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It's May outside.
I'm at home a few hours before the sun disappears behind the dark
buildings. The finger stuck into the knot of the tie. A resolute twitch, and
then I collapse bare chested on the bed. I take off my shoes. They make an
incredible noise when I throw them on the floor. Then the silence I longed
for and finally found. A hand on the forehead that burns.
It's not fever, just the anxiety of another day passed without memories. Nothing serious but the love which fills the mouth and throbs
hindering the breath. On the night table there's the old Polaroid you gave
me. I take it in my hands and point it towards myself. I see my image
reflecting in the convex viewfinder. Suicide. A blow in full face with
the bulky Spirit 600. Instant camera. I press, a clang and the tongue
of celluloid scurries out on the chest. The square held in the white frame is
vanilla juice in motion. In the chemical spirals, from the chasms of the
paper appear the thin features of my face. There's the forehead, hair
pulled back, liquid eyes, beard not shaved, scars, all my thoughts wedged
under the cheekbones, in the nostrils, inside the mouth. Those lips keep
everything: discontent, abandon sense, the acidulous humours on the tongue.
Continuously. And below the face there's that body I don't recognize each
time I see it represented by something that's not my glance. The emaciated
and fragile body, almost hairless. Clasping bones by
the slender arms, the hairless and pathetic breastbone and the Adam's
apple pronounced over the unlikely. All around the vermilion tonality of
the bed, the pillow well put under my head, a scrap of the tie,
captured by the last moment from the lens, there, in that corner.
I put
the picture on the mattress and suddenly I'm on my feet. I take off my trousers. I wear a t-shirt of T-rex, a
faded sweatshirt, a pair of jeans and
dirty sneakers. I stink of sweat even before sweating, but I smile and
stutter out. ''There's still light and enough time to do everything''. Then
it's confetti of actions done with the speed of light. In the bathroom, toothpaste,
teeth, face under the water, in the drawer, the walk-man, the one of twenty years
ago, when I walked alone and uninhibited with the skin-deep thoughts and
the loves, unable to feel ashamed of the sorrows which passed me through.
It's dirty and scratched, it's orange, it's plastic and aluminium.
Batteries work, since millennium, took roots inside. I play a chrome
cassette which smells of things happened a lifetime ago. I remember it,
the past century, with the titles of the songs written in pen and the
tears, or the rain that have discoloured, soiled, transformed, lenghtened
those titles.
What tonalities of green! I put the case in
a small rucksack. It still smells of train, shrimps eaten ten years ago in
Norway, under a summer storm, in Bergen. I carry it on my back, the door, the keys,
going downstairs, in the cellar, the taste of mould (the exaltation beatin'
on the temples). Down there, yeah, right down those boxes there's a red
and white Bmx. The faded watercolour stickers, the chromium plated mechanicals
corroded by rust
but everything considered still working. I take it out with quick actions.
With one hand I wanna free it from webs and from those years of silence.
''You've abandoned me for such a long time'', the bike whispers in my ear
while I pump up the first wheel. ''But I forgive you, if is still gonna be
time of speed and smiles, of light-heartedness and ice-creams eaten with one only
hand''. I look at it with fun and I caress it, as it was a small iron and
aluminium horse. ''I don't assure you the smiles and the
light-heartedness, my
lil' one'', I add with fun, ''but there will be speed for sure, as well as
descents to cover with the thundering music in the ears''. The bike answers grumbling with a neighing of metallic joints. It would take some
oil and that brake, the back one, which is so consumed to give suicidal
tones to the enterprise. It doesn't matter, nevermind for real. I pump the other
wheel up and then I dust the saddle. It's full of scrapes. Each one stands for a fall. There's
a rip on the frame of twenty years ago.
I remember the smell of asphalt and the graze on the knee. Speed didn't
want to slow down, then the sudden hit, the shooting pain, the thought of sweat
that flew on the legs and of life still bedewing the
body. I remember the candid hand of my mother, the family cold of her
fingers on the wound.
