The Polpetton Hash - Chapter II – The Letter

Bare-headed under a light rain, from the first track Mauro Suttora headed towards the exit in search of taxi driver Zoppas, whom he never met but knew that he looked like Ulster republican leader Gerry Adams. He asked to be taken to a hotel and along the way he didn’t stop touching a letter in his pocket. He grazed it and felt his fingertips burning, a lump in his throat preventing him to swallow. He couldn’t understand what was going on and was eager to get to the hotel room to read again for the umpteenth time that damned letter. The rain kept coming down like a fool, diabolic litany on the windshield and the ferocious dance of the wiper blades dominated its breath. Eventually relaxed in the hotel room, he unfolded the letter on the small writing desk.

IN THE SHEETS’ NIGHT LOST ARE THE RHYMES OF AN ABSENT-MINDED POET WHO WRITES BECAUSE HE LOVES WORDS. IN THE SHEETS’ NIGHT LOST ARE THE RHYMES WHICH NOBODY EVER WROTE.

Well gentlemen, in order to try and conclude this speech that goes on for 7 lines by now, I would suggest to synthesise in a few points the thoughts expounded by the various theologians. In the first instance it seems to me that all agree on the fact that we are nothing but a story. This is demonstrated by the fact that we are only humble words, formed by small letters that, if put together, they form sentences like the one I am pronouncing. Well, at first sight everything seemed plain and obvious: actually, we read that the rhymes (the words) are the work of a poet (an author) who writes them because he loves the words (that’s us). And in order to value this first hypothesis it was said that an author must exist, otherwise our existence would have any meaning. But from the third line the controversy began. I am not to list to all the literary currents which rose from the third line as it would be far too long, I will rather attempt to expound my hypothesis, which seems conclusive to me. I think that an author does exist. Moreover I am convinced that all this that we words express is nothing but the fruit of his imagination…

“Excuse me if I interrupt you! But what you are saying seems somehow absurd and unlikely, besides being stupid and poor of content. As a matter of fact it could be deduced that the author, if he wants so, could without reason start to del….”

Mauro Suttora startled: “WHO, WHO, WHO is deleting that damned letter!” He was sweating frightfully and an oesophagus reflux brought back the flavour of pesto in his mouth. “What a stupid idea” – he thought – “to eat gnocchi al pesto in Conegliano Veneto! I feel sick, and I haven’t even got a pencil. Cazzo! Cazzo!” The letter inexorably continued to delete itself under his eyes and he couldn’t think that him, Him, HIM!, the powerful radical tyrant… “maybe he’s dead! Maybe he’s succeeding in… Cazzo! My book! I must check my book… all its copies…”
A monstrous flatulence upset his bowels. He rushed to the toilet and as soon as he rested its flabby bottom on the liberating seat the telephone rang. It was that radical activist, Rita Filippi, who flew over the bridge to abandon the happy island where he dominated uncontested. Him, HIM, the old powerful radical tyrant. In a wheezing she told him to meet at the Posta cafè in the old square the morning after.

When a fading, yawning sun made its sleeping beams filter through a light morning fog, Mauro Suttora took a seat at the Posta cafè and ordered a rich breakfast. It had already eaten two cornetti and a cappuccino, when a sicilian cottage cheese cannolo garnished with happy candied fruits attracted his attention, and being unable to resist the temptation he ordered another breakfast. At a table nearby, two young people flirted while waiting for their coffees and reading in complicity a Millelire pocket book, Seneca’s Happiness. While voluptuously swallowing the cannolo, thinking that that was happiness too, Rita sat next to him and began to talk o update him on what was going to happen soon. She still was a beautiful woman, solar, full of enthusiasm and good will. He thought of her hidden orchid guessing a fragrance that wrapped him stopping his ears, and then he had a strange feeling, like sea-sickness. He watched the Rita’s lips rolling in a dance of silent music which gave the rhythm to the cottage cheese waving in his stomach. He was standing still, immovable, breathing little by little. Rita, who hadn’t stopped a second to talk, and whom he couldn’t hear, looked unaware of his momentary pallor and how he was feeling bad. The youngsters were watching instead, but pretended not to notice by hiding behind the book. Once more, words were making fun of him. Under his eyes the Happiness turned itself into a dancer to the rhythm of Rita’s lips, which couldn’t stop talking, in a very long bridge losing itself far away.

