I'm arranging the blankets in the cupboard above my bed. My feet are bare half sunk in the mattress and fold down, rolled it up and threw it to the best of the doors open, hoping to fall almost composedly on the stack of sheets. I still numb muscles wine, swollen eyes that seem to burn the eyelids. Wearing hot pants suit, a sweater for men deformed and too big. The post-hangover: comfortable clothes and ugly, milk and yogurt, all white and sweet in the world to purify the language, the stomach, still feel clean inside when the movements are slow, dry lips that stick to teeth. The house is empty and silent, and I think of my father last night. Through the windows I hear the sound of a blurry car slowing down and take the driveway. I do not want to get out of bed and look out the window, I do not want to know who has arrived. I continue to bend the covers. Last night I laughed and chatted (what then? I can not remember for sure but I talked acid at random throughout the evening), I also broke my new camera. I fall out of the hands as I tried, walking and laughing like a snake, to photograph me and Mario together. A look at the pictures remained there's no shame: my white face is frightening under the bearskin polished of hair, twisted in grimace of drunkenness, his eyes red and blue and chapped lips from the cold. Every shot is a different hug, I find myself in a big man to embrace a blonde, a giant elf, eyes cut thin mustache and reddish. He is wearing the yellow apron chef's jacket over a blue construction and holds me by the shoulders. I smile a twisted smile. He was good to see Fogher, the carcass of twigs and straw burning high in the sky low in January, the puppet in the splendor of the old brimstone, in the din of firecrackers and the band playing. The epiphany is always my party, this year probably more. I wish I'd burn myself into that fire country, curled up in the dust to be reborn like a phoenix. I could only drink wine, too much wine, and eat with dirty hands greasy cheeks, apply to face the heat of the fire and close your eyes. Imagine that you were eating something really into that Pignarul arranged in the mud, something that really was dying in there, and bangs nerve flare-ups. Almost all the huts that were used to eat were closed after a few hours, but that of grappa resisted. I went home that night and it was four people were still on the river bank.
About six o'clock, had to be six and a half, I got out of bed because I was thirsty. In the kitchen I met my father and now can not remember exactly what he said but did not much matter, the usual litany funeral stutters for a month now, since my mother has gone home. I would not listen: I had already heard enough and did not share any of his lamentations, I had already made him cry in my pajamas in the morning of the first year. It was six o'clock in the morning, I was in bed for two hours and even wanted to sleep. As if I had stumbled into a shadow or a reflection in the mirror I saw the illusion of a person, I have not even mentioned a response to his whining and I'm back in the room. I stayed still and heavy as I believe God has to sleep, consciousness scattered everywhere around me, and the pillows on the floor, between the folds of dirty clothes, to stay still and alone and without dreams.
It has been my grandmother to wake a few hours later. She and her grandparents live in ours, no keys, no formalities, no privacy, especially now that the poor wretched father was shamefully abandoned to itself. My grandmother sat on the bed next to me and to my inconsistency, my smell of wine. I rocked up with his hands cold and hard, told me in the dark what little he knew: the message of my father, the stockings of witch. I got up and dressed, I tried to understand. In my family on January 6 will continue to hang on the stove stockings stuffed with licorice and charcoal, it does not matter if I have twenty-three, twenty-one my brother. Each year that passes I'm afraid that my mother forgets this little ritual, or that we now believe to be adult enough to do without, and every year we expect to find living in the braided swells of candy. This morning my mother was preparing a surprise, she is no longer even in Italy. It 'was my father, from cast iron stove hung two colorful socks, a blue and orange for me for my brother, and a note: "For L. and M. This world is not for me. " What dramatic accent! What say the least redundant, how much drama and capacity rhetoric of the third order! Have not succeeded in preventing a first bike sarcastic, contemptuous. I should have burst into tears, tear my hair out of pain, scratching her face with her nails nibbled still asleep? Overall, the whole situation looked pretty bleak and ridiculous as to be real, but I did not felt to put myself in the tragic role of an orphan child inconsolable. I could not take seriously the states to which all others are participating with great effort and I was expressive, I feel, inhuman. I was still angry from the meeting of six in the morning, my father and egocentrism fanatic devouring his victim from which no one, apparently, could escape. I could not think of death, I still think like the great actor pathetic. I tried to reassure my grandmother, I offered a hot tea, in the best British sit-com I tried to work it out by putting a bit of water to boil on the stove and feigning normality. I hugged my grandfather who was crying and I've never seen you cry, he always seems solid and immovable as a fat tank, round, compact belly to protect him from any thought that is not his. My brother, meanwhile, telephoned the police and explained what had happened, sobbing. I did not cry. I have burned up the skin in the shower hot and impassive, as if that could also serve to improve a bit ', to get rid of the hangover and all the evil of myself and the day has just begun. I wore the suit handy, I ate a bit of yogurt, cold relief on his lips, and now I am making the blankets in the closet. The car that I feel would be to enter the yard of my father or my brother went out to look for him, or of the police. I do not want to know. I do not want running out into the garden, I do not want to play the part he is trying to force myself. I'm here to bend the quiet Scottish plaid.
The police call us that it is almost time for lunch. My grandmother has apparently appreciated the fiction of the now because the table, the pot pasta with tomato sauce is ready (I did a simple thing, that I had at home), but my brother and I are leaving home to go to river. Not to mention, he drives in the empty streets of the pine forest. The car of the police is still not far from the mouth . They found that it was the lighthouse. I walk to my father: he is dressed in the clothes of Sunday, all in black with leather boots. I have not even brought the jacket and embrace in the cold. I'm a little bit, just to breathe in her sweater too perfumed and everything around is green and gray, the trees and sky, the asphalt and the river, the sea in the distance. Then it's up to my brother, who embraces him with contracted mouth, careful to hold back the tears. The space where we are is the dead end of a bumpy road, frequented by fishermen in the winter, deserted in a day of celebration. There's just me my brother my father and two policemen. They make me nod from the group, I followed them. I talk about where they have found, their impressions, we exchange phone numbers to keep us informed as you never know, ask me if I have weapons at home. Shotguns answer. I have to make them disappear for a while '. Okay, no problem.
decide that my brother will come home alone, I drive with my father. The trembling hands, although I try not to look at me discover an attitude defensive, but we get home safe and sound and the tears of joy to my grandmother's grandfather's warnings seem to faint is happy he does not believe they had all already dead.
In the afternoon he and I chat on the sofa, in the flashing lights of the Christmas tree. Continue to stammer that since he had eaten fish that the fish would eat him. A romantic idea placed in charge of a series of nonsense. I listen to him and try not to contradict him too. We drink whiskey and drink a toast to us and eventually we also, hysterically laughing.
