December 21, 1999 "Today I have more desire to make lesson. How about investing the last half hour before the holidays talking about what lies ahead? I would like to share with you how I feel and I like that I'd sentiste you. "
Silence. I take a breath
pro forma.
"In just over a week, my boys, we'll look at our planet with decrepit five eyes each. The three more zeros will be accompanying the two. Two millennia of history, even if I do not think the modern era is playing after the death of Jesus was later medieval lords of the ancient Egyptians.
But never mind.
should question rather than on the passage from one millennium to another.
What does it mean? Almost nothing. Maybe only twenty centuries of Christianity, or two hundred decades of calendars identical to the current one, or even twenty-four thousand months which are repeated in line for twelve.
The real magic is all in the figure in 2000.
will last only a year, you enjoy it! The shot of the first issue, resetting the other, will allow us to understand what really changed around us, how's our old bike after the paint oven, puffed leather ball at the gas station. The cart will review the grandfather? We'll see if the computer
finally trigger the very programs that provide entry into the real future, or trying to forget the thousands of computer stupidities which have stored a millennium earlier, as could happen to any human being with ideas, projects and sentiments.
Historians say that the twentieth century was celebrated in a pyrotechnic, was seen as the century of revolutions, free-thinking, speed. The inventions kept coming spasmodic, and it was mainly the change of dates to galvanize scientists, writers and governments around the world. Cruises were organized daring avant-garde theater, parties that had nothing to do with the pompous platitudes nineteenth century. And it was just a changing of the guard, was entered in the last hundred years of the first millennium, many were missing zeroing, the halfway point, the mathematical symbol of the future. Indeed, the excessive expectations placed in the twentieth century have brought the beauty of three world wars, international conflicts twenty and thirty-five civil unrest. This would be a more plausible reason to not celebrate at all. Knock on wood and cross your fingers, but imagine what is going to happen, you who made us virgin, receptive, hopeful. Annusatene the air, happy to assist you! And please, at least the first day of the new millennium, keep cell phones turned off. "
smile, the game begins to like.
"An ancient prophet sent us its curse, the jinx, but it works if it occurs quickly, it's maturity, such as mozzarella. I do not think we will jump into the air like fireworks next week. Instead they are concerned about whether there will still be poetry, in the next millennium, if you will give more space to words, rather than voice. How many more things will be cleared, in addition to the numbers?
With these considerations on the time it will be, I wish you happy holidays. Do you think more than anything to live intensely the ball most of the last Novecentonovantanove, with a loved one at his side. What then, so, ensure that the real millennium begins January 1, 2001. "
So I laid off by the pupils of the third F.
pistolotto Before this, heard in extracurricular silence from the boys, even indifferent to the blaze of adrenaline that usually causes the trill of the bell, I had taken the lesson of the last millennium in poetry.
The last great poet of the century, Pierpaolo Pasolini. Corrado
I asked to recite the mystification and lightness in falsetto.
"Why, Professor?"
"in falsetto! You know the soprano Farinelli, or the Country Cousins? Or those other, as they are called ... The Bee Gees? "
" Those of Saturday Night Fever, Professor? "
" Just them, Cattaneo
He tried, but he was laughing. Then he realized that I was not joking at all.
He became serious, he read it all in one go, in a voice white white. A
was laughing the whole class. The mystification is lightness
Sincerity heavy and vulgar
With it is the life that wins should win instead
youth.
was just an experiment.
They have not taken seriously, we have the usual. The teacher is in their antiquated and pedantic, or modern, knowledgeable and hateful. If he loves
diverse, surprising, then, is completely crazy. Lesson
archived. Corrado
chased me down the aisle, he dribbled a crossroads of comrades, a janitor with a broom leaning against the window and Sister Matilda handling a Game Boy kidnapped a student of second out of breath and asked me where I spent the last night of the millennium.
E 'flabbergasted, to learn that I was going to Africa.
Maybe he's one of those that I imagined perpetually locked in a dump full of dusty books, including cans of cat food and felted sweater, piled on the washing machine, absorbed in speculations, which eliminate the concept of time, and therefore also Christmas holiday, light and dust the desk on which the elbows dug furrows. Maybe it smelled of mothballs and carrots in my house, the humidity of the bathroom peeling walls, the solitude that tries to yellow-gray hair ash. Measure the depth of my insomnia circles, the misanthropy of the thickness of bifocals. You probably consider me a strange animal intellectual Pleistocene, torn between the abstract concepts of the immortal and the problem of survival of the species.
At times like that.
"In Africa, professor? But in Sharm or in Africa? "
Just in Africa.
What I did not tell you that Conrad was not my own choice.
Well, not really.
I was surprised myself, the day when he called Beatrice.
not heard from her for a long time. Actually I had never been felt, she had remembered a couple of my birthdays, glimpses of humor in the saddest days of life, which usually I love to spend in bed, with his friend that ever materialized from the pages a book from time to time I open since I was a teenager. E 'Bernardo Soares, who reassured me from his office in Lisbon.
colorless at the end of summer I had come, like a premonition, a signed postcard from Corsica Beatrice dal'alto view of a beach stuck in the rocks where we were with Lorenzo eighteen years.
you can not Roccapina!
The bungalow which vibrated to every gust of wind, the evenings at the taste of myrtle, the sea of \u200b\u200ba hundred different shades of blue ... that nostalgia.
I reciprocated with a view to the island Comacina Ossuccio, during a trip with the class. I was not able to do better, but it was just a way to thank her.
The last time I crossed the former wife of Lorenzo had been at the furniture fair of Canterbury, five or six years ago. He sat on one of his couches, in the stand of the company inherited from his father.
was in the company of a gentleman of her more mature, and very distinct.
