Reptilia III – The Forbidden Fruit.
Pieve Santo Stefano.
June 15, 1997.
In a few days we have the final exam, Emmanuel: do you feel ready?
Honestly, I don't care. But yeah, I think I'm pretty ready.
Why are you so negative today?
I don't know. It's hot, way too hot for early June.
And does this put you in a bad mood?
Yes. But it's not just that.
Don't you like coming here to the little church with me anymore?
Of course I like it. I don't know, I have a strange feeling, as if something bad is happening right now.
It's just a feeling, Emmanuel. Relax.
He takes a deep breath.
Let's go back to the car, please: without the air conditioning I feel suffocated.
We get up and reach the Volvo, parked in front of the parish church in the shade of a large holm oak; but the heat inside is unbearable, and only after about ten minutes the air conditioner manages to lower the temperature of a few degrees. We lie down on the reclined backrests.
Luckily the sun has set and a warm breeze has sprung up: the air is cooling down a bit.
Turn off the engine, then, and let's open all the windows. It's really anti-ecological what we're doing,
as well as anti-economical.
Let's hope the mosquitoes don't arrive.
Thanks to the effect of the air conditioner, the shade of the big tree and the evening breeze coming in through the open windows, finally you can breathe.
Emmanuel remains with his eyes closed for a few minutes, then suddenly says:
I didn't want to be born.
No one chooses to be born.
Not necessarily, according to the myth of Er.
He remains silent for a while and then starts speaking again.





May I tell you something I've never told anyone...
Not even to her?
No. Not even to her.
I'm listening to you.
He crosses his arms over his chest, a position of unconscious self-defense, and lowers his gaze. Then begins to speaking with difficulty, pausing frequently.
I was six years old when Aunt Luisa, my father's sister, got breast cancer. She was a very sweet woman, my favorite aunt... She was thirty-eight years old... I could hear my father and my mother in the room next to mine: they were talking to my brother about our aunt who was dying. They said she was devastated by suffering and they spoke in low voices, you understand?... Because I wasn't supposed to hear I wasn't supposed to know, I wasn't supposed to understand what damn trap they had put me in by bringing me into this world!
Everything about that moment remained etched in my memory: the voices of my parents, the frozen marble floor, the Persian carpet I was sitting on... the display case with the majolica and jade statuettes in front of me, the silverware on the furniture... the roughness of the embroidered silk upholstery of the sofa against my cheek... I stared at the mirror and inside the baroque frame I saw a child curled up in a corner near the radiator, surrounded by a blatant and impotent luxury, which could not protect him from anything. At a certain point I heard my brother's voice calling me.
Your brother loves you, Emmanuel.
Maybe, I don't know. At that moment I hated him. I understood that he was looking for me and I didn't want to be found.
Why?
Because I hated him. I hated them all. As soon as I saw my father and mother enter the room I started screaming. My mother got scared, she bent down to hug me and I hit her with all the violence I was capable of, in the face and on the shoulders. Then I ran into the garden and started running without knowing where I was going. I reached the animal shed at the end of the meadow, I opened a cage and I hid among the rabbits.
Among the rabbits?
Yes. They made me feel good, protected. I fell asleep among them, with my head resting on their fur... It was warm and comfortable... They understood the situation, you know? None of them tried to bite me. When I woke up I opened all the cages and let them escape; some were so stupid that they wanted to go back into the cage to be killed by humans: I chased those fool animals into the woods threatening them with a stick.
That's all.
You lost your faith too soon, Emmanuel.
I wish I had lost it.
What do you mean...
I have never believed that God made man in his image and likeness, but I can't believe nor the opposite, what atheists say: that is, that we invented God. A friend of mine whose name was Antonio always said this, but I never believed him. Maybe the God the Father, the merciful God, yes, we invented that: we are all children when faced with pain, we desire all a father who protects us. But the one who created the world and dominates it, whoever he is, exists, and is visible through its own laws: mathematical laws, physical laws, the golden section, the law of the strongest. You have to be really stupid to believe that all this happened by chance.
So you believe in God?
Unfortunately, yes.
Why unfortunately?
Because I’d rather not believe in him. 
A being with average morality would not allow all this suffering: how can it be attributed to a just God? Then justice, as we understand it, is not It is a prerogative of God. Those who say that pain is not evil, like the Stoics, do not solve the problem, just move it: if it is not evil, why does it seem evil to us? And if the one who created me is the evil God, why do I look so little like him? Everything would be perfect if I functioned like him. In fact, many human beings work like this: they do evil without knowing it, without even realizing it, some even voluntarily, and they feel at peace with themselves. But not me: I don't want to have anything in common with that sadistic designer. But then, if He didn't create me, if I'm not part of Nature, who am I, where do i come from? 
The answer to certain questions is found only in faith Emmanuel.
What if faith itself were his most refined deception? Making us believe that we cannot understand, that we have to believe by faith, when in fact the solution exists, and maybe it's even simple.
In what sense?
It's like when you don't understand a drawing and then you realize you're just looking at it upside down.
I don't follow you.
Yet it is simple: it would make no sense for God to give man reason and then prevent him from use it and force him to believe by faith. So there is only one logical explanation: who gave us the reason and who does not want us to use it is not the same God. Do you remember the words of the serpent to Adam and Eve? If they had eaten the forbidden fruit they would have become like God, and that is precisely why God wants to prevent it.
So what?
Maybe the snake is right. Maybe he is not the villain of the story, maybe he is trying to warn us against the deceptions of the false God. Perhaps the God of matter is not the true God, he is something similar to Plato's Demiurge. Perhaps the false God with his commandments only seeks to preserve his dominion on matter: this is why he wants procreation, this is why he says "honor your father and mother", when It would already be too much not to hate them.
Emmanuel, you're talking like a heretic!
Maybe I was a heretic in another life, who knows; maybe Don Luciano was the inquisitor who burned me alive at the stake, while you were in the crowd applauding.
Don't talk nonsense. Don Luciano is a good man and I would never have applauded the burning of heretics: the violence horrifies me. My Christianity is that of St. Francis, don't forget it.
Who forgets, you or I? The Franciscans lent their arm to the Holy Inquisition.
They were wrong: they did not understand Francis' message.
He shows me the countryside with a circular gesture of his arm.
And them? Who saves them?
Francis preached to the birds, he spoke to the wolves.
But he never said they have a soul, right?
No, not that I know of.
Arianna, give me one reason, just one, to believe that suffering has a meaning: I ask for nothing better than to change my mind. Don't tell me that life is a test for the afterlife, because I speak of useless evil: the suffering of a child, a dog, a lizard, a fly. Tell me what it's for. Tell me what this supreme intelligence has in mind to enjoy the suffering of a defenseless being which he himself created. Tell me what compensation is expected for a street child used for organ harvesting, for a dog drowning in a canal, tell me what otherworldly reward awaits a lobster boiled alive to become the excrement of a human being, tell me what intelligence can having planned the extinction of tigers to make an impotent old man's penis erect, tell me what is the punishment for a black cat crucified by a bastard claiming to act on behalf of God!
And maybe that bastard is right, maybe he is the instrument of that evil God. But not me, I don't I allow him to use me. If he wants to carry out his criminal plan, then go ahead, I can't stop him: as long as he doesn't use me. But he forces me to do harm even if I don't want to, and that's the most vile of all betrayals. I don't give a damn about what that superior being has in mind: I only know that I don't want to be his accomplice.
Emmanuel, that's enough: you're blaspheming.
I'm not blaspheming at all, Arianna. Mine is more like a prayer than a blasphemy. It's strange that you don't understand that.

