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, June 13, 1997

 

Dear Mrs. Kellermann,

And so you won. A year has passed since I left and exactly what you expected has happened: you have become a respectable upper-class lady and I am recovering little by little. I owe my healing (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 the happy ending is a must: it is precisely to communicate it to you that I am writing to you.

Arianna and her parents are wonderful people. We are preparing the exam (you will be happy to know this too) in the garden of their country house, completely surrounded by a high hedge that isolates it from the road, and it's 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 have placed a table and two chairs under an umbrella. In the morning we have breakfast with tea, biscuits and jam; then we start studying. Every now and then we rest: I absorb the rays of the sun lying on the grass, in absolute numbness, and I recharge. In the evening we go around some medieval villages. There is only one place I will never return to, I'm not going to tell you which one.

In short, everything is perfect. The cowardice you forced me to is agreeable: I am sinking into it without escape, as in quicksand. I lost the bet: I remember that there was a stake and, do not doubt it, I will pay my debt as soon as possible.

It is useless to probe the bottom of the indecipherable sadness that hides all my joys: there is no meaning in these hours of grazing light and long shadows, the dream is missing, meaning is missing, but they tell me that it is not important.

June, as you know, is my favorite month, a full and warm 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. Too bad it is then supplanted by the useless July, by the dull and rowdy August.

Now that the wait for adolescence is over, I realize that I have been waiting for something infinitely more empty than waiting. You will tell me that it smells a lot like “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 now.

Living is only for living, there is nothing else; what I still can't understand is how the comedy can be taken seriously. I was not mistaken, lady: the world of adults is necrophiliac, loves the macabre cosmetics of the corpse, it wants us dead but presentable. We are already in the wax museum. 

What can I tell you, my soul? If you have forgotten who you are, I still cannot forget who I am. After you I no longer had any immanent faith: I can only survive with vulgar magician’s tricks. 

It is precisely the people who are closest to us who are less able to understand us: when they laugh at the chicken flights we try, when "for our good" they block us from access to dreams, we should be brave enough to give up on them and stay true to our dreams. But it is difficult. I no longer have this courage: I had it once, as you maybe remember, and if you pass me the metaphor, I haven't finished collecting yet my shards from the toilet bowl. 

I have chosen 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 themselves, without the need for obtuse derision of other people, or worse, their compassion. And there are feelings that cannot be expressed in words: all that remains is the inarticulate cry, or the silence.

 

                                                                       Yours forever

                                                                       Emmanuel

 

PS: I would like you were here, in my arms, to show you how I am forgetting you.