We were awakened by a song screamed loud that night. So fluid and intoned, angelic, almost asexual, that for a moment we stood spellbound in bed, lulled by the melody, before getting up angry leaning out the windows. But that hesitation, block after block, was enough to that body and that voice to get away, disappearing around the corner every time, in another alley. So, the next morning, we found ourselves in the courtyards, stunned and furious. No one had seen the author of the serenade sung to the entire city. No one was able to say with certainty even if it was a male or a female singer. I went to work more dazed than usual that morning. Not to the point, however, to miss a curious detail, a challenge to logic and statistics: the cats I passed along the streets were all red. Soft, fat and with a reddish hair. All in good humor, also. They looked at me and laughed, literally, under their long mustaches, as if to say, "You don't understand anything, right?". I could not deny the fact. But I went on, quite, after all, saying that it was a coincidence, and that simply I had not been paying attention to the cats of other colors. And then the smile of the red cats, or what seemed to me a smile, had also improved my mood, as far as possible. At the office that morning everybody was civil and courteous. Even the secretary Contelli called PH, acidity quotient. I judged even that a benign coincidence. At that moment, however, I heard it again. The music, the heavenly song. I thought of a radio. But in our company the radio had been banned from the foundation. Hypothesizing its presence was absurdly vain. No less absurd and inescapable, however, was the fact that I, in spite of everything, still heard it. I got up from the table with an apology and I started looking in closets and in rooms closed since immemorial time. I found nothing, but I confirmed to myself the intention to take at all costs the clandestine singer. Down the stairs I could almost grasp its shadow for a few times. But in the decisive moment he or she crept into the interstices of time and space, as if it wore off between one frame and the other of life. I felt the need to ask solidarity to someone.
"This time I almost caught it" - I whispered to my neighbor's desk. "Did you get whom?, he replied yawning. I began to suspect that even the night music was not shared by anyone. That evening I stopped with an excuse my next-door neighbor. I dropped the subject as by chance about the night sounds. "I never slept so well as in the last few nights. Someone should just try to make noise down here at night. I have a shotgun faster than the ghosts," he growled. I gave the blame to the stress, and I decided to take it more comfortable in the days ahead. But I still heard it. I just heard it, more ruthless and harmonious than ever. Today, Friday, May 31, I feel it's really time to talk to an expert. In our town, the options are few: there is only one psychologist, indeed, a female psychologist, Stefania Ermiani. I take an appointment, albeit reluctantly, and I go to visit her. I look at her for a long time while she scrutinizes me. She is beautiful, intelligent, with a warm and alive light in her eyes. I find the courage to tell her everything. She listens quietly, slowly rises, and, still smiling, touches my shoulders. "Doctor, I hear the music ... now!""This is real. And, it is the radio. Do not worry, everything's fine." I turn around and she is no more there. She's disappeared. She returns a few minutes later on the opposite side, with a light shirt silk. She starts to sing. Fluid, intoned, angelic, almost asexual. But that almost disappears in the exact moment she casts away the veils from her white firm breast, revealing she is solid, feminine, real, without a doubt. Beauty dancing in the folds of time. Beautiful like the long red hair that melt, now, on the hot skin of her shoulders. She approaches me, vibrant, passionate, and confesses. This time it's her turn to confess to me: "You know, even I am not mentally stable. To have you I became a sleepwalker. A dream and a nightmare." Yes, she was my dream and my nightmare. But only a dream, in that moment, indeed, only reality.
"It was just a joke in the beginning - she continued. I made a bet with myself. I bet I'd be able to move more rapid and furtive than love. Passing by it, an inch, a breath, then dodging it each time, leaving only impalpable air. I lost. I'm here, still, lazily won. I feel a bit like my Vincent". Saying these words she stretches her hand under the table to stroke a tabby, fluffy, fat cat with a tawny fur, moving just enough to let me see his face and his long whiskers twitching. Without wanting to say nothing more and nothing less, this time, than the arcane, deep, mysterious joy of his laughter.Ivano Mugnaini