapter 106

  The church is bu
rsting with people ; the whole school is there. Everyone is gathered around a shiny wooden shape that hides her body, her lifeless eyes. The Beatrice I remember no longer exists and the one that is now inside that wooden box is another Beatrice. There lies the mystery of this thing called death. But what I loved in her and about her hasn’t floated away. It hasn’t slipped off like a single hurried breath. I clutch her diary tightly between my hands, like a second skin.

  Gandalf is celebrating the mass. Once again. He talks about the mystery of death and tells us the story of a guy called Job from whom God took everything. Despite this, Job remained faithful to him, even though he had the courage to reproach him for his cruelty.

  “And as Job screams out among his tears, God says to him: ‘Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Who shut up the sea behind doors? Have you ever given orders to the morning, or shown the dawn its place? Does the rain have a father? Who gives birth to the frost from the heavens? Who provides food for the raven? Does the hawk take flight by your wisdom and spread its wings toward the south? Speak out if you have so much wisdom!’”

  Silence falls after Gandalf’s reading.

  “We, like Job, are today crying out our disapproval to God; we do not accept what he has decided to do, we do not accept it, and this is only human. But God asks us to have faith in him. This is the only solution to the mystery of pain and death: faith in his love. And this is divine, a divine gift. And we must not be afraid if we cannot do that now. Indeed, we should say this clearly to God: We will not stand for it!”

  Nonsense! Forget faith, I hate God. Gandalf continues, unflinching.