No, I was not afraid. I was an albatross I competed with the seagulls, I spread my wings my wings were white, big, mighty I was plunging into free fall I swooped and then I skilfully pulled up and reared towards the sun I went down to touch the tops of the trees I felt the tickle of the leaves on my stomach the caress of the air on the body I dived into the stars, I breathed the light I breathed the night I could feel the wind outside the wind inside. Prologue. San Quirico d'Orcia, 13 June 1997. Dear Mrs Kellermann, And so you won. It's been a year since I left and exactly what you predicted has happened: you've become a respectable upper-class lady and I'm slowly recovering. I owe my recovery (or perhaps I should say convalescence) to the care of a sweet nurse who keeps me prisoner in an enchanted castle, and in fairy tales a happy ending is a must: it is precisely to let you know that I am writing to you. Arianna and her parents are wonderful people. We are preparing the exam (you will be pleased to know this too) in the garden of their country house, completely surrounded by a tall hedge which isolates it from the road, and it is from here that I am writing to you. Beyond the hedge, only the bare hill and a dark patch of cypresses can be seen. We set up a table and two chairs under an umbrella. In the morning we have breakfast with tea, toasted bread and jam; then we start studying. Sometimes we rest: I absorb the sun's rays lying on the grass, in absolute torpor, and recharge my batteries. In the evening we go around some medieval village. There's only one place I'll never go back to, I'm not telling you which. In short, everything is perfect: the cowardice you forced me into is pleasant, I'm sinking into it with no escape, like in quicksand. I lost the bet: I remember that there was a stake and, don't doubt it, I will pay off my debt as soon as possible. It is useless to probe the bottom of the indecipherable sadness that undermines all my joys: there is a lack of meaning in these hours of grazing light and long shadows; the dream is missing, the sense is missing, but they tell me it is not important. June, as you know, is my favorite month, a full and hot month, swollen with vital juices. The meaning of this month is summed up for me in the smell of jasmine in full bloom, a smell that stuns, it's like a promise. It's a pity that it is then supplanted by the useless July, by the stupid and noisy August. Now that the waiting of adolescence is over, I realize that I have been waiting for something infinitely emptier than waiting. You'll tell me that it's like Leopardi's Saturday in the village, but you know how I think: knowing things in advance is useless, only what you discover personally counts. And I find out it now. Living is only for living, that's all; what I still fail to understand is how one can take comedy seriously. I wasn't deceiving myself, ma'am: the world of adults is necrophilic, it loves the macabre cosmetics of the corpse, it wants us dead but presentable. We are already in the wax museum. What to tell you, my soul? If you've forgotten who you are, I still can't forget who I am. After you I no longer had any immanent creed: I can only survive with vulgar magician's tricks. It is precisely the people who are closest to us who can understand us least: when they laugh at the chicken flights we try, when "for our own good" they bar us from accessing dreams, we should be brave enough to give them up to remain faithful to our dreams. But it's difficult. I no longer have this courage: I had it once, as you may remember, and, if you'll pass me the metaphor, I haven't yet finished picking up my pieces from the toilet bowl. I chose not to choose; I let myself live next to the people who love me and I keep them at bay, away from the intimate sphere. There are truths of such a desperate delicacy that it hurts to confess them even to oneself, without the need for the obtuse derision of others, or worse, their compassion. And there are feelings that cannot be expressed in words: all that remains is the inarticulate cry, or silence. Yours forever, Emmanuel. P.S.: Wish you were here, in my arms, to show you how I'm forgetting you.