The Polpetton Hash – chapter 9

A feeling of restlessness pervaded him, it wasn’t easy to sort out that problem between Rhoda, who seemed to possess paranormal powers, and Dentano, in permanent and hopeless delirium of omnipotence; a human tragedy that could have been the script for a television drama. Mauro was well known for his investigative abilities, nothing escaped him, neither a tear nor a sigh, and he knew how to use words to shake people’s minds, to affect them till they would cry, to freeze the minds or to heat up the hearts. Words were authentic magic for him. Sleep surprised him dipped in those thoughts, and the next day he would have travelled back to Milan for his job. During the newsroom meeting, Mauro tried several times to put on the agenda his article on the two radical fasters. Information rules the market! People should be given what they want! As a matter of facts, Mauro left the same day for the riviera, for the opening of a new bingo hall.

The sun beam that obliquely entered his hotel room to woke him up that morning, cheering him up, had happily surprised him. The letter in his pocket inexorably continued to cancel itself, but by now he didn’t care much. He turned it in his hands and put it serenely in the book he was reading. He exited the hotel satisfied, enjoying the redundant beauty the coast’s flowers and, while waiting for the bingo hall opening he went to a radical meeting, where he would eventually have met that activist alienated and imaginative that every now and then appeared on the party’s forum. It was said, among her companions, that she didn’t understand anything of politics, but there was something he couldn’t explain, a curiosity hidden in the words that she wrote intrigued him, sometimes making him nervous.

And it was there, in the middle of the public square in front of the big bookshop, that he saw her for the first time, together with known and unknown people waiting to climb to the conference room. The usual words of convenience floated in the air like corks on the water, smearing the atmosphere, but the words not said, those left behind the glares and the smiles, those floated in the air like icebergs on the water, freezing the atmosphere and making his voice hoarse and shaking. In the meantime he could’t help looking at that activist curious and annoying: she was a mass, a mess of irregular features which formed an harmonic whole and a pleasant one to watch, while the spiteful wind ruffled her green hair.

“Green hair!” Mauro thought abashed in re-entering himself and focussing on those around him, astonished again to notice that most of them had green hair. “What the fuck is going on, I haven’t been smoking anything for four days! ” he thought. And he said to a boy nearby: “What is this? To dye hair green!” And the boy: “So you can see them? It seems that only 2% have them green, visible only to those who themselves… then you too should… ” Mauro leaped behind and reflected his image on the display window of the bookshop: he had got green hair! Green like the phosphorescent laser sword in Star Wars! He recalled it very well, that sword had a name: “The Force”. “But… I’m very handsome! ” Mauro thought, and then he understood, “… but I won’t tell it anybody!”

It was in that moment that everything returned to flat normality, the colours, the sounds, the people’s gestures, and his image had disappeared from the display window, the books could be seen showed and, like a fan on three shelves on the left, like an arrogant peacock’s tail, his book. Mauro felt a lump in his throat, that animated filth that tormented him since a long time, and didn’t know what to do, it didn’t seem convenient to spit in the middle of people, he looked in his pocket for a handkerchief, but he didn’t find any, while watching that creative and stinging activist who was leaving for the meeting with her companions… “It’s nothing!” Mauro thought swallowing the filth.

The bingo hall was crowded, with many lining outside to enter. Mauro watched outside the window the sunset on the sea… on the sea! Mauro watched upset that enormous red ball diving in the horizon… in the sea… to the South! He felt a cold shiver through his body and rethought to Granzotto’s love letters… the content had taken him that he hadn’t noticed the dates… but there was something wrong… all the double letters were deleted… and then that letter that was being cancelled itself… he couldn’t understand what was going on… The sun was disappeared and the sky was being punctuated of luminous stars and, unlikely in the dark night, mockinlgy shone the Southern Cross! He was confused, more and more confused and also scared. He went back to the hotel wishing to check again those letters. In the middle of all those words making fun of him he would have found the solution.