Thursday, January 28, 2016

TRADOTTI

SE ME LO DICEVI PRIMA



                                                When you’re twenty you mix up
                                                Blood and unrevealed chemistries.
                                                But with the flow of days
                                and if  the blood has been properly drained
                                when eventually your time is shortening
                                when you have already made two counts
                                                You can only wait.
                                And it’ll come, oh yes, it’ll come:
                                                                Love!
                                                And companion will be
                                                Until the last breath.


1
Bastiano Carena pulls himself staggering toward the shed of corrugated metal built up at the fringe of the clearing lawn edged by gum trees. The frail construction, abandoned hut of cane cutters of the first half of last century, is the only shelter he can afford  with his current income, the cheque from Centrelink.
The silent and starry sub-tropical night, brought very little relief to a stinky hot day: temperature is still high and humidity make one sweat to every single little movement.
His asthmatic breathing, due to the many cigarettes, produces a combination of  assorted whines. His breath recall to mind those old Italian cellars where the smell of Grappa they use to distilled abusively there was permeating everything. His head’s spinning like a top and a heartburn tenacious and nasty along with several dry retching  suggest a not exactly quiet night to come.
He eventually reaches the shed and gets in. With the last effort closes the tiny wooden door and finally collapses, without undressing, on the creaking bed.
John Gummingarr, the old Aborigine who lives in the shed built on the opposite edge of the clearing – one hundred metres away – has observed the scene from the little window of his house shaking his head.
The little house is slightly illuminated by the light of a couple of candles barely sufficient to lighten up the room.
The old man is rolling a cigarette of Virginia tobacco while in between the few teeth remaining in his mouth is jabbering an old and sad Baryulgal song.
The scene he just saw is the same of every night since a few months.
- If he continues this way, is going to kill himself. One of these night I’m going to talk to him.
- And what you think to fix up – asks Sheela, the woman who has shared her existence with him for the last 47 years. Her tone is unusually sweet.
- I don’t expect to fix anything, but you see my love, I feel compelled to remind him that life is a precious gift, since he seems he forgot that. Every night he comes back drunk. How old is he, you think?
- How old can he be? Forty five, fifty years old! You are seventy four and you see things in a different way.
- I know what you mean! But there are things that one learns early. Well, one should…
- Exactly, one should – she interrupt – but not everyone follow the same path, as you know. And then many things can happen in life!
- C’mon woman, what do you mean: what things?
- Mine are only suggestions but yesterday, right here behind the shed, I was gathering wood to cook and I was bent on the ground when I saw a snake, she was a brown, a female, not farer than half a metre away from my hands. She was already on her tail and ready to attack. I got so scared, I bounced the wood away I yelled and started to beat my feet on the ground. All that noise scared her because I saw her sneaking away to hide in the long grass. So I calmed down and while picking up the wood the Great Mother came to my mind and I thanked her for the lucky escape.
- Alright but what the Italian has to do with all that?
- I’ll get here.
- Just at the end of my thanking it came to my mind our neighbor and how he reduces himself every night. And I recalled that the snake was a female and then I understood, well, I think I understood: I believe there’s a woman involved!
- You’re trying to tell me that the man is killing himself, smash after smash, because of a woman?
- I told you, you stubborn man, they’re my beliefs.
- Yep, sure, but your beliefs, as you called them, result to be right almost ever.
- Listen – John continue – tomorrow for that fencing job, they’ll pay me my wage and they told me they going to give me a lamb hunch. What do you think if I invite him to eat it with us?
Sheela face opens in such a tender smile that him as well, despite that bit of embarrassment for the missing top teeth, siles her back.
Later on, in bed, before to get asleep, cuddling her and listening to her quiet breathing, the man recall what his woman said:
- If she’s right, my task is a hard one but our Bunjalung tales will help me to make him understand.
Just after that, his eyelid become very heavy and closes on another day given him by destiny.
In a few moment he fall asleep.