It's time to go, scurrying away from the garage, bent
on the handle-bars. Proportions betray the years which have passed. But it
doesn't matter. Ride, for God! Ride, 'coz the chain is dry and not greasy
anymore. And the noise of the gearing doesn't promise anything good. But I go
ahead quietly, with the same sweat which wets the trousers. Those dirty and
stinking shoes are perfect on those pedals defying the force of gravity. And that
sweatshirt still swells in the wind. Hair are only more grey but are
there exactly like the last time we flight over the street of Eur (that's
an area from Rome; Mery's note), almost twenty years ago.
Music in the ears, the rustling of magneto and of the batteries. All the tones
up, for compensating the wear and tear of time that has made the notes dark and
deep. When you have a song playing in your ears and you're ridin' a bike that's got your same age, when love explodes
in your heart and you
don't know how to stop it, you become one with the air. I float, as smooth
as silk, the sweat wet by the wind. The phones force my ears to painful
positions. But I've got a full album to play, with which dreaming and,
again, remembering. At the end of the way planted with trees, over the
abandoned cycle-racing stadium, the slavic whores greeting and smiling at
you with their
flabby sides and arms burnt by the first
sun of May. ''Where are you going, beautiful boy? Come here''. I send 'em a kiss with the
hand and run away in the by-ways tormented by the fronds of trees. Such
tender leaves intwined one upon the other, the shade, the emerald green
tunnel. Two blocks, next to the cars parked along the sidewalks and flooded by pollen.
Well, just turn round that corner and make for
that building. Can you see it? The one with green shutters and sunshade
curtains striped. On the first floor there are memories waiting for you,
whispering and veiling surroundings with apprenhension. I stop
and tell the bike to wait in silence. I'm on the landing with
sweaty hands and the heart lookin' for a place in the chest. The shutters
are turned down, flowers in the vases are dead and dry. There is none in
the garden untilled by now. The letterbox is a mess of faded and heaped
envelopes one upon the other. Once wet by winter rain, today damped of dusk
and spring. Where are you? Where will you be now? Do you remember when
people told you that I was as mad as a hatter, or when we ate an ice-cream
along the street, leant along the walls populated by lizards? It was daydreams, it were words climbed on the trees and blossomed over the leaves,
higher than anything else, where we weren't able to see. I've not been lookin'
for nicotine for almost thirty years and I imagine you at your place, on
the balcony, with the hair loose, jeans cut below the groin, t-shirts bigger then a couple of sizes from which showed, in turn, your
shoulders.
I wore torn trousers made of black linen and black leather sandals. You
told me I had a bad taste in dressing. If I mortified too much myself, you
kissed me on the forehead and I thought I could fly.
Where are you now? That window is barred
since years. Thousand of leaves have fallen in front of your room. Inside there is
still your bed, your desk, your pictures hanged on the wall, your stereo.
And I feel like closing my eyes imaging myself by your side, on
that bed, with the secret feelings that slaughtered my chest. I never told
you but I adored you, my love. And we were so close to tell it to each
other, resting our heads on the pillows, when the boxes of the stereo
repeated endlessly:
"It's my own design, it's my own remorse
help me to decide, help me make the most
of freedom and of pleasure
nothing ever lasts forever
everybody wants to rule the world"
I take out the cassette from the rucksack, which was yours, with your handwriting. The titles of the songs disappear
as these memories hanged by a thread. Your house is here rotting, letters are still delivered near, the music of those days is in my ears.
"There's a room where the light won't find you
holding hands while the walls come tumbling down
when they do I'll be right behind you
So glad we've almost made it
So sad they had to fade it
Everybody wants to rule the world"
 This is for
you. I put the cassette in its
case and leave it close by your window. When you wake up, you'll be able to
play it again. With the fingers of ghost up to the stereo. And the head
resting on the pillows, like many years ago. I'll be ridin' my bike, with
the black linen trousers and the dark sandals at my feet. I'll just have
the hair a bit more grey but the same wish of acting like a mad through
the desert streets. And that spoiled cassette-player will be stuck to my
waistband. Earphones with red sponges not to torment too much my lobes, the
white wire on the t-shirt, the hypnotic movement of the heads turning. I never told you how much I loved you. I swear I never did it. I have
one hand
on the forehead that burns. It's not fever, just the anxiety of another
day passed without memories. I'm just a ghost. You're only a ghost. Titles
of the songs disappear as these memories hanged by a thread. Your face is
rotting somewhere, the music of our days is in my ears. In my ears. |
