4. The terrible day.
It has rained the whole day.
And even if toward evening the sky is cleared as often happens in the sunsets of June from these parts on the lake, the air is still cold; and inexorably damp.
Mark extinguishes the portable one and inserts him/it in the case box. It is distorted, because you/he/she has remained to the telephone mezz'ora without besides resolving nothing, with that stupid some office purchases of that big Milanese firm that the truth to say is the most important client of the firm Innocentini.
Maddish, they want to still buy to smaller prices, and if the Innocentini won't succeed in being more competitive, they swear to turn to the Asian market, where everything costs less.
The crisis he is making to feel of ugly in this period, and even if in television the usual political optimists of the cabbage solemnly announce that the worse it is by now to the shoulders, the small firms as the Innocentini continue to arrancare or worse to fail. Mark however it doesn't lose the calm, it is good in his/her job and he/she knows that the times will change in better sooner or later, despite that usual our cabbage of political. He, that has of smell of it, warns that the turn could arrive even this year.
In every case you/he/she should not worry too much himself/herself/themselves; even if they failed, the investments done in the years' 80 from Mr. Innocentini would guarantee to his/her family and he the same quality of life for other 50 yearses.
But Mark is not us, and you/he/she would never be us; he is master of his/her choices and he will succeed in holding standing the firm of family, he knows him/it.
However it is tired. Because the night he doesn't sleep, and a four month-old child steals sleep as nient'altro she knows how to do, sopratutto now that you/he/she is sick. Nothing serious, has the fever and the nasino full of catarrh, things from babies, but however annoyingly worrisome for his/her/their parents.
They play the 20.00 broken, Mark it is late. It doesn't have to do nothing of programmed, but you/he/she was intended to detach before the usual one to give strong hand to Simona, even if she is a woman it toasts that it doesn't even mention never to complain about himself/herself/themselves.
Mark turns the keys in the picture of the German derision that is done from not too long.
It exaggeratedly is not a luxurious car, but it hardly possesses standard of comfort and reliability ritrovabili to that price, further to have for a long time an appreciable aesthetical line.
It takes the road for house, he/she would like to make himself/herself/themselves a cigarette, but it doesn't smoke a lot of because of the child and of sure it would not turn on him in car imbuing the cabin of toxic air.
Few kilometers to finally arrive to house; the road is that usual, transited thousand of times: a pair of curves, an along rectilinear, another series of curves and finally house.
It begins the along rectilinear holding the 100 hourly kms, it is oddly out of the limit, even if not of a lot. It extracts from the door objects a case box of cardboard: candy to the Swiss grasses. It opens the case box using only the right hand, he/she takes a candy, it puts her/it in mouth. It always closes again the box with the same hand, but the scatoletta falls him.
It decelerates, but of few, too much little.
It unties the safety belt and it begins to look for the case box fallen him on the rug, always only with the right hand.
Don't find him/it.
They are the 20.15 and in June there is still a weak light, yet the same doesn't succeed in understanding where those damned candy are chased. It throws rapidses glances while it is proceeding for the rectilinear one, but he/she anchors he/she doesn't see her.
It looks at the road, then in low on the rug: nothing.
The road, then again in low on the rug: still nothing.
The road, then in low: find!
Then Mark breaks him against a tree to the 20.16 of an evening of June in which you/he/she had stopped raining from not too long. Not even one braked, not even an abrupt swerve, nothing of nothing, and it dies.
Of the following instants immediately to the accident void he/she is known, he can hypothesize only.
Perhaps Mark is realized to die, you/he/she has tried even perhaps to fight, not to release, despite you/he/she had the broken down skull and the organs inside meeting places in mash for the received counterblow. Even you/he/she has attended that the paramedics arrived, hoped to feel soon the sirens, begged to live, to succeed us for Martina or for Simona or simply for love toward the same life.
Of certain, absolutely certain, he/she is known only that to the arrival of the ambulance Mark had already died.
After all he also dies so: stupidly, for of the candy fallen of hand and for a belt untied with too sufficiency, to not even thirty years and with a 4 month-old baby that will never know really his/her father.
I have known him from Chicken; absurd, but I have known him from who kilometers was far.
It has a cousin that works on the ambulances and the news of a boy that he breaks and it dies, in this place where it seems to never happen anything, it does soon to turn.
I have received the call that was almost midnight, I was about to go to sleep when I have read on the display that illuminated him jerky" Chicken cell." I would ever be imagined me.
«Ready?»
«...» He/she cried.
«Hello? Oh Chicken? But what do you have? Ready?»
«Mark...»
«Mark? Do I Mark thing? What has happened?»
«Mark has made an accident. It is in the hospital.»
«Thing?»
«Paul... they say that it is dead.»
And it is as to be invested by a deflagrating, as if the stomach bursted and the temples exploded for the so much effort to hold up such a sudden pressure, ever borne.
I don't remember other.
I don't even know if I/you had kept on speaking on the phone with Chicken or if I/you had closed the call and I/you immediately was fallen me in the hospital. I would not know how to say nothing of the road, neither if you/he/she had started over raining, neither if I/you had driven to out lighthouses. I remember that felt only a knot that suffocated me, only this.
Arrived in first aid anybody you/he/she could tell me void. I asked with anger of Innocentini Marco, but they said not to be able to give information and to calm me, that you/they otherwise would have been forced to make to get further me. Then a man that I had already seen meeting has come me: you/he/she was the father of Simona.