It must have been the proximity of the man ol'accostamento of her slender figure to an austere sofa "boat", but I found her aged more than I could imagine.
He rose and came towards me and I wanted to offer a drink. After a few seconds, the platinum blond hair flowing gracefully recline on the cushions of a beige Pagoda. Then he abandoned the pleasantries and I smiled as he saw a glimpse of the happy times.
It was a moment, I simply said, "All right, Professor?" And he took his leave, kidnapped by a potential customer, removing them from the embarrassment of presenting his new companion that he was peeping.
The other night on the phone, however, was different.
"Sorry your time, I absolutely need to talk to you. "
His voice was grave, subtended an emotional tension that I never recognized her ever so far away from everything: accommodating to the threshold of embarrassment of others, but never servile or enthusiastic, spontaneous and passionate but rarely flighty or instinctive.
I went to Villa Orsara thinking the worst, I crossed the desert night in Cernobbio Lorenzo believes that concern, that something had happened to our Lorenzo.
was more than three months without hearing from the son of a bitch, but it could also be normal, has always been afraid to reveal his whereabouts and was forced to such expedients to escape justice and the search of his first wife.
And if not for Lawrence, I was wondering, what so urgently wants a woman who has nothing to do with me for fifteen years?
The massive gates of the villa was opened electronically, I crossed the park with my car, messing with the least possible uncertainty carburetion English silence that reigned, accompanied by real estate elm trees, guarded by well-kept flower beds, until you reach the parking .
issues means no barking dogs, but even wag my tail, and the steward greeted me with a blank stare from the zombies.
"Welcome, Professor Xavier
In his tone there was the will to make me understand a specific situation, but also the obligation to be quiet and remain in harmony with the big house.
Something in the dust of the paintings of ancestors, and the smell of medicine of the corridor, I put in early warning.
Beatrice was in the party room, alone, curled up on a chair that was tiny, with the bones stretched as far as possible toward the warmth of the fireplace.
I approached, she smiled and extended his thin face, I thought that maybe it was my impression, the argument hands and I leaned over to kiss her.
whispered a greeting, that she was expected to debut.
"Sit down, Professor"
voice was tired, he tried to open the voice to be as accommodating as possible. Then I examined
better: cheekbones shadow over those who did that once were the cheeks, the tendons of the neck regardless of the skin that lasted difficult to wrap and keep them together, a little hair kept very short and strikingly painted red.
"How are you?"
I knew that was one of the most idiotic question, I tried to use the tone of one who has realized that there is something wrong.
Lorenzo was not the problem but her.
He took a breath as that produced sparks shock, through the lungs.
He had the look of complacent masochism precisely because he has bad news in Serbian, and this alarmed me even more. They spent two seconds between my new presentation and his voice wavering.
"I'm sick, Riccardo. I do not long to live. Maybe I can see the millennium, the doctors told me that the treatment I have adopted some of the most revolutionary, but in my case can only delay ... are also very expensive and very painful. I undergo therapy, not a morbid attachment to life, believe me, nor for the consolation of ending the worms in the new millennium. "
Another interminable breathe.
"I have only one wish: I want to see my daughter. It's not fair that she did not know who her mother was, what he left for her ... Because every day of my life I thought of Alice. Over the years I have hired investigators, governments have paid at least twenty countries, using the supports politicians of my father, but I could not locate my ex-husband. You're the only one who can do it. "
I understood, and despite the embarrassment of watching a drama and I do not regret to see her in that state, I tried not to ask what I should do. I simply make myself available.
"You're the only friend Lorenzo has kept, you can find out where they are, him and our daughter. I'll pay the ticket, I have ready a credit card from which to draw for you every need during the trip, is unlimited. I ask you to try to do everything possible to bring the girl here. Just to see her, talk to her, give her mirror in his youth and a look of motherly love. You need it, and I can leave happy. "
What could I do but nod in silence and tighten his fragile hands, it was already so much that I had not made to whine like a little kid, like the time I discovered which had been in bed with Lorenzo, and I did not know to which of them was crying, most of who I was jealous.
"Okay, Bea. My holidays from 22 "I said.
"I know. The trip to Zanzibar has already been booked. I do not know which damn statelet African or Indian Ocean island that has been kicked ... "
interrupted his tirade.
"The Indian Ocean islands are many, Africa is immense. It will not be easy to find them. "
Beatrice bowed her head, returned the handshake and asked the maid a heavier robe, giving me a resigned grimace.
"Can you make it. You're the only one who can do it. "I held
phrases fact, proverbs and words of hope, I choked a sad one, the feel, but useless half-sincere condolences that came up from the esophagus. He had not hinted at any remorse that I could sit.
After I had contributed to the escape of Lorenzo, indirectly.
I was sweating, m'imposi to believe it was the proximity of the chimney.
I thought only of her, to his condition. The magazine I?
Alternated in the head a thousand other questions, which I saw pass in the blink of an eye.
A thousand sealed envelopes, like those of the quiz, there were any questions of a friendship. I've loved you? You were jealous of me and Lorenzo when you were engaged? In Greece, when I spied her, you find you me? This time in London, while we waited Lorenzo coming from Rome and there was this strange atmosphere, the hotel simulasti an attack of colitis because you were afraid to read that fine? I cursed you when you heard that your husband had run off with my student?
Now answer - I thought - what good is it to lie when you're one step away from the greatest truth of all? We even tried
, language was welded to the palate and I felt that if I tried to pull it off, I would have swallowed.
had waited for her to leave.
"Remember, your credit card is unlimited," his last words.
