Archivi tag: Egypt

A MYSTERIOUS HIEROGLYPH – a short story about living hearts

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A MYSTERIOUS HIEROGLYPH

– A living heart –

I had resisted, somehow, to life. Could I resist to death? How would I look at her the moment she would come through that door? What would have we talked about? How would we spent the time together?
I’d asked myself these questions for years, as if they were a purely theoretical matter. A routine medical examination, then, an afternoon like any other. A young doctor with a grim, sincere face. The time had come for me, without clamor, hungry and with a moderate advance. A death accurately foretold, with the privilege of the notice. The expiry date had been communicated officially, but also in a civil way, almost slightly, almost humanly. Within a few months the epilogue would come for me.
The tears and laughter suddenly get a different taste, a strange texture. They satiate quickly, and just as quickly they make me get tired. Chasms of time, empty arms, stomach, veins. It remained me only the need, at that point, not to die before the time, to establish how to spend my days. The first impulse, half elected, natural slope towards slippery ideas, is the frozen lake of budgets. Things done and not done, successes and failures. A destination to be avoided at all costs. Smiling and grinning time passed, lost, never found. It would be a sterile game, with the additional risk of plunging into eddies of ice. A possible alternative is to meditate on possible revenges: finally, now that I have really nothing to lose. But it costs too much energy, physically and mentally. Moreover, from the new perspective, many mountains of anger seem piles of mud and manure. So, against all expectations, I find myself to concentrate on a new chapter: Thanks and Rewards. I run back along the path of the years going to recover those rare people who, unexpectedly, gave without asking, without expecting something in return.
The first that comes to mind is Rina Giromini from Livorno, born in 1975. A companion of the University, one of the few I had never been in love with. Wrong. More than ever, in her case. Giromini, only now I can concentrate on the playful magic of her surname: the round opposite, the other side of men, of people. Men backward, or something like that. Different, different by nature and fate. She was surely different.
I try to get in touch with her through an old phone number fished out a dusty agenda. She answered immediately. She is faithful in the years also to that set of numbers. She has the same measured, courteous voice. She speaks of the years spent with tranquility, as if describing the brown water of a storm already absorbed by a new sun. We agree to meet. In Pisa, Via Santa Maria, at the entrance of the University, as if we were to go to another lesson. She is more beautiful, more mature, quiet and painful as ever. After brief and hasty sentences of circumstance, I say, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, I have little else to live. She, serene, with an inscrutable face, speaks to me of an Egyptian legend: “When a child is born seven gods decide of his death…”. I listen and watch, amazed, blown away. Quiet again, too. Her hair still jet-black, shining like asps. She is perhaps a witch, a descendant of the line of Cleopatra.
“When a child is born seven gods decide of his death: if born twenty-three he dies of a crocodile bite, born the four dies of fever, if born on fifteen dies of love…”. I interrupt. “I was born on the fifteenth.”
I look her in the eyes and full lips. I laugh. I see her deep bitterness. It’s late. It’s late for everything now.
But Rina is known, and infinitely dear to me, to my hidden memories, especially for a phrase. One morning she sat down beside me on the bench in the Aula Magna, and came up to me, touched my arm and whispered: “Surprise them!”. A few syllables, the sense of a life. Lightly, no boulder compact imposition. “Surprise them!”. Surprise the commonplace, the cliche, the brand seared back. Surprise yourself, ideas, fears, beliefs, doubts and certainties. Rina urged me, stroking me almost by accident, as in error, to do something unexpected, discovering the courage of the will, the art to get involved. The thirst of the flight without thinking about the crash.
I watch again. Long, carefully, as I had never done. She is beautiful. This is the first and greatest confirmation. Beautiful without ifs or buts. I would tell her finally, but something stopped me: an echo crystallized in memory, the voice of the doctor: “A few months, at best. No more”. Yeah. Nothing more than death I have to like now.
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Rina senses. She needs no words, she never needed. She takes leave. Without hatred, without anger, with a mild handshake. Her face is only darker now. She knows that the next lesson in philosophy that we listen together, sitting at the same desk, is light years away, located in galaxies yet to be born. I see her get away, slowly, hesitantly. Despair gives me the strength to focus again on a single imperative: “Surprise them!”. I have the opportunity, the last one, the first, to surprise who made me the precious and heavy gift of that advice.
“You know Rina, I have never been in Egypt. I know it’s absurd, but … if you came with me, I’d go there now. ”
Rina turns slowly. All her calmness cannot hide the light of a smile. She searches important phrases, appropriate to the circumstance. Finally she manages to break the silence with a joke.
“But you were not the one who is afraid of flying? If you want we can go by boat, as in the novel by Agatha Christie. ”
“No, we go by plane. This time I know that I will not fear. The worst thing that could happen to me … would be … to die! ”
We do not laugh, neither of us. We are so close that the lips have better things to do. The kiss is sweet, full-bodied. As a wine that has breathed and absorbed the secret of the dark.
The embrace makes us shake naked. Rehearsing in endless knots chapters of a lesson that no one can teach and learn alone. We follow the points, lines, soft meat and breaths. The stresses of a sentence written over and over again with our fingers. Mute phrases, impossible to forget.
She looks at me again. Tenderly now, no longer burdened by that corner stone that prevents the lips to stretch freely. She touches my hair, my eyes still look bright. She whispers new words.
” You’re lucky, you know! Of all deaths, the death by love is the best . When you die really, you don’t die at all. ”
I’m not sure I understand completely. Maybe yes and maybe no. The mind and the body prefer to get lost in another dilemma: if the heartbeat that I feel in the soft and warm flesh I hold is mine or hers. I listen to the silence for long moments. I can not decide. It remains an enigma, a mysterious hieroglyph, an eternal mystery. I only say now, with absolute certainty, that it is the sound of a living heart.
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