The public square became crowdy of noisy people whose Bla Blas came softened to Mauro Suttora, who couldn’t understand what they were chatting about but knew most of them were businessmen from the area with small factories, mainly right-wing liberals waiting for Somebody. He couldn’t succeed in turning his eyes away from the imaginary bridge gushed out from the words and thought that perhaps it took to the happy island where the old most powerful radical tyrant reigned uncontested on the right and on the left with the small faithful minority which would have never left him. The island from where, since always and forever, he would throw his bridges towards the abominable desert on the left and the galactic rubbish dump on the right.

To tell the truth, he thought, that from time to time among the countless who were waiting beyond the bridges, with a patience to make envious even the most fundamentalist Buddhist, to see his corpse pass through, someone, taken perhaps by a desire never totally extinguished, went throbbing and full of ardor down those bridges in order to discover and enjoy the taste of freedom. But it always lasted a little time, invariably the squadrons of the right and the left, hoisting the standards of interests and values, came to resume to the platonic outcry of “Too much freedom hurts”, ass-kicking themselves back in hopeless disorder on that bridge which they had gone beyond with such proud desire and haughty braveness, and quickly made them convinced that “Half a freedom is better”, deciding that every group would have kept its peculiar freedoms and, unanimously, that the island shall be moved farther away in order to make more and more difficult to that old stubborn to lengthen his bridges.

He was at a loss for a moment. “What am I doing here?” – he wondered, and then recalled – “The book!” He had to advertise the imminent sale of his book, “Man does live by bread too”.
He had eventually digested the cannolo and was feeling fine. The public square was crowded of friends, that is friends among them, and Mauro turned away the eyes from the two youngsters who were leaving, thinking that nothing had ever made him feel so lonely than their thin happy whispering to each other ears. And the word “lonely” smiled jumping into him, pasting with his soul like water and flour. He stood up and said goodbye to Rita. He was feeling lonely and wanted to be alone. “ALONE!” he thought; probably just like the feeling that Pemo had in running to the online elections, the last bridge the old solomonic radical tyrant threw to induce to the conquest of the happy island all those who, albeit desiring it, kept far away in order not to have to deal with him.

Mauro walked quickly towards the railway station, but a light fog had begun to wrap the town, mingling roads and houses and he felt himself swallowed by the fog like being captured in a dream. He wrung his eyes in an attempt to see far away, and he saw… saw Pemo bare and wild running freely on the happy island. The irreverent boy was pawing the ground, offering the exact image of juvenile torment and unlimited ambition linking today’s moment with the past history, much beloved to the old solomonic tyrant who benevolently candidated him from time to time, considering him one of his sons anyway, in spite of knowing that he didn’t joined a new Radical Party together with those “eternally upset with him, Him, HIM!” stroke by the “there’s too little democracy” syndrome.

Mauro thought of Pemo, alone and muddy, when he realized having taken the wrong road. He wasn’t at the station, but in front of a castle plunged in a greeny English garden, and from behind a hedge a peacock sprouted out, walking in a stately fashion, dragging behind a very long tail. A peacock!

He looked beyond the hedges and the challenging peacock’s glare and saw Pemo again, asleep in the moonlight. He saw him dormant in the quiet sleep of those faithful only to themselves, while a gentle viper attempted to penetrate his dream by hissing in his ear. But he was protected by the moon, which beams sweetly inculcated the silent gnawing of presentiment, and Freedom, which is one and only, thoughtful like a mother, covering him under its wings.

Mauro was alone in the fog, thinking again of his book, when lightening up a cigarette the weak light illuminated a gigantic billboard which caught his attention.