La silloge (Prologo - Part 3)

Così era stato, alla fine di un giorno magico, il 12 maggio di qualche anno addietro, in realtà molti anni prima, tanti da sembrare secoli, ormai. Liberi da qualsiasi impedimento, liberi di fare, di desiderare, di provare le parti di quella affascinante storia che erano andati costruendo negli anni precedenti, e che era arrivata alla fine, d'altronde tutt'e due lo sapevano benissimo, avevano sì tentato di immaginarne insieme qualche altra pagina, forse un capitolo ancora, ma non era in pratica che l’epilogo. La luce sulle tonalità dell’arancione e del rosso sangue, il silenzioso rumore del mare calmo, il discreto vociare di ragazze, felici dei primi complimenti, non potevano altro che accelerare l’incipiente fine del film della loro vita insieme. Lentamente come se sapessero realmente dove andare e cosa fare, e, forse, era proprio così. Adagio, camminando adagio, abbracciati, languidamente, manifestamente, sensualmente, tanto vicini da sfregare i fianchi, tanto da mimare una trascinante danza erotica, i cui passi avrebbero condotto fino alla fine del lungomare e, poi, più in là, giù per i gradini di pietra verso il bagnasciuga e, quindi, a piedi scalzi nell'acqua e fino alla spiaggetta della grotta. Seduti, quasi immersi nella fredda luce del sole che si andava tuffando nell'orizzonte bagnato di mare, il loro primo, unico, infinito bacio, prologo di quella voglia nascosta, del desiderio più recondito, che li aveva accompagnati per tutti quegli anni ed ora, proprio perché tutto stava inesorabilmente sparendo, quell'ultima emozione, quello scorcio di tempo avrebbe dovuto esser consumato, affinché non lasciasse traccia in loro ed imprimesse un ricordo indelebile che li avrebbe accompagnati durante le loro vite, destinate, ormai, a separarsi, quel bacio quindi, li denudò del ritegno del gioco e permise che le mani volassero non controllate. Quando si è sconvolti in così poco tempo, però, si perde ogni briciolo di ragione, e la ragione spesso è un limite all'amore più profondo. Quella volta, infatti, fece loro dimenticare che avrebbero dovuto considerare una conoscenza più lunga e approfondita dell’altro ed è anche vero che il tempo non sempre aiuta, perché se la persona con cui stai non è la tua reale parte mancante, può passare anche un secolo, ma non riuscirà mai a colmare completamente il calice. Erica, però, non lo era e non lo sarebbe stata mai, né in quel tardo pomeriggio. Ma… la mano di Erica, morbida, calda, decisa, fermando l’incedere distratto dei suoi pensieri, lo riportò al tempo reale: lì in piedi all’Alcazar, sulla rive gauche, di fronte a lei, l’amica di sempre, la custode compiacente dei suoi segreti, delle sue paure ed anche dei suoi tabù…

Prologue There, at the Ile du Levant, in La Plage dei Grottes, the only commitment was to improve the tan and think, rearrange one's life after the worst time that had perhaps ended. It had seemed possible, perhaps only for a moment, to think of an existence made of days sitting watching the seasons of the sea go by, trying to understand the changing moods, defining the shades of blue and green in a palette island, to breathe its winds, to touch its smells. When the day ended and there, a few meters from the Mediterranean, camped in the Canadian, it remained suspended between wakefulness and restful sleep waiting for forced and incipient emotions, induced memories, sensations violated by the volume of the headphones of the I- pad raised to the paroxysm of the notes, waiting for the deep night. Just on those nights, so many and so desperate, he sought magic in reality, looked for something, sought and wanted "the precipitous moons of Barsoon, and to challenge to duel the one who had dared, and longed for a harem full, full, of fascinating odalisques" , and he wanted Indiana Jones to wake him up and say "the hunt has started", and that a creature of Manara, shaking him, would attract him to wild and unknown places in search, unseemly, of adventure, that is, looking for what already, then, he could have had, if his shy, introverted, exhaustive character had not prevented him from gathering, in due course, how maturity should have advised him, caresses, kisses, words. But he wanted more! For this reason, it raised the volume, and at the same time, as the music grew, the desire grew that only the passion of a thousand nights, a thousand hours, a thousand centimeters of smooth and white skin, could fill! 'Yes, such episodic seamless moments were now his life. Indelible and painful memories accompanied him constantly, inexorably, inconveniently, on the other hand only broken illusions, which preceded him in every way. Like a day before yesterday, when he thought walking on the white sand of the "Riviera" of the island at the mercy of a pleasant breeze that brought the pleasant smell of pines, eucalyptus, and the scents of the hedges of myrtle, arbutus and pitosphorus, that it did not seem true to him that, ungracefully, he came across the shell, not common to that low and sandy sea, with streaks likely similar to the notes of a pentagram and ideogrammatic a writing, almost chiseled by nature with embarrassing art and finesse, as in beautiful handwriting on a golden amber yellow and so fascinating as to seem made by human hands, which seemed to indicate, but