2
- What a fuckin’night – mutters within himself Bastiano, stretching and yawning when he stands up from the bed.
He goes out on the back of the shed, walk three metres and enters a smaller shed in corrugated metal, four square metres, the bathroom.
After making sure that no redback spiders have chosen the the loo seat as a shelter for the night, he seats on it.
Same cheking for the shower tub: everything alright, no undesired visitors a part from the always present cockroaches.
The air is already warm, despite is only half past six in the morning: the mess of drinking is that one collapses at night but after a few hours sleeping the hang over wakes you up.
The fresh water of the shower helps him to clear his mind and he recalls his “performance” of the previous night at the pub, down in town.
How did it go? The usual! Same old shit feast by himself minding his business. Then, when eventually rhum mellowed him and Sonia popped up again in his mind, he started to talk by himself, the talk reached soon very high and angry tones and inevitably, as usual, the Tongan bouncer “gently” – so to speak – pushed him off the venue. As usual!
Bastiano get off the tiny shed with a towel around his hips and one around his head.
Then everything happened in a quick motion: he feels a acute pain at his ankle that make s him bent on himself and with the back of his eye he spot the snake getting away in the long grass. A moment before to pass he thinks with guilt on how many times he has thought he must cut the grass with the weeper sniper around the shed.


3
Forty five years the two of them: Bastiano is twenty two, Fulvio twenty three! It’s a hot afternoon, June 1979, they strolling down at the beach and while walking they chat and laugh. When they’re near the building site of the Public Assistance Ambulances, Bastiano spots her. She’s alone, leaning against the doorjamb of the office door, with the look of who’s waiting for someone that is not coming. He catches a bit of a boredom in that face. Fulvio is plying him with questions about the night to come but he’s absorbed by that face, those blonde hairs, those blue smiley eyes, by that look naïve and so exciting.
And then, what the hell, by her body fully developed and those tits that seem to drill a hole in her linen summer shirt.
He set up his walking in the coolest way he knows – John Wayne’s style – and just when they crossing her sight and Fulvio insists with something he doesn’t even listen anymore, he turns and look at her in admiration mixed with insolence.
She initially return the look but soon turn her head somewhere else.
After, at the beach, Bastiano recall that face. Sure the vision of that breast pops up continuously but is like of disturbance for him, like blurring the clear image of that sweet face.
- She’s really pretty – confirm to himself.
So the next day, here he is again, by himself this time, on his same way. In his hand is carrying two objects (items): a 45 rpm vinyl disk and a little bag full of little roses.
She’s there, alone, leaning against the doorjamb of the office door, with the look of who’s waiting for someone.
- You won’t be upset today – he grins.
When he’s a metre away he stops, look at her and handing her the vinyl says:
- Take it, this is for you: is Please don’t go by KC & Sunshine Band, I hope you like the song – and hands her the 45 rpm.
Next he shy less and with his cheeky face, pulls out of the bag a rose, smell it, pass it to her and says:
- This is also for you but remember: the prettiest rose is you.Then he leaves with that step John Wayne’s style, without even waiting for an answer.

***********







To re-emerge from that sensation of endless exhaustion is like climbing bare hands a high mountain. Bastiano come back conscious just for a few moments, enough to visualize an old man black face that smiles at him. To his pleas dictated by his thirst, short incomprehensible moans, the man answer moistening his lips with a wet cloth. Then he slips again in unconsciousness.

***********

Sonia – the blonde girl of the ambulances – and Bastiano are at the beach. It is not the first time they hide in that little beach behind the boulders of the breakwater. He turned around her for a while and after a few amused declines she finally accepted to go to the beach with him.
The gorgeous Sonia Martelli, the prettiest of the suburb, the moderate girl of the low medium class, raised between home, school and church. Teen ager like many others, apart from that face like a Madonna and that look that pierces the soul. Some experience with the other gender, followed by the inevitable sense of guilty, before to come to know Giacomo, her fiancé. And now, to pleasantly disrupt her life, here is Bastiano.
Every date has been more and more involving and their intimacy went growing every time. But there is something that stops Sonia: she likes him, she desire him – beside it wouldn’t be her first time. Nevertheless she can win a doubt, a mental obstacle. Perhaps is the fear of hurting Giacomo’s feeling, her fiancé, who already went and introduced himself home, a good man. A man who’s not able to make her feel desiredable as bastiano can, but who’s reliable. Yes, that is perhaps the reason why she unconsciously is not able to fully relax: him, Giacomo, has not the bad reputation that instead bastiano has gained in the town.
Who is Bastiano Carena? It’s easily explain: a twenty two years old boy, without trade nor role, a freak anarchist that once finished High School for Accountancy without no intention at all to occupy himself behind accountability books, cope with the pressure from his parents – where he lives by the way - to find a decent job, doing some temporary casual works. And who spends his nights with his friends fantasizing of a world more just, more equal, more beautiful…between a joint and the next of hashish and a cone at Pucci’c gelato shop.
Is not a case that professor Revelli, who spotted him a couple of times in front of the school where he was waiting for Sonia, rang immediately to her mum warning her that her daughter was seeing an untrustworthy guy. But Bastiano doesn’t know that and now is there, her lips on his lips, his hands on her breast, asking himself once again why she refuses his invitation to go to his place where they could stay in peace since his parents won’t come back home until late afternoon.
The same night, strolling along the beachside promenade, Bastiano and his friends meet a group of girl from Milan and later on the beach, after a swim under the moon, despite is immersed in playing Battisti’s songs on his guitar and despite he’s recalling Sonia’s caresses he can’t help but noticing the looks that that pretty girl, Roberta, has been  sending to him.
That is why the next day, same old little beach, same old boulders, same old tender phrases and kisses and caresses, to her annoyed refusal to his request of intimacy, he understand that is not keen to wait anymore and won’t invite her again. And when leaving she doesn’t mention for a date for the next day, he senses that they reach the same conclusion. He kisses her lips lightly and walks away feeling a mix of sadness for what he leaves behind and a light enthusiasm for what is going to happen soon.