«Boy, calmed» you/he/she has lowly said and then the knot is tightened stronger and I has taken to cry as I am sure to never have done in my life, up to vomit.
I have not wanted to see him/it, I would not have succeeded there.
Out of the mortuary room the mother of Mark has tightened me strong. He/she cried to I hijack and it repeated only compulsively «Mark... Mark... Mark...»
Also his/her father, Mr. Innocentini, has embraced me, but without saying nothing.
Simona I have not seen her, it was too badly and you/they had soothed her. In-patient and estate would have him under observation for the night.
"Who wants to live forever?"
Mark asked him/it that night when we found us in that dreadful accident while we were directing there toward Calabria.
Who wants to die to not even thirty years, for a fool distraction and when, done just get married, has not a four month-old daughter still pronounced your name?
Life is incomprehensibly unfair at times; but it is so, and he can take only action of it.
The funeral was not the serene ceremony, with only the present near people, and even with the music, that Mark would perhaps have liked indeed. There were rather all, or almost the inhabitants of the country on the lake and those of the near countries. Because here the tragedy, fatality, is also novelty, event, call.
In the middle of the known faces and to those less traceable, we were also there us:
the friends.
David, known the news, you/he/she had reentered with the first possible flight. It was exhausted from the trip and from the loss, but it hid drawing to all of his/her residual boldness the pain that I/you/they am sure it tormented him/it.
Chicken, poor Manu, didn't possess the same tempering of character of David, and he/she uninterruptedly sobbed with big and heavy tears. I would have liked to comfort him/it, to tighten him/it and to stop the shake that fierce they got tired him/it, but he/she didn't succeed me to do him/it.
Gianca didn't speak, almost never. During the burial and in the brief meeting that subsequently united us to the Wine cellar, it said at the most about twenty words.
I remember that in front of Silvio that, gone down by the counter to embrace it repeated us insistent «it is not correct, it is not correct, it is not correct...» Gianca observed laconic «has happened.» And it told him/it with neutrality, as if pain didn't serve or as if it were useless to surrender space to the suffering however.
I could not understand him/it.
Alice, that came also to the funeral, he/she remained far. The instinct of woman perhaps suggested her to leave only me with my silences to close that interlacement of life that ended forever without appeal.
After all, I hoped that it didn't draw near, because in the anger that already kicked me inside furious for that absurd death, I wanted us to be somehow alone once more: Mark and I.
There was a sun inappropriato to the funeral of Mark and from the first files of the full church up to the last benches before the exit weepings and complaints felt him.
The mother of Mark and Simona, women united by the laceration of the soul, compotes and neighbors sat, able behavior was almost a form of respect toward that immense love by now confined in the coffin of dark mahogany. His/her father, Mr. Innocentini, remained for the whole standing time, and in his/her eyes, that had always appeared me comprehensive acute and, something, perhaps that spark that the eyes of serene the people possess, had disappeared already, as died, forever.
Martinas left her/it to house with an aunt of Simona that day.
The priest recited the homily, but I didn't listen to him; then the organized transport conducted slow but inexorable Mark's body for the whole country, up to the arrival to the cemetery where you/he/she was buried.
They put a photo that I had gone off him me on the headstone.
As I have anticipated we went later to the Wine cellar: me, Chicken, Gianca and David.
We didn't consume anything, neither we spoke as, aware that were only there for the extreme need of a normal context.
The day later Chicken and Gianca hastily returned to Cesenatico, while David left again as soon as you/he/she was able to bear another long intercontinental trip.
I remained only again, this time in a new loneliness, fiercer, logorante, eternal.
I didn't listen to music anymore for a lot of time, nothing of nothing, less that never the Queen of Freddie Mercury, because the solo to feel some notes of whatever song that brought back me to instigated me to us a maddish nausea.
I started over soon working, I was still part-time from Pigozzi, and I tried to survive to that environment they put and to the glances of everybody that again they worried for me.
I kept on writing, both for the on-line sporting editing and for my manuscript, and when I came to have to speak of the death of Mark Innocentini I tried a depth bother, as if somehow what happened it didn't have to make part of the history that I was writing, as if it were in contrast with the whole rest or it was inopportune to be told.
So that I have decided not to speak too much of it.
And I won't write of as him it reenters to house after having known that your best friend, he who considered a brother, it is dead. Neither I will say of as slowly it is metabolized, of as the nightmares and the fears they are fought, of as, footstep after footstep, is restarted to take back the really run and the memoirs put back him in the drawer of the memory.
I do him/it because this history, that starts from the news of a life that was born, doesn't finish with the slash of a life that dies.
I do him/it because to Mark, the first one that would have had to read these lines, is not be liked to exclusively track the suffering and the sadness of the adverse events down, but sopratutto would have desired to see the joy and the love, for which I have always thought about wanting to write and for which so much encouraged me to do him/it.
As he/she affirmed Gianca that day to the Wine cellar «has happened.»
And they is not able, they are not had to stop the pages or the time or the happiness. You can live only anchor, and to strive himself/herself/themselves to succeed us with intensity and tension turns to the same life, because it is a duty verse those people who have left each other and verse those people who accompany us, and a precious teaching to be given to those people that we inevitably will leave.
Viva la vida (english version) Page 19