actually indicated, a name Κωνσταντινούπολις: Constantinople: Istanbul! He should have already noticed the coincidence that fate had brought him but, often, he was distracted from the present moment to tie it to the previous one, so he remembered that he had instead collected that shell and had continued to walk among his memories and wishes. Like a Pratt character, he had continued to walk, and climbed from the beach, to the promenade which, in the space of a few hours, had gone empty, while the cold wind was sweeping him, he had tightened the caban, raising his collar and making even more solitary that walk among the memories of a lifetime, and, as in an appendix novel, he found himself incredulous when he read that advertisement: "If a man were granted the possibility of a single glimpse of the world, it is Istanbul that should look ": distracted in the thoughts that chased him, he had thought that, certainly, the creator of that advertisement must have sensed that that phrase by Alphonse De Lamartine was a good message to attract the attention and curiosity of romantics all over the world! But, why did he remember that aphorism? Who was, then by grace, Alphonse De Lamartine? Rather, why not repair in a warmer place? He had thus repaired the entrance of a travel agency in the first door that had been saved before him. The man who welcomed him was a very tall individual, with hair graying rather than thoughts rather than age. His dark, piercing eyes, hidden under thick gray eyebrows, lingered on his presence. The thinness of the face, furrowed by deep wrinkles, and the strong lines of his physiognomy, then revealed a man more able to exercise his moral faculties than physical forces, showed seventy, seventy-five years, although a certain vigor in the movements betrayed a certainly younger than the one who denounced the external appearance, as the color of his skin justified that strange name: Airaf Etaba. So his guest had affably presented himself, approaching his attention with mock curiosity for an advertising brochure and advising him that the best time of year to visit Istanbul was from April to June and from September to October, months that coincide with spring respectively and autumn, seasons in which average temperatures are mild, between 16 ° and 25 ° C, and the humidity is not overwhelming. Far from any of his plans to visit the city, he still appreciated the advice, after the ischemia suffered the year before, in fact, he no longer liked the oppressive heat, it seemed to him as if words slowed their run following thoughts and felt the his voice trailing in a slow and difficult struggle against the blood flow, now, forever, compromised. He had welcomed the Egyptian's words with great pleasure, since he had informed him that he came from Cairo and there, however, the desert climate was hot, almost rainless, in fact, from May to September it can be torrid and humid. Winter, only, (December-February) is mild. He lived now as if in a dream, walking to reach the Mezzanine counter, without taking his mind off the memories of those fantastic, lonely afternoons spent in the Ile du Levant, an island between Marseille and Nice, divided into three areas, of which the largest is the one intended for military base and occupies a large part of the surface of the island, making the south-east coast inaccessible in its entirety; another is the area that occupies the hill close to the marina, a pretty paradise, the Domaine of Heliopolis, with its scattered houses and small village, and the last one, finally, is the nature reserve of the Domaine des Arbousiers, with its paths in the middle of the greenery or bordering the cliffs that delimit the coast of the island. He remembered that, as soon as he disembarked in the small harbor, after leaving the noisy, annoying old engine of the boat, he immediately immersed himself in an unusual dimension: the almost total absence of motorized means of transport, an exception that had made the laconic atmosphere of the island, when the last light of sunset closed the only audible sounds: those of the sea and the wind, but also the heartbreaking sweet voices of the seagulls: prompting them, to escape the sense of empty fullness, to take refuge in the pleasures of taste. The Brise Marine restaurant was still closed at that time and had folded, then, towards the oven, the Pomme d'Adame, on the main square of the village, which gave off a warm call from the smell of excellent bread and then to the shop of the island, which, despite suffering significantly higher prices than on dry land, favored a rare, precious, tasty Jamon Serrano, but ... ... he had seen her arrive at a fast pace and had immediately abandoned the listless reading, and more than ever distracted by the thoughts of that bad newspaper, 'so partial as to be inconveniently partisan even in the weather forecast. He had then ironed it with a strong right on the bar counter and, swallowing the last drop of Campari, had approached the exit of the bistro. The misfortunes, the tribulations and the thoughts, rather than the maturity, had imposed wrinkles of expression and graying hair, had veiled the dark eyes of the heavy sadness that "unites those who, every damned morning, review what has been and he hopes that nothing else will happen ”, aware