************
Tears are slipping down Bastiano’s cheeks and Sheela wipes them with a tissue. The woman gently touches his face: is hot! She put the cloth in the bowl full of cold water, squeezes it and put it on his forehead. The Italian has regained consciousness yet: doctors said he overcome the critic stage of the poisoning but his liver had extra work to carry out lately: too much alcohol! There has been some resistances from the paramedic “white” staff when the two Aborigines offered to look after him but when finding out that Carena has not close ones who would care for him and considering that their presence would free a nurse from those minimal duties eventually they accepted them.
Sheela fills up a dropper with a green, mint flavoured liquid: the nurse left it there urging her to drip some drops from time to time on those cracked lips.
- Why are doing that man, why do you hurt yourself? – she whispers – can’t you see how big is the gift you have been given? You are wasting your life tormenting yourself about something you have not control. We all have a role, a task, a target to reach. This is the meaning of life: you can’t dissipate it, you can’t drawn it in a sea of pain and punishment.
Now tears are slipping down on her old wrinkled face too: such a young man, in the top of his years and there he is, two pipes inside his nostrils for the oxygen, his arms stretched and still from which drip feed probes starts, sensors attached with machines, the catheter sadly empty: in one word a disaster!
All of the sudden Sheela seems to catch through her blurry and crying eyes a tiny movement of his lips. She looks more attentively and find confirmation to her impression: Bastiano is trying to say something.
She put her ear closer to his lips and she hear him muttering something.
- Tell me man, talk to me: what’s tormenting you? – then she remains.
Is a whisper, a weak attempt of reaction, a gauzy vital spark.
- …onia…- a repeated sound with a very low and hoarse voice.
- …Sonia…- before the man flops down exhausted again.
- Sonia – she repeats – a woman then.
Sheela recall mentally the female snake and feels a shiver running up her back and blasting in her brain.
But something serious is happening: Bastiano started to violently shake and that bip bip from the machine it sounding faster and faster calling the nurses in the room. And then it become a steady, unstoppable unbearably long sound and that sign on the monitor doesn’t jump up anymore and has become a long flat line.

************


Every afternoon Bastiano stops for a coffee at Gepi’s bar: a chat about sport before to start his shift at the brickwork house ware where he works as truck driver. It’s a beautiful day of late September, the sun warmed up the air and a light Western breeze has blown away the morning moist.
After a very long engagement, seven years, ten months ago he married Linda. Things are not too bad but their marriage seems to be already affected by some tiredness for that never-ending  pre wedding prelude. Coming out from the bar Bastiano is thinking about all the range of reciprocal gentleness that has almost never, almost no more that hint of enthusiasm, that pinch of passion which such a fresh wedding should have instead.
Since the news agency is nearby he gets in and buy a current affairs magazine to be read after, while the labourers will unload his truck.
Getting out from the shop he sees her: yes, there she is, Sonia! She’s pretty as usual, yes she gained some weight and that pram she’s pushing tells the reason why. Her eyes are aimed at him: the same look that pierce. Her lips are contoured by a light smile; she’s amused by his visible embarrassment.
He would have preferred not to be seen and sneak away but now it would be rude not stopping and cheer her and compliment for her maternity. Beside, what’s the problem? Everything is over now, positions are clear, unmistakable. And yet he cannot deny he felt uncomfortable when he saw her.
He get closer, shake her hand and they start a formal conversation, nearly dull as it’s predictable: how are you? You look well;  yes I’m married and you? Yes me too, yes is my son, his name’s Andrea, he’s two weeks old, and you two, children? Nothing yet, they’ll come, we’ll see…
During the chat her eyes never left his eyes and when he already started to cheer her away he catches  in that look an unanswered question.
Suddenly in his mind are quickly strolling that short summer nine years before, those kisses, her refusals and finally his escape to look elsewhere what she wasn’t ready to give him. He then understands how much is missing that look, that velvety voice, that tenderness. He gets even closer and now very emotional whispers in her ear:
- I know is too late now Sonia but I want you to know that in my heart there’s always a little spot with your name – and after a short goodbye he walks quickly away.