He turns to take from the back seat an old book with a worn cover from my father's library, which he has been carrying with him for some time now; he browses the pages in search of a passage, he finds it and reads it to me:
I prefer to stay with unavenged suffering. I prefer to stay with my unavenged suffering and in my dissatisfied indignation, even if I were not right. They set a too high a price for harmony; we cannot afford to pay so much to access it. Therefore I hasten to return the entrance ticket. And if I am an honest man, I am obliged to do so as soon as possible. And I'm doing it. Not that I don't accept God, I'm just giving him back, with the utmost deference, his ticket.
He puts the book on his knees and looks at me:
The genius who wrote these words was deeply religious, yet he was able to write the most sublime of blasphemies.
Yes, I remember that passage.
Arianna, I will not change my way of being to please a God-fearing girl who does not realize the contradictions of her faith. I do not blame you for this, but if you do not accept me as I am, I am ready to leave tomorrow. I can do it, I feel much better.
Sorry, I didn't mean to offend you; it just makes me feel bad seeing you so upset.
He is silent for a few minutes.
I've been trying to get out of the game all my life. All my life. I'm just now realizing it.
That's why…
Why I was doing drugs? Yes, I think it was for this reason, and for other reasons too. But I'm really better now.


I look at him: his eyes are magnified by dark circles, it's as if his irises projected a blue halo all around.
Who knows, maybe I'm already dead and I don't remember it anymore.
You are there Emmanuel: you are here, you are alive, you are with me.
Sometimes I lie awake at night and think I should be underground long ago. I see because you lend me your eyes, I make love through your body. I'm only half alive, maybe even less. Though it's still beautiful.
Do you think it is wise for a heretic to marry his inquisitor?
Not right away, obviously, we're too young.
You're right, this little church is beautiful. On one condition though: intimate ceremony and no
white veil, okay?
I am speechless for a few seconds, then I wrap my arms around him: I feel like I'm going crazy with joy. He smiles, but it seems to me that he creaks a little. I loosen my grip. I have to keep him in good health until marriage, my fragile, tender, problematic, adorable, erotic, heretic boyfriend.
God, this all seems too good to be true! If this is a dream, please, don't wake me...