that already the burden of his life was already heavy enough to carry it to the desired evening rest. About twenty meters from where he was, there was the restaurant where they had met for a quick dinner and there he headed, hastily, almost awkwardly, to welcome his charming lawyer. He carefully pushed the glass door with the gold-colored "Z" shaped handle of the Alcazar and, in relinquishing the passage, lingering a long second, met his green eyes, deep, clear, seeing sweetness and happiness accompanied by satisfaction, so, reassured, he breathed a sigh of relief and opened the entrance even more to let the beautiful woman pass. When crossing the Mezzanine threshold, he found himself intent but distracted, thinking that Erica had always trusted him since high school and when he had told her about the unexpected opportunity that had happened to her, she had immediately lavished to accelerate the times of a meeting, all too sensitive to the hurry of that boy, returned from the past and found a man who, lost the naive ignorance of the future, had acquired the charm of life. The short journey to the counter did not prevent him, however, from thinking about the day before, when it really did not seem true that his life had changed due to one of those unexpected fortunes that "are unexpectedly granted to those whose fate is tired of persecute"… ... he was still there, fortunately, or unfortunately, at the Mezzanine counter, and in the company of the most beautiful female in the place, Erica, tall as a woman should not be, but perfect and elegant, paraded and put away the black trench coat with the hood , which framed the blond curls, as if to make her look like a courtesan of the past, who stealthily leaves an unseemly place, her tanned shoulders uncovered, which in another woman would have appeared wide, but in her they were adequate to bear the weight of the breast perfect and abundant, he had left the rest to the imagination, wrapped in a black silk sheath dress that descended over her waist, wide in a smaller woman, but in her she was delightfully thin and highlighted her beautiful hips. The two of them had that rare gift of immediately establishing intimacy, it had always been this way, even in high school, when they had mocked everyone simulating the most beautiful love story of the five-year period. No jealousy, no disagreements, nor nervous days, everything "as only celluloid can give". In fact, it was a film, in which the two protagonists had descended into their respective characters, 'so much to do it even without a camera, without a script, or a director, until they realized that they could no longer get out if they had not written, as he remembered to have heard in an Italian song: "after the closing credits, and on an image of their back, the word end". So it had been, at the end of a magical day, on May 12 a few years ago, actually many years before, so many as to seem centuries, now. Free from any impediment, free to do, to desire, to try the parts of that fascinating story that they had been building in previous years, and that had come to an end, on the other hand both knew it very well, they had tried to imagine a few more pages together, perhaps a chapter yet, but it was in practice only the epilogue. The light on shades of orange and blood red, the silent sound of the calm sea, the discreet chatter of girls, happy with the first compliments, could only accelerate the incipient end of the film of their life together. Slowly as if they really knew where to go and what to do, and maybe it was. Slowly, walking slowly, embraced, languidly, manifestly, sensually, so close as to rub the hips, so much to mimic a enthralling erotic dance, whose steps would have led to the end of the promenade and, then, further down the steps of stone towards the shore and, therefore, barefoot in the water and up to the beach of the cave. Sitting, almost immersed in the cold light of the sun that was diving into the horizon bathed in the sea, their first, unique, infinite kiss, a prologue of that hidden desire, of the most hidden desire, which had accompanied them for all those years and now just because everything was inexorably disappearing, that last emotion, that glimpse of time should have been consumed, so that it would not leave a trace in them and imprint an indelible memory that would accompany them during their lives, destined, now, to separate, that kiss then, he stripped them of the restraint of the game and allowed the hands to fly uncontrolled. When you are upset in such a short time, however, you lose every bit of reason, and reason is often a limit to deeper love. That time, in fact, made them forget that they should have considered a longer and deeper knowledge of the other and it is also true that time does not always help, because if the person you are with is not your real missing part, it can also pass a century, but will never be able to completely fill the glass. Erica, however, was not and never would have been, nor that late afternoon. But ... Erica's hand, soft, warm, determined, stopping the absent-mindedness of her thoughts, brought him back to real time: standing there at the Alcazar, on the left bank, in front of her, her longtime friend, the compliant custodian of her secrets, her fears and even her taboos ...