************

They got him back just in time: a couple of shocks with the defibrillator and that bip restarted spacing out with short silences and on the monitor that line restarted to show his heart beats.
It all went on for a couple of minutes but to Sheela seemed endless hours.
When John arrives to replace her, she – exhausted – between sobs tells him what happened.
- Go home now, I’ll stay with him – whispers her John and cheers her with a caress and a smile.
The old man, as usual, sits on the chair beside the bed and start to tune one of his old Baryulgal lullabies.
Drugs took effect: fever is gone, breathing is regular and Bastiano seems having a quiet rest.
Suddenly John has the impression of seeing a smile on those lips.
- You’re coming back, Italian man, are you? This is good, whispers him getting closer, but you need to know that reality will be worse compare to your current being, your current floating, if you won’t face it as a warrior.
He remains silent for a moment while thinking about his words and starts againg his whisper:
- I’m now telling you an old fairy tale! Now and not when you’ll be conscious, now that you don’t have rational defense so that it will get in your heart word after word and it’ll bring you advice.
He sits even more comfortably on the chair and begin to tell:
- Once upon a time was a brave hunter, able to face the kangaroo by himself and to wait for hours under the sun the estuarine barramundi to spear it at the first hit. His name was Boojin. One day, with all the experienced hunter of his family, he went for a big hunting expedition. At night, around the bonfire of the camp of the adjacent tribe he saw a young woman, he thought she was gorgeous and he desired her like never happened before with other women. Her name was Yoonda and returned his looks with shifty eyes full of promises. After the hunt, challenging taboo and curses from her family, they run away and Boojin brought her to live in his village. A few months went by and they saw their love growing every day more and more. But one morning a messenger from Yoonda’s tribe arrived at Boojin’s village bringing the order from the olds for her to return or they would have sent the Black Men to kill her. Boojin kicked the messenger out of the village and promised to protect her at any cost. However the next morning Yoonda was gone. He went back to her village to take her back but couldn’t find traces of her. He then understood she renounced to him and his love turned into resentment.
However soon after resentment showed up for what it actually is, a very demanding ally. He was suffering for the loss and the hope of revenge delayed his wound to heal. But the time, a precious ally instead, wan the resentment and bit by bit, while the years were going by, he understood that by renouncing to her he could have found peace in the awareness of his sacred feeling. He understood that the love he felt for her was more important than any physical presence and it would stay in his heart until his last day.
And then, when he finally wouldn’t wait for her anymore and she was only a faded memory full of sweetness and cleansed by all acrimony, one morning he saw her contour outlined against the raising sun: she has returned.

