The Polpetton Hash - epilogue

He had brought with him the book containing that letter slowly deleting itself. Seated on the beach he watched the sunset and couldn’t explain to himself why so much beauty made him sick. It was an incredible show, the light played creating colourful shadings of a moving beauty and Mauro wished to cry thing of nothing, while watching the sun slowly coming down on the horizon, its beams staining the clouds with blood. He listened to the sensual wave-breaking on the shore, the sea sweetly and insistently fondling the land with love and voluptuousness. Mauro let his thoughts go far away towards the sun that heartbreakingly escaped from the chains of time, and he saw it meeting the crests of the waves in a sea of words moving forward the shore.

There were the sweetest words: those whispered to the ears of lovers, and those which said nothing: those in the stores and the bars, words that can win you believe to have a soul, and others plunging you into desperation. There were all the words of science, and maths, words made to make you laugh and others to make you cry, words made to subdue people, others to make them raise, unrepeatable rude words, words of songs and ballads. All the words were there, the words of children and those of the mad, and the worst ones: arrogant, sick, trivial, words of ignorance and falsity. Written and advertised words advanced towards the shore like a conquering army, sparing nothing and nobody.

A small group of people had assembled on the beach and watched that purple swollen body that divers had found.
“There’s a book here” said one of the officers.
“See if he has left something written” replied someone who was probably his chief.
“Not, there’s a folded sheet between the pages, but it’s completely blank”
“Perhaps he used it to bookmark this page”, and he read the poetry:

A word (for I want to conquer it),
the decisive word, superior to any other,
unseizable, sent - which is it? - I am listening;
you whisper them, since always, waves of the sea?
It is that one raising from your liquid crests and humid sands?
And answering, the sea
Without indulgence, with no hurry,
it whispered to me in the night, and clearly before dawn,
it rustled to me the humble, delicious word: death,
and then again death, death, death.
It twittered melodiously, unlike the bird
Nor like my child heart by now awake,
but approaching, as to say it in private,
rustling at my feet,
and then calmly crawling up to my ear
washing me sweetly,
death, death, death, death, death.

The young officer was shaken by those words. He didn’t know yet, he would have forgotten that turgid and tumefied that nearly made him vomit, but every time looking at the sea, perhaps with a woman in love with him, or playing football with friends on the shore, he would have never forgotten that word brought by the wind on wave-crests, the word singing more sweetly than any chant, that strong and delicious word whispered by the sea to the ear of that baby poet.
Death… death… death…

Born again

“Open your eyes Mauro … wake up Mauro … open your eyes”
“What a nightmare” he said sitting on the bed.
“You have been restless all night long, you have probably not digested yesterday’s pesto gnocchi!” replied C. entering the room, and the first thing he saw were her waving hair fondling the air.
“I can’t recall anything, but it had to be a terrible nightmare, I’m soaked in sweat!”
She smiled and he thought to that smile as the quiet harbour he had been seeking for so long, where he would anchor to stay there forever, nonetheless his memory kept blank. Even when finally sitting on the toilet and the phone rang surprising him in the position of Rodin’s thinker, he couldn’t recall anything. Not even when the loyal cleaner L. came in with her wrinkled face, huge ass and dried brest, anything came up to his mind, not even when he opened the package from the pastry shop to taste the Sicilian cannoli with cottage cheese and candied fruit.
Only when seated before his computer, reading a mail from a comrade “Willyou go to Geneva?” he saw a well folded sheet, completely blank, and wondered why but couldn’t find a reason, as his memory was blank too. C. came in with a bird in a cage, maybe fallen from a nest in its first flight experience, they had collected a couple of days before to avoid it eaten by some cat, and they had fed along the weekend.
“It is sick” she said pointing at the bird rolled in a cage’s corner.
Mauro approached to sow him better, up to find himself close to an aye of that robin, and he saw… he saw the small but powerful arsenal full of freedom and everything came up to his mind and withdrew dismayed. He carried the cage to the terrace to free the bird. It quickly and safely flew on the mimosa’s highest branch.
He wanted to tell everybody that the anaemic and anorexic freedom, withered and frustrated, humiliated and mocked deep in the eyes of every living being perfectly reflected the luminous face of God, and he escaped terrified from his sight.
From the terrace he watched the sea and the sun and felt himself invaded by impotence and desperation, he wanted to scream “WORLD! WATCH WHAT YOU ARE DOING!” but he already knew that the world would have not replied, too much distracted by the impalpable lightness of superficiality. The old tyrant of the happy island was right, for too long time many with Mauro had given up and stopped to scream, weakening a great party until extinguishing it. Like an immune system badly working leaves room to the invasion of the individual by another ego, they had been the cancer of freedom.
Mauro cried. Yes, he would have gone to Geneva, and wanted to find the courage to tell everybody what he had found out.
He would have wanted to invite all to put a hand in the heart and forcibly, without fear, extirpate from that arsenal that everybody had the root of freedom in blood and show it to the world.

THE END