************

Bastiano is in the office of the timber company he works for sipping a coffee with Rachel, the secretary. She, who has a page on Facebook, tells him:
- You know, an Italian lady ask me friendship? Actually she’s Ligurian, just like you.
- Really? – she ask him laughing – show me!
Sonia face is there on the monitor: Bastiano feels like emotion is overwhelming him and like a not in his throat.
Rachel, who’s waiting for a comment, whatever would be, doesn’t hear nothing and pulls her eyes off the monitor, looks at Bastiano and by his look understands that something has happened.
- Ahh…c’mom, don’t tell me you know her? I can’t believe it! It’s amazing, it’s wonderful!
- Yes I do know her, pretty well actually – he whispers his voice broken by emotion – can we put a song/
- Of  course we can, well I should say “you can”: what do you want to post?
- I’d like to post, as you say, an old song by KC & The Sunshine Band. It’s called Please don’t go.
And so, after more than twenty years and despite sixteen thousands kilometers of distance, thanks to an internet site, to a virtual dimension, Bastiano and Sonia, the blonde of the ambulances, are in contact again. She is now a mature woman, aware, possibly a little marked by life, but after all who is not at their age? However her beauty is intact and that look, God that look, still piercing one soul.
Him, after years feels again inside an energy he thought was lost forever and despite was using a computer only to keep alive his weird literary dreams and to play solitaire card games, enrolls in a course to learn to surf the internet. Rachel helps him, so excited by the idea of her consultancy to be of help to rekindle a love story which according to Bastiano, was like cinders  under the ashes.
Carena used to make fun of his colleagues who would flirt virtually but now he must admit that it works: messages, photos, nice bits, confidentiality, unmistakable sweet sentences or at time very sensual. In those moments when she is not there physically but thanks to technology is like if she was that he gives to the adjective “virtual” a full different meaning.
However the distance is a problem as well as the real facts that during the years modeled their respective lives. Bastiano is divorced but his children live in Australia. Sonia on her part, says that is no more in love with Giacomo, her husband, but them as wel are parents and she doesn’t seem to be ready to pull herself out of that situation. Bastiano sometime is insistent and eager on their hypothetical reunion. Then she disappears for days leaving him alone with his sense of guilty. Sense of guilty due partly on the awareness that he too is not ready to leave behind his kids yet adolescents, partly by the uncertainty that gives him the idea of sharing again the same place with another person, of leaving behind those little reiterated habits typical of  single persons.
They both agreed that anyway before to take a ultimate decision they need a so to speak “reciprocal study time”. A period of time to know each other better and to understand if the possible development of the relationship can eventually give them back a meaning to an existence that under the sentimental point of view has very little to offer. On his part, with some haughtiness, he believes he can give her back what she lost long before: her femininity. On her part, with the same haughtiness, she believes she can give him back what he lost long before: the capacity to love someone unconditionally.
The solution comes under the form of a brief holyday, ten days, to spend together in a place half way between Italy and Australia. After having chose, sorted out, chose again different destinations, they eventually chose India. Is more or less half way: is a country full of tradition, history, culture and monuments; is a destination not too expensive where without spending a fortune one can afford a nice hotel and meals good enpugh to not to spend the holyday sitting on a toilet; is a place where misery, if watched without prejudice, can be helpful to feel some modesty so useful in a world where the “who you are” seems has been totally defeated by the “what you own”.
A few months are spent for projects, itineraries, fantasies and obviously passport, tickets, bookings. Sonia needs to create a plausible story: a destination like Ireland for instance, since in her family they all know she fears to fly and how she always has been fascinated by that country. But most important would be to find a friend, a lady, available to help her in that endeavor since a well mannered lady of the Italian outback, all home, work, church and gym doesn’t go on holyday for ten days on her own without raising suspects and gossips. A friend available to support cover her by saying they would go together to Dublin and surrounding but that she would go there by herself while she will fly to India.
They will cheer up at Malpensa airport before to take different destinations and meet up again at Malpensa after the holyday. Then, on their train trip back to Liguria, they will have time to fix all details to make credible a trip never made together and Sonia will get in her bag those Irish souvenirs that one can’t really find in Mumbay.
Pippi Castelletti, a recent but well groomed friend who’s informed in details about Bastiano, makes her available for the plot. She too has a “Bastiano” to meet in one of the characteristic pub of the Old Dublin, she says.
Finally the day of departures arrives: the 22nd of April 2010! The appointment is at Mumbay airport, outside the international flights customs, at seven pm, minutes after Sonia flight will have landed. At the time Bastiano will have arrived by a couple of hours: just the time for a beer sipped calmly, a casual look to a magazine, a couple of sigarettes and he will hug again Sonia after so many years and all the reciprocal recent promises made.
Apart from a couple of light turbulences, Bastiano’s flight is comfortable. The interesting conversation with a young man from Varanase, red spot on his forehead and turbant, helps him to make time go faster. But consideration about the current social and political Indian situation, do not ease his excitement for the date to come, his doubts, his expectations.
Finally he’s in India: he collect his luggage and then go and seats at a bar nearby. Every minute anxiety and restlessness are growing. This is why beers are now three and the ashtray is now half full. Bastiano cannot take off his eyes from the flights indicator panel and eventually the green light indicating that the flight Milan – Mumbay switch on.
He calmly stands up: the waiting is over. Picks up his luggage and pulls it on the little wheels approaching the exit gate. His heart beats is accelerating, his throat is dry:  there are the shadows of travellers from Milan behind the opaque glasses of the exiting hallway. Warm welcomes, pats on shoulders, kisses, hand shakes, private chaffeurs with signs indicating names. Sonia is not out yet.
- Some little problems at the custom – he thinks – with her loose English…
Other people is passing by, cheering, walking away and bit by bit the foyer is now nearly empty. Bastiano leans over the rail to check on the hallway but all he got is the  blame of a police man. The foyer is now desert, no one is coming out, Sonia is not there.
Bastiano runs at the counter of the airline and keeping in control as much as he can his nervousness ask to the lady about Sonia.
The young woman checks more than once, hands him a block notes and asks him to write down in capital letters Sonia’s details. She then checks the register once again:
- I am sorry sir: there is not a Martelli among the names of those who checked-in at Malpensa. The lady you are talking about never embarked the flight!


4

Dear Sonia,
This is the last time you will receive a message from me! Do you want to know why? Because I will ban (unfriend) you from my friendships! I know: for us, people of Facebook, where everything is virtual and extremely volatile, a friendship is something nearly sacred and so to ban someone is equal to an offence, a slap on one’s face, something not redeemable! But you deserved it! You didn’t leave me alternative.
I don’t think there is need for it – because when you needed it you have shown an excellent memory - but let me briefly remind you what happened in the last eight months.
Everything began when I received an unexpected request of friendship from Italy, your one, with a message which surprised me for its confidentiality where you explained me that incidentally you found out that Bastiano and I worked together and you assured me that you two, despite life separated you, were always been in love.
You told me about the many times that you regretted to not to have been brave enough to defy conventions, to not to have been able to renounce to the social and economic security that your husband gave you and, in one word, to not to have been strong enough to follow the man you were in love with and stand by him. You then finished asking me to help you to put you in contact with him but making sure that it would look like a coincidence. Why you asked me? Because, you told me, you were ready to walk the big step: your children are adult now and you wouldn’t care less about your husband and wanted to make real your all times dream.
I should have considered carefully your unusual request but I am a woman of a certain age, naïve like only people brought up in the far Australian outback can be and on top of that I am an incurable romantic and I believed you and played your game since the beginning. I started to accept his invitation for a coffee, to crack jokes with him and when I thought that his guard was down and he trusted me, one afternoon he was in the office I shown him the picture on your profile. When I saw his reaction I understood that he also was in love with you. Since I saw him regenerating: he started again to look after himself, he stopped to flirt all women, in one word another man! Obviously I put myself aside and I cut in only when you were asking me to tell you, as friends, how the situation seemed to be or when he was asking me advice on the best way to approach you again, the best way to understand without hurting himself again. The trip in Mumbay, you know, was my idea, darling!
There we go…Mumbay! Since then, that 22nd of April, you disappeared! Well, actually you popped out again to beg me to forgive you because you knew you betrayed my trust; you admitted you screwed up everything, that at the last minute you didn’t find courage enough, that you were repentant. But to him not even a single word!
He started to drink, drink heavily: every night after work he would go straight to the pub. Then even daytime. Obviously his work was effected and he had a couple of accident with his forklift and he fall into debt to pay back the damage. Eventually they gave him the sack. Soon after he couldn’t even pay the rent and he lost his house: lately he was living in a shed near the bush. That is where he was bitten by a snake! He escaped it just because a couple of Aborigines who lives nearby saw the scene. They looked after him day and night, they had a roster, poor old people, understood his pain.
Him, John, came and look for me, asked me if I knew of some sorrow: they couldn’t understand his surrender, his stubbornness to not to heal. I didn’t say anything, your business, but I wrote you asking to do something about, at least a letter, a couple of words of encouragement. You silent!
I then started to go after work to relieve the old couple, to wet his lips with a cloth, to wipe off his sweat, to keep his hand when it was shaking violently.
Bit by bit he recovered, they detoxified him from the venom and from alcohol, he started to talk again, he relieved himself, he cried, he told us things that I already knew: you can’t imagine how much I felt guilty, and none was my responsibility. And bit by bit, you know, I understood what kind of man he is! Well he doesn’t put up with rules, is true, and he’s an independent guy…a wild boar. But is generous, is a good man, simple, romantic, creative: did you know he writes very good novels? Well Sonia, I fell in love with him and him, the other day, moved to tears, in front of Sheela and John the two old Aborigines, he took my hand in his hand and he said that he cares for me. When soon he will be out of the hospital, he’ll come and live with me. And since the house is a big house John and Sheela will come too, because living in a shed a their age is not exactly the best, isn’t it? Well, I’ve spoken out! Goodbye Sonia and…thank you!
Rachel.